EVOLUTION,CULTURE, AND SIN: RESPONDING TO PHILIP HEFNER'S PROPOSAL

Abstract. In his recent book, The Human Factor, Philip Hefner proposes to deepen theological understanding of the natural world and the place of humans within it. He describes humans as products of converging streams of genes and culture, and as possessors of freedom that requires them to be “created cocreators.” In accordance with the requirements of “the way things really are” (God), humans are to become divine agents in enlarging the realm of freedom in the world through self-sacrificing altruism. While Hefner's insights are admirable, his work could be viewed, in part, as a covert expression of nineteenth century liberal beliefs in progress. In fact, human culture and freedom are more ambiguous products of both good and evil, and hence we must take more cognizance of the pervasiveness of what theology has termed sin.     

ON THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN FREEDOM

Abstract. The age–old dilemma of free will and determinism is attacked by proving that both sides are flawed with contingencies, that the notion of eternal law is a theologically tainted projection rather than a reality of the real world that is understood to be evolutionary. Determinism is dissolved into conditionalism. This excludes materialistic scientific explanation of the deterministic style. As it brings forth freedom, evolutionary reality transcends essentially the explanatory possibilities of statistically structured natural laws. The dilemma of determinism and free will based on a logic of contradiction is replaced by an ontology of polarity.     

从客观决定性到意志自由——论行动哲学研究的方法论变革

如果说心灵哲学是当代西方学术界的“第一哲学”,那么,以“客观决定性VS．意志自由”为核心问题的行动哲学研究,则是这种哲学研究在当今最重要的组成部分和基本发展趋势,因而只有在研究客观决定性和意志自由的相互关系方面取得了根本性突破,行动哲学和心灵哲学研究才有可能取得实质性进展。不过,由于绝大多数研究者都没有通过对惟理智主义研究方法论的深刻批判反思而达到方法论的自觉,所以,只有真正实现了对由基本倾向、思维方式和研究模式构成的研究方法论的彻底变革,这样的突破才是可能的;本文认为,以社会个体生成论彻底扬弃和取代基于抽象个体的预成论,是实现这种变革的富有建设性意义的学术理路。     

Freud's psychoanalysis: A moral cure

That psychoanalytical treatment in its classical Freudian sense is primarily a moral or ethical cure is not a very controversial claim. However, it is far from obvious how we are to understand precisely the moral character of psychoanalysis. It has frequently been proposed that this designation is valid because psychoanalysis strives neither to cure psychological symptoms pharmaceutically, nor to superficially modify the behaviour of the analysand, but to lead the analysand through an interpretive process during which he gradually gains knowledge of the unconscious motives that determine his behaviour, a process that might ideally liberate him to obtain, in relation to his inner desires, the status of a moral agent. There resides something appealing in these claims. But it is the author's belief that there is an even deeper moral dimension applying to psychoanalytical theory and praxis. Freudian psychoanalysis is a moral cure due to its way of thematizing psychological suffering as moral suffering. And this means that the moral subject – the being that can experience moral suffering – is not primarily something that the psychoanalytical treatment strives to realize, but rather the presupposition for the way in which psychoanalysis theorizes psychological problems as such.     

Critical notice of On the people's terms: a Republican theory and model of democracy,by Philip Pettit,Cambridge University Press, 2012, xii+333pp.

This paper is a critical notice of Philip Pettit's On the People's Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy. Pettit argues that only Republicanism can respond appropriately to the ‘evil of subjection to another's will – particularly in important areas of personal choice’ because its ideal of liberty – freedom as non-domination – both captures better than liberalism our commitment to individual liberty and explains better our commitment to the legitimacy of democratic decision-making than standard democrat accounts. If this argument succeeds, it demonstrates that there is no real tension between the liberal thought that justice provides a standard for evaluating public decisions independent of the fact that they are taken democratically and the democratic thought that the fact that a decision is democratic suffices to make it legitimate. I argue, however, that Pettit finds himself caught between two contradictory positions: a version of Isaiah Berlin's negative concept of liberty and a positive liberty account of democracy. And I show that his attempt to resolve the tension fails because it requires him to embrace the positive liberty account he is committed to rejecting.     

Self-Reference,Reality Principles,Marxism, and Social Transformations in the Postmodern Era

Three distinct turning points (“bottleneck breakings”) in universal evolution are discussed at some length in terms of “self-reference” and (corresponding) “Reality Principles.” The first (origin and evolution of animate Nature) and second (human consciousness) are shown to necessarily precede a third one, that of Marxist philosophy. It is pointed out that while the previous two could occupy a natural (so in a sense neutral) place as parts of human science, the self-reference of Marxism, as a social human phenomenon, through its direct bearings on the practice of society, did have a stormy history. I conclude that the fall of Bolshevism was unavoidable, and still, we might uphold our hope for a truly free society of humankind, just on the very basis of what we have learned of the fate of Marxist philosophy as such, as a recursively evolving social practice: the freedom of humankind of its own ideological burdens (constraints).     

Fiat's cultural revolution: TQM as functional integration

The opening decade of this millennium witnessed genome scientists, policy makers, critical race theorists and world leaders standing together to pronounce the anti-racist democratic potential of human genomics. Understanding and assessing this rise of ‘anti-racist, democratic genomics’ requires distinguishing between two problems of power and science: the first characterized by what Michel Foucault labeled states of domination; the second by what he described as relations of power. When states of domination exist, as in the case of Nazi science, liberal efforts to extend new powers of participation and autonomy to research subjects may play important roles in redressing power imbalances between researchers and their subjects. However, when distinctions between scientist and research subject blur, as in the case of much human genomics, efforts to extend liberal rights to subjects of genomic studies—or genomic liberalism—may produce novel problems, including: (1) human genome scientists' loss of capacity to describe their objects of study; (2) disruption of research subjects' abilities to define themselves; and (3) lack of accountability for the unintended effects of efforts to democratize genomics. In these ways genomic liberalism may foster, at the same that it impedes, the co-constitution of knowledge and democratic subjects. It may create new forms of racism at the very moment that it explicitly seeks anti-racist ends. Addressing the problems created by this paradoxical position will require more sustained attention to and critique of the anti-racist and democratic imaginaries that increasingly animate technoscience.     

Notes on Autocephaly and Phyletism

Changing one’s religion is increasingly common in multicultural societies. Such changes are made more likely when there is greater contact between individuals of different creeds. Conversion is also the result of proselytising activities carried out by various religious faiths or groups. This paper analyses the recognition of the right to change religion and the safeguarding of this right under international treaties, giving special attention to Europe. The study shows the content and limits of this right and examines the role of the state in its regulation. Both having membership of a given faith and changing religion can have legal consequences with respect to the state. This fact has been demonstrated by the legal battles that have arisen in a number of European countries as a consequence of changing religion. According to the international human rights legal system, the function of the secular state should be to safeguard equal treatment for all citizens, ensuring that neither religious affiliation nor a change of such affiliation results in discrimination.     

Unsinnig: A Reply to Hutto∗

Abstract

In the late 1930s Heidegger makes allusions to ‘the wild’ and ‘the mild’ in connection with a human liberation that he understands as a steadfast response to the claim that historical being (Seyn) makes upon us. The following paper elucidates these allusions in terms of the overturning of metaphysics that they entail.