Ontotheology? Understanding Heidegger's Destruktion of Metaphysics

Heidegger's Destruktion of the metaphysical tradition leads him to the view that all Western metaphysical systems make foundational claims best understood as 'ontotheological'. Metaphysics establishes the conceptual parameters of intelligibility by ontologically grounding and theologically legitimating our changing historical sense of what is. By first elucidating and then problematizing Heidegger's claim that all Western metaphysics shares this ontotheological structure, I reconstruct the most important components of the original and provocative account of the history of metaphysics that Heidegger gives in support of his idiosyncratic understanding of metaphysics. Arguing that this historical narrative generates the critical force of Heidegger's larger philosophical project (namely, his attempt to find a path beyond our own nihilistic Nietzschean age), I conclude by briefly showing how Heidegger's return to the inception of Western metaphysics allows him to uncover two important aspects of Being's pre-metaphysical phenomenological self-manifestation, aspects which have long been buried beneath the metaphysical tradition but which are crucial to Heidegger's attempt to move beyond our late-modern, Nietzschean impasse.     

Defining and Understanding Mental Toughness within Soccer

This study examined the frequency of observed prosocial and antisocial behaviors in soccer teams, age differences in observed behaviors and motivational variables, and whether motivational variables account for age differences in observed behaviors. Participants were 313 adolescent soccer players, recruited from three age groups: under 13, under 15, and under 17. Each age group was represented by eight teams. Players were filmed during a game and completed questionnaires after the game. Videotaped games were analyzed by two observers, who recorded behaviors for each team rather than each individual player; therefore, all data were analyzed only at the group level. Observed antisocial behaviors were more frequent than prosocial ones. Significant differences were also identified among the three age groups with the oldest group displaying more frequent antisocial and less frequent prosocial behaviors and perceiving a stronger performance climate and a weaker mastery climate in their team compared to the two younger groups. A series of ANCOVAs using motivational variables as covariates indicated that mastery climate followed by performance climate accounted for the largest decrease in the variance of both prosocial and antisocial behaviors attributed to the age group factor. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for promoting fair play in sport.     

Heidegger on Ontological Education,or: How We Become What We Are

Heidegger presciently diagnosed the current crisis in higher education. Contemporary theorists like Bill Readings extend and update Heidegger's critique, documenting the increasing instrumentalization, professionalization, vocationalization, corporatization, and technologization of the modern university, the dissolution of its unifying and guiding ideals, and, consequently, the growing hyper-specialization and ruinous fragmentation of its departments. Unlike Heidegger, however, these critics do not recognize such disturbing trends as interlocking symptoms of an underlying ontological problem and so they provide no positive vision for the future of higher education. By understanding our educational crisis 'ontohistorically', Heidegger is able to develop an alternative, ontological conception of education which he hopes will help bring about a renaissance of the university. In a provocative reading of Plato's famous 'allegory of the cave', Heidegger excavates and appropriates the original Western educational ideal of Platonic paideia, outlining the pedagogy of an ontological education capable of directly challenging the 'technological understanding of being' he holds responsible for our contemporary educational crisis. This notion of ontological education can best be understood as a philosophical perfectionism, a re-essentialization of the currently empty ideal of educational 'excellence' by which Heidegger believes we can reconnect teaching to research and, ultimately, reunify and revitalize the university itself.     

Ontology and ethics at the intersection of phenomenology and environmental philosophy

The idea inspiring the eco‐phenomenological movement is that phenomenology can help remedy our environmental crisis by uprooting and replacing environmentally‐destructive ethical and metaphysical presuppositions inherited from modern philosophy. Eco‐phenomenology's critiques of subject/object dualism and the fact/value divide are sketched and its positive alternatives examined. Two competing approaches are discerned within the eco‐phenomenological movement: Nietzscheans and Husserlians propose a naturalistic ethical realism in which good and bad are ultimately matters of fact, and values should be grounded in these proto‐ethical facts; Heideggerians and Levinasians articulate a transcendental ethical realism according to which we discover what really matters when we are appropriately open to the environment, but what we thereby discover is a transcendental source of meaning that cannot be reduced to facts, values, or entities of any kind. These two species of ethical realism generate different kinds of ethical perfectionism: naturalistic ethical realism yields an eco‐centric perfectionism which stresses the flourishing of life in general; transcendental ethical realism leads to a more ‘humanistic’ perfectionism which emphasizes the cultivation of distinctive traits of Dasein. Both approaches are examined, and the Heideggerian strand of the humanistic approach defended, since it approaches the best elements of the eco‐centric view while avoiding its problematic ontological assumptions and anti‐humanistic implications.     

Institutional creativity and pathologies of potential space: The modern university

Abstract

This paper proposes the applicability of object relations psychoanalytic conceptions of dialogue (Ogden, 1986 Ogden, T. 1986. The matrix of the mind, London: Karnac.  [Google Scholar], 1993 Ogden, T. 1993. “On potential space”. In In one's bones: The clinical genius of Winnicot, Edited by: Goldman, D. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aaronson.  [Google Scholar]) to thinking about relationships and relational structures and their governance in universities. It proposes that:

• the qualities of dialogic relations in creative institutions are the proper index of creative productivity; that is of, as examples, ‘thinking’ (Evans, 2004 Evans, M. 2004. Killing thinking: The death of the universities, London: Continuum.  [Google Scholar]), ‘emotional learning’ (Salzberger-Wittenburg et al., 1983 Salzberger-Wittenburg, I., Henry, G. and Osborne, E. 1983. The emotional experience of learning and teaching, London: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]) or ‘criticality’ (Barnett, 1997 Barnett, R. 1997. Higher education: A critical business, Buckingham: Open University Press.  [Google Scholar]);

• contemporary institutions' explicit preoccupation in assuring, monitoring and managing creative ‘dialogue’ can, in practice, pervert creative processes and thoughtful symbolic productivity, thus inhibiting students' development and the quality of ‘thinking space’ for teaching and research.

In this context the paper examines uncanny and perverse connections between Paulo Freire's (1972 Freire, P. 1972. Pedagogy of the oppressed, London: Penguin.  [Google Scholar]) account of educational empowerment and dialogics (from his Pedagogy of the oppressed) to the consumerist (see, for example, Clarke & Vidler, 2005 Clarke, J. and Vidler, E. 2005. Creating citizen-consumers: New labour and the remaking of public services. Public Policy and Administration, 20: 19–37.  [Google Scholar]) rhetoric of student empowerment, as mediated by some strands of managerialism in contemporary higher education. The paper grounds its critique of current models of dialogue, feedback loops, audit and other mechanisms of accountability (Power, 1997 Power, M. 1997. The Audit Society: Ritual's of verification, Oxford: Oxford University Press.  [Google Scholar]; Strathern, 2000 Strathern M. Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy London Routledge 2000 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), in a close analysis of how creative thinking emerges.

The paper discusses the failure to maintain a dialogic space in humanities and social science areas in particular, exploring psychoanalytic conceptions from Donald Winnicott (1971 Winnicott, D. W. 1971. Playing and Reality, London: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]), Milner (1979 Milner, M. 1979. On not being able to paint, New York: International Universities Press.  [Google Scholar]), Thomas Ogden (1986 Ogden, T. 1986. The matrix of the mind, London: Karnac.  [Google Scholar]) and Csikszentmihalyi (1997 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1997. Creativity, New York: Harper Perennial.  [Google Scholar]). Coleridge's ideas about imagination as the movement of thought between subjective and objective modes are discussed in terms of both intra- and inter-subjective relational modes of ‘dialogue’, which are seen as subject to pathology in the pathologically structured psychosocial environment. Current patterns of institutional governance, by micromanaging dialogic spaces, curtail the ‘natural’ rhythms and temporalities of imagination by giving an over-emphasis to the moment of outcome, at the expense of holding the necessary vagaries of process in the institutional ‘mind’. On the contrary, as this paper argues, creative thinking lies in sporadic emergences at the conjunction of object/(ive) outcome and through (thought) processes.     

The relationship between reward and probability: Evidence that exploration may be intrinsically rewarding

ABSTRACT

The probability of an event occurring and the reward associated with the event can both modulate behaviour. Response times are decreased to stimuli that are either more rewarding or more likely. These two factors can be combined to give an Expected Value (EV) associated with the event (i.e., probability of the event x reward magnitude). In four experiments we investigate the effect of reward and probability on both saccadic and manual responses. When tested separately we find evidence for both a reward and probability effect across response types. When manipulations of reward magnitude and probability of the event were combined, the probability modulations dominated and these data were not well accounted for by the EV. However, a post-hoc model that included an additional intrinsic reward associated with responding provided an excellent account for the data. We argue that reward consists of both an explicit and intrinsic component. In our task, the saccadic and manual responses are linked to the information provided by the targets and the goals of the task, and successful completion of these is in itself rewarding. As a result, targets associated with a higher probability of being presented have a higher intrinsic reward.     

The relationship between productive and counterproductive work behaviour across four European countries

Research suggesting a similar but different relationship between Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) and Counterproductive Work Behaviour (CWB) is dominated by North American samples. Little evidence exists on whether these findings are replicated in other countries. To assess if a similar pattern emerged, we used the Social Axioms model (Bond et al., 2004) as a cultural framework and surveyed employees in the UK (105), The Netherlands (203), Turkey (185), and Greece (70) on the relationship between OCB and CWB, and the relationship between these behaviours and personality, justice, and commitment. Analysis supported a multidimensional structure to OCB and CWB and indicated a nonbipolar relationship between these behaviours. Culturally, somewhat different to OCB research in general, we find support for a convergence perspective across countries. Conceptually, linguistically and structurally the scale assessing OCB/CWB was shown to be equivalent across countries and a nonbipolar pattern of relationships was consistent across countries. Overall, findings imply a universal nature to the relationship between OCB and CWB across societal cultural groups.     

Measuring saccade curvature: A curve-fitting approach

Saccade curvature is becoming a popular measure for detecting the presence of competing saccadic motor programs. Several different methods of quantifying saccade curvature have been employed. In the present study, we compared these metrics with each other and with novel measures based on curve fitting. Initial deviation metrics were only moderately associated with the more widely used metric of maximum curvature. The latter was strongly related to a recently developed area-based measure and to the novel methods based on second- and third-order polynomial fits. The curve-fitting methods showed that although most saccades curved in only one direction, there was a population of trajectories with both a maximum and a minimum (i.e., double-curved saccades). We argue that a curvature metric based on a quadratic polynomial fit deals effectively with both types of trajectories and, because it is based on all the samples of a saccade, is less susceptible to sampling noise.     

Autonomy,Sanity and Moral Theory

The concept of autonomy plays atleast two roles in moral theory. First, itprovides a source of constraints upon action:because I am autonomous you may not interferewith me, even for my own good. Second, itprovides a foundation for moral theory: humanautonomy has been thought by some to producemoral principles of a more general kind.This paper seeks to understand what autonomyis, and whether the autonomy of which we arecapable is able to serve these roles. We wouldnaturally hope for a concept of autonomy thatis value-neutral rather than value-laden. Thatis to say, we would want the judgement that Iam autonomous to depend wholly on, say,structural features of my psychology, and in noway to require us to make ethical judgements, orother value judgements. Being value-neutral isperhaps desirable in a concept of autonomyserving the first role, and plausiblyindispensible in one playing the second. Ishall argue, however, that value-neutral conceptionsof autonomy are impoverished and out of linewith our intuitions; set out and defendan explicitly value-laden conception ofautonomy; and explore the implications of such a view for theability of autonomy to play the rolesmentioned above.     

Individual responses to climate change: Framing effects on pro‐environmental behaviors

Promoting effective responses to climate change, especially among people who reject its anthropogenic causes, has been challenging. Following a qualitative study, we experimentally induce one of four frames of reference (identity, biodiversity conservation, economic prosperity, and climate change), and assess their effects on participants’ behavioral intentions using three scales (consumption‐investment, consumption‐reduction, and political participation). The sample (N = 156) included people who thought climate change is natural and those who thought it is human‐induced. Results show a significant impact of the identity frame, relative to the climate‐change frame, for both consumption scales, in the total sample, and among those who reject the anthropogenic causes. These results offer a way to address behavioral resistances associated with antagonistic views on climate change.