Enfleshing the Erotic

Abstract

An embodied theological ethic of human sexuality must engage two specific tasks: (1) articulate a theological explanation of the body that can frame critical reflection on the right ordering of relationships at the macro, social-relational level and (2) celebrate the erotic as an essential, creative contour of human sexual experience at the micro, interpersonal level. This essay is divided into two sections. In the first section, I explore the significance of the body in theological and ethical reflection in an attempt to distill an embodied theological ethic of human sexuality that can level a critique against the sinful social realities of heterosexism and sexism. In the second part, I develop the ethic further so as to carry moral weight within sexual practices. I celebrate the erotic as the creative dimension of human sexuality that encompasses desire and pleasure. I reflect on desire and pleasure individually in light of embodied experience and ground each within an ethic of mutuality to ensure goodness, rightness, and the doing of justice in all sexual relationships.     

Savoring time: desire, pleasure and wholehearted activity

There is considerable appeal to the Aristotelian idea that taking pleasure in an activity is sometimes simply a matter of attending to it in such a way as to render it wholehearted. However, the proponents of this idea have not made adequately clear what kind of attention it is that can perform the surprising feat of transforming otherwise indifferent activities into pleasurable ones. I build upon Gilbert Ryle's suggestion that taking pleasure in an activity is tantamount to engaging in the activity while fervently desiring to do it and it alone. More specifically, I draw upon insights into the sort of evaluative attention involved in having a desire to generate corollary insights into the sort of attention that makes activity pleasurable. My aim is to offer a compelling account of a certain class of pleasures, and to shed light on their relation to reasons. I argue that prospective pleasures in this class are not always reasons for action, and that even when they are reasons they have this status only derivatively, as vivid apprehensions of an independent realm of values. This does not mean that such pleasures are never good. They are good provided that they track real values, for then they constitute a proper savoring of one's activities and/or circumstances, and provide a valuable respite from the distractions and unwarranted doubts that so often leave us at odds with ourselves and alienated from our own doings.     

Dark Desires

An influential view of sexual morality claims that participant consent is sufficient for the moral permissibility of a sexual act. I argue that the complex and frequently dark nature of sexual desire precludes this, because some sexual desire has a character such that it should not be gratified, even if this were consented to. I illustrate this with a discussion of a famous literary character, the Vicomte de Valmont, and draw on Kant's anthropology to illuminate the nature of such desire, before offering an account of its psychological roots. In the course of the paper I explain why the view of sexual desire endorsed by my main opponents is mistaken, and attack the limited conception of the normative which is a central plank in the argument of a prominent recent defender of the view, Igor Primoratz.     

Inverting the Object of Study: Recalibrating the Frame of Reference in Study Abroad Experiences

This essay is concerned with study abroad experiences as opportunities for student cognitive development, using the interpretive lens of educational psychologist William G. Perry. A standard and often valuable assignment in courses on world religions is a site visit to a religious institution in one's local area. This may concretize otherwise abstract materials and help students reflect on ways in which the lived experience of religion differs from its presentation in course texts and other academic materials. Increasingly, study abroad trips are being offered as extended and more intensive ways of bringing this material to life, offering students opportunity to see lived religion within another cultural framework. At the heart of this paper is the contention that such study abroad experiences function not simply as longer, more intense versions of site visits but, rather, as experiences that invert the subject and object of study. The worldview of the student becomes a primary object of study, which is examined, as it were, by the particulars of the religion(s) under investigation and the cultures of which said religion(s) are a part. Where site visits offer students an opportunity to visit the strange amidst the familiar, study abroad trips provide opportunities for students to become the strange within a recalibrated familiar. The subject becomes the object and is interrogated by the context of study. While local, stateside site visits can offer a degree of such dislocation, their brevity, together with some degree of assimilation to the larger culture flows on the part of the local religious institution being visited, most often mitigates any significant inversion. Students generally see such institutions as either mildly or wildly exotic, but always within their frame of reference, which constitutes the norm. When abroad, the normative experience of students is often subverted in ways that lay bare the assumptions behind such views and makes possible another world in which to live. Simply put, the subject and object of study change places. If this inversion is carefully attended to, it can provide rich insight into not only the topics nominally being studied but also occasion opportunity for real cognitive development on the part of the student. This essay is published alongside of six other essays, including a response from John Barbour, comprising a special section of the journal (see Teaching Theology and Religion 18:1, January 2015).     

The analysis of experience: John Dewey and Elsie Ripley Clapp on desire and thinking, 1911

Unpublished correspondence with Elsie Ripley Clapp, along with extensive notes for a 1911 course, The Analysis of Experience, provide the context for a consideration of John Dewey's discussion of the relation between desire and thinking. Dewey's philosophic point of view is portrayed as it was developing in his own mind. The unity of thought and desire, the necessity of making objects of inquiry, the identification of thinking and acting, are themes in these materials which would appear in their published form in such works as Essays in Experimental Logic, Democracy and Education, and Human Nature and Conduct. In the unpublished materials, Dewey is seen as a naturalist at work in his laboratory, reworking his ideas and acknowledging Clapp's assistance in getting Dewey to connect practical situations in life with the philosophic distinctions under development. The 1911 materials are an excellent connection between problematics in Dewey's earlier writings on ethics, epistemology, and logic, and his later writings, on the same subjects in the 1920's and 1930's.     

Explaining the Paradox of Hedonism

The paradox of hedonism is the idea that making pleasure the only thing that we desire for its own sake can be self-defeating. Why would this be true? In this paper, I survey two prominent explanations, then develop a third possible explanation, inspired by Joseph Butler's classic discussion of the paradox. The existing accounts claim that the paradox arises because we are systematically incompetent at predicting what will make us happy, or because the greatest pleasures for human beings are found in certain special goods which hedonists cannot enjoy. On the account that I develop, the paradox is a consequence of a theory about the nature of pleasure, together with a view about the requirements of rational belief. Which of these explanations is correct, I argue, bears on central questions about how to understand the nature and extent of the paradox.     

庄子情欲本质及其调节的心理思想管窥

情欲是中国古代心理学思想研究的重要范畴,是关系密切但又各有所指的两个范畴。庄子指出情欲对人的身心健康具负面影响,提出许多关于情欲本质及其调节的心理思想。本文分析和总结了庄子的情欲本质观和调节观,这些思想对今天人们实施情欲心理调节仍有重要借鉴价值。     

Desire and the female analyst

The literature on erotic transference and countertransference between female analyst and male patient is reviewed and discussed. It is known that female analysts are less likely than their male colleagues to act out sexually with their patients. It has been claimed that a) male patients do not experience sustained erotic transferences, and b) female analysts do not experience erotic countertransferences with female or male patients. These views are challenged and it is argued that, if there is less sexual acting out by female analysts, it is not because of an absence of eros in the therapeutic relationship. The literature review covers material drawn from psychoanalysis, feminist psychotherapy, Jungian analysis, as well as some sociological and cultural sources. It is organized under the following headings: the gender of the analyst, sexual acting out, erotic transference, maternal and paternal transference, gender and power, counter-transference, incest taboo - mothers and sons and sexual themes in the transference.     

2~5岁儿童愿望理解能力的发展

愿望理解是儿童心理理论的重要组成部分.研究选取2~5岁的儿童79名,使用简单愿望推理任务、愿望形成理解任务、冲突愿望理解任务、对自己过去愿望理解任务以及对他人愿望理解任务,系统地探讨愿望理解的层次性.实验结果表明,儿童在对自己过去愿望理解任务中的成绩比简单愿望推理、愿望形成理解和冲突愿望理解中的成绩要好,在冲突愿望理解任务中的成绩比对他人愿望理解的任务要差.说明儿童的愿望理解能力包含着多个方面,其发展步调并不一致,具有一定的顺序性.     

我国中学语文和历史教学目标分类取向的研究

本研究采用文献研究法,查阅了2000年以来中学语文和历史教案共303篇,对教案中教学目标的相关信息作点计数据处理,并进行卡方检验,结果表明:⒈近几年来我国中学语文和历史教学绝大多数采用布卢姆的教育目标分类取向;⒉两者的教学目标侧重于认知领域;⒊两者在认知和情感领域的目标要求学生达到的水平偏低,在动作技能领域的目标要求学生达到的水平偏高;⒋中学历史教学目标中对动作技能领域的理解有偏差;⒌两者在认知和情感领域的教学目标陈述时用词单一或含糊,而动作技能领域教学目标的陈述较清晰。研究结果提示,提高广大一线教师有关教学目标的分类理论及科学地运用教学目标的陈述技术仍有很长的路要走。     

The reduction of sensory pleasure to desire

One of the leading approaches to the nature of sensory pleasure reduces it to desire: roughly, a sensation qualifies as a sensation of pleasure just in case its subject wants to be feeling it. This approach is, in my view, correct, but it has never been formulated quite right; and it needs to defended against some compelling arguments. Thus the purpose of this paper is to discover the most defensible formulation of this rough idea, and to defend it against the most interesting objections.     

基于愿望的儿童特质因果理解研究

本研究采用测验法,随机抽取60名42-93个月的儿童为被试,考察他们基于愿望的特质因果理解能力。结果显示:(1)从42个月起,儿童就可以根据特质信息进行行为预测和情绪预测,且随年龄增长,预测水平有显著提高;(2)儿童理解愿望的主观性是儿童进行情绪预测的前提。     

Our neoliberal fantasies? A preliminary test of research trends in leading journals in work and organizational psychology

Prior to engaging in a substantive discussion on the supposed influence of neoliberalism on research in work and organizational psychology (WOP), it is important to verify the empirical basis of the trends advanced by Bal and Dóci (Neoliberal ideology in work and organizational psychology, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology [Online First Publication, 2018]). To this end, we content analysed 745 abstracts of empirical studies published in leading WOP journals during the years 2006–2007 and 2016–2017. Results of our content analysis do not support the hypothesized trends towards more instrumentality and individualism in WOP research, suggesting that Bal and Dóci’s (2018) portrayal of the WOP literature does not provide a solid basis for discussion. On the basis of our findings, we conclude with recommendations to broaden the scope of WOP research to also include macro-level, societal issues.     

道德判断中心理状态和事件因果关系的作用:兼对道德判断双加工过程理论的检验

考察青少年儿童和成人在道德判断中利用心理状态和事件因果关系信息的差异,并验证道德判断双加工过程理论.以道德判断中“行为坏的”程度和“应担负的道德责任程度”作为判断问题类型,共有10～11岁和13～15岁的青少年儿童及大学生各120名,完成道德判断测试任务.结果表明在不同的道德判断问题类型下,事件中他人愿望和信念、因果关系信息的作用模式是不同的,支持道德判断双加工过程理论.10～11岁儿童和13～15岁青少年在判断行为坏的程度时,利用心理状态信息和因果关系信息与成人类似.在判断应担负的道德责任程度时,10～11岁儿童更注重行为结果,并且不能综合应用心理状态信息和事件的因果关系信息.13～15岁青少年的道德判断中心理状态信息和事件因果关系信息的作用与成人的情况类似,但在进行应担负的道德责任程度判断时,还不能融合信念与因果关系信息进行道德判断.研究结果为道德判断双加工过程理论提供了支持,而且表明从儿童青少年到成人,利用心理状态和因果关系信息进行道德判断存在不断发展和成熟的过程.