Platform and prophecy: the rise and fall of Rabbi Stuart E. Rosenberg as foreshadowed in his early Toronto sermons on leadership

Stuart Rosenberg, who served from 1956 to 1976 as rabbi of Beth Tzedec Synagogue in Toronto, enjoyed a meteoric rise and suffered as precipitate a fall. A charismatic speaker with a powerful personality, Rosenberg presided over Beth Tzedec as if he were the chief executive of a corporation. The activities he initiated in the synagogue and his high profile in the Jewish and general communities put Beth Tzedec “on the map,” making it, for a time at least, Canada’s premier Jewish religious institution. During his early years at Beth Tzedec, Rabbi Rosenberg published two books of sermons: Man Is Free: Sermons and Addresses and A Time to Speak: Of Man, Faith and Society. Both were widely distributed to colleagues and congregants. His only collections of sermons can be viewed as his written testament. Read from the perspective of a half-century later, the sermons are clearly documents of their time and place. They reflect the well-known, mostly sociological literature on religion, Toronto, and the Conservative Movement written during the 1950s and earlier, as well as the history and mood of the congregation itself. Read in the light of Rabbi Rosenberg’s rise and fall at Beth Tzedec, these sermons appear to be both his platform for early success and a prophecy of his sudden downfall.     

Life satisfaction and satisfaction in domains of life: is it a simple relationship?

This paper studies the nature of the relationship between life satisfaction and satisfaction in domains of life. The domains-of-life literature assumes that a person’s overall satisfaction with his or her life depends on his or her satisfaction in many concrete areas of life, which are classified into a few main domains of life. This paper addresses the issue of what characteristics the relationship between life satisfaction and satisfaction in domains of life has by focusing on its specification. The domains-of-life literature has commonly assumed that an additive relationship between domains satisfaction and life satisfaction does exist. This paper argues that the use of an additive relationship has substantially restricted our comprehension of the relationship; since it makes impossible to empirically address questions such as: Is life satisfaction just a weighted average of domain satisfactions? How easy is it to substitute satisfaction in one domain by satisfaction in another? Is it reasonable to expect similar additional benefits when we continuously improve satisfaction in one domain? What happens with our life satisfaction when we manage to continuously improve satisfaction in all domains? What happens with the importance of one domain when satisfaction in another domain declines? The paper argues that there could be substantial gains in the understanding of the relationship by assuming alternative specifications. At an empirical level the investigation works with four different specifications: an additive relationship, a semi-logarithm relationship, a logarithm–logarithm relationship, and a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) relationship. Using a database from Mexico, the investigation finds out that an additive specification provides – at least for Mexico – a goodness of fit similar to those of alternative specifications. However, there are some relevant issues in the relationship between domains satisfaction and overall life satisfaction that cannot be studied with an additive specification; hence, the?use of an alternative specification – in particular a CES specification – is preferable if the objective is to understand rather than to predict life satisfaction.     

What is Postnormal When There is no Normal? A Postdichotomous View of the Histories of the Past,Present, and Future

In this paper, I discuss the concept of ‘postnormal times’ and argue that the term postnormal is misrepresentative where applied to describe a state beyond so-called ‘normal’ times. Such normality is characterized by, i) progress towards social, economic and political equilibrium, and ii) future betterment for all. I posit that these conditions represent, at best, misplaced optimism and, at worst, a deliberate veil of untruths. I also argue that the foundation of thinking on normalcy, based on the classical free market economics of Adam Smith, was flawed from the outset. I propose that what are termed postnormal times actually represent an extreme set of long-term ‘normal times’. Importantly, I propose that human responses to a situation of extreme normalcy will be different from responses to the novel and truly postnormal. Action, or lack thereof, to address extreme normalcy requires a different mindset and starting point to that for addressing a new or post-normalcy. As such, I call for fundamental change to economic and political priorities and for a focus on social needs and values in the very near future. Finally, I posit that, whether we live in postnormal, ‘hyper-normal’, abnormal or ‘new normal’ times, we must accept that, for most of humanity and for the planet on which we live, these are not good times, and we must strive to bring about urgent and radical change.     

‘There is no brute world,only an elaborated world’: Merleau-Ponty on the intersubjective constitution of the world

In his later works, Merleau-Ponty proposes the notion of ‘the flesh’ (la chair) as a new ‘element’, as he put it, in his ontological monism designed to overcome the legacy of Cartesian dualism with its bifurcation of all things into matter or spirit. Most Merleau-Ponty commentators recognise that Merleau-Ponty's notion of ‘flesh’ is inspired by Edmund Husserl's conceptions of ‘lived body’ (Leib) and ‘vivacity’ or ‘liveliness’ (Leiblichkeit). But it is not always recognised that, for Merleau-Ponty, the constitution of the world of perception, the problem of embodiment or incarnation, is at the very same time one with the problem of the experience of others in what Husserl called Einfühlung or Fremderfahung and indeed one with the problem of the constitution of the commonly shared world ‘for all’. As Merleau-Ponty put it in his late essay ‘The Philosopher and His Shadow’ in Signs, ‘the problem of Einfühlung, like that of my incarnation, opens on the meditation of sensible being, or, if you prefer, it betakes itself there’. In other words, the problem of the apprehension of the other is part of the overall apprehension of the transcendent world. In this paper I want to meditate on the relations between embodiment, experience of others, and experience of the world in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. I will take particular note, as in the title of this presentation, of the claim made by Merleau-Ponty in The Visible and the Invisible that ‘there is no brute world, only an elaborated world’ (il n'y a pas de monde brut, il n'y a qu'un monde élaboré).     

Visual adaptation of the perception of “life”: Animacy is a basic perceptual dimension of faces

One critical component of understanding another’s mind is the perception of “life” in a face. However, little is known about the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying this perception of animacy. Here, using a visual adaptation paradigm, we ask whether face animacy is (1) a basic dimension of face perception and (2) supported by a common neural mechanism across distinct face categories defined by age and species. Observers rated the perceived animacy of adult human faces before and after adaptation to (1) adult faces, (2) child faces, and (3) dog faces. When testing the perception of animacy in human faces, we found significant adaptation to both adult and child faces, but not dog faces. We did, however, find significant adaptation when morphed dog images and dog adaptors were used. Thus, animacy perception in faces appears to be a basic dimension of face perception that is species specific but not constrained by age categories.     

Judeo-conversas and Moriscas in sixteenth-century Spain: a study of parallels

Though interesting research has been done on Jewish women conversas in Spain, as well as on Morisco women converts, no comparison of the activities of the two groups has been made. This paper comes to fill this lacuna, examining their commitment to Judaism and Islam and ritual practices, especially as reflected in Inquisitional records. Despite basic differences, a surprising number of parallels appear in the behavior of both groups, suggesting the importance of women in preserving ties to the past and maintaining the converso mentality.     

Bocheński on the human condition: is a long and happy life the whole story?

Following his retirement from teaching in 1972 J. M. Bocheński entered into a creative phase of his scholarly career characterized by, among other things, a marked shift to ‘naturalism’ to the detriment of philosophical ‘speculation’ of any kind (comprising much of classical metaphysics, ‘world views’, ‘ideologies, ‘moralizing’—for him so many nefarious ‘superstitions’). During this period he examined issues which bear on the human condition in a way that was at once constructive and critical—constructive by virtue of the logical analyses of such concepts as authority, critical by dint of his refusal to take seriously any so-called ‘anthropocentric’/‘humanist’ thinking attempting to secure a special standing for ‘Man’ in the world. These attitudes come to expression in his last work devoted to worldly wisdom, the practical rationality required to ensure a long and happy life. I examine, first, some of the background of this work, with an eye to the naturalism it is based on, provide a schematic overview of the contents of the study, and concentrate on a couple of key issues related to the question as Bocheński understood it. The salient issue concerns his insistence that whatever else it may be the wisdom that is conducive to the long and happy life is not to be confused, conceptually, with any sort of morality: worldly wisdom and the categorical commands of morality stand in no essential relation to each other and may indeed be contradictory … to the detriment of morality, according to Bocheński. Throughout, but especially in the concluding section, I express some doubts about the cogency of this position.     

Jivacide,Zombies and Jivanmuktas: the meaning of life in the Bhagavad Gitā

In discussing the meaning of life in the Bhagavad Gitā two obvious questions arise: first, what is the meaning of ‘the meaning of life'?, and second, how does that meaning apply to the Bhagavad Gitā? In Part I of this brief paper I will attempt to answer the first question by focusing on one of the common meanings of that phrase; in Part II, I will apply that very common meaning to the Bhagavad Gitā; and in the third and final part, I will point to a puzzle, the paradox of the jivanmukta, that would seem to follow from the discussion in the first two parts of this paper.

My own feeling is that the concept of ‘the meaning of life’ is a Western invention [1]. This being so, perhaps it would be wise to probe for that concept and its meaning among Western authors. We turn first, then, to one ancient writer, Aristotle of Stagira, and conclude Part I with a modern writer also concerned with the meaning of life, Albert Camus.     

Judging the animacy of words: The influence of typicality and age of acquisition in a semantic decision task

The age at which members of a semantic category are learned (age of acquisition), the typicality they demonstrate within their corresponding category, and the semantic domain to which they belong (living, non-living) are known to influence the speed and accuracy of lexical/semantic processing. So far, only a few studies have looked at the origin of age of acquisition and its interdependence with typicality and semantic domain within the same experimental design. Twenty adult participants performed an animacy decision task in which nouns were classified according to their semantic domain as being living or non-living. Response times were influenced by the independent main effects of each parameter: typicality, age of acquisition, semantic domain, and frequency. However, there were no interactions. The results are discussed with respect to recent models concerning the origin of age of acquisition effects.     

Measuring depression at the end of life: is the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale a valid instrument?

Depression at the end of life is a common mental health issue with serious implications for quality of life and decision making. This study investigated the reliability and validity of one of the most frequently used measures of depression, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) in 422 patients with terminal cancer admitted to a palliative care hospital. The HAM-D demonstrated high reliability and concurrent validity with depression diagnosis, based on Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders, non-patient research version (SCID-I/NP Depression Module). Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses generated an area under the curve of .91, indicating high sensitivity and specificity. The HAM-D strongly correlated with several measures of distress (e.g., hopelessness, desire for hastened death, and suicidal ideation). Factor analysis generated 4 factors (anxiety, depressed mood, insomnia, and somatic symptoms), accounting for 42% of the variance. Implications for assessing depression in this population are discussed.     

No anticipation–no action: the role of anticipation in action and perception

This paper reviews psychophysical evidence for the existence and the nature of two types of anticipation in goal-oriented action. The first one relates to attained changes of the perceptual world, thus to action goals. These anticipations determine appropriate motor output. We argue that goal codes do not only serve as a reference unit, against which currently produced behavioral effects are compared. Rather voluntary actions appear to be planned literally in terms of intended behavioral effects. The second type of anticipation relates to the environmental conditions that have to be met to bring an intended effect into being. These anticipations serve to trigger selected actions, when appropriate execution conditions are encountered. Altogether, the behavioral evidence portrays a remarkable automaticity of goal-oriented action. Once a goal exists (wherever it might come from), corresponding efferent output is generated and executed under appropriate conditions.     

Attention in humans and animals: is there a capacity limitation at the time of encoding?

Investigators have suggested that pigeons have a limited capacity input channel and that as a result performance suffers when information load is great. This information overload hypothesis is based on converging findings from experiments using the matching-to-sample paradigm. Fundamental among these findings are that (a) performance improves as sample duration increases, (b) performance is better when the sample contains one relevant feature (elements) than when it contains two (compounds), and (c) this element superiority effect can be reduced by making the relevant feature of compound samples predictable. Experiments 1 and 2 show that these effects occur for humans as well. However, Experiments 3, 4, and 5 show that in humans at least some of these effects do not result from information overload at the time of encoding. Thus, the assertion that these effects do reflect such a limitation in pigeons must be reevaluated.     

“In the Face,a Right Is There”: Arendt,Levinas and the Phenomenology of the Rights of Man

This paper examines the differences between the thought of Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas concerning the “Rights of Man”, in relation to stateless persons. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt evinces a profound scepticism towards this ideal, which for her was powerless without being tethered to citizenship. But Arendt’s own idea of the “Right to have Rights” is critiqued here as being inadequate to the ethical demand placed upon states by refugees, in failing to articulate just what states might be responsible for. I argue that the ethical philosophy of Levinas meets this lacuna in Arendt’s thought, via his concept of the Face as the locus of human dignity and to which states can be recalled to responsibility. Levinas wrote several papers on what he called “the phenomenology of the Rights of Man”, and in his phrase, which provides a summation of precisely what is lacking in Arendt’s arguments: “In the face – a right is there”.     

Israeli Psychotherapy,Politics and Activism: Is There a Way Out of the Trap?

This article examines psychotherapy in context—political, social, cultural and historical. It does so by taking a close look at the Israeli psychotherapeutic community and how it changed over the years. Through this narrative and analysis the author wishes to illustrate how social-political context and professional practices plug into each other. It will be demonstrated how at difficult times when their country faces internal and external hardship and threats, Israeli psychologists have tended to withdraw and, whether unwittingly or not, affirm and support the status quo. This is paradoxical: when mostly needed psychotherapists may become silent and socially or politically passive. A possible way out of this trap, through a change in psychotherapists’ professional position and views, will be discussed. In addition, a politically sensitive alternative will be presented, one that may enable psychotherapists to maintain an independent praxis, which models a proactive and optimistic stance while serving society as agents of personal, social and political change.     

A grasp from afar: Überschau and the givenness of life in Husserlian phenomenology

In this paper I explore the issue of how our personal life is given to us in experience as a whole to be actively shaped and determined. I examine in detail Husserl’s analysis of the kind of experience responsible for this achievement, which he terms Überschau and which thus far has never been addressed by scholars of phenomenology. First, I locate Überschau in the context of self-determination and highlight the difference between the unthematic pre-givenness of life in the phenomenon of self-awareness and the actual, i.e. thematic givenness of life in acts of Überschau. Second, I contextualize Husserl’s discovery of Überschau in his analyses of ethical life and the possibility of a universal epoché. I argue that for Husserl the very possibility of ethical life and of phenomenology itself rest on the totalizing apprehension of one’s life rendered possible by Überschau. In the third section I spell out the essential characteristics of Überschau by contrasting this peculiar kind of consciousness with reproductive forms of consciousness such as recollection and expectation, which otherwise might be easily conflated with Überschau. In section four I reply to a possible objection to the very possibility of Überschau based on the consideration of the infinitely open stream of time-consciousness. I argue that the possibility of Überschau is tightly connected with the egological nature of consciousness as understood by Husserl. The ego does not coincide with its own conscious acts and thus enjoys a special vantage point on the totality of its own life. To conclude, I advance a speculative suggestion about the phenomenological origin of Überschau in the structure of self-awareness. This opens up a variety of possible lines of research that would connect Husserl with philosophers such as Augustine or Heidegger who are more immediately associated with the issue of personal life and its unity or lack thereof.