Merleau-Ponty,Marx, and Marxism: The problem of history

At the present time, Europe, particularly eastern Europe, is still immersed in a major political transformation, the most significant such change since the Second World War, arising out of the rejection of official Marxism. This unforeseen rejection requires meditation by all those concerned with the relation of philosophy to the historical context. Marxism, that follows Marx’s insistence on the link between a theory and the context in which it arises, cannot be indifferent to the rejection of Marxist theory in practice. In respect to the usual tendency to pass rapidly over practice for a theoretical analysis of social theory, Merleau-Ponty stands out for his concern to evaluate the theoretical claims of Marx and Marxism against practice.     

试论存在主义对人本主义心理学的影响

从人本主义心理学产生发展的背景,研究命题与体系式思想．研究方法及在咨询和治疗上的应用四个方面来探讨存在主义对人本主义心理学的积极影响。主要关注存在主义作为一种哲学思潮在对人性,人的生存方式和独特性的看法上给予人本主义心理学的启示．以及存在主义的创新的本体论对于人本主义心理学在跳出传统心理学模式走上“第三条道路”上的推动作用。     

Some Thoughts on the Integration of Narrative and Humanistic/Existential Approaches to Psychotherapy

Although humanistic and narrative approaches to psychotherapy make some different assumptions about the nature of the human condition and emphasize different aspects of human functioning in their therapeutic endeavors, I argue here that the underlying assumptions of these two approaches reflect a common view of humanness, thus making these two approaches candidates for attempts at integration. Four areas of commonality are discussed in detail: (a) life as a process of continual development, (b) the nature of experience and the process of meaning creation, (c) the nature of psychological dysfunction, and (d) the nature and importance of human relationships. The implications of these commonalities for the practice of therapy from an integrated perspective are explored in an extended case example.     

弗洛姆人本主义精神分析的启蒙价值

弗洛姆人本主义精神分析综合了欧洲文化传统的理性主义、人本主义、批判精神和救世情怀这些基本要素, 他试图用理性主义和人本主义的标准和精神分析心理学的工具来剖析他所处的社会和身边的人, 并探索实现理想社会和人的发展的途径。这一事业的价值实际上是启蒙。他从现代人的不安全感处境出发, 深刻分析了威权主义、民族主义、消费主义的病理机制, 进而提出了基于人本主义原则的社会改革方案。弗洛姆人本主义精神分析的理论和实践对于21世纪人类发展问题的解决仍然具有启发意义。     

"保合太和,乃利贞"新解--《易传》论社会和平与社会功利的关系

<易传>提出"保合太和,乃利贞"的光辉哲学命题,揭示了社会和平对于社会经济发展的重要作用,要求创造和平的社会环境促进并保持社会经济的可持续发展;<易传>哲学还包涵着"以财聚人"的人本主义经济思想,与以追求利润为旨归的资本主义经济有着本质的区别.     

We,Heirs of Enlightenment: Critical Theory,Democracy and Social Science

Abstract

My goal here is to come to terms with the Enlightenment as the horizon of critical social science. First, I consider in more detail the understanding of the Enlightenment in Critical Theory, particularly in its conception of the sociality of reason. Second, I develop an account of freedom in terms of human powers, along the lines of recent capability conceptions that link freedom to the development of human powers, including the power to interpret and create norms. Finally, I show the ways in which the social sciences can be moral sciences in the Enlightenment sense. This account provides us with a coherent Enlightenment standard by which to judge institutions as promoting development, understood in terms of the capabilities necessary for freedom. The relevant social science in this area might include the robust generalization that there has never been a famine in a democratic society.     

Morality and political orientations: An analysis of their relationship

Groups are social constructions with differences. People spontaneously attempt to explain differences between groups. Stereotypes often play this explanatory role. Specifically, group members tend to attribute different essences to social categories. Given widespread ethnocentrism, it is not surprising that individuals reserve “the human essence” for their ingroup, while other groups are attributed a lesser humanity. This phenomenon is called infra‐humanisation and happens outside people's awareness. Secondary emotions (e.g., love, hope, contempt, resentment) are considered uniquely human emotions in contrast to primary emotions (e.g., joy, surprise, fear, anger) that are shared with animals. The research programme summarised in this chapter demonstrates through various paradigms that members of groups not only attribute more secondary emotions to their ingroup than to outgroups, but are also reluctant to associate these emotions with outgroups. Moreover, people behave less cooperatively with an outgroup member who expresses himself with secondary emotions than with an ingroup member who uses the same terms. Interestingly, infra‐humanisation occurs for both high‐ and low‐status groups, even in the absence of conflict between groups.     

Rorty's Debt to Sellarsian Metaphysics

Rorty regards himself as furthering the project of the Enlightenment by separating Enlightenment liberalism from Enlightenment rationalism. To do so, he rejects the very need for explicit metaphysical theorizing. Yet his commitments to naturalism, nominalism, and the irreducibility of the normative come from the metaphysics of Wilfrid Sellars. Rorty's debt to Sellars is concealed by his use of Davidsonian arguments against the scheme/content distinction and the nonsemantic concept of truth. The Davidsonian arguments are used for Deweyan ends: to advance secularization and anti‐authoritarianism. However, Rorty's conflation of theology and metaphysics conceals the possibility of post‐theological metaphysics. The key distinction lies between “metaphysics” and “Metaphysics.” The former provisionally models the relations between different vocabularies; the latter continues theology by other means. Sellars shows how to do metaphysics without Metaphysics. This approach complements Rorty's prioritization of cultural politics over ontology and his vision of Enlightenment liberalism without Enlightenment rationalism.     

‘Polydorus Italus’

Abstract

In his Anglica Historia, the expatriate Italian cleric, Polydore Vergil (1470–1555), cultivated a flexible and resourceful relationship with ecclesiastical and temporal authorities in Henrician and Edwardine England when residing there. His humanist learning enabled him to adapt to changes of power and religion by means of a prudent publishing strategy, to challenge with a degree of impunity the perceived wisdom of both kings and clerics, and to carry out revenge upon one who had wronged him: Cardinal Wolsey. Using primary and secondary source material, this article examines, for the first time, Vergil’s attitude to and dealings with those in authority through an assessment of his Anglica Historia. Dying a Roman Catholic in his native Italy, ‘Polydorus Italus’ adjudged the Henrician Reformation, in so far as he actually presents it, as deficient.     

How European is the European Journal of Developmental Psychology?

This paper tries to make clear why a European journal of developmental psychology makes sense. First it is explained that so-called European culture is a complicated matter: historically and culturally many fault lines are to be detected, from the borders of the Roman empire to the iron curtain. These fault lines separate different cultural areas within Europe.

Developmental thinking came into existence within the eighteenth century (Enlightenment), especially with the work of Rousseau, which offered the theoretical building blocks for Western education and for modern Piagetian developmental psychology. Empirical developmental research found its origins in Germany, especially in Jena, with the work of William Preyer. The Jena ideas were brought to the USA by Stanley Hall. And in the twentieth century the Rousseau–Piaget tradition was brought to the USA by John Flavell.

A European Society for Developmental Psychology and its flagship the European Journal of Developmental Psychology should devote itself to the study of the European roots of developmental psychology as well as contributing to European developmental psychology, which in an open, new Europe moves across the original fault lines.