Kant on freedom: A reply to my critics

The first two sections of this paper are devoted respectively to the criticisms of my views raised by Stephen Engstrom and Andrews Reath at a symposium on Kant's Theory of Freedom held in Washington D.C. on 28 December 1992 under the auspices of the North American Kant Society. The third section contains my response to the remarks of Marcia Baron at a second symposium in Chicago on 24 April 1993 at the APA Western Division meetings. The fourth section deals with some general criticisms of my treatment of Kant's theory of freedom and its connection with transcendental idealism that have been raised by Karl Ameriks, who was also a participant in the second symposium, in an earlier piece published in Inquiry and by Paul Guyer in a review. The paper as a whole is thus an attempt to reformulate and clarify some of the central claims of my book in light of the initial critical reaction.     

On Reflective Knowledge: replies to Battaly and Reed

This article is a reply to Baron Reed and Heather Battaly, two critics in a book symposium on my Reflective Knowledge. The reply to Reed concerns the main content and structure of Descartes??s epistemology. The reply to Battaly concerns how best to deal with epistemic circularity.     

Philosophy,writing, and liberation

In responding to the three creative interpretive discussions in the symposium on my book Philosophy and the Art of Writing, this paper explores the different styles of philosophical discourse and their role in the practice of philosophy as a way of life that extends beyond the discursive and that combines self-cultivation with care for others in the ethical-aesthetic pursuit of living beauty. In advocating this aesthetic model of philosophical life over a purely therapeutic model, I suggest how the former can incorporate the latter's concerns for spiritual health and liberation. In developing my response to the symposiasts while elaborating on the themes of my book, I consider issues of ineffability, creative performance, embodiment, truth, heroism, vulnerability, possession, art, spirituality, love, and liberation.     

Just responses to problems associated with the brain drain: Identity,community, and obligation in an unjust world

In this essay, which forms part of a symposium on the brain drain, I respond to the arguments of several critics. I defend my proposals concerning how to address problems associated with high levels of skilled migration, especially in the face of concerns about identity, community and obligation in an unjust world.     

Winckelmann on Taste: A Somaesthetic Perspective

This article argues that somaesthetic thinking is central to Winckelmann's theory of artistic taste, rendering it more relevant to contemporary aesthetic contexts. After briefly defining this perspective and the importance of somatic cultivation in Winckelmann's life, the article first explores how somatic factors are crucial in Winckelmann's account of how good artistic taste originated in ancient Greece. It then examines how somatic feelings play a central role in determining a person's aptitude for properly appreciating beauty in art and how those feelings operate in the judgment of taste. The article concludes by examining Winckelmann's use of bodily reactions and somaesthetic reflection in his own critical practice, purveying a somatically grounded model of strong feelings tempered with composed understanding.     

Ars Erotica and Ars Gastronomica in Shusterman’s Somaesthetics

This paper explores the roles of the erotic and gastronomic arts in Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics. By discussing the relationship between moral education and the cultivation of gustatory taste in classical Chinese philosophy, this paper suggests future avenues of research for somaesthetics that draw on the rich tradition of thinking about food and the body in Chinese philosophy.     

Between Embodied Subjects and Objects: Narrative Somaesthetics

Michel Foucault's ethics of embodiment, focusing upon care of the self, has motivated feminist scholars to pursue promising models of embodied resistance to disciplinary normalization. Cressida Heyes, in particular, has advocated that these projects adopt practices of “somaesthetics,” following a program of body consciousness developed by Richard Shusterman. In exploring Shusterman's somaesthetics proposal, I find that it does not account for the subjective challenges of resisting normalization. Based on narrative theories of subjectivity, the role narrative plays in normalization, and a commitment to developing concrete, feminist practices of embodied ethics, I develop a model of “narrative somaesthetics” based on an updated consciousness‐raising model that emphasizes group heterogeneity and narrative conflict that deals with these challenges. Through an analysis of interviews with self‐identified femme lesbians and a “female to femme” transition support group featured in the documentary film, FtF: Female to Femme, I argue that narrative somaesthetics enables the analytical, genealogical work required to identify and weaken normalization's constraints on embodied feminist ethics.     

Replies to comments on <Emphasis Type="Italic">Judgment and Agency</Emphasis>

This paper is part of a book symposium on my Judgment and Agency (Oxford University Press, 2015). Here I reply to the comments of three commentators: Jason Baehr, Imogen Dickie, and Hilary Kornblith.     

The Motivation for “Toward an African Moral Theory”

Abstract

Here I introduce the symposium issue of the South African Journal of Philosophy that is devoted to critically analysing my article “Toward an African Moral Theory.” In that article, I use the techniques of analytic moral philosophy to articulate and defend a moral theory that both is grounded on the values of peoples living in sub-Saharan Africa and differs from what is influential in contemporary Western ethics. Here, I not only present a précis of the article, but also provide a sketch of why I have undertaken the sort of project begun there, what I hope it will help to achieve, and how the contributors to the symposium principally question it.     

身体美学的启迪与反思

舒斯特曼提出来的“身体美学”日渐得到人们的重视。利用传统中国哲学和中国医学中所包含的身心一元论思想指导下的身体观来说明身体美学的可能性和重要意义,思考有中国文化特色的身体美学的一个重要特点及其对于当前流行的美容实践的启迪。     

Blessed are the uncertain,for they will experience excess

In this paper I look at the possibility that uncertainty may not merely be a stage in the research process, but an outcome in itself. Exploring how university education and scholarship collided with my own personal experiences and identity I discuss how a combination of poststructural theory and my encounters with peace, conflict and religion enabled me to value uncertainty, and I make the case that uncertainty can open up the future to the gift of chance. By intertwining discussions of both lived experience and academic work, the organisation of the paper reflects how the two became inextricably linked, continuously folding into each other, so that my sense of self influenced my research, and conversely, my research influenced my sense of self. The outcome is a discussion of how I incorporated uncertainty into my research and personal life, which I explore using the example of religion, and how I lost and gained my faith, rejecting my previous Christianity while reconstructing a kind of faith found in uncertainty, a sense of place and ethical space to come.     

Somaesthetics and The Second Sex: A Pragmatist Reading of a Feminist Classic

This paper explains the discipline of somaesthetics, which emerges from pragmatism's concern with enhancing embodied experience and reconstructing the aesthetic in ways that make it more central to key philosophical concerns of knowledge, ethics, and politics. I then examine Beauvoir's complex treatment of the body in The Second Sex, assessing both her arguments that could support the pragmatic approach of somaes‐thetics but also those that challenge its bodily focus as a danger for feminism.     

Enigmatic Masculinities: A Reply to Swartz and Grossmark

In reply to Swartz and Grossmark’s commentaries on my paper about encounters with the masculine, I elaborate from a reflexive stance on the notions of context, positionality, and warrants to speak in my writing and the responses. My account is part of an unfolding exploration of how I stand as a gendered being within psychotherapeutic praxis, and in line with that, how what was intimated in my original paper points to Laplanche’s theorizing on the sexual and to his notion of enigmatic seduction in ongoing gendering processes. The reply finds itself haunted by the abject and its position within the postcolony, and with a desire for what is an illusory transcendence.     

Replies

I reply to challenges raised by contributors to this book symposium. Key challenges include (but are not limited to): distancing my new account of reductionism-in-practice from my previous “new wave” account; clarifying my claimed “heuristic” status for higher-level investigations (including cognitive-neuroscientific ones); defending the “reorientation of philosophical desires” I claim to be required by my project; and addressing consideration about normativity.     

HIDDEN VARIABLES AND THE IMPLICATE ORDER

Abstract. This paper explains how my ideas of hidden variables tie up to those in the implicate order, and how all these notions are related to my views on religion. Beginning with my work on the quantum theory, it traces how I was led to question the usual interpretation, and goes on to show how both the notion of hidden variables and that of the implicate order were implicit in my thought more than thirty years ago. The further development through quantum field theory brings all the various threads together. Finally, the general world view that comes out of this development is seen to be compatible with a religious approach to life.     

Replies to Deng,Lee, and Skow

This paper is a contribution to a book symposium on my book Experiencing Time. I reply to comments on the book by Natalja Deng, Geoffrey Lee and Bradford Skow. Although several chapters of the book are discussed, the main focus of my reply is on Chapters 2 and 6. In Chapter 2 I argue that the putative mind-independent passage of time could not be experienced, and from this I develop an argument against the A-theory of time. In Chapter 6 I offer one part of an explanation of why we are disposed to think that time passes, relating to the supposedly ‘dynamic’ quality of experienced change. Deng, Lee, and Skow’s comments help me to clarify several issues, add some new thoughts, and make a new distinction that was needed, and I acknowledge, as I did in the book, that certain arguments in Chapter 6 are not conclusive; but I otherwise concede very little regarding the main claims and arguments defended in the book.     

Man on Wire: Walking the Therapeutically Transformative Tightrope of the Analyst’s Cancer

Almost nothing was clear to me when I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I knew that I intended to inform all of my patients about my illness. But how could the focus remain on their needs when my mortality was so at risk? Unexpectedly, I discovered that I coped with my fears most effectively in my office. It was the one place where I could maintain a grasp on a holistic sense of myself and hold conflicting intense emotions. Additionally striking was the corresponding capacity of my patients to remain in treatment while addressing the unpredictable dyadic changes generated by my sickness. In this paper, I address this point of intersubjective transformation—the interactive contributions that generated each treatment’s unique rhythm. I also discuss the temporality of illness and how my continuing reconfigurations of self-experience impacted my ability to maintain authenticity and analytic balance both during and after treatment.     

Creativity,Spontaneity, Impasse,and Leaps of Faith: Reply to Commentaries

In my reply to the commentaries, I address several points of convergence with and divergence from Drs. Danielle Knafo and Philip A. Ringstrom. I clarify my view that while shame can drive the creative process, the thrust of my paper is about ways in which shame can close down access to one's creative potential, as well as creating obstacles to vitality and intimacy in relationships. I expand on how it was indeed a visceral, embodied sense of my own shame which served as an “informant,” as Ringstrom suggests, of Julia's chronic experience of shame, opening a door to our exploration of the repetitive enactments between us. Grounding my understanding of therapeutic action and enactments in a relational perspective, I describe how I view enactments as inevitable and co-created, and reflecting on them collaboratively as a potentially useful opportunity in analytic work. I resonate with Ringstrom and Knafo's belief in the creativity inherent in the psychoanalytic process, and the importance of spontaneity and risk taking, particularly in negotiating impasses in treatment. Finally, I describe Julia's poetic reflections upon reading the paper.     

Physical education and fostering relationships

Rather than presenting an academic paper, I wanted to simply examine my own perspective as a physical educator and classroom teacher and the importance of creating relationships with children. As a relatively new physical educator and recent Masters of Education graduate of the University of Toronto at OISE, but experienced classroom teacher working in a Toronto public school, spirituality at first appeared to be the farthest thing that affected both my life and the life of my classes. During the last two years, I became increasingly aware of the connection between physical education and feelings of enthusiasm and perseverance that have helped my students to see themselves in positive ways. The relationship developed between teacher and student had been apparent to me but I had not realised how important until I began graduate school and reflecting on both my classroom practice and how it had extended into the gymnasium. I often thought that physical education teachers tended to focus on the physical aspects and skills, but instead I found that it was indeed making a shared connection with my students through the various physical and everyday activities as of the highest importance. The shared connections encourage feelings of perseverance, and fit together between mind, body and spirit, which also encouraged active participation and success. What I had suspected to be true for the classroom really was true anywhere in the school community. My experiences as a physical educator and classroom teacher helped me create positive learning environments for children as they struggled with academic and physical activities. With this paper, I am asking academics to help teachers such as myself to understand the correlation to something we as teachers take for granted as part of our everyday teacher–student relationship.     

Wayfinding with my iPhone: An autoethnographic account of technological companionship and its affects

Location-aware technologies such as GPS devices and smartphones are integral to everyday, mundane navigational practices or ‘wayfinding’. The personalisation, portability and popularity of these devices means that wayfinding can be accomplished with near-instant access to place-based information. But how do people connect to these devices in more intimate, emotional, and haptic ways? To address this question, this paper draws on autoethnographic fieldwork involving wayfinding devices, using a series of iPhone navigation apps. The paper presents a series of short narratives taken from my field diaries exploring the ways in which I perceived and performed my iPhone device as a companion during my everyday mobilities. The paper focuses on three mechanisms that facilitated relations of companionship: product design, sensory engagement and emotional/affective encounters. Building on these insights, the paper argues that relations of companionship with technological devices come into focus in particular moments when the life cycles of the users and their devices collide. The various emotions and affects, which circulate in these moments, are critical to how we make sense of space, place, and our mobilities, as well as ongoing engagements with human/technology relations.