Generosity: Between Love and Desire

“Safe sex” discourse attempts to protect women from dangers assumed inherent in erotic life, such as domination, submissiveness, and loss of freedom and self-control. However, Beauvoir's and Merleau-Ponty's revision of Sartre's ontology suggests that erotic life involves a kind of generosity that transforms existence; sex neither liberates personal existence nor poses a necessary threat to women's freedom. 1 also reconsider the conditions under which sex is assumed to involve a violation of being.     

Politics and Generosity

ABSTRACT This paper argues that generosity as a moral virtue is only consistently and fully possible to practise in the kind of polity that upholds natural individual human rights, including the basic negative right to private property. The paper sketches a characterisation of generosity and explains the sense in which it can be a moral virtue. Some of the assumptions underlying the concept of moral virtue are considered and it is argued that contrary to some recent claims, it is possible to conceptualise as well as to practise moral virtues in our age. Yet it is also shown that certain political prerequisites are necessary for practising generosity. Furthermore, it is shown that there cannot be any generosity involved in a polity in which one is forced to share one's wealth with those who might be the beneficiaries of generous conduct. Finally, it is argued that even in a polity with a very limited government some acts of official generosity are possible.     

Envy and Generosity Between Co-Therapists

This paper explores the dynamics of envy and generosity between co-therapists. Generally speaking, co-therapists can be drawn into the same social comparisons (overt and covert), competitiveness, and envy as their group members. The list of valued resources can include the group's affection, appreciation, and recognition, or, more generally, one's status, popularity, creativity, sensitivity, understanding, or parental functioning. The group in turn, will sometimes tend to divide the therapists into the good one and the bad one in order to serve its own developmental needs. This process can increase the tension between the therapists, and feed their envy. I present an argument for processing those feelings and assert that awareness of co-therapist envy can promote the expression of generosity and enhance the capacity of group members for similar experiences. Clinical material will be presented to demonstrate how this works.     

Nietzsche on Generosity and the Gift-Giving Virtue

Generosity and gift-giving are important themes in Nietzsche's philosophy. This essay focuses on Nietzsche's idea of the gift-giving virtue which is explicitly discussed at the end of Part One of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I begin with a critical discussion of this section, and then I consider three different interpretations. Finally, I look at some ways in which the idea of the ‘gift-giving virtue’ may be understood in terms of spiritual generosity, leading to ‘sovereignty’ as its ultimate goal. Throughout, there are important comparisons to be made between Nietzsche's account of generosity and the traditional viewpoint.     

Gender: Genetics,Genitality, Generosity (Grace), Gentility

After acknowledging that gender is defined at many levels and that definitions may not be concordant across all of these layers of human development, this essay illuminates how these threads intertwine with one another to produce a final product that we call a person. Gene expression, gender identity, sexual orientation, and anatomic structures are not always coterminus. Arbitrarily assigning an infant child with maldefined genitalia to a socially defined gender role on the basis of surgical convenience may (should) be perceived as an act of violence, and an untruth. A further intent of this article is to help in pastoral settings to respond to events which raise points of anxiety and concern, among persons of faith, which are sometimes associated with instances of discrepancy.     

Generosity: a psychological and interpersonal motivational factor of therapeutic relevance

This paper examines the role of generosity in analysis. Generosity represents a complex constellation of cognitions and affects that is antithetical to those states of super-ego harshness that characterize many forms of human psychopathology. In development, generosity is evoked by idealization, and a dynamic axis of idealization-generosity promotes relational proximity between the child and its caretakers, and eventually fosters separation and individuation. Generosity is highly sensitive to adverse conditions, and requires environmental conditions that are conducive to psychosomatic well-being. The imaginal basis of generosity is rooted in the myth of the 'hero and the return', which is the mythic foundation of the analyst's role as psychopomp. It is argued that the generosity of the analyst is a cardinal therapeutic factor in treatment.     

The Vulnerability of Giving: Ethics and the Generosity of Receiving

ABSTRACT

In this article, I describe how the interchange of giving and receiving is centrally implicated in the developmental/ethical journey from holding on to oneself toward a receptive embrace of a different Other. Since people’s lives are shaped by an inherent passion of offering one’s expressive contributions to the larger world, the challenge of the ethical turn requires a generous humility of receiving what others have to offer. When an individual has attained a sense of belonging because of being received himself/herself by significant persons, he/she is better able to mobilize the graciousness of welcoming the gifts of others. Finally, I emphasize the clinical import of the therapist being sufficiently open as a person so as to provide the patient with the opportunity and dignity to give of himself/herself as well.     

Charity Begins at Home: Cultural Differences in Social Discounting and Generosity

People often consider how their actions influence others when making decisions. However, we are not equally generous to everyone alike. Our willingness to share resources declines as a function of social distance between the decision maker and the recipient. This function is likely to be influenced by culture, but research on behavioral decision making is still lacking empirical evidence. In Western societies, individuals generally perceive themselves as autonomous and independent from others, whereas the distinction between self and close others is less sharply defined by Eastern individuals where relationships and group membership are more centralized. Therefore, the social discount function should reflect this difference in the distinction of self and others by a reduced decline in generosity over close social distances. A social decision‐making task was adapted to the intercultural context, and data were collected in Germany and China. For seven different social distances, we estimated how much money German and Chinese subjects were willing to forego to give a certain reward to another person. A hyperbolic model was fitted to the data. We found that other‐regarding generosity declines as a function of social distance independent of cultural identity. However, German subjects showed a marked drop in generosity across close social distances, which was significantly less pronounced in Chinese participants. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotional Intelligence and Creativity: The Mediating Role of Generosity and Vigor

This study examines whether and why emotional intelligence may result in enhanced creativity in the workplace. Using a time‐lagged data set collected from employees in three firms, we examined a mediation model where emotional intelligence is indirectly related to creativity serially, through generosity and vigor. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate a sequential mediation model where emotionally intelligent employees display a high level of generosity; these acts of generosity nurture a sense of vigor, which in turn fosters creative behaviors. We discuss the implications for research on emotional intelligence, generosity, vigor, and creativity.     

论陈辽的学术思维

陈辽的学术事业几乎是和共和国的起步同时拉开序幕的。他是中国学术界为数不多的、曾经取得过巨大学术成就、并且至今仍然活跃在文坛上的著名学者之一。在长达 5 0年的辉煌的学术生涯里 ,他历经风雨沧桑 ,数度蹉跌而后奋起 ,在身后留下了一串曲折艰辛又踏实坚定的足迹。人们还记得 ,195 7年 ,在反右派风暴袭来的前夕 ,他直抒胸臆 ,大胆陈辞 ,对某些大人物反对“百家争鸣、百花齐放”方针的错误言论提出了尖锐而又合理的批评 ,从而震惊了学术界 ,乃至引起了中共最高层领导的注意。他那种指点江山、激扬文字的书生意气和勇于捍卫科学真理的率…     

大学生学习成功感的初步研究

本研究以上海市1362名大学生为被试,编制了大学生学习成功感量表,并分析了不同性别、年级大学生的学习成功感.研究结果表明,大学生学习成功感量表具有较高的信度和效度,可以作为评鉴大学生学习成功感的有效工具;因素分析结果表明大学生学习成功感量表包括:与学习本身有关的积极情感、与他人有关的积极情感、积极的自我评价和消极的自我评价四个因子.不同性别大学生的学习成功感有显著性差异,女生的学习成功感显著高于男生;不同年级大学生的学习成功感也有显著差异,大学一年级学生的学习成功感比大学三年级学生的学习成功感高.     

龚自珍论乾嘉学术:专门之学——钩沉传统学术分化的一条线索

乾嘉学术是中国传统学术向现代学术转折的关键时期,本文以龚自珍为中心,讨论乾嘉学者如何反省、定位清儒自清初以来的学术分工,从学术发展的角度阐释清代多元学术现象的意义.