CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY: BACK TO THE FUTURE

In its many interwoven traditions, continental philosophy has a distinctive focus on what escapes the concept—experience, change, agency, responsibility, the future, the Other. The challenges that face us in the future are many: reaffirming and renewing what has already been thought and needs repeating, responding to emergent questions. None could be more urgent than the question of the animal and the fate of the planet. Addressing each of these requires that we suspend our normal conceptual assurances and think anew.     

A Meta-Analysis Summarizing the Effects of Pornography II Aggression After Exposure

This meta-analytic review examines the effect that exposure to pornography produces on aggressive behavior under laboratory conditions considering a variety of possible moderating conditions (level of sexual arousal, level of prior anger, type of pornography, gender of subject, gender of the target of aggression, and medium used to convey the material). The summary demonstrates a homogeneous set of results showing that pictorial nudity reduces subsequent aggressive behavior, that consumption of material depicting nonviolent sexual activity increases aggressive behavior, and that media depictions of violent sexual activity generates more aggression than those of nonviolent sexual activity. No other moderator variable produced homogeneous findings. The implications of the results for theoretical approaches to understanding the impact of pornography receives discussion, as do the limitations of such findings.     

Surveying the Effect of Media Effects A Meta-Analytic Summary of the Media Effects Research in Human Communication Research

This is a unique investigation that is particular to the needs of this special issue of Human Communication Research (HCR). Specifically, this study analyzes the media effects research that has been published in HCR during the past 25 years via meta-analysis. Numerous significant findings point to various themes and trends regarding media research in HCR. First, age is related to processing ability, understanding, and attending to media such that as children age, they better understand media messages. Second, the mass media are a significant source of learning. Third, the media can influence attitudes, which in turn, may influence or shape behaviors. Political, social, and educational implications of the findings are discussed. In addition, directions for future research, including the use of meta-analysis as a methodological tool, are discussed, as is the social responsibility of scholars in exploring the positive effects of media as opposed to ones with potentially antisocial outcomes.     

TOWARDS A NON‐POSSESSIVE CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE: ON THE RELATION BETWEEN REASON AND LOVE IN AQUINAS AND BALTHASAR1

Because of the consistent emphasis he places on the supremacy of love, Hans Urs von Balthasar has occasionally been thought to incline toward a problematic irrationalism. This essay addresses this charge through a comparison of Aquinas and Balthasar on the question of the relationship between intellect and will. It is argued that the superiority of intellect over will generally attributed to Aquinas itself leads paradoxically to irrationalism whenever the object exceeds the soul, and that Balthasar's insistence on the supremacy of love—precisely because it integrates will and intellect and thereby makes the intellectual act structurally ecstatic—in fact allows us to avoid such an irrationalism.