The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems,by J. J. Gibson

This paper examines the relationship of Jean-François Lyotard’s aesthetics to phenomenology, especially the works of Mikel Dufrenne and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It argues that this comparison allows a greater understanding of Lyotard’s late aesthetic writings, which can appear gnomic and which have received relatively little critical attention. Lyotard credits Merleau-Ponty with opening the theme of difference in the aesthetic field, yet believes that the phenomenological approach can never adequately account for it. After outlining Lyotard’s early critiques of Dufrenne and Merleau-Ponty, the paper will demonstrate how his late aesthetics can be understood as returning to phenomenological themes but in the form of a reversal. Lyotard’s “lesson of darkness” is that the secret power of art can never be brought into the light of phenomenal appearance, and that artworks do not testify to the birth of perception, but to its death and resurrection.     

The Work of J. G. A. Pocock

J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. Vol. 1: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764. Vol. 2: Narratives of Civil Government. Cambridge, England, Cambridge University Press, 1999, xi+339 pp. and xiv+422 pp., $90.00, 2 vols., ISBN 0 521 77921 9.     

The Psychology of the Child at Geneva and the J. J. Rousseau Institute

In the present study, the authors investigated what prosocial-assertive, passive, and coercive strategies 6-year-olds (N = 257) would propose in response to stories about 2 socially challenging situations: displacing another child in a game and obtaining a toy from another child. The scenarios also varied the gender composition of the characters. Participants' verbalizations while acting out their responses using toy props fell into 13 categories of strategies. Teachers reported antisocial behavior and social competence of the participants. Girls and boys responded similarly in their general suggestions of prosocial or assertive strategies, but girls were more likely to offer prosocial strategies with other girls than with boys. Teacher-rated competence and antisocial behavior interacted in predicting coercive responses by girls but not by boys. The results demonstrate that prosocial and antisocial behaviors need to be considered in interaction to fully understand the nature of social competence.     

克利考特伦理整体主义理论研究

文章从克利考特与大地伦理学的理论渊源着手,对克利考特如何捍卫大地伦理学,扩展大地伦理理论,以及提出的伦理整体主义这一理论发展过程做一概说。     

The other Man by Donald J. West

The American Group Psychotherapy Association began in 1942 as an elite, strictly Freudian organization. Its dramatic growth in the 1960s and 1970s was accompanied by much theoretical disagreement and professional “chauvinism.” During the past decade, however, the ideological controversy has yielded to pluralism* in theory and eclecticism in practice.     

The Legacy of Neoplatonism in F. W. J. Schelling's Thought

F.W.J. Schelling, one of the essential thinkers in the development of German Idealism, formed his own thought not only in a critical dialogue with Kant's and Fichte's transcendentalism and Hegel's earlier conception of thinking, but also in an intensive discussion with Plato and Aristotle. Over and above that, Neoplatonism – especially Plotinus, Proclus and the Christian Dionysius the Areopagite – played a decisive role in Schelling's reception and transformation of ancient philosophy. Selecting the manifold aspects which could be reflected on in this field, I want to make plausible as a transcendental analogy to Plotinus' concept of self-knowledge Schelling's requirement for a raising-up and transformation of the finite 'I' into the form of the Absolute, whose central features converge with the goal of the Plotinian self – transformation of thought into a timeless self-thinking and its ground. A main part of this paper discusses Schelling's and Plotinus' concept of nature as a dynamic process constituted by an immanent 'creating theoria'. Furthermore we find in Schelling's theory of the Absolute as the 'utterly One' a union of Plotinus' notion of a pure One beyond Being with that of the reflexive self-presence of nous, so that this Absolute can be understood as an All-Unity which grounds and embraces all actuality – because it is in itself the most unifying self-affirmation or self-mediation. What follows is a reflection on the anagogical function of art, especially from the viewpoint of Plotinus' non-Platonic rehabilitation of art as an imitation of nature. The last perspectives focus on Schelling's concept of matter and emanation – as different from and at the same time coherent with that of Plotinus – and on Schelling's theory of an absolute self – willing will in connection with Plotinus' Enneads VI.8, 'On free will and the will of the One' as a causa sui.