Radical Separation Research Articles

Энактивистский подход как выход из «ловушки когнитивизма»: реабилитация субъектности

The article substantiates the importance of the subjectness position in the study of cognitive processes. The subject cannot be either eliminated or considered as a mere “carrier” and “mediator” of cognitive abilities; it is necessary to study the whole variety of subjective ex­perience and the possibilities of its empirical fixation and measurability discovered by phe­nomenology. The article argues that the radical separation of cognitive processes from con­sciousness creates a kind of explanatory gap in scientific theories. According to the author, the “trap of cognitivism” arises if the cognitive process is viewed as the solution of predeter­mined tasks (assigned to the system from the outside), where the mind is essentially a cogni­tive unconscious, which deepens the gap between “computational” and phenomenological mind and leaves no room for subjectness. The article proves the productivity of the enac­tivist approach from the position of coherence of the concept of mind as a dynamic system and phenomenological explanation of the experience of subjectness, since autonomous agents create their own cognitive domains, which allows them to endow information with new meanings and perform situational actions relevant to the environment.

Framing the present through the past: Ukrainian diaspora in France, Holodomor memory and the 2014 critical juncture

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on a rarely addressed aspect of the link between diaspora and memory construction: the use of historical analogies, i.e. the way in which the memory of a past event (the 1933 famine in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor) is used by diasporic entrepreneurs to frame current violent events (the Russian–Ukrainian conflict). Based on fieldwork conducted among the Ukrainian diaspora in France, I show that the critical juncture of 2014 was a key moment in the reinterpretation of the present through the past (and vice versa), and identify three core-framing mechanisms that construct the historical analogy: parallelism, causality and implication. This framing activity contributed to the reconstruction of the imagined Ukrainian community and its radical separation from the Russian one. More generally, the article highlights the need to understand memory and nation-building as transnational processes that are not necessarily tied to the personal histories of diasporic entrepreneurs.

Greyhounds, Hunters, and Hares: The Construction of Fluid Animality in Interspecies Relations

ABSTRACT The pursuit of hares with greyhounds (known as “coursing”) is a very common hunting practice in the villages of the Guadalquivir Valley, Andalusia (Spain) and is strongly rooted in the history of the area. This kind of hunting provides an intersubjective/interspecies context that hints at the ambivalence of animality as a category. By applying a phenomenological perspective, and through the development of ethnographic research, we study the relationships between greyhounds, hares, and hunters, with the aim of showing that animality cannot be understood as a closed category. Animality emerges in the context of human–animal interactions, and within these, attributes and capacities are attributed to greyhounds or hares that are conventionally only acknowledged in humans. In addition, these attributes change throughout the animals’ life cycle. Consequently, we propose the notion of “fluid animality,” as something changing and flexible that blurs the radical separation between the human and the animal assumed by Western naturalism. We believe that approaching animality by studying multispecies practices and interactions offers a more appropriate analytical perspective when seeking to understand human–animal relations and their complexity in the Western world.

Myśl ekonomiczna kalwinizmu

The aim of the paper is to present the economic thoughts of John Calvin and his followers, referring to current issues, such as money lending, usury, or work. The latter, according to the famous thesis of Max Weber, received spiritual value by acting as a bridge between God's will and daily life. The hypothesis of this article differs somewhat from this conviction, assuming that the main economic elements of Calvinist thought have been the consequence of the release of temporal realities from the influence of the direct action of God, according to the protestant theology of the radical separation of nature and grace. Initiated by Protestantism, the dichotomy of nature and grace seems to have important consequences for economic thought. The salvific dimension of human fate remained in the hands of God, he depends entirely on its favour in connection with the dogma of predestination. In the earthly life, a human being was treated as a part of nature, his survival depended on skill and determination. in the struggle with nature, devoid of the grace of God, ruled by the law of necessity. Survival and a better life depended primarily on human labour and effort. The flourishing of economic life has resulted not only from the ethical role of work, but also from the fact that it was no longer inhibited by religious restrictions. Thus, modern man was born, more and more aware of his subjectivity, subordinating nature to himself building the human world in place of the natural world. Building a modern society and economy is part of the Protestant ethos of mastering nature.

A Museum of Black Civilizations in the Contemporary World: In conversation with Hamady Bocoum

A Museum of Black Civilizations in the Contemporary World: In conversation with Hamady Bocoum

Shadows of Being: Encounters with Heidegger in Political Theory and Historical Reflection by Jeffery Andrew Barash

Reviewed by: Shadows of Being: Encounters with Heidegger in Political Theory and Historical Reflection by Jeffery Andrew Barash Rylie Johnson BARASH, Jeffery Andrew. Shadows of Being: Encounters with Heidegger in Political Theory and Historical Reflection. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2022. 260 pp. Paper, $42.00 ELIZABETH C. SHAW AND STAFF* Composed of a series of unique yet thematically connected chapters, Jeffrey Andrew Barash's latest book carefully addresses the relationship between Martin Heidegger's thought and political theory and how these are connected through the thematization of historical narrative. In light of the publication of the controversial Black Notebooks, Barash's book serves as a significant contribution to debates regarding Heidegger's political engagement with National Socialism. However, rather than simply rehash this engagement, Barash takes a critical approach, arguing that Heidegger's historical narrative, that is, the history of Being, buttressed a "political mythology" and "fatalism" that absolved human beings of historical, ethical, and political responsibility. Thus, through a confrontation with Heidegger, Barash demonstrates the danger of denying human agency in the future course of history, since "fatalism only makes more probable the outcome it claims to foresee." While invested in explicating the political and ethical implications of Heidegger's thought, Barash is critically oriented around demonstrating a presupposition within the Seinsfrage, or the question of being that motivated Heidegger's philosophy. Heidegger presupposed that reraising the question of being was the fundamental task of philosophy, one that rendered "subordinate" other forms of historical reflection. Consequently, Barash argues that Heidegger established a "strategy of interpretation" that privileged his own standpoint in the history of Western thought and allowed him to set aside contrary ethical, political, and historical interpretations. Ultimately, this resulted in the formulation of the myth of the history of Being that placed Heidegger himself at the culminating point of Western history. The essays that compose Barash's book address the various implications of Heidegger's presupposition. The book is separated into two parts. The first consists of direct interpretations of Heidegger's thought and is composed of six chapters. The second addresses the critical reception of that thought, reflected in such figures as Hannah Arendt and Emanuel Levinas, and is composed of chapters seven through ten. [End Page 541] Chapter 1 focuses on Heidegger's broad legacy today, which according to Barash is threefold: the prevalence of historical deconstruction, his complicity with "Germanic ideology," and his criticisms of Western scientific rationality, all of which Heidegger rendered into an effect of metaphysics and the forgetting of the Seinsfrage. Chapter 2 discusses Heidegger's metaphysics of memory, showing that his inversion of the traditional eternal view of memory in favor of one grounded in mortality obscured other forms of "collective remembrance." Through a reading of St. Paul and Spinoza, chapter 3 investigates Heidegger's presupposition by revealing that the radical separation of the ontological from the ontic matters of theology, politics, and ethics is in fact an ontic decision of the "ethical order." Chapter 4 extensively discusses Heidegger's understanding of race and its relationship to Nazi orthodoxy. Highlighting that Heidegger was certainly critical of biological racism, Barash nevertheless shows that Heidegger articulated a "metaphysical" racism at the level of the history of Being. Chapter 5 reflects on Heidegger's Being-historical interpretation of World War II. Barash shows Heidegger's fatalism whereby the war was not a matter of human choices but was "attributed to an abandonment of Being." Chapter 7 closes part 1 by discussing the status of mythology in Heidegger's thought. Criticizing mythology as a form of historical production, Heidegger nonetheless creates his own myth: the history of Being. This mythological dimension is perhaps the most problematic aspect of Heidegger's thought. In the second part, Barash changes the trajectory of his arguments, addressing the critical reception of Heidegger's legacy by other philosophers. In chapter 7, Barash discusses the influence of Heidegger on Hannah Arendt's view of the public world, a world that theoretically rests on Heidegger's Dasein. But while Heidegger failed to adequately grapple with the public, Arendt radicalized it, showing that political reflection served as the basis for the philosophical problem of truth. Chapter 8 reflects upon the influence that the...

A Comparison of the State-Favored Religions in Turkey and Hungary

Is it possible to establish a radical separation between religion and politics in constitutionally secular states? Is religion a private or political matter? In many countries, religious people are becoming activists, involving politics, trying to change the policies based on their beliefs or get a share of the state power. Their claims sometimes fall within the democratic structure of the country, and sometimes outside of it. This paper provides insight into the relation between state and religion by focusing on the religious politics of two countries, Turkey and Hungary This study is, in essence, a crossregional and cross-religious comparative study, presenting the very first comparison of the state-religion relationships in the two countries. Ninian Smart’s concept of dimensions of religion will be used as a framework to extract a pattern for each country. These dimensions exist in social systems and reflect the cultural and social milieu in which people socialize and build their own beliefs. Our goal is to present and prove that the religious features of Turkey and Hungary are comparable and show similarities along each dimension of Smart. Exploratory qualitative analysis will be employed to collect and analyze qualitative data in order to generate new concepts and generalizations. The data will be collected from open sources, such as newspapers, statistics, and survey results in Hungary and Turkey, to find the answer to the research questions. The main results of our comparative analysis are, first, evidence for substantial similarities regarding the presence of religion in the public sphere in each Smartian dimension, although in countries that are very different in terms of religion. Second, our systematic and structured analysis provides a strong and impartial invitation for further comparative research from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. This study is going to provide data collected from open sources such as newspapers, statistics, survey results in Hungary and Turkey, in order to find the reply to these questions.

Beyond Tolerance? Spinozist Proposals on Preferences and Justifications

The term “tolerance”, strictly speaking, does not belong to Spinoza’s vocabulary, and the notion of “tolerance”, in its modern sense, is not part of his concepts either. However, the separation of theology and politics, which is the subject of the Theological-Political Treatise, envelops an even more radical separation between immanence and transcendence. An entirely immanent policy would be indifferent to “values” and “justifications” of any kind (moral, religious, rational). It would be based only on the “accounts” of individual “preferences”. We show that Spinoza’s philosophy can help us conceive (perhaps one day achieve) such a form of radical, or “absolute” democracy.

T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral: Divine vs. Human?

This article discusses the relationship between the divine and the human, as it appears in T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral, written for and performed at the Cathedral of Canterbury in 1935. On the one hand, and most obviously, this play about the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket in the Cathedral on 29 December 1170 owes much to a medieval Catholic as well as Anglo-Catholic tradition. On the other hand, the unbridgeable distance between the divine and the human, pronounced by Thomas Becket in all his utterances in the play, resembles the contemporary theology of the Reformed theologian Karl Barth, whose theology Eliot had been aware of since 1934. Recent scholarship has discussed the influence of Barth’s theology on Eliot’s poetry, especially the Four Quartets (1936–1940). Contemporary sources, on the other hand, show Eliot’s ambivalence towards what he understood to be Barth’s theology. However, the article does not aim at a biographical understanding; it concerns Eliot’s text and how it relates to the radical separation between God and the human world, as found in Barth’s theology. The analysis of Murder in the Cathedral emphasizes the polyphony of voices in the play, which counterbalances the radical contrast between divine and human in the play’s presentation of Thomas Becket’s voice.

Ghost production: applying the Servuction model to establish a typology and propose a research agenda for on-demand restaurant food delivery

PurposeThe rapid growth in volume and value of on-demand restaurant food delivery, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is causing a paradigm shift in the food service sector. However, there is a lack of hospitality management research into this emerging phenomenon. To address this gap, this paper defines and develops a novel conceptual model and typology and proposes a research agenda for ghost production in the context of food service.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses the Servuction model to explore, define and model the radical separation between food service production sites, points of sale and consumer interaction from the perspective of on-demand restaurant food delivery. A novel typology is developed and illustrated with eight industry examples from the UK and an accompanying cost benefit analysis. Future research priorities are identified.FindingsIn the hospitality literature, little attention has been paid to changes on-demand restaurant food delivery brings to production and business models of food service organisations, resulting in significant gaps between food service practice and theory. The knock-on effects to stakeholders include increased convenience for customers, uncertain employment status of riders and, for restaurants, striking a balance between capturing new markets and losing control of the customer. Additionally, for aggregators, there is a lack of profitability in existing models, despite holding the balance of power (and data).Originality/valueThe concept of “ghost production” and its associated typology is novel and offers a contribution to hospitality management literature by defining the term, scope and scale of this new phenomenon. Practical implications are proposed.

Liberation Theology: A Pragmatist Perspective

Liberation Theology: A Pragmatist Perspective

Between ‘Retreat’ and ‘Recentralisation’: China’s SOE Reform Conundrum

State-owned enterprises (SOEs), a key constituent of China’s economy, are an important reference for analysing China’s evolving state-market relations. Market-oriented reforms introduced in the SOE sector over the past four decades have seen the Communist Party of China (CPC) loosen its control over SOEs, shedding a large number of loss-making enterprises, and significant restructuring of remaining enterprises, including by public listing. But these achievements still fall short of making Chinese SOEs ‘modern enterprises’, and they continue to be extensions of the Chinese Party-state. Using Party documents, speeches and policy announcements, this article explores key changes and continuities in China’s state-owned sector in the post-liberalisation era. It contends that the neoliberal turn in China’s economic transition cannot be understood in the radical separation of state and market configurations but that reform and restructuring of SOEs have to be situated in a political-institutional landscape where multiple interests compete over the formulation of economic policy.

Enforcing Ecological Borders between the Human and the Nonhuman: Adapting Pygmalion’s Benevolent Galatea into Frankenstein’s and Contemporary Monsters

Humans are evolutionary adaptations of other biological organisms. However, socio-cultural adaptations associated with the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, the rise of monotheism, and the Scientific Revolution, have contributed to a radical ontological separation of the human from the nonhuman. This false binary opposition facilitates humanity’s destructive behaviour towards nonhuman components of our biosphere, threatening the existence of our species. This article explores the historical development of artistic texts that demonstrate anxieties about transgressing borders between the human and the nonhuman. These texts use repeated narrative and thematic topoi that are adapted to reflect historical attitudes towards human/nonhuman borders. Palaeolithic culture produced art which demonstrated a lack of borders between the human and the nonhuman, but following the Agricultural Revolution, ecophobic cultures produced fictional narratives warning about the monstrous consequences of transgressing human/nonhuman borders. The article traces these ecophobic borders from the polytheistic ‘Pygmalion’ narrative, through the monotheistic/scientific Frankenstein narrative, to contemporary films about human/nonhuman borders such as The Terminator and Toy Story.

Evangelicalism’s identity crisis: The meaning and application of qōdhesh and hágios for Christian holiness and distinctiveness in a post-Christian South Africa

South African evangelicalism finds itself in the midst of an identity crisis. In many sections of evangelicalism, there seems to be a pervasive worldliness which has resulted in a lack of holiness and distinctiveness amongst many professing Christians. In short, the line between holiness and worldliness has been blurred, compelling evangelicals to recapture the doctrine and praxis of personal holiness. To address the problem of the lack of holiness and distinctiveness amongst evangelicals, this article employed qualitative research in the form of a literature review. It explored the meanings of qōdhesh and hágios and applied them to Leviticus 11:1–47 and 1 John 2:15–17, respectively. Furthermore, these two passages were applied to the contemporary context to see how holiness and distinctiveness may be expressed by evangelicals in the 21st century. The article suggests that holiness and distinctiveness is the proper response to God’s holiness and God’s graciousness. It also suggests that holiness and distinctiveness demand radical obedience to God’s Word, resulting in a radical separation from all forms of worldliness, including desires, attitudes and behaviours.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article explores the meanings of qōdhesh and hágios and their implications for personal ethics. It shows the intradisciplinary relationship between biblical hermeneutics and practical theology and implies an interdisciplinary relationship between philosophy, sociology, anthropology and theology.

Noncanonical Isomers of Nucleoside Cation Radicals: An Ab Initio Study of the Dark Matter of DNA Ionization.

Cation radicals of DNA nucleosides, 2'-deoxyadenosine, 2'-deoxyguanosine, 2'-deoxycytidine, and 2'-deoxythymidine, can exist in standard canonical forms or as noncanonical isomers in which the charge is introduced by protonation of the nucleobase, whereas the radical predominantly resides in the deoxyribose moiety. Density functional theory as well as correlated ab initio calculations with coupled clusters (CCSD(T)) that were extrapolated to the complete basis set limit showed that noncanonical nucleoside ion isomers were thermodynamically more stable than their canonical forms in both the gas phase and as water-solvated ions. This indicated the possibility of exothermic conversion of canonical to noncanonical forms. The noncanonical isomers were calculated to have very low adiabatic ion-electron recombination energies (REad) for the lowest-energy isomers 2'-deoxy-(N-3H)adenos-1'-yl (4.74 eV), 2'-deoxy-(N-7H)guanos-1'-yl (4.66 eV), 2'-deoxy-(N-3H)cytid-1'-yl (5.12 eV), and 2'-deoxy-5-methylene-(O-2H)uridine (5.24 eV). These were substantially lower than the REad value calculated for the canonical 2'-deoxyadenosine, 2'-deoxy guanosine, 2'-deoxy cytidine, and 2'-deoxy thymidine cation radicals, which were 7.82, 7.46, 8.14, and 8.20 eV, respectively, for the lowest-energy ion conformers of each type. Charge and spin distributions in noncovalent cation-radical dA⊂dT and dG⊂dC nucleoside pairs and dAT, dCT, dTC, and dGC dinucleotides were analyzed to elucidate the electronic structure of the cation radicals. Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics trajectory calculations of the dinucleotides and nucleoside pairs indicated rapid exothermic proton transfer from noncanonical T+· to A in both dAT+· and dA⊂dT+·, leading to charge and radical separation. Noncanonical T+· in dCT+· and dTC+· initiated rapid proton transfer to cytosine, whereas the canonical dCT+· dinucleotide ion retained the cation radical structure without isomerization. No spontaneous proton transfer was found in dGC+· and dG⊂dC+· containing canonical neutral and noncanonical ionized deoxycytidine.

Mechanism of thermolysis of hydrazino-dinitroethylenes

Promising energetic materials – 1,1-diamino-2,2-dinitroethylene (DADNE) derivatives, in which one or two hydrogen atoms are replaced by –NH2 group, were studied by quantum-chemical calculations using hybrid functional PBE0 with cc-pVDZ basis set and coupled cluster method CCSD with aug-cc-pVDZ basis set. A number of thermolysis primary steps were investigated and it was shown that the addition of –NH2 group leads to a change in the mechanism of rate-limiting step. The main channels for DADNE are transfer of hydrogen to carbon and various transformations of aci-forms; for hydrazino derivatives hydrogen transfer to carbon is the only main channel and the following transformations are NO2 radical separation and transfer of another one hydrogen atom to an oxygen and elimination of HNO2 molecule.

History

Anthropology and history are inseparable, sharing concerns with societies other than the one we currently inhabit—whether in time or in space. This entry considers how the relation between anthropology and history developed since the late nineteenth century when anthropology professionalised as a discipline. Initially, anthropology was wedded to a form of history that was conjectural, based on hypothetical ideas of societal development deriving from evolution or diffusion. Thus, societies were often held to progress over time, in ways comparable to biological evolution, or they were held to develop through adoption of sociocultural traits from one or several culture centres. Criticism of this conjectural history came from within both anthropology and history. For a period of several decades, then, anthropology had a relatively detached relation from history, but by the mid-twentieth century this all changed. Anthropology was now understood as analogous to historiography—to writing history—as both seek to understand another society or culture and translate it into terms of one’s present society. Later, the influences of colonialism and global capitalism on the societies studied by anthropologists were given greater prominence, as was the issue of understanding societies in historical time, i.e. as subject to change over time. However, the supremacy of historical knowledge and historical time was subsequently questioned, as anthropologists asked whether all people should be seen to exist in a single and secular historical time that encompasses other kinds of time. In contrast to the single frame of historical time, with its radical separation of past and present, greater recognition is being given to the multifaceted temporal relationships of past, present, and future as diverse peoples have distinct ways of valuing and communicating temporal categories and their interconnections. Anthropology thus raises the question of whether everything can or should be historicised.

Touch of separation— toward an ethics of anxiety in the age of the global contagion

I examine the relation between anxiety and the COVID-19 pandemic. For context, I begin by sketching the rise of anxiety as a theme from the 19th century to the post-World War II era, as a mood of the individual in a world without absolutes. Then, I characterize the current moment as the age of the anxiety of the global contagion. Next, I examine the most general effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the individual ego, as simultaneous radical separation from and connection with others. I proceed to juxtapose this situation with Freud’s anxiety theory, which likewise involves simultaneous separation and connection. The social ego today thus appears, from a Freudian perspective, as in an exacerbated anxiety-state. I claim that this exacerbation helps us understand more clearly Freud’s anxiety theory, and vice versa. I then consider where this anxiety takes place, and so I examine the Freudian “site” of anxiety—the ego. This examination clarifies two aspects of Freud’s ego-theory: both the sense in which the Freudian ego is (post)modern, and the sense in which Freud’s linkage of anxiety with the ego is not occasional, but constitutive. That is, the ego is the site of anxiety, in that anxiety characterizes the ego as such, because the ego is a (post) modern liminal structure. I suggest in conclusion that the affirmation and acceptance of anxiety as a fundamental experience of the ego, and of the psyche more generally, constitutes an ethical imperative for psychoanalysis in general, and especially in the contemporary age of the global contagion.

Five problems for the moral consensus about sins

A number of Christian theologians and philosophers have been critical of overly moralizing approaches to the doctrine of sin, but nearly all Christian thinkers maintain that moral fault is necessary or sufficient for sin to obtain. Call this the “Moral Consensus.” I begin by clarifying the relevance of impurities to the biblical cataloguing of sins. I then present four extensional problems for the Moral Consensus on sin, based on the biblical catalogue of sins: (1) moral over-demandingness, (2) agential unfairness, (3) moral repugnance, and (4) moral atrocity. Next, I survey several partial solutions to these problems, suggested by the recent philosophical literature. Then I evaluate two largely unexplored solutions: (a) genuine sin dilemmas and (b) defeasible sinfulness. I argue that (a) creates more problems than it solves and that, while (b) is well-motivated and solves or eases each of the above problems, (b) leaves many biblical ordinances about sin morally misleading, creating (5) a pedagogical problem of evil. I conclude by arguing that (5) places hefty explanatory burdens on those who would appeal to (b) to resolve the four extensional problems discussed in this paper. So Christian thinkers may need to consider a more radical separation of sin and moral fault.

Personhood and care in disorders of consciousness. An ontological, patient-centred perspective

People in unresponsive wakefulness syndrome/vegetative state or minimally conscious state are characterized by the alteration – or the complete loss – of self-awareness and consciousness of the external environment. According to the functionalist and brain-centred approach, this kind of clinical situations also implies the loss of the moral status of person. This paper critically discusses this perspective and proposes an alternative paradigm of personhood concerning the disorders of consciousness (DOC). After a preliminary analysis, I will compare the function-based approach with the pragmatic perspective, arguing that the latter seems to deal better with the evaluation of the status of personhood in patients with disorders of consciousness, and specifically criticising the functionalist view from both the theoretical and ethical levels. Nevertheless, I will claim that the pragmatic view only works as a provisional approach, falling back into the functionalist perspective once the uncertainty of the clinical diagnosis is resolved or decreased. I will thus propose an ontological personalist approach that avoids the radical separation of the concepts of person and human being, considering personhood as an intrinsic condition of human existence, instead of an emerging property from certain contingent faculties or decisions made by a community of moral subjects. In this sense, the patient with DOC is understood as a human being with some damaged features (rationality, consciousness, self, etc.) but still a person worthy of care and attention precisely because of her/his human nature in a fragile and non-autonomous condition. Moreover, I will argue that such an ontological personalism could guide healthcare professionals towards a proactive attitude for the wellbeing of these patients.