Philosophical Debates about Prostitution: State of the Question

This article aims to present “the state of the question” concerning prostitution. It is organized around an analysis of the various questions that current theorists take themselves to be answering when they defend decriminalization, some form of legalization, or the so‐called “Nordic model” of sex equality. By assessing these “framing questions,” as I shall call them, and the arguments stemming from them, we gain a powerful basis for understanding and critiquing the literature as a whole. In the end, I argue that the Nordic Model is superior in both its orienting method and its solution.     

On the Nature and Meaning of Human Finitude

This article considers the interaction between psychoanalysis and philosophy by examining the meaning of human finitude in the work of Freud and Heidegger. Although Freud and Heidegger develop radically different systems of thought, they are surprisingly close in their examination of the human attitude toward death. Freud's philosophical reflections on the nature of death are ultimately subsumed in his speculative theory of the death instinct, which is far removed from the lived experience of finitude. Heidegger's ontological account of death draws from lived experience but neglects the relational nature of finitude. Drawing on the connection between the work of Binswanger and Stolorow, I maintain that finitude is a fundamentally relational phenomenon. While philosophy can help us to understand and formulate an account of human finitude, the relational nature of psychoanalysis can help us bear the trauma associated with death.     

The Question of Survival: The Death of Desire and the Weight of Life

This article aims to document the psychic injuries of torture. Psychic deadness, erasure of intersubjectivity, refusal of meaning-making, perversion of agency, and an inability to bear desire constitute the core features of the post-traumatic landscape of torture. The existential challenges in traumatized lives is examined, and questions are also raised about the ethics and unconscious defensive functions of the term "survival." Clinical materials with various torture patients are reported to explore the process of working through the losses and paradoxes of trauma. The role of unmourned loss and the defense of fetishizing the trauma are highlighted as the motivating force and the problem in the current preoccupation with trauma in modern Western culture.     

Temporal Finitude and Finitude of Possibility: The Double Meaning of Death in Being and Time

Abstract

The confusion surrounding Heidegger’s account of death in Being and Time has led to severe criticisms, some of which dismiss his analysis as incoherent and obtuse. I argue that Heidegger’s critics err by equating Heidegger’s concept of death with our ordinary concept. As I show, Heidegger’s concept of death is not the same as the ordinary meaning of the term, namely, the event that ends life. But nor does this concept merely denote the finitude of Dasein’s possibilities or the groundlessness of existence, as William Blattner and Hubert Dreyfus have suggested. Rather, I argue, the concept of death has to be understood both as temporal finitude and as finitude of possibility. I show how this reading addresses the criticisms directed at Heidegger’s death analysis as well as solving textual problems generated by more limited interpretations of the concept.     

天、象、辞与《易传》哲学基本问题

《周易》包含《经》与《传》两个部分。《经》重占卜,《传》在诠释。《易传》面临的核心问题是:天意、卦象与言辞之间关系如何?《周易》认为,天是本原;象是符号,天的象征;辞是陈述,再现符号、指称命运。天意经过卦象,由言辞得以彰显。三者实现了统一。这三者的关系,从根本上来说,依然体现了性的问题。它是儒家人性论的一种特殊形态。《周易》将圣人神化,为言辞提供了权威基础。     

On the distinction between the concept of God and conceptions of God

The starting-point is the distinction between concept and conception. Our conceptions of gold, for instance, are the different understandings we get when we hear the word ‘gold’ whereas the concept of gold consists in the scientific determination of what gold is. It depends on the context whether it is more reasonable to claim a concept or to look for fitting conceptions. By arguing against metaphysical realism and for non-metaphysical realism, I will elaborate on some philosophical reasons for dealing with conceptions instead of concepts of God, and secondly, I will discuss how such conceptions should be critically assessed. This article is an amended and enlarged version of a paper delivered at the conference on The Concept of God, arranged by the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion in Oxford, Great Britain, September 11–13, 2007.     

安乐死合法化的哲学辩护——以自由主义哲学为视角

安乐死问题一直都是一个争议性话题。从学理上,安乐死可以分为自愿安乐死和无意愿安乐死。自由主义的伦理学分为义务论和功利主义。以自由主义哲学观来审视两类安乐死合法化问题:自愿安乐死体现病人自由意志的选择,是人格尊严之自主性的结果;无意愿安乐死是由利益相关人代为选择,符合社会利益的最大化。通过严格立法来规范安乐死行为,也应成为我国法律的理性选择。     

On The Reality of Tooth Fairies: A Review of The God Delusion

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins reviews the evidence for and against God. After considering arguments for a divine power, he says the main current one is that the characteristics of living creatures must be attributed to an all-powerful designer. Design is the only plausible account, because the excellent fit between each plant and animal and its environment could not possibly have appeared in one stroke by pure chance. Dawkins agrees that randomness could not have done the job, but he says that a designer is equally unlikely. The only viable explanation is evolution by natural selection, a process that operates without plan or design. He then turns to the adaptive value of religious belief. After failing to find any, he proposes that belief in divinities is the by-product of a powerful tendency to learn from others, an adaptive strategy produced by natural selection. Adults and other influential figures teach children many useful things, but they also train them to worship deities. Religious devotion is established through education, and it is maintained over generations by the social learning processes underlying all instances of cultural evolution. Dawkins'' arguments together with other problems encountered in describing evolutionary processes highlight the importance of social learning. His discussion leads the reviewer to assert that only by knowing the mechanisms of social learning is it possible to understand how biological and cultural evolution interact to produce life as we find it.     

Heidegger on Human Finitude: Beginning at the End

Interpreters generally understand Heidegger's notion of finitude in one of two ways: (1) as our mortality – that, in the end, we are certain to die; or (2) the susceptibility of our self‐ and world‐understanding to collapse – the fragility and vulnerability of human sense‐making. In this paper, I put forward an alternative account of what Heidegger means by ‘finitude’: human self‐ and world‐understanding is non‐transparently grounded in a ‘final end.’ Our self‐ and world‐understanding, that is, begins at the end, and authenticity requires us to interpretively appropriate the full range of this understanding. After laying out this view of finitude, via an analogical appeal to the Socratic account of action and desire in the Gorgias, I discuss its relationship to the two leading views of finitude mentioned above.