Rhetoric and Dialectic: Some Historical and Legal Perspectives

The thesis is defended that rhetoric is not, as is often said, a discipline which is hierarchically subordinate to dialectic. It is argued that the modalities of the links between rhetoric and dialectic must be seen in a somewhat different light: rhetoric and dialectic should be viewed as two complementary disciplines. On the basis of a historical survey of the views of various authors on the links between rhetoric and dialectic, it is concluded that efforts to establish clear boundaries or unequivocal conceptual or moral hierarchical relationships between the two disciplines have failed and that therefore, they must be conceived as being mutually dependent.     

Kant and German idealisms

This paper considers whether Hegel's master/slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit should be considered as a refutation of solipsism. It focuses on a recent and detailed attempt to argue for this sort of reading that has been proposed by Frederick Beiser – but it argues that this reading is unconvincing, both in the historical motivations given for it in the work of Jacobi and Fichte, and as an interpretation of the text itself. An alternative reading of the dialectic is proposed, where it is argued that the central problem Hegel is concerned with is not solipsism, but the sociality of freedom.     

A Country of Two: Race and Social Class in an Immigrant Therapeutic Dyad

This paper explores some of the ways in which social structures and fantasies organized around race and social class emerge in the intersubjective space created by a patient and a therapist who emigrated from the same country. Incorporating some of his own experiences of identity and otherness, the author discusses, through the lens of his countertransference, how communicating with the patient in their native language allowed for access to early internal object-relations, unconscious threats to his sense of belonging, racialized self-states, and feelings of shame associated to some of these dissociated self-states rooted in historical oppression and trauma. The author suggests that the “country of two” populated by patient and therapist is a dynamic co-created space, that emerges from the dialectic interplay of sameness and difference along the lines of race, social class, and culture.     

Supportive psychoanalytic psychotherapy for borderline patients: an empirical approach

The author describes a reformulation for research purposes of a supportive psychoanalytic therapy for patients with borderline personality disorder. The major influences on the thinking that led to the modification of prior formulations and the historical background of treatment manuals are described. Supportive treatment is contrasted with transference-focused psychotherapy and dialectic behavior therapy in the interest of creating a clear comparison that lends itself to empirical study.     

The Founding of the Association for Psychological Science: Part 1. Dialectical Tensions Within Organized Psychology

ABSTRACT— The founding of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) did not represent the first time a group of psychologists broke away from the American Psychological Association, the parent association of organized psychology in the United States. In fact, the history of organized psychology is replete with examples of splinter groups that sought to better represent the needs and interests of their specific constituencies. All of these breakaway efforts have occurred amid intradisciplinary tensions—the continual push and pull between unity on the one hand and autonomy on the other—that reflect some of the enduring challenges of the field. A historical examination of this dialectic provides a useful framework within which to understand the founding of the APS, its most recent instantiation.     

脊柱疾患临床诊断的辩证思维

脊柱外科是骨科学的一个亚专科,也是外科学领域中发展最为迅速的一个分支学科。脊柱外科疾患的正确诊断有赖于诊断过程中的正确辩证思维。在临床诊断思维中,从疾病学角度和症状学角度,需要正确处理几个辨证关系,同时要避免临床思维常见误区,才能提高诊断正确性。     

Adorno’s Negative Dialectic: Theme,Point, and Methodological Status

Abstract

This paper provides a criticial interpretation of the theme, point, and methodological status of Adorno’s so‐called negative dialectic. The theme at issue, ‘non‐identity’, comes in several varieties; and the point of Adorno’s dialectic, namely reconciliation, is multifaceted. Exploration of those topics shows that negative dialectic seques into substantive doctrines, including a version of transcendentalism and a claim about deformation. The peculiar methodological status of negative dialectic explains that adumbration. In the appraisive register, my principal contentions include these: Adorno’s transcendentalism makes some sense of the aforementioned deformation claim; and negative dialectic qua method avoids mystery and metaphysical excess.     

Personality as a work of art

The idea of the personality as a work of art offers a new conception of personality. From this perspective, personality would be the ethical and aesthetic style each person gives to their life, according, naturally, to the prevailing personal circumstances and social values. The idea is developed in two parts. In the first, which constitutes the empirical part, a historical review, from the time of Homer to the present day, reveals a ‘great chain of personality’, with its characteristics in each era. In the second, or transcendental part, we argue that it is some kind of work-of-art or life project that constitutes personality, whatever its aesthetic form. From this point of view, life projects, though in principle fictitious, may end up forging a person's true character, in accordance with a person-character dialectic. This dialectic is well illustrated by the literary figure of Don Quixote, but it is equally valid for anybody in everyday life. In any case, it is understood that the development of a personality is a dramatic task (in line with the theatrical sense that is at the basis of this conception). Among the most important consequences of this idea is the confirmation of responsibility as an essential constituent of the person.     

The Fascist Seduction of Narrative: Walter Benjamin’s Historical Materialism Beyond Counter-Narrative

This essay introduces Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism to illuminate how history teachers may invoke a critique of the past and present through democratizing the production of knowledge in the classroom. Historical materialism gives students access to the means of knowledge production and entrusts them with the task of generating a critique of politics though encounters with historical objects. The rise of the alt-right, alternative facts, and fake news sites necessitates social studies methods that intervene into the fascist seductions of narrative in history. A Benjaminian pedagogy emphasizes reading practices that acknowledge the political layers of history inscribed within the objects. This generates space for forms of pessimism and dialectic critiques of barbarism that students may experience with history beyond the teacher’s capacity for understanding. In the name of democracy over fascism, the article adds a political critique to students’ historical and critical thinking skills.     

Adorno’s View of Life

The aim of this article is to reflect on the dialectic of the individual’s life and death in terms of Adorno’s moral philosophy, specifically through a thorough reading of his Negative Dialectics and other key works on the subject. I hold that there are two aspects of the dialectic of life within the context of Adorno’s “nonidentity”: one involves exploring the false identification, due to the reification of modern society, of the individual’s life experience with her or his death experience, while the other involves preserving the dialectical and irreducible tension between the theoretical contemplation of life and of historical conditions, as well as specific social systems. Heidegger’s ontological philosophy concerning Dasein and Kant’s categorical imperative will also be discussed in order to fully understand Adorno’s moral philosophy and his idea of nonidentity. From my point of view, Adorno’s moral philosophy is the prime motivator of his unique concept of nonidentity, and has influenced contemporary political philosophical concepts such as biopolitics (cf. G. Agamben).     

Dialectic and Dialetheism

In this article, I consider the possibility of interpreting Hegel's dialectic as dialetheism. After a first basic recapitulation about the meaning of the words ‘dialetheism’ and ‘dialectic’ and a consideration of Priest's own account of the relation between dialectical and dialetheic logic in 1989, I discuss some controversial issues, not directly considered by Priest. As a matter of fact, the reflection on paraconsistent logics and dialetheism has enormously grown in recent years. In addition, the reception of Hegel's logic and metaphysics has also impressively improved. So I suggest that the discussion about the binomial dialectic/dialetheism should be reopened, on these new bases.     

从“概念思辨”到“资本批判”——论马克思主义辩证法对传统辩证法的改造及其实质

关于马克思主义辩证法是物质辩证法还是实践辩证法的论争,是贯穿我国近30年来哲学研究的一条主线。这场论争虽然推进了问题的研究,但并没有真正取得突破性进展。这主要表现在:争论方法仍停留在直观或概念思辨层面,以至于不仅争论双方相持不下,而且未能阐明马克思颠倒黑格尔辩证法的真义。其根源就在于人们忽略了如下史实:马克思颠倒黑格尔辩证法的关键     

Diversity and Community: The Role of Agent‐Based Modeling

Community psychology involves several dialectics between potentially opposing ideals, such as theory and practice, rights and needs, and respect for human diversity and sense of community. Some recent papers in the American Journal of Community Psychology have examined the diversity‐community dialectic, some with the aid of agent‐based modeling and concepts from network science. This paper further elucidates these concepts and suggests that research in community psychology can benefit from a useful dialectic between agent‐based modeling and the real‐world concerns of community psychology.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Revolutionary Becomings</Emphasis>: Negritude's Anti-Humanist Humanism

In this paper I establish an alliance between the thought of Frantz Fanon and Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Difference. In light of Fanon's critique of Sartre's characterization of the place of the Negritude movement in terms of dialectic, I point to the inherent limitations of modern humanism's dialectical accounts for enabling genuine historical change. Alternatively, I appeal to Deleuze's distinction between history and becoming, and his concomitant idea of intensive becoming-revolutionary. I conclude that such an alliance with Deleuzian metaphysics holds far greater promises for effecting Fanon's revolutionary project of the creation of a new humanity (and therefore, of a new ethics and a new politics) than his traditional assimilation to Phenomenology and Existentialism.     

"IMPERIALISTIC MISSIONARISM" AND THE KIBBUTZ PARADIGM FOR COEXISTENCE

Abstract. Hegelian-Marxian doctrines of dialectic progress through war and conflict are traced to Christian theosophy of historical necessity and "imperialistic missionarism." Jewish fossilized existence is traced to its antiproselytizing "kibbutz" ideology of dialogic coexistence. Tolerance is possible either through an ideological balance of terror between equal opposing powers or through mutual volitionary space evacuating Cabalic style contraction. According to the Biblical definition of covenant, brit , a coexisting shalom (peace) is possible only through separating and rebinding which comprises the shalem (complete). Japanese Makuya Christianity is presented as an anti-imperialistic model for mutual contraction facilitating the coexisting shalom-shalem between equals who are different but not indifferent to each other.     

Aristotle's Endoxa and Plausible Argumentation

Aristotle's conception and use of ta endoxa are key points to our understanding of Aristotelian dialectic. But, nowadays, they are not of historical or hermeneutic importance alone, as, in Aristotle's treatment of endoxa, we still see a relevant contribution to the modern study of argumentation. I propose here an interpretation of endoxa to that effect: namely, as plausible propositions. This version is not only defensible in the Aristotelian context, it may also shed new light on some of his assumptions and methodological shortcomings – e.g. concerning the 'plausible/implausible' pair –; finally, it will even enable us to show certain basic hints and guidelines, advanced by Aristotle's study of endoxa, which still serve nowadays to orientate our studies of argumentation from the angle of a theory of plausible argument currently under construction. These hints and guidelines suggest a pragmatic, gradual and comparative discursive concept of plausibility, and point, in particular, towards the reasonable dealing with, and weighing up of, differences of opinion within this frame of reference.     

Confucius�� transformation of traditional religious ideas

Confucius’ religious thought summarized and utilized existing historical and cultural achievements. He strove to bring problems concerning traditional religious ideas such as destiny, the spirits, ritual propriety and faith into the realm of the rational. He sought to unearth the elements of human reason contained within these and to highlight the sublime and sacred in actual human society. He established a system of religious humanism that incorporated views on edification, faith, destiny, the ghosts and spirits and self-cultivation. Using a dialectic based on the mean, he established a spiritual mindset comprising rational faith, a this-worldly transcendence and a sacredness grounded in the human that led ancient Chinese religious thinking in a unique direction.     

The Ecclesial Hermeneutic of Raymond E. Brown

Against the background of some positions taken up in a recent document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the article studies Raymond Brown's attempt to combine mainstream historical-critical exegesis of the Bible with a Roman Catholic theological pre-understanding. Particular reference is made to his handling of issues connected with the virginal conception of Jesus. Some of his religious presuppositions such as those concerning the relation between faith and reason, and the development of doctrine, are presented. Biblical criticism in Brown's understanding is an essentially historical discipline which has as its principal object the literal sense of the text, that is, what the text meant when it was written. His religious presuppositions make the practice of the discipline ineliminable in an integral hermeneutic. From an analysis of his treatment of the virginal conception, it is argued that Catholic pre-understanding and historical criticism, when combined, inevitably result in a two-stage hermeneutic. In a first stage appeal is made to presuppostions common to all practitioners of historical criticism. In a second stage religious presuppostions come into play. The distinction between these two stages is seen as more fundamental than Brown's better known distinction between the literal and more-than-literal senses of the text. It is argued that the relation between the two stages is to be understood in chalcedonian terms as exemplifying the dialectic of faith and reason: they must be distinguished, but cannot be separated. Brown's grasp of an incarnational economy of salvation is presented in terms of David H. Kelsy's concept of a discrimen, and emerges as fundamental for an ecclesial hermeneutic of the Bible. Questions about the place of the historical-critical method, the promise of alternative approaches and the role of hermeneutical theory can only be adequately addressed in terms of it.     

Innovating “Traditional” Women’s Roles: Byzantine Insights for Orthodox Christian Gender Discourse

Some contemporary hierarchically endorsed statements about gender within Orthodox Christianity appeal to “traditional roles” for women. Byzantine hagiographies about women, however, often confound the stability suggested by such rhetoric, and offer a more open “tradition” of Orthodox Christians celebrating diverse and boundary-breaking forms of women’s sanctity (even if via negation of their womanhood). Although these texts betray an unabashedly historical patriarchal perspective, they also can be read as using gender, via an almost apophatic dialectic, to convey theological values that challenge essentialist associations between specific vocations, authoritative positions, and particular sexes. As hagiography is an influential genre for Orthodox beliefs and practices, the ways hagiographers negotiate and depict gender should inform understandings of gender in Orthodox “tradition.”