Take care of egotism,and redemption will take care of itself: Comments on Tracy Llanera's Richard Rorty: Outgrowing modern nihilism

This commentary critically examines two facets of Tracy Llanera's recent book Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism. First, it considers her interpretation of Richard Rorty's redemptive project. It argues that, while Llanera succeeds in resolving tensions in Rorty's public-private distinction, her account downplays the role of abnormal discourse within projects of self-creation. Second, it raises several questions about Llanera's strategy for situating this redemptive project within debates concerning existential nihilism. On her view, one ought to follow Rorty in addressing the problem of egotism instead of the problem of nihilism, since the former is prior to the latter. But it is not clear who counts as an egotist, or why egotists are especially prone to becoming nihilists. Moreover, there are reasons to think that egotism and nihilism are fundamentally different kinds of problems.     

Public Science of the Savage Mind: Contesting Cultural Anthropology in the Cold War Classroom

“What is human about human beings? How did they get that way? How can they be made more so?” These three questions formed the basis of a fifth‐grade social studies curriculum project developed in the 1960s called Man: A Course of Study, or MACOS. In the years between the curriculum's development in the 1960s and its controversial implementation in the 1970s, two separate sets of concerns served to problematize the use of anthropological materials in public school classrooms. On the one hand, MACOS designers were wary of the possibly racist interpretations of exploring so‐called “primitive” cultures in the classroom. On the other, conservative textbook reformers objected to claims that all cultural solutions to biological problems were morally equivalent. Once MACOS earned a place in national news, it came to embody both hopes for the redemption of American democratic society and fears about the violent nature of humans, depending on one's political perspective. These mixed messages eventually undermined the long‐term success of the program as public science.     

Thinking About a Word—Love,for Example

What is it we do when we philosophize about a word? How are we to act as we ask the philosophical question par excellence, “What is … ?” These questions are addressed here with particular focus on Troy Jollimore's Love's Vision and contemporary theories of love. Jollimore's rationalist account of love, based on a specific understanding of “reasons for love,” illustrates a particular philosophical mistake: When we think about a word, we are prone to believe that even though “the sense of the word” that we investigate may be up for grabs, the other words we use when we do these investigations are not. Jollimore's exploration of love is guided by specific conceptions of “reasons” and “rationality” that remain unquestioned. The article argues that we may have to rethink a great number of words as we embark on the task of uncovering the sense of one word.     

A critical commentary on follow-up studies and “desistance” theories about transgender and gender-nonconforming children

ABSTRACT

Background: It has been widely suggested that over 80% of transgender children will come to identify as cisgender (i.e., desist) as they mature, with the assumption that for this 80%, the trans identity was a temporary “phase.” This statistic is used as the scientific rationale for discouraging social transition for pre-pubertal children. This article is a critical commentary on the limitations of this research and a caution against using these studies to develop care recommendations for gender-nonconforming children.

Methods: A critical review methodology is employed to systematically interpret four frequently-cited studies that sought to document identity outcomes for gender-nonconforming children (often referred to as “desistance” research).

Results: Methodological, theoretical, ethical, and interpretive concerns regarding four “desistance” studies are presented. The authors clarify the historical and clinical contexts within which these studies were conducted to deconstruct assumptions in interpretations of the results. The discussion makes distinctions between the specific evidence provided by these studies versus the assumptions that have shaped recommendations for care. The affirmative model is presented as a way to move away from the question of, “How should children's gender identities develop over time?” toward a more useful question: “How should children best be supported as their gender identity develops?”

Conclusion: The tethering of childhood gender diversity to the framework of “desistance” or “persistence” has stifled advancements in our understanding of children's gender in all its complexity. These follow-up studies fall short in helping us understand what children need. As work begins on the 8th version of the Standards of Care by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, we call for a more inclusive conceptual framework that takes children's voices seriously. Listening to children's experiences will enable a more comprehensive understanding of the needs of gender-nonconforming children and provide guidance to scientific and lay communities.     

Frankl, Newman and the Meaning of Suffering

How can we find meaning in the suffering in our lives? What alternatives does our tradition offer to those who reject the “abuse excuse” and the “feel-good” mentality? This article contrasts the “feel-good” therapeutic model with Viktor Frankl's logotherapy and John Henry Newman's theology of the cross.     

"This is Simply What I Do"

Wittgenstein's discussion of rule‐following is widely regarded to have identified what Kripke called “the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date”. But does it? This paper examines the problem in the light of Charles Peirce's distinctive scientific hierarchy. Peirce identifies a phenomenological inquiry which is prior to both logic and metaphysics, whose role is to identify the most fundamental philosophical categories. His third category, particularly salient in this context. pertains to general predication. Rule‐following scepticism, the paper suggests, results from running together two questions: “How is it that I can project rules?”, and, “What is it for a given usage of a rule to be right?”. In Peircean terms the former question, concerning the irreducibility of general predication (to singular reference), must be answered in phenomenology, while the latter, concerning the difference between true and false predication, is answered in logic. A failure to appreciate this distinction, it is argued, has led philosophers to focus exclusively on Wittgenstein's famous public account of rule‐following rightness, thus overlooking a private, phenomenological dimension to Wittgenstein's remarks on following a rule which gives the lie to Kripke's reading of him as a sceptic.     

FORMATION,GRACE, AND PNEUMATOLOGY: Or,Where's the Spirit in Gregory's Augustine?

Eric Gregory's Politics and the Order of Love takes up an audacious project: enlisting Saint Augustine in order to “help imagine a better liberalism.” This article first provides a summary of Gregory's argument, focusing on his emphasis on love as a “motivation” for neighborly care, and hence democratic participation. This involves tracing the theme of motivation in the book, which is tied to his articulation of liberal perfectionism and an emphasis on civic virtue. In conclusion I raise the question of whether his project has ignored a key aspect of Augustine's account of love, namely, the role of the Holy Spirit, thereby demarcating the limits of Gregory's “rational reconstruction” of Augustine.     

Plurigenealogies: Marriage and address to women in Foucault's Confessions of the Flesh

How does the publication of Confessions of the Flesh impact feminist critique of Foucault's History of Sexuality project? The paper addresses this question in two ways: by asking how reflection on continuities and ruptures has, and can, be productive for feminist critique; and by revisiting the role of women in all four volumes. The terms of their inclusion have been considered an omission, particularly because the project omits same-sex eros between women. Where women appear, they are framed as spouses, or as subordinated to some form of authority. And yet, insofar as the project contains more than one genealogical dimension, Foucault's “marriages” also belong to proximate plurigenealogies. In Confession's focus on the conditions for a juridical and divided self's subjectivation by will and desire, even the limited parameters within which women appear in the project incite the following question. What are the implications of Confessions of the Flesh's juridical self for genealogies of female subjectivation?     

Stability and Change in Psychosocial Resources during Caregiving and Bereavement in Partners of Men with AIDS

ABSTRACT This study examines the effects of caregiving and bereavement on psychosocial resources in HIV + and HIV? caregivers of men with AIDS. We explored three hypotheses regarding these effects: the “wear and tear” hypothesis, which asserts that the chronic stress of caregiving and bereavement diminishes resources; the “enhancement” hypothesis, which asserts that caregiver resources may increase in response to increased demands; and the “personality” hypothesis, which asserts that psychosocial resources reflect stable personality characteristics. We addressed four questions: (a) What are the effects of caregiving on resources? (b) How do these resources vary by the imminence of the partner's death? (c) What is the effect of the partner's death on these resources? and (d) How does the caregivers' HIV serostatus influence the effects of caregiving and bereavement on resources? Support for the personality hypothesis predominated, with some support for the wear and tear hypothesis, depending on the resource in question. In general, HIV seropositivity did not put people at additional risk for resource depletion.     

Bribery and Intimidation: A Discussion of Sandra Lee Bartky's Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression

A review of my undergraduate students’ commentaries on two of Bartky's essays serves as the occasion for elaborating on Bartky's analyses of factors that sustain and perpetuate the subjection and disempowerment of women. In my elaboration I draw from John Stuart Mill's statement: “In the case of women, each individual of the subject-class is in a chronic state of bribery and intimidation combined.” I conclude by raising the question, How is personal transformation possible?     

Precedent Autonomy and Subsequent Consent

Honoring a living will typically involves treating an incompetent patient in accord with preferences she once had, but whose objects she can no longer understand. How do we respect her “precedent autonomy” by giving her what she used to want? There is a similar problem with “subsequent consent”: How can we justify interfering with someone's autonomy on the grounds that she will later consent to the interference, if she refuses now? Both problems arise on the assumption that, to respect someone's autonomy, any preferences we respect must be among that person's current preferences. I argue that this is not always true. Just as we can celebrate an event long after it happens, so can we respect someone's wishes long before or after she has that wish. In the contexts of precedent autonomy and subsequent consent, the wishes are often preferences about which of two other, conflicting preferences to satisfy. When someone has two conflicting preferences, and a third preference on how to resolve that conflict, to respect his autonomy we must respect that third preference. People with declining competence may have a resolution preference earlier, favoring the earlier conflicting preference (precedent autonomy), whereas those with rising competence may have it later, favoring the later conflicting preference (subsequent consent). To respect autonomy in such cases we must respect not a current, but a former or later preference.     

Do Christians and Muslims Believe in the Same God? Reflections on Miroslav Volf's Allah: A Christian Response

Miroslav Volf's Allah: A Christian Response is an important book that advances Christian–Muslim dialogue. This article outlines Volf's thesis, critically evaluates some key claims made in the book, and examines some of the methodological presuppositions in Volf's project. It also seeks to situate Volf's claim about the “same God” within a Christian typology of “revelation” so that the significance of his claims might be better understood.     

Rortyan therapists,pragmatist engineers,and white nationalist egotists: A response to Huckerby,Huetter-Almerigi,and Showler

This essay is a reply to commentaries by Elin Danielsen Huckerby, Yvonne Huetter-Almerigi, and Paul Showler on Tracy Llanera's Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism (2020).     

Strangers in Paradise: Trevor,Marley, and Me: Reggae Music and the Foreigner Other

The “immigrant” position calls forth a sense of “strangeness” as a constructed Other. What happens when the self is experienced as a limited, hybridized version of the self one might otherwise be, with opportunity to shape one’s identity? Intersubjectivity is conceptualized as a generative, developmental space in which the “I-ness of me” locates fertile ground for such a project. How do analyst and patient negotiate mutual experiences of alienation in a shared culture of origin, as they encounter experiences of foreignness in a foreign land? As with relational spaces, the construct, “immigrant” is positioned as a thing in itself—a transitional space—in which Otherness might be interrogated. The work of crossing boundaries at the meeting points of race and class is discussed, as two Jamaicans, embedded in the power of Reggae music, engage in psychoanalytic, and socio-political “talk.” Or, is it that we dance?     

“A GREATEST MIRACLE”: STANLEY CAVELL,MORAL PERFECTIONISM,AND THE ASCENT INTO THE ORDINARY

What to make of “the ordinary,”“the everyday,” and their common “eventfulness”? What to think of what Veena Das, in her recent book Life and Words, prefaced by Stanley Cavell, has called our need to “descent into the ordinary”? Is there a parallel figure of “ascent,” again, into the same “ordinary,” that we might we want to juxtapose with it and that resembles the motif of “change,” even “conversion,” that Cavell analyzes at some length in The Claim of Reason and throughout his oeuvre as a whole? And what could be our reasons for doing so? This essay will draw on Cavell's reading of Ibsen's work in the volume Cities of Words to spell out what such an “ascent” might mean.     

Stereotypes,Prejudice, and the Taxonomy of the Implicit Social Mind1

How do cognition and affect interact to produce action? Research in intergroup psychology illuminates this question by investigating the relationship between stereotypes and prejudices about social groups. Yet it is now clear that many social attitudes are implicit (roughly, nonconscious or involuntary). This raises the question: how does the distinction between cognition and affect apply to implicit mental states? An influential view—roughly analogous to a Humean theory of action—is that “implicit stereotypes” and “implicit prejudices” constitute two separate constructs, reflecting different mental processes and neural systems. On this basis, some have also argued that interventions to reduce discrimination should combat implicit stereotypes and prejudices separately. We propose an alternative (anti‐Humean) framework. We argue that all putative implicit stereotypes are affect‐laden and all putative implicit prejudices are “semantic,” that is, they stand in co‐activating associations with concepts and beliefs. Implicit biases, therefore, consist in “clusters” of semantic‐affective associations, which differ in degree, rather than kind. This framework captures the psychological structure of implicit bias, promises to improve the power of indirect measures to predict behavior, and points toward the design of more effective interventions to combat discrimination.     

The Church in the Contemporary Ecumenical‐Missional Moment: Together towards Life in Dialogue with The Cape Town Commitment and Evangelii Gaudium

The doctrine of the church has always been important to developments in mission and ecumenism – a fact that has been true since the birth of the modern ecumenical movement and is no less so today. This article compares three recent documents – the WCC's Together towards Life (2013), the Lausanne Movement's Cape Town Commitment (2011), and Pope Francis' exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2014) – in light of the rise of a prominent new way of expressing the role of the church in the mission of Christ (missio Dei). This theological development has significantly impacted mission and ecumenical thinking and practice in recent decades, requiring us to consider the church's relationship to mission in a new and important way. The article reveals various aspects of missio Dei theology at work in all three of these documents, and finally looks at the visionary leadership of Pope Francis in calling the Catholic Church to a joyful expression of the gospel of Christ through both words and deeds. EG does not so much address the doctrine of the church as it assumes it. Its concern is far more pastoral: “How do we more effectively and powerfully communicate the gospel in our time?”     

Rewriting the flesh of the world for the new human: Merleau-Ponty,Fanon, and Wynter on the ethics of futurity

This article reads Maurice Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the “flesh of the world” alongside the ontology that seems to undergird Frantz Fanon's sociodiagnostics as well as his theory of sociogeny. It argues that reading Fanonian sociogeny in terms of the ambiguity and intercorporeality of the flesh of the world renders the ethical and political imperatives of Fanon's decolonial project all the more pressing, since the “new human” is prefigured—if not totally determined—in the national consciousness obtained by “les damnés” through the decolonization process. It then examines how Sylvia Wynter's Fanonian call to (re)fashion the future of humanness through (re)conceptualizing “being human as praxis,” also seems to rely on this ontology of the flesh of the world. Bringing these arguments together, the article suggests that the conceptual content of the new human can be found in the liberation struggles of les damnés across what Wynter calls the “poverty archipelagos” wrought by colonial humanism. Hence, the “new skin” for which Fanon calls is fashioned through forming international solidarity with les damnés, with the conceptual content of the new humanism emerging sociogenically—and autopoetically—from those struggles themselves.     

GETTING UNDER MY SKIN: WILLIAM JAMES ON THE EMOTIONS, SOCIALITY, AND TRANSCENDENCE

“You are really getting under my skin!” This exclamation suggests a series of psychological, philosophical, and metaphysical questions: What is the nature and development of human emotion? How does emotion arise in social interaction? To what extent can interactive situations shape our embodied selves and intensify particular affective states? With these questions in mind, William James begins to investigate the character of emotions and to develop a model of what he terms the social self. James's studies of mimicry and his interest in phenomena now often investigated using biofeedback begin to explain how affective states develop and how it might be possible for something to “get under one's skin.” I situate these studies in the history of psychology between the psychological schools of structuralism and behaviorism. More important, I suggest continuity between James's Psychology and recent research on mirror neurons, reentrant mapping, and emotional mimicry in the fields of clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience. This research supports and extends James's initial claims in regard to the creation of emotions and the life of the social self. I propose that James's work in the empirical sciences should be read as a prelude to his metaphysical works that speak of a coordination between embodied selves and wider environmental situations, and his psychological studies should be read as a prelude to his reflections on spiritual transcendence.