Organizations, Managers, and Wage Inequality

Lips (2012) has offered a useful critique of the human capital approach to understanding the wage gap. In this essay, rather than offering ways to fix human capital theory, I direct readers away from supply-side accounts of wage determination, by reviewing theory and U.S.-based research on the organizational bases of wage inequality and other forms of workplace stratification. Specifically, I concentrate on one growing line of empirical investigation – the effect of women in powerful organizational positions – arguing that evidence of women managers being agents of change is growing, but additional research and data collection efforts are needed. I conclude by arguing that further research on workplace stratification should focus on the pivotal role of managers.     

Response to Karen Lebacqz and Stephen Palmquist

I respond here to the essays by Karen Lebacqz and Stephen Palmquist, beginning with my debt of gratitude to Lebacqz for her understanding of the methodological depth I try to bring to the analysis of bioethical issues. I further illustrate that observation here by reviewing the logic of my approach to the issue of wrongful life. At the same time, in connection with human genetic enhancement, I acknowledge that I may have not properly appreciated the seriousness of the problem of sin. To Palmquist's assertion that my criticisms of Kant's treatments of grace miss the way Kant has confined himself to being a philosophical (as opposed to biblical) theologian, I argue that Kant's problem lies instead in his poor application of his own compelling insights about the depths of human sinning. I close with an appreciation of Palmquist's observation of some important points of contact between Kant's understanding of sin and that of Kierkegaard.     

Father and Son: Freud Revisits his Oedipus Complex in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Moses and Monotheism</Emphasis>

In this paper, I propose to understand Freud on his own terms and within his social, intellectual and psychological context. It is my hope that such an understanding will contribute in turn to our understanding of some of the sources of the creative process. Were it not for his fame, Freud's views on religion, history and art, would at best be but a footnote to these subjects. My contention is that Freud's writings on these subjects can contribute more to our understanding of Freud, the person, than they do to some of the subjects he is writing about. Toward this end I will focus on two of Freud's works, written more than 30 years apart, his early Moses of Michelangelo and his late-life work Moses and Monotheism, which reflect the considerable changes in Freud's thinking.     

Merleau-Ponty’s Responses to Skepticism: A Critical Appraisal

Abstract

In this article, I reconstruct and evaluate Merleau-Ponty’s main responses to philosophical skepticism in the relevant parts of his work. To begin with, I introduce the skeptical argument that Merleau-Ponty most often tried to refute, namely, the dream argument. Secondly, I show how Merleau-Ponty, in his initial works, excludes the skeptical problem by appealing to a general contact with the world guaranteed by perception. Finally, I analyze how in his last texts Merleau-Ponty considers at least some uses of the skeptical arguments as tools to make our opaque contact with being explicit.     

'Consumed By Fire From Within': Teilhard de Chardin's Pan-christic Mysticism In Relation To The Catholic Tradition

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), eminent Jesuit scientist and religious write, was one of the great Christian mystics of the twentieth century. Yet scholars of mysticism rarely discuss his works or typology of mysticism. I argue that the little studied, early Writings in Time or War , together with his late autobiographical essays, provide the hermeneutical key for understanding Teilhard's pan-christic mysticism. My paper examines especially the experiential and cosmic dimensions of his pan-christic mysticism of union and communion with Christ through all things. This mysticism belongs to the kataphatic rather than apophatic tradition of Christian mysticism. It is deeply rooted in, and in full continuity with, the catholic tradition but through introducing innovative elements, it is at the same time also thoroughly transformative. I show this in relation to Teilhard's understanding of the Spiritual Exercises and, in particular, to that of the "Sacred Heart" whose meaning he greatly extended by understanding it in a universal, cosmic sense. He so frequently used the metaphors of fire and heart—well known, traditional images of Christian mysticism—that I describe Teilhard's mysticism as a fire and heart mysticism. I also discuss the significance of his typology of mysticism in relation to the comparative study of mysticism.     

Workers' perception of workplace bullying: A cross-cultural study

This study is one of the first studies to approach workplace bullying cross-culturally. It sought to compare employees' understanding of workplace bullying in two different world regions: Central America and Southern Europe, regarding three aspects of workplace bullying: psychological vs. physical harassment, hierarchical vs. horizontal bullying, and direct vs. indirect aggression. A convenience sample of 246 workers provided their own definition of workplace bullying through a single, open-ended question. The results showed that employees from Central America emphasized the physical component of workplace bullying more than the Southern European employees. However, similarities in the conceptualization of workplace bullying across both cultures were found as well. Both Southern European and Central American employees defined workplace bullying mainly as a hierarchical phenomenon, where the aggression took the form of direct strategies. Such differences and similarities bring to the field some positive inputs for the development and implementation of different strategies for dealing effectively with this phenomenon.     

Personale Seinsweisen bei S.L. Frank: Schnittstellen zwischen Anthropologie und Ontologie

This article strives to combine conceptions of the person by Semën Frank. From his early critical Marxist works to his metaphysical personalism and late Christian anthropology, he covered normative-ethical, transcendent-epistemological, and ‘total unity’—ontological questions in equal measure. This diversity will be synthesized in comparisons of his personalist and ontological thought. The text will highlight Frank’s different schemes of personal modes of being, i.e. correlations between the ‘I–thou’ relationship and the absolute being, and move on to contrast his concepts of ontological personality.     

A matter of taste: Nietzsche and the structure of affective response

ABSTRACT

Nietzsche’s work is filled with references to taste. He frequently expresses his own judgements of taste and criticizes or praises individuals and groups on account of their taste. Some recent attempts to account for Nietzsche’s understanding of taste argue that Nietzsche understands affective response, when guided by good taste, as being appropriate to, or merited by, the intrinsic features of the object. This is in direct contrast to anti-realist accounts of Nietzsche’s taste, according to which his evaluative judgements have no special epistemic status. In this article, I argue against objectivist or universalist readings of Nietzsche’s judgements of taste. However, in doing so I aim to show that affective responses do not thereby turn out to be arbitrary. Nietzsche suggests that by engaging with one’s affective responses, one can organizes them into a coherent and unified taste. This process of unification is central to Nietzsche’s understanding of value and self-creation.     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">W</Emphasis><Emphasis Type="Bold">ang</Emphasis><Emphasis Type="Bold">Fuzhi’s Criticism of Buddhism and Its Limitations</Emphasis>

Wang Fuzhi’s 王夫之 remarks on Buddhism have not been given sufficient attention despite increasing research on him. The few works on this topic either focus on just one aspect of his view of Buddhism or fail to disclose the purpose and uniqueness of his attack of it. This essay analyzes his view of Buddhism comprehensively, in particular his insight into the paradox of Buddhist universal love and his rejection of Buddhist retribution and reincarnation from Confucian righteousness and qi 氣-monism. In addition, it also explores the reason, context, and limitations of his criticism, that is, his reaction to the popular approach of “understanding Confucian classics through learning Buddhism” in the late Ming 明, his response to Zongmi’s 宗密 criticism of Confucian cosmology and human nature, and his misunderstanding of some Buddhist concepts. Yet his criticism is still illuminating to our understanding of the interaction of Confucianism with Buddhism and other religions.     

Anton Boisen: A Portrait

This psychobiographical essay aims to shift Boisen scholarship from a focus on his disputed psychiatric diagnosis to a more inclusive investigation of the disparate aspects of his personality. I conclude that Boisen’s central personality trait was a brand of loquacity that lacked substance—specifically the substance of his deepest secrets. This caused a kind of chronic frustration in his relations with others and, I argue, led to his chronic, psychotic state of being. Additionally, I argue that Boisen’s psychosis and religious practice worked together to sustain his psychological regression.     

Beauvoir‐in‐America: Understanding,Concrete Experience,and Beauvoir's Appropriation of Heidegger in America Day by Day

This paper reads Simone de Beauvoir's travel journal America Day by Day for its philosophical content. I argue that this work provides a unique approach to feminist, embodied philosophy, one that has been overlooked by the categorization of her writing into philosophical works and feminist ones. Such an approach, I contend, is enacted here through her use of Heidegger's concept of the everyday to inform her own treatment of understanding and experience.     

Humor and the Rebellious Spirit of the Early Adolescent Boy

In my companion article on the making of the reliably religious boy (D. Capps, 2006c) I presented my argument that, whereas the younger boy of three to five is becoming religious as a result of his emotional separation from his mother, the early adolescent boy (age 11–14) has become reliably religious in that he has developed a religious habit of mind, a habit reflected in his embrace of the religions of honor and hope. I presented myself as a case study in this regard. I noted, however, that there is a third form of religion, that of humor, and that it relativizes—and thereby preserves—the religions of honor and hope. I also noted that religion and spirituality are capable of being differentiated. I suggested that my own spirituality took the form of rebellion and that this spirit of rebellion fueled and was fueled by the religion of humor. Employing Freud’s writings on humor, I explain in this article how this works.     

ON THE VERY IDEA OF AN ONTOLOGY OF COMMUNION: BEING,RELATION AND FREEDOM IN ZIZIOULAS AND LEVINAS

The present article examines the theology of John Zizioulas with a view to understanding its coherence and viability for ecclesiology. Instead of treating his trinitarian theology, or his historical claims, I focus upon the basic themes of his personalistic ontology, especially the relationship between the ‘hypostasis’ and its ‘nature.’ I argue that Zizioulas's central concept of freedom rests upon an equivocation: he affirms both that freedom and being are identical, and that they are mutually exclusive. In conversation with the philosophy of Levinas, I further argue that Zizioulas's proposal, as an ontology of communion, falls prey to the same reduction of being to thought that forms the central tenet of Western conceptions of subjectivity. In conclusion, I argue that both of these problems trade on a basic inability to account for grace as the fundamental reality of communion. Throughout my basic concern is to inquire into just what function the category of ‘being’ has in Zizioulas's theology, and to point out its surprising obscurity.     

Origins of the logical theory of probability: Von Kries,Wittgenstein, Waismann

The physiologist and neo-Kantian philosopher Johannes von Kries (1853-1928) wrote one of the most philosophically important works on the foundation of probability after P.S. Laplace and before the First World War, his Principien der Wohrscheinlich-keitsrechnung (1886, repr. 1927). In this book, von Kries developed a highly original interpretation of probability, which maintains it to be both logical and objectively physical. After presenting his approach I shall pursue the influence it had on Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann. It seems that von Kries's approach had more potential than recognized in his time and that putting Waismann's and Wittgenstein's early work in a von Kries perspective is able to shed light on the notion of an elementary proposition.     

Speaking out of Turn: Martin Heidegger and die Kehre

' Speaking out of Turn : Martin Heidegger and die Kehre ' examines the difference between Heidegger's own understanding of 'the turning' and that understanding which originated with Karl Lowith and was later presented to English-speaking readers by William Richardson in Martin Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought . The study focuses on Heidegger's own introduction to Richardson's book, and argues that, far from confirming Richardson's view that there is a 'Heidegger I' and 'Heidegger II' connected by the 'reversal' or turning, Heidegger sought to indicate with (sometimes indirect) reference to his own works that the 'turning' is a movement in thought that it was part of the original project of Being and Time to carry through, but which he only succeeded in describing much later. The study attempts to illustrate this by a close examination of the works to which Heidegger alludes in his Foreword to Richardson's book. Many of these were not available when Richardson published (1963), and so it has only more recently been possible to amplify Heidegger's earlier published works with reference to his lecture courses. The study concludes that the horizon of time and the analytic of Dasein never really disappear from his later thinking, as many have claimed, and proposes that the relationship between the earlier and later Heidegger be re-examined. This re-examination takes the form of accepting that far from the 'turning' representing a fracture, where Heidegger abandons the existential-temporal analytic of Dasein in favour of an attempt to think only being ( das Sein ) as such, the 'turning' represents the point of unity in Heidegger's work. This point of unity shows how Dasein and being 'belong together' in 'the event' ( das Ereignis ).     

Heidegger on presence: A reply

Taylor Carman has argued that the passages I submitted to him as proof that Heidegger identifies being with presence are really just his characterizations of a metaphysical conception of being that he repudiates. I show that he has misread these passages and has misunderstood the nature of the continuity that Heidegger himself recognizes between the views of Kant which are under discussion in the texts from which these passages are drawn and his own (Heidegger's) position which finds expression in them. I then cite other passages from another work by Heidegger that make the same point about being and presence just as emphatically and quite independently of any account of any other philosopher's views. Finally, I explain the difference between the ways Heidegger uses the word Anwesenheit ‐ his word for presence. One of these is as a translation of the Greek ousia which he interprets as a concept of being as presence sans temporality; the other is the radicalized concept of being as presence toward which Heidegger was working in Being and Time.     

A Functional Analysis of Psychological Terms Redux

In his seminal paper, “An Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms,” Skinner (1945) offered the revolutionary suggestion that, rather than endlessly debating the meanings of psychological terms, psychologists should analyze the variables that control their occurrence as verbal behavior. Skinner''s suggestion reflected the essence of his 1957 book, Verbal Behavior, wherein he argued that the behaviors of which language is composed (i.e., speaking and listening) are controlled by variables found in the social environment (which he called the verbal community), and that analyzing those variables would lead to an understanding of the behaviors. Although Skinner formally introduced his radical approach to language in 1945, it has yet to be fully realized. The result is that psychologists, including behavior analysts, still debate the definitions of terms. In the present paper, I review Skinner''s functional approach to language and describe ways in which behavior analysts have already applied it to traditional psychological terms. I conclude by looking at other current terms in behavior analysis that engender some confusion and encourage behavior analysts to apply a functional analytic approach to their own verbal behavior.     

A Psychology of Religious Plurality: From Intra-Religious Dialogue to Intra-Psychic Reality

Panikkar’s (The intra-religious dialogue, 1978) classic, re-issued by Paulist Press in 1999, grapples with the theological challenges in the disciplines of comparative theology and the theology of religions through what he terms, “intra-religious dialogue.” In this psychology of religious plurality, I use works from a variety of disciplines to highlight the achievements of Panikkar’s intra-religious dialogue, as well as to critique his work in the hope of finding categories of understanding that can be profitably used to face the inter-personal crises of the contemporary world, namely religious terrorism.