From Nature to Culture? Diogenes and Philosophical Anthropology

This essay is concerned with the central issue of philosophical anthropology: the relation between nature and culture. Although Rousseau was the first thinker to introduce this topic within the modern discourse of philosophy and the cultural sciences, it has its origin in Diogenes the Cynic, who was a disciple of Socrates. In my essay I (1) historically introduce a few aspects of philosophical anthropology, (2) deal with the nature–culture exchange, as introduced in Kant, then I (3) relate this topic to the Ancient Cynic Diogenes. Surprisingly, although we usually identify Critical Theory and Freudian psychoanalysis as theories that have shown that cultural progress should not be comprehended as a development from nature to culture, and that instead it should be conceived as a development from culture against (external as well as internal) nature, I show that Cynicism can be conceived as a vivid example within the history of our culture that reveals a double sense of repression and alienation, which is part of human civilization and mankind.     

Künstliche Intelligenz und Philosophie

Artificial Intelligence can be considered as the so far last attempt to decode the anthropological comparison between human beings and machines. Thereby it also represents in a prominent way what can be called systemic thought. Searle's conclusive argument against strong AI (that is the idea of computers having intention in a literal way) refers to his precise distinction between syntax and semantics. This difference obviously opposing some of Searle's other essential ideas will only convince if it also explains the genetic-pragmatic aspect. A theory explaining the life of mind and the possibility of understanding needs to combine representation and intention with the subjective causation of signs. At the same time they have to be contextualized within a model of teleologically interpreted life recognized with the help of self-experience and self-reflection. This suggests that AI is a simulation which wrongly believes to be a real duplication. Actually it is a semiotic reduction (syntax and semantic surface of signs only) and a psychological compensation (Turing test) connected with a genetic or abductive fallacy. The biological decontextualization, in fact the elimination of teleology and intention, the deconstruction of subjectivity, the loss of the genetic-pragmatic dimension and the abductive fallacy induce the strong AI to confuse its surface-illusion of simulated understanding with the real process itself.     

Eucharistic priority in Hilary of Poitiers' trinitarian theology: a critique of contemporary approaches to divine–human communio

The notion of koinonia or communio is at the heart of contemporary ecclesiology, and trinitarian theology has become its necessary presupposition. This article argues that the way many contemporary theologians have envisaged this link between divine and human communion is deeply problematic. Hilary of Poitiers was the first theologian of communio, and he offers a bold critique of contemporary discussions. Hilary gives eucharistic priority to trinitarian theology, that is, there is a movement from Eucharist to Trinity in his thinking on the relation between divine and human communion. A retrieval of Hilary's eucharistic priority in trinitarian discourse can provide constructive avenues in trinitarian theology which avoid the anthropocentric tendencies of contemporary social doctrines of the Trinity and reject the misdiagnosed problem of trinitarian ‘relevance’ in current discussions. Such a retrieval recovers trinitarian doctrine as a practised, performed reality, lived out in human communio itself through the eucharistic life of the Church.     

‘Teshuvah baskets’ in the Israeli teshuvah market

As opposed to the approach that makes a dichotomous distinction between ‘rigid religiosity’ and ‘soft religiosity’, I would like to point to a reality in which these boundaries are blurred. I shall do so by examining the case of the religious revival movement in Israel (the ‘teshuvah movement’), which offers a broad range of teshuvah styles, out of which hozrim beteshuvah (penitents) select ‘teshuvah baskets’, which they fill and pack themselves, according to their own personal preferences. These ‘teshuvah baskets’ are dynamic, in that their owners can fill, empty and modify their contents, while they conduct an ongoing critical ‘market survey’. This dynamism creates a reality, accompanied by a discourse, which continuously blurs the symbolic boundaries separating the various types of religious ‘supply’ sources. It demonstrates how practices and beliefs related to ‘soft religiosity’ are expressed also by those participating in what is generally referred to as ‘rigid religiosity’.     

A Typology Of Domestication In Exorcism

In this article the authors develop a typology that maps the way in which contemporary exorcist practices become ‘domesticated’. The typology is based on a comparison of Dutch charismatic Christians and Brazilian Spiritists, two religious contexts in which dealing with evil spirits takes a central place. The typology makes clear that the discourses surrounding demons and exorcism, including the medical discourse, are made up of different practical parameters of diagnosis and treatment, which are intrinsically linked to the use of language. Metaphorical and metonymical language form two extremes of the continuum in this respect, the former representing a ‘domesticated’ demonology and the latter referring to the untamed reality of the demonic world.     

Social practices,culture and children’s ideas. Convergence between anthropology and critical genetic psychology / Prácticas sociales,cultura e ideas infantiles. Una convergencia entre la antropología y la psicología genética crítica

Abstract

This article explores recent studies in anthropology and critical genetic psychology, both of which analyse the relationships between children’s constructions of social knowledge and sociocultural conditions. For this, we have used research studies that have initiated the dialogue between these disciplinary fields as well as to our own empirical approaches. In order to establish shared problems, recent conceptual developments are explored and their methodological implications are analysed. Finally, the compatibility between the two approaches is analysed.     

GALILEO STILL GOES TO JAIL: CONFLICT MODEL PERSISTENCE WITHIN INTRODUCTORY ANTHROPOLOGY MATERIALS

Historians have long since rejected the dubious assertions of the conflict model, with its narratives of perennial religion versus science combat. Nonetheless, this theory persists in various academic disciplines, and it is still presented to university students as the authoritative historical account of religion–science interactions. Cases of this can be identified within modern anthropology textbooks and reference materials, which often recapitulate claims once made by John W. Draper and Andrew D. White. This article examines 21st‐century introductory anthropology publications, demonstrating how such works perpetuate religion–science myths and the notion that history has been replete with inevitable religion versus science warfare. In particular, this study reveals how such introductory materials propagate discord narratives associated with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Affiliated with these anecdotes are oversimplified accounts of religious responses to heliocentrism and evolutionary theory, as well as claims that science has invariably led to the usurpation of religious belief and secularization from Galileo onwards.     

Side Wound,Virgin Birth,Transfiguration

Abstract

This essay draws on the work of Karmen MacKendrick and several early Christian theologians to argue for a Christian “morphological imaginary” (Judith Butler) characterized by remarkable fluidity of embodiment. It does so by tracing the “mimetic circuitry” (Jean-Luc Nancy) of the traditions of virgin birth, side wound, and transfiguration, bringing several patristic-era meditations on these themes into further conversation with MacKendrick’s work.     

BUDDHIST ETHICS: A Review Essay

I argue that three recent studies (Imagining the Life Course, by Nancy Eberhardt; Sensory Biographies, by Robert Desjarlais; and How to Behave, by Anne Hansen) advance the field of Buddhist Ethics in the direction of the empirical study of morality. I situate their work within a larger context of moral anthropology, that is, the study of human nature in its limits and capacities for moral agency. Each of these books offers a finely grained account of particular and local Buddhist ways of interpreting human life and morality, and each explores complex conceptions of moral agency. I suggest that these three studies share similar interests in moral psychology, the human being across time, the intersubjective dimensions of moral experience, and what life within a karmic framework looks like. I propose that their contributions offer some of the most refreshing and interesting work generated in Buddhist ethics in the last decade.