Primo Levi's loneliness: psychoanalytic perspectives on suicide-nearness

To elucidate suicide-nearness, the perspectives of the death drive and narcissism are applied to the writings of Primo Levi. Emerging themes are Levi's struggle to maintain his self-regard from his year as a prisoner in Auschwitz and onward, and his observations on xenophobia, violence, and the need for love. The gradual increase of depressive content in Levi's work is noted, as are his identifications with others who succumbed in the Holocaust or took their lives after surviving it. The conflict between the wish for peace and the need for love is seen as impossible to resolve under the threat of extermination and as reemerging in the prevailing sense of loneliness that Levi described.     

Avoiding Epistemic Hell: Levi on Pragmatism and Inconsistency

Isaac Levi has claimed that our reliance on the testimony of others, and on the testimony of the senses, commonly produces inconsistency in our set of full beliefs. This happens if what is reported is inconsistent with what we believe to be the case. Drawing on a conception of the role of beliefs in inquiry going back to Dewey, Levi has maintained that the inconsistent belief corpus is a state of ``epistemic hell'': it is useless as a basis for inquiry and deliberation. As he has also noticed, the compatibility of these two elements of his pragmatist epistemology could be called into question. For if inconsistency means hell, how can it ever be rational to enter that state, and on what basis could we attempt to regain consistency? Levi, nonetheless, has tried to show that the conflict is only apparent and that no changes of his theory are necessary. In the main part of the paper I argue, by contrast, that his attempts to reconcile these components of his view are unsuccessful.The conflict is real andthus presents a genuine threat to Deweyan pragmatism, as understood by Levi. After an attempt to pinpoint exactly where the source of the problem lies, I explore some possibilities for how to come to grips with it. I conclude that Levi can keep his fundamental thesis concerning the role of beliefs in inquiry and deliberation, provided that he (i) gives up the view that the agent can legitimately escape from inconsistency, and (ii) modifies his account of prediction alias deliberate expansion by acknowledging a third desideratum, besides probability and informational value, namely, not to cause permanent breakdown further down the line of inquiry. The result is a position which is more similar to Peter Gärdenfors's than is Levi's original theory, while retaining the basic insights of the latter.     

Adorno,Ferenczi, and a new “categorical imperative after Auschwitz”

Abstract

Theodor W. Adorno's mature thought can be characterized by the attempt to articulate what he calls a “new categorical imperative after Auschwitz.” By this, Adorno means that theory and praxis must be organized in such a way that the Holocaust does not repeat itself. This article argues that Sándor Ferenczi’s metapsychology is key to understanding Adorno’s attempt to rethink the nature of precisely such a new categorical imperative. One of the key themes of Adorno’s entire corpus is the problem of the “identification with the aggressor” – an idea that originates with Ferenzci rather than, as is commonly thought, Anna Freud. The Ferenczian dimension of Adorno’s thinking becomes particularly clear in Adorno’s thoughts on the question of freedom. In this context, Adorno engages in a psychoanalytically informed critique of the philosophy of freedom and a speculative philosophical critique of psychoanalysis. The fashioning of a “new categorical imperative” after Auschwitz entails a form of education directed towards a new form of Mündigkeit, one oriented towards contradiction, resistance, and a steadfast refusal to “identify with the aggressor.”     

Responsible technoscience: The haunting reality of Auschwitz and Hiroshima

Auschwitz and Hiroshima stand out as two realities whose uniqueness must be reconciled with their inevitability as outcomes of highly rationalized processes of technoscientific progress. Contrary to Michael Walzer’s notion of “double effect”, whereby unintended consequences and the particular uses to which warfare may lead remain outside the moral purview of scientists, this paper endorses the commitment of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science to argue that members of the technoscientific community are always responsible for their work and the eventual uses made of it. In what follows four related views are outlined pertaining to modern situations within which the technoscientific community operates, so as to highlight the urgency of infusing a sense of responsibility for the products of their activities into this community. A provisional “code” is suggested that may serve as a guide for increased personal responsibility of individual technoscientists (academic scientists and industrial engineers).     

New Reflections on the Mirror: the Interests Proximity Bias Solution

Philosophia - We worry about becoming non-existent, but not about coming into being. But both events are similarly bad according to Deprivationism; hence, it seems that we should display symmetric...     

Beyond Dusky and Godinez: competency before and after trial

Scholars have carefully considered all aspects of the incompetency to stand trial process, questions involving incompetency to confess, questions involving incompetency to be executed, and, to a lesser extent, questions related to incompetency to plead guilty or to waive counsel, but little attention has been paid to the relationship between incompetency and the full range of other criminal procedure issues: sentencing, appeals, consent to searches, and others. This article discusses this range of issues, assesses the factors relied upon by courts in deciding these cases and attempts to offer an agenda for future scholarly developments in this area.     

罗蒂新实用主义的若干思考

在当今的哲学家中,罗蒂(Richard.Rorty)无疑不应当被忽略.尽管他常常被英美主流的分析哲学有意无意地边缘化(罗蒂现在被聘为比较文学系教授而不是哲学教授,也许可以看作是这种边缘化的一个例证),但其工作的意义却并未因此而湮没.作为新实用主义的代表人物之一,罗蒂复兴实用主义传统的尝试中包含着值得关注之点.这里,仅做若干简略评论.     

Theological and Ethical Reflections on Men and Violence: Toward a New Understanding of Masculinity

Abstract

This paper explores the reasons why men express violence against women, children and other men, suggesting that men's violence represents one of the darkest features of masculinity. The way men are socialized and conditioned requires and produces violent behaviors that are destructive to men themselves as well as to women, children, and the earth. The author proposes the need to re-envision masculinity to enable men and women to create communities in which people are encouraged to participate in ‘adventurous partnering for peace’.     

Psychological effects of attack on the World Trade Center: analysis before and after

Four different studies using a total sample of 711 from the same New York City student population tested a model that has emerged from previous research on disasters. The model suggests that postdisaster psychological distress is a function of exposure to the disaster, predisaster psychological distress, acute distress following the disaster, time elapsed between disaster and observation of distress, and additional traumatic experiences since the disaster. Although findings replicate those of previous cross-sectional studies regarding association of exposure and distress after the disaster, before and after studies did not detect an effect on postdisaster psychological distress of the World Trade Center attack. Great caution must be used in attributing elevated psychological distress observed postdisaster to the effects of the disaster.     

Life before and after quitting smoking: an electronic diary study

This article describes a multidimensional, multivariate, and multilevel approach to the assessment of nicotine withdrawal. In this prospective study, 70 adult smokers assigned to an active or placebo nicotine patch condition completed multiple daily assessments using an electronic diary. Average and individual growth curves were estimated for affective and nonaffective withdrawal symptoms. All symptoms but hunger increased significantly on the quit day and remained elevated for three weeks. Variability in symptom experiences across individuals increased from pre- to post-quit. Relations between symptom reports (e.g., negative affect or craving) and episodic events (e.g., stressful events or seeing someone smoke) changed from pre-quit to post-quit. Pre-quit increases in negative affect and quit-day increases in craving were inversely related to abstinence three months after the quit day, suggesting that anticipatory and immediate reactions to quitting influence success.     

Feminist Philosophy after Twenty Years Between Discrimination and Differentiation: Introductory Reflections

A panel titled Feminist Philosophy after Twenty Years was organized by Carol C. Gould for the session sponsored by the Committee on the Status of Women at the American Philosophical Association's 1993 Eastern Division Meeting, December 30, 1993 in Atlanta, GA. The remarks of the three panelists, Linda Lopez McAiister, Ann Ferguson and Kathy Addelson are printed below.