Reflection and Critique: Philosophy's Hope for Education

1 Introduction Universities still,today,enjoy a specific type of respectability.Undoubtedly,this could be explained by the fact that universities,from medieval times onwards,have belonged to the cultural and intellectual landscape in general and to educational heritage in particular.From a distance,it looks like they are braving,with obvious confidence,every day's delusions;most people look at universities as quite stable institutions.Of course,there are good reasons for this:Universities have been and still are offering programs and training,consisting of individual courses,offered by professors.At the end,in exchange for ongoing efforts,students can get a degree,most likely opening the door to interesting,meaningful jobs with decent pay.     

The Body's Contribution to a Female Sense of Self

The study presents a theory of early female development based on infant observation studies and clinical reconstructions. Suggestions are made for applying this theory in doing psychotherapy with women. Examining earlier psychoanalytic studies on gender development in girls in the light of the infant studies underscores the role played by the body in fonning a female sense of self. It challenges us to reassess both our theory and technique in regard to female development and ueatment.     

The You Turn

This introductory paper sets out a framework for approaching some of the claims about the second person made by the papers collected in the special edition of Philosophical Explorations on The Second Person (2014, 17:3). It does so by putting centre stage the notion of a ‘bipolar second person relation’, and examining ways of giving it substance suggested by the authors of these papers. In particular, it focuses on claims made (and denied) in these papers (a) about the existence and/or nature of second person thought, second person reasons for action and second person reasons for belief and (b) about possible connections among thought-theoretical, ethical and epistemological issues and debates in this area.     

The Body's Response to Processing Emotional Trauma: Linking Verbal Text with Autonomic Activity

ABSTRACT When individuals talk or think about upsetting experiences, different coping and defensive processes are invoked from one minute to the next. Further, some coping strategies are thought to be more effortful and to be associated with greater biological activity than others. The present research sought to identify how the expression of emotions and the use of different psychological defenses were reflected in momentary changes in autonomic nervous system activity while subjects wrote about emotional topics. A new methodology is introduced that links the production of natural written language with autonomic activity on a word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase basis. Using this technique with a sample of 24 subjects who wrote about traumatic experiences, it was found that certain text dimensions are highly related to skin conductance level (SCL) but not heart rate. In general, subjects' SCLs increased when expressing negative emotions and when using denial and the passive voice. SCLs were more likely to drop when subjects used positive emotion words and self-references and at the conclusion of sentences or thought units. Implications for this methodology for understanding psychological defense and physical health are discussed.     

The Cultural Turn: Empirical Studies and their Implications

This essay uses empirical studies to engage Richard Miller’s advocacy of a “cultural turn” in the study of religious ethics found in Friends and Other Strangers. The particular kind of empirical research I highlight here, cultural cognition, emphasizes the ways that belonging to a cultural group influences one’s reasoning when faced with controversial issues involving disputed facts. This approach underscores the significance of the cultural turn, but it also raises some important challenges for Miller’s accounts of moral psychology and public reason. I work to elucidate what those challenges are and point to some ways that taking cultural cognition seriously might open up fresh avenues for addressing perennial ethical issues.     

哲学退位——论康德哲学中哲学和政治的关系

V．格哈特从西方哲学传统和政治传统来解读康德的《论永久和平》,从康德对“公共契约”中“秘密条款”的反讽论述中揭示出康德的真正意图是为人民提供权利、并实现哲学和政治之间的关系的重要变革。在康德之前,西方哲学传统和政治传统一直继续柏拉图和亚里士多德的路线。按照柏拉图,哲学和政治应当合而为一,最高的理想是“国王从事哲学、或哲学家变成国王”;按照亚里士多德,哲学和政治具有一种类比结构,“从事统治就像从事哲学”。在康德那里,哲学和政治相分离,哲学批判和政治实践隶属于两个完全独立的行动领域,“从事统治和从事哲学是互补的社会活动”;因而康德为哲学和政治之间的关系确立起一个新的范式模型。这个范式模型意味着：哲学退出政治。格哈特把康德对哲学和政治的分离归因于理论知识和实践知识之间的差异。过去的哲学家往往把理论知识和实践知识同一化,从理论知识来推导实践洞见;康德看到,理论知识是先天的,实践知识则与境遇性和经验性的事务状态相关,因而不能从理论知识来推导实践知识。     

Philosophy's Folds: Seneca,Cavarero, and the History of Rectitude

This article takes as its stimulus Adriana Cavarero's recent investigation of the postures of rectitude and inclination in the Western philosophical tradition (Cavarero 2013). To showcase how this book might catalyze productive interactions between feminist critics in different areas of the humanities, I will bring Cavarero into dialogue with a thinker she mentions in passing who extensively develops “rectitude as a general principle” (Veyne 2003): Seneca. I argue that a gendered ontology of rectitude is increasingly put under pressure and transformed in Seneca's Epistles, and propose that the letters are a laboratory for developing a new model of inclination that arises from an urgent need to confront the consequences of political impotence and threats to bodily integrity for Roman aristocratic manhood in the 60s ce . The playful, densely literary Epistles offer multiple points of contact with Cavarero's own philosophical strategies, and emerge as a highly stimulating text for feminist thinkers interested in the ethical and political implications of acknowledging vulnerability. Reading Seneca alongside Cavarero reminds us that such investigations have a (tortuous, buried) history in Roman antiquity whose recovery is itself politically significant.     

The Cult Phenomenon: A Turn of the Century Update

A variety of groups that function on the fringes of both religion and psychotherapy have been evident in the U.S. since the 1960s, with perhaps their greatest presence noted in the 1970s. There were as many as 3000 cult-type organizations identified in that period. Many of these groups created havoc with their followers' lives and the lives of the followers' families. The authors examined the cults in the late 1970s and early 1980s, comparing their activities and requirements to those of "standard" religions and sects. The present article looks at the changes in the two decades since then, noting modifications in the cults' target populations as well as the increases in many kinds of violence in some of the groups.     

历史转折的前奏--邓小平与一九七五年整顿平议

在文化大革命十年内乱中,一九七五年整顿闪耀着特殊的光辉.本文简要评述了一九七五年整顿的历史背景、指导思想、发展过程和显著成效,分析了整顿在短期内取得显著成效和突然中断的原因,对一九七五年整顿作出了历史评价邓小平主持的一九七五年整顿贯彻落实并发展了文化大革命后期毛泽东三项重要指示所体现的正确思想和决策,是对文化大革命拨乱反正的开始,是改革开放的实验,是邓小平理论的起点.它上承中共"八大"路线和文化大革命前十年的正确发展趋向,是60年代前期调整、1972年周恩来主持的整顿的继续和发展;它下启十一届三中全会以后改革开放新时期,是对建设有中国特色社会主义道路的初步探索,给当代中国的历史进程起了开辟航道的作用,成为第二次伟大历史转折的前奏.