Philosophical Tensions Research Articles

La politique selon La Mort d’Agrippine de Cyrano de Bergerac : conspiration, athéisme et libertinage érudit sur scène

The present article examines the vision of politics, especially linked to religion, in the only known tragedy by French author Cyrano de Bergerac. Provoking a major scandal during its premiere due to several dialogues considered as atheist by contemporary authorities, this complex piece of dramatic art provides some insights into the political thought of a 17th-century philosophical (un-derground) tendency known as libertinage érudit. As I try to show, one of the major problems we face in the tragedy’s (political) interpretation is its overall composition, which Cyrano based on baroque principles like (dis)simulation, illusion, and manipulation, turning the whole piece into a dramatic trompe-l’œil. Focusing on the close reading of some crucial dialogues that involve three of the tragedy’s protagonists (Agrippina, Emperor Tiberius, and Sejanus), this article postulates two axes as central to politics according to Cyrano: (1) religion is useful for political enterprises and the foundation of the state, but has no basis in itself since the gods do not exist — they are mere creations of the human mind. (2) At least in Cyrano’s Rome, there simply are no good politicians (‘good’ understood in a moral sense), only brilliant liars and deceivers, Machiavellian rulers, cruel emperors, and equally cruel conspirators. Politics is perceived as a dirty business where there is no space for morals — scandalous conclusions explaining the immediate suppression of any further representations of La Mort d’Agrippine after its tumultuous premiere.

Embodying Narrative: Diffractive Readings of Ethical Relationality in Qualitative Inquiry

This introduction provides an inquisition into the role of narrative inquiry in the field of qualitative inquiry. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s works on painting, this introduction discusses the philosophical tensions within narrative inquiry as a methodology to situate narrative in a broader context of research methodologies and to raise some questions about the very specific role of the human and anthropomorphism in narrative inquiry. The authors in this special issue were tasked with thinking through narratives with unexplored theories or theoretical perspective. The purpose of the special issue is to invite readers to consider these various tensions.

Rethinking Two Scientific Currents, Westernism and Philosophical Orientation, in Iran of the Islamic Republic Era

The present article, with emphasis on the descriptive-analytic method, is a description of the thoughts of the scholars of the two scientific, westernist and the Philosophy oriented currents، In Iran after the 1979 revolution. The Iranian revolution in the space of modernity as a paradigm dominating the world occred in 1979. During the revolution and afterwards many crises were created in the Iranian society and the new political system. In the wake of the crises, numerous religious and non-religious groups consisting of clerics, intellectuals and academics sought to eliminate them. Each of these groups proposed a solution to these crises according to their intellectual base and community space or various intellectual and philosophical tendencies. Some of these groups saw their solution in embracing scientificism and adherence to it, some embraced Western models, modernity, and harmony with the West, others saw the solution in following traditionalism and distance from the West and the rationality of the new world, And some have considered solutions to managing society based on the Islamic model. Following will explain the thoughts of the thinkers of the two major streams of thought from these currents.

El concepto de verdad en Alain Badiou: de la edad de los poetas a la edad de las matemáticas

El presente trabajo pretende abordar el concepto de verdad en Alain Badiou a partir de dos esferas reconocibles del conocimiento filosófico: por un lado, el espacio central que ocupa la poesía desde Nietzsche hasta Heidegger en la disposición filosófica, y por otro, la necesidad de transportarlo al campo de la lógica matemática. De esta manera, podemos analizar la propuesta de Badiou como un pensamiento superador de las “dos culturas” y, a su vez, como un intento por unificar aquello que había sido clausurado bajo el nombre de “la guerra de las ciencias”. Por ello, en este trabajo no son ajenas las estéticas rupturistas de finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX, así como tampoco las influencias de matemáticos como Brouwer, Cantor y Gödel. De este modo, para que la filosofía salga del ostracismo metafísico del siglo XX, y como salto fundacional sobre el enunciado fin de la filosofía, es imperativo un retorno clásico que vuelva a poner en diálogo poema y matema: literatura y matemáticas.

Complexities and Constraints in End-of-Life Care for Hospitalized Prisoner Patients

ContextManaging the care of an increasing and aging prisoner population, including providing palliative and end-of-life care, is a challenge worldwide. There is little known about the views of health professionals who provide palliative care to hospitalized prisoner patients. ObjectivesTo explore experiences and perspectives of health professionals regarding the provision of palliative and end-of-life care for hospitalized prisoner patients. MethodsA qualitative study involving semistructured focus groups and interviews with 54 medical, nursing, and allied health staff engaged in the care of hospitalized prisoner patients. Purposive sampling from a metropolitan teaching hospital responsible for providing secondary and tertiary health care for prisoners in Victoria, Australia, for 40 years was used to identify and seek perspectives of staff from a variety of clinical disciplines. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted by two researchers. ResultsParticipants described significant constraints in how they provide palliative care to hospitalized prisoners. Key themes emerged describing constraints on prisoner health decisions, provision and place of care, patient advocacy, and how care is delivered in the last days of life. Participants highlighted a deep philosophical tension between prison constraints and the foundational principles of palliative care. ConclusionClarity of correctional service processes, protocols, and aspects of security and related training for health professionals is needed to ensure improved care for prisoners with progressive and life-limiting illness. Further research is required to seek the views of prisoners facing end of life and their families.

Ford’s metaphysics: On the Transcendental origins of Henry Ford’s Fordism

Since it was first articulated by Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks (1929–1935), Fordism has been understood at two interconnected levels. At one level, it is understood in secular materialist terms as an archetypal system of mass production. At another, as a techno-economic paradigm of capitalist expansion. However, little attention has been given to the philosophical influences and ideas that underpinned Henry Ford’s (1863–1947) worldview and how this came to influence the formation of the factory systems at his Highland Park and River Rouge complexes. In most textbooks, it is assumed that Ford based his industrial design on a technological intensification of F.W. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management. This article seeks to examine the origins and rationale behind Ford’s factory system by exploring the relationship between his personal worldview and the ‘ism’ which came to bear his name. Through a cultural-historical analysis, this article critically explores Henry Ford’s personal Fordism, and argues that what has come to be understood as one of the most ‘secular’ and ‘materialist’ processes of organising ‘men and machine’ began with an attempt by Henry Ford to realise a ‘metaphysical’ ideal that was informed by the popular philosophical and theological thought of the previous century. By returning to the ideas and the context of this period, Ford’s engagement with the work of the American Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) is considered to both contextualise Henry Ford’s Fordism and explore the philosophical tensions at the heart of his organisational theory and practice.

El antagonismo laclausiano ante Mouffe y Žižek: encuentros y desencuentros con el pensamiento posfundacional y la izquierda lacaniana

El presente artículo aborda la categoría de antagonismo propuesta por Ernesto Laclau e indaga en los campos filosóficos que le dan origen, analizando algunas tensiones que estos ofrecen. Primero, se caracterizan dos campos, a saber, el pensamiento político posfundacional y la izquierda lacaniana, vinculando a ellos la categoría de antagonismo. En segundo lugar, se examinan las tensiones filosóficas entre la categoría y tales campos a través de dos exponentes concretos: Chantal Mouffe y Slavoj Žižek, dando cuenta de ciertas incompatibilidades y de algunas críticas a las propuestas de ambos autores. Por último, se plantean algunas interrogantes abiertas con respecto a la categoría de antagonismo, fruto de las discusiones previas y de las limitaciones del propio Laclau.

Analysis of Philosophical Tendencies of Hakim Sabzevari on How Diversity Originated from the Unified Being

Analysis of Philosophical Tendencies of Hakim Sabzevari on How Diversity Originated from the Unified Being

Procédure Maastricht 3 : restons attentifs à ses enjeux éthiques !

Peu d’analyses des premiers résultats ont été publiées sur la procédure de don d’organes dite Maastricht 3 (M3), mise en place en 2014 en France. Pourtant, cette procédure est soumise à un conflit d’intérêt intérieur pour le médecin qui devra éclaircir son désir d’être utile aux autres par le biais de la promotion du don d’organes sans que cela n’influence sa décision d’arrêt des traitements de l’éventuel patient donneur. Ceci, alors même que les moyens d’établir un pronostic sont souvent limités. Toute modification des pratiques liées à la fin de vie au cours de l’instauration de la procédure M3 – telles la politique d’admission des patients en réanimation, l’administration de la sédation ou encore la procédure de séparation du ventilateur – peut témoigner d’une volonté de maximisation de l’utilité à court terme de cette procédure. Le consentement des proches peut lui aussi se retrouver biaisé par une forte désirabilité sociale ou par un sentiment de culpabilité, et une évaluation sereine ne sera pas réalisée du fait de la rapidité de la procédure. L’éclairage des tensions philosophiques entre les pensées conséquentialistes et déontologiques, l’importance d’un débat dans chaque structure, une indication très restrictive aux patients anoxiques les plus graves, un contrôle a posteriori indépendant, font partie des solutions proposées dans cet article pour réduire ces problèmes. Alors que la « pénurie » actuelle liée au don d’organes pourrait être résolue par un meilleur taux d’acceptabilité de prélèvements de patients en état de mort encéphalique, se pose finalement la question d’un dépassement irrémédiable des limites éthiques qui garantissent le sens premier de l’engagement des professionnels auprès de leurs patients.

Lars Q. English, There Is No Theory of Everything. A Physics Perspective on Emergence, Springer 2017, rec.

Książka Larsa Q. Englisha składa się ze wstępu, ośmiu rozdziałów i krótkiego zakończenia. Autor ukazuje w niej jak najnowsze odkrycia fizyki zmieniają myślenie o świecie, aprobując zachodzenie emergencji. Sam będąc fizykiem, połączył wyniki otrzymywane w ramach fizyki z refleksją filozoficzną, stąd książkę tę warto polecić studentom i absolwentom kierunków ścisłych posiadających zapędy filozoficzne.

Against the “Moonlight and Magnolia” myth of the American South. A new materialist approach to the dissonant heritage of slavery in the US: The case of Whitney Plantation in Wallace, LA

The article presents an analysis of the operations of the Whitney Plantation Museum, which opened in 2014 in Wallace, LA (USA), situated within the context of plantation heritage tourism in the American South. The argumentation offers an illustration of the significant transition, even though still of marginal character, of the dominant tendencies of representing slavery in heritage sites (plantation museums) devoted to cultivating knowledge about the history of the region. New materialist in its orientation, the analysis subscribes to the most fundamental assumption of this philosophical tendency, namely that knowledge is generated in material-semiotic ways, and applies this approach in an enquiry into the educational experience offered to visitors by this heritage site. The article argues that although the emergence of institutions such as Whitney Plantation is meant to pluralise the memorial landscape of a given community, rather than serving as multivocal spaces they tend to remain steeped in fragmentation.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE KILLER PSYCHOMODEL: PRAXEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

The problem of the identity of the offender (the one who attacks, robs and\or murders) is one of the most complex in criminology. The individual is a key element of crime in general and of a specific crime in particular, since it has subjective causes which, when they interact with the environment, lead to the commission of the crime. If it comes to killing contract, whether it’s for hire or money, it’s more complicated than that. The purpose of the following scientific exploration is to represent a systematic review of the socio-historical background of so-called killer psychomodel - the phenomenon yet neither revealed, nor scientifically thoroughly researched. One of the innovative approaches to developing this psychomodel is that the killer (or hired assassin) is praxeologically viewed from a professional perspective (i.e., who is killer regarding ‘killer’ as a profession). Ontological analysis of the ‘killer’ phenomenon is provided regarding the philosophical dispositions of such a person, the psychological background of such an individual, his specific living conditions, the special conditions created by the organizers aiming these people to continue their ‘killer’ routine activities throughout their lives. Keywords: psychomodel, prototypology, criminology, memory studies, killer as a profession, killer, psychological portrait.

Nikolay Danilevsky about the role of influence in the formation of cultural and historical types

The article examines Danilevsky’s approach to the analysis of the role of influences on the formation and changes of cultural-historical types. Several contradictions in Danilevsky’s consideration of the phenomenon of influences are underlined. They were caused by an insufficiently clarified analysis of the correlation between the universal and the concrete historical, and by some monotheistic and typological aspects in the analysis of historical development. Danilevsky clearly underestimates the significance of the interaction between successive and synchronously developing cultures, which leads to a diminution of world-historical trends in the development of mankind. The article stresses a polemical character of a number of provisions of Danilevsky’s concepts. The urgent significance of the philosopher’s conclusions about the need to protect national cultural values is emphasized, which is especially important in the context of modern globalization processes. Additionally, some key risks of philosophical tendencies of Russian thought are pointed out in regard to the dream of world hegemony, or towards autocratic otherness. These dangers arise largely from the lack of practical and theoretical differences in the use of unprocessed European concepts, and therefore Russian history can often be viewed as a sequence of attraction to and repulsion from the West. The article also stresses that the “Russian idea” (which can be seen, in Solovyov’s understanding, from a religious standpoint as the one brought by the Russian people to the Last Judgment of the World as a unique contribution to universal human consciousness) is not a “dream” of world hegemony or the autocratic otherness”, according to which all good is always “one’s own”, and all evil is “somebody else’s”, but it is some antinomic perception of universal salvation, which was also noted by Dostoevsky, Florensky, Bulgakov, and others.

Filozofowie, skandaliści i etnarchowie – twórcy literatury czarnogórskiego oświecenia

Philosophers, Scandalists and Ethnarchs – the Authors of the Montenegrin Enlightenment Literature This present article is devoted to an issue of assimilation and adaptation of the philosophical tendencies and literary patterns of the European enlightenment in Montenegrin literature which was established in 18th century in difficult internal circumstances and during constant threat to the independence of the country. Key advocates of the rationalistic, democratic and anticlerical demands were mainly descended from the romanized Adriatic communities and obtained their education in Western Europe –transplanting into native ground the ideas of the free mind and conscience, religious tolerance, just politics, reform of the state or general education. In the context of the above-mentioned and similar categories the works of Stefan Zanović, Jovan Baljević, Katerina Radonjićand other authors were considered. The special example of taking advantage of the enlightenment paradigm are texts of the bishops and political rulers from the PetrovićNjegošdynasty –their attitude was formed through the necessity of the defence of the legal-state interest and fidelity to the Christian ethic. As a case of such a meaning of the civilizing mission in the environment of disintegrated Montenegrin tribes Petar I was presented. Especially his messages to the clan communities contain many didactic appeals which are faithful to the enlightenment vision of the man and society.

Should Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) be Used With Focus Groups? Navigating the Bumpy Road of “Iterative Loops,” Idiographic Journeys, and “Phenomenological Bridges”

Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is a qualitative thematic approach developed within psychology underpinned by an idiographic philosophy, thereby focusing on the subjective lived experiences of individuals. However, it has been used in focus groups of which some have been critical because of the difficulties of extrapolating the individual voice which is more embedded within the group dynamics and the added complexity of multiple hermeneutics occurring. Some have adapted IPA for use with focus groups, while others provide scant regard to these philosophical tensions. This raises the question whether IPA should be used with focus group data. To address these concerns, this article will set out a step-by-step guide of how IPA was adapted for use with focus groups involving drug using offenders (including illustrative examples with participants’ quotes). A rationale of why it was important to use both focus groups and an IPA approach will be covered including the value, merits, and challenges this presented. An overview of how participants’ idiographic accounts of their drug use, relapse, and recovery were developed will be provided. This article will conclude with a suggested way forward to satisfy the theoretical tensions and address the question raised in the title.

HUKUMAN CAMBUK TERHADAP KONTROL SOSIAL

Caning applied in Aceh is one of the social controls and the form of punishment is expected to fulfill the philosophical, juridical and sociological tendencies of legal awareness. Caning is one form of punishment that is also expected to foster a lawful attitude and the creation of an orderly society. According to Islamic law that punishment is for the benefit of the Ummah and educate the person of the perpetrator of the crime. Basically It is not easy to do efforts to increase legal awareness and the development of a legal culture in the community without encouragement from individual communities themselves. This should be of particular concern by the government to be more serious in conducting socialization so that legal awareness can be understood and implemented by the public properly.

Combining the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of teaching sustainability: the case of the business school academics

Faculty are key to bringing about ‘bottom-up’ change for sustainability education. Yet, research is still needed on the backgrounds and experiences of change agents in universities and the challenges they face. This study focuses on the marketing discipline, a field fraught with epistemological tensions in seeking to integrate sustainability, mainly revolving around profit maximisation and continuous consumption while living on a planet with finite resources. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with sustainability marketing academics in Australasia, Europe and North America. The contribution of this paper lies in the development of a sustainability educator typology linking why and how integration occurs. The sustainability ‘transformer’ wishes to engage in transformational learning, changing student mindsets, the ‘thinker’ wants to encourage critical thinking to bring about the discussion of worldviews, while the ‘actioner’ hopes ‘learning by doing’ (community projects) will provide an appreciation for sustainability. We discuss implications for those disciplines which struggle with philosophical tensions and colleague resistance to the integration of sustainability in the form of suggestions for professional development (i.e. creation of positive nature experiences) and pedagogical approaches (critical, transformative and community-service learning).

Brain or Mind?

This short creative prose illustrates an experience that I had while rotating at the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital. I hope readers will reflect on the philosophical tension between neurology and psychiatry and also deepen their appreciation for the human behind the label of a refractory patient.

Bajo el signo de un dios salvaje: escenarios contemporáneos del superhéroe

Más allá de su dimensión mitológica, las adaptaciones cinematográficas de los superhéroes Marvel ofrecen una completa pedagogía acerca de las concepciones contemporáneas sobre la relación entre cuerpo, tecnología y mutación. A lo largo de la historia del cómic de superhéroes, la transformación del mito ha evolucionado a través del desdoblamiento original del héroe, la necesidad de mantener doble identidad y la mutación hacia espacios narrativos vinculados, por una parte a lo onírico y por otra hacia un campo de tensión filosófica entre el transhumanismo y lo posthumano. El presente artículo realiza un recorrido histórico y conceptual a través del arquetipo superheroico para hacer hincapié en el ensamblaje entre las posibilidades del cómic y las del cine. Tanto las singularidades contemporáneas del mutante, por una parte, como los acercamientos heterodoxos al superhéroe por parte del cineasta Manoj Night Shyamalan constituyen una indagación filosófica, ética y mitológica de los dispositivos políticos, sociales y perceptivos que acompañan el legado de esta tradición nacida al mismo tiempo que el cómic de aventuras de los años treinta

Paradojas en la jurisprudencia frente al consumo de estupefacientes. Análisis a partir de la bioética

This article tries to describe how the Colombian jurisprudence guarantees through the guardianship the access to the health of the drug addicts and of the inhabitants of the street when the scourge of the drug addiction is recognized as a disease; But on the other hand, it allows the consumption of narcotics without taking into account the criteria established by other disciplines. For this reason, a documentary analysis is carried out on the effect of the principle of dignity on the consumption of the addict and the inhabitant of the street according to legal, juridical and philosophical tendencies, to conclude that these assessments must be taken into account to establish criteria in bioethics Which should be inserted into drug-related legislation and jurisprudence and regulate the permissive use of narcotic drugs in Colombia, especially psychoactive substances. The article that will generate academic reflection, through the method of documentary analysis of jurisprudence, doctrine, documents, and articles of indexed journals. Being qualitative and descriptive research (Guirao-Goris, Olmedo Salas & Ferrer Ferrandis, 2008).