The Embodied and Contingent Self in Later Life: A Narrative Understanding

This article examines a narrative understanding of identity and discusses its relevance within the sociocultural contingencies of the postmodern age. Providing an historical overview of understandings of the self, Meador traces the lineage of the self from Augustine through contemporary theories of identity. He focuses on the narrative concept of identity, acknowledging the existence of multiple narratives—those that individuals tell about themselves and those told by others. Finally, he explores the transformative potential available within this context for those in their later years.     

Yoga,Eugenics, and Spiritual Darwinism in the Early Twentieth Century

Put briefly: perhaps the entire evolution of the spirit is a question of the body; it is the history of the development of a higher body that emerges into our sensibility. The organic is rising to yet higher levels. Our lust for knowledge of nature is a means through which the body desires to perfect itself. Or rather: hundreds of thousands of experiments are made to change the nourishment, the mode of living and of dwelling in the body; consciousness and evaluations in the body, all kinds of pleasure and displeasure, are signs of these changes and experiments. In the long run, it is not a question of man at all: he is to be overcome (Nietzsche 1967: 358).     

Paradigms and possibilities

This paper is a excursus into a philosophy of science for deployment in the study of sport. It argues for the virtues of Thomas Kuhn's account of the philosophy of science, an argument conducted strategically by contrasting that account with one derived from views of Karl Popper. In particular, it stresses, first, that Kuhn's views have been widely misunderstood; second, that a rectified Kuhnianism can give due weight to truth in science, while recognising that social sciences differ in crucial ways from natural sciences. For, as Kuhn recognised, social sciences do not function in the paradigm-relative way characteristic of natural sciences. Yet there Kuhn's jargon, and especially misguided talk of ‘paradigms’, is almost ubiquitous.

These thoughts have relevance for three groups. First, as both sports scientists and exercise scientists come to grips with the claims to scientificity of their work, they will need increasingly to locate it within an epistemological framework provided by philosophy of science. So they must begin to take Kuhn's view seriously. Second, social scientists of sport – faced with the predominant scientism of colleagues in sport and exercise science – must also recognise alternatives to a postmodernist rejection of the concept of truth, where Kuhn's picture of natural science clarifies one such. Finally, philosophers writing on sport must not let antipathy to scientism close off the options they present or the terms in which they (we!) present them. And that may require debate among ourselves on abstract issues not immediately connected with sport.     

Towards the Postmodernization of Aging: The Body and Social Theory

This article reviews the significance of postmodernism as applied to understanding social gerontology. We begin by looking at the disciplinary dominance of biomedical models to understanding bodily change through later life. We then move our analysis to the lack of theoretical models within social gerontology which have not attempted to analyze or develop social explanations of the body. The article introduces the concept of postmodernism and reviews the work of major theorists who have impacted postmodern gerontology. We conclude by arguing for an interface between social theory and social gerontology by drawing on recent examples of the mask of aging thesis, biotechnologies, and new technologies that impact aging identity and understanding the self.     

Gabrielle Suchon,Freedom, and the Neutral Life

ABSTRACT

A central project of Enlightenment thought is to ground claims to natural freedom and equality. This project is the foundation of Suchon’s view of freedom. But it is not the whole story. For, Suchon’s focus is not just natural freedom, but also the necessary and sufficient conditions for oppressed members of society, women, to avail themselves of this freedom. In this paper I, first, treat Suchon’s normative argument for women’s right to develop their rational minds. In Section 2, I consider Suchon’s three necessary and sufficient conditions for freedom and the manners in which women are blocked from meeting them. The normative argument together with the obstacles to women meeting the conditions for freedom raises the question of how to get women into a position where they can enjoy the freedom to which they are entitled. In Section 3, I outline Suchon’s answer: women must live a life without attachment. I argue this answer situates Suchon both chronologically and theoretically between the Béguines, a medieval women’s spiritual movement, and twentieth-century feminist separatism. I conclude that Suchon’s view of freedom is radical, both for its time and ours, and deserves greater attention from historians of philosophy and of feminist thought.     

American images of Punjabi immigrants in the early Twentieth Century

This article explores and contextualizes the formation of anti-South Asian sentiment in the history of anti-immigrant, and specifically anti-Asian, nativist movements in the United States during the early twentieth century. Through an investigation of the activities and written documentation of the Asian Exclusionary League, as well as Congressional proceedings and popular periodicals, it seeks to understand the terms in which wider anti-Asian sentiments were shaped during this period, the influences that shaped them, and the impact these articulations of racism had on South Asian, specifically Sikh, communities in the United States during the first several decades of the twentieth century.     

Philosophy of Mathematics in the Twentieth Century: Selected Essays

S. SHAPIRO (ed.), Intensional Mathematics (Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, vol. 11 3). Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1985. v + 230 pp. $38.50/100Df.     

二十世纪《四十二章经》研究述评

据史料载,佛教东传始于汉,随之传译入中国最早经籍之一为《四十二章经》-许久以来,此说已为多数国人所共知和认同。然,由于历史久远、史料的缺乏及记载上的出入,学者对于《四十二章经》的真伪遂生质疑,从译者、译地到译本等,迭有議,今犹众说纷纭、莫衷一是。此问题攸关佛教始传中国的时间、途径与中外交流等重大历史事件,故而,辨析此经之真伪实属必要。兹事体大,含涉面广,必须对经文的文体、内容和相关史料记载的可信度详加审虑,并结合时代背景,作全面的考量。本文即是对百年来的这方面研究作一介绍与综述。     

Postmodernism Versus Modernism: Rethinking Theoretical Tensions in Social Gerontology

The interconnection of social theory to social aspects of aging has grown in recent years. The theoretical movement entitled structured dependency, couched in social class analysis, has tended to ignore an understanding of aging identity, the body, cultural representations of aging, and positive images of aging, all of which are central features of an emerging postmodern paradigm in gerontological theory. This article argues that the concept of gender can form a useful bridge, a continuity, between structured dependency and postmodernism in theoretical gerontology. Unfortunately, the compartmentalization of these two conceptual approaches has made their links difficult to forge. This article attempts to take a first step in this direction by highlighting the way postmodern ideas can be used to understand a modernist issue—gender in a gerontological context. Also, focusing on the aging body as a primary form of analysis generates some novel insights into the importance of both the theoretical understanding and cultural representations of the body.     

Developing Sexual Agency: Rethinking Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Theories for the Twenty-First Century

Neo-liberal society asserts that adults should be independent and responsible for themselves, and that children and adolescents should be dependent on their parents. The earlier construction of the concept of adolescence makes this seem obviously true. Yet if we remember that “adolescence” was part of a project of gender, race, and class construction, it becomes easier to ask whether adolescence is a meaningful concept and a stage of life or whether it continues to be a component of an ideology that relies on the construction of “others.” In this chapter, I suggest that adolescence plays the latter role, and that although the naturalization of adolescence is particularly dangerous for groups like queer youth who are at the margins of society, it is dangerous for all young people because it limits sexual agency. This is particularly important because increasingly society requires that young people consider their futures not from the assumption that they will move into well-defined roles, but with the assumption that they will need to define new ways of relating.