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Western Thought (western + thought)
Selected AbstractsThe "Return of the Subject" As a Historico-Intellectual ProblemHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 1 2004Elías Palti abstract Recently, a call for the "return of the subject" has gained increasing influence. The power of this call is intimately linked to the assumption that there is a necessary connection between "the subject" and politics (and ultimately, history). Without a subject, it is alleged, there can be no agency, and therefore no emancipatory projects,and, thus, no history. This paper discusses the precise epistemological foundations for this claim. It shows that the idea of a necessary link between "the subject" and agency, and therefore between the subject and politics (and history) is only one among many different ones that appeared in the course of the four centuries that modernity spans. It has precise historico-intellectual premises, ones that cannot be traced back in time before the end of the nineteenth century. Failing to observe the historicity of the notion of the subject, and projecting it as a kind of universal category, results, as we shall see, in serious incongruence and anachronisms. The essay outlines a definite view of intellectual history aimed at recovering the radically contingent nature of conceptual formations, which, it alleges, is the still-valid core of Foucault's archeological project. Regardless of the inconsistencies in his own archeological endeavors, his archeological approach intended to establish in intellectual history a principle of temporal irreversibility immanent in it. Following his lead, the essay attempts to discern the different meanings the category of the subject has historically acquired, referring them back to the broader epistemic reconfigurations that have occurred in Western thought. This reveals a richness of meanings in this category that are obliterated under the general label of the "modern subject"; at the same time, it illuminates some of the methodological problems that mar current debates on the topic. [source] Making History, Talking about HistoryHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2001José Carlos Bermejo Barrera Making history,in the sense of writing it,is often set against talking about it, with most historians considering writing history to be better than talking about it. My aim in this article is to analyze the topic of making history versus talking about history in order to understand most historians' evident decision to ignore talking about history. Ultimately my goal is to determine whether it is possible to talk about history with any sense. To this end, I will establish a typology of the different forms of talking practiced by historians, using a chronological approach, from the Greek andRoman emphasis on the visual witness to present-day narrativism and textual analysis. Having recognized the peculiar textual character of the historiographical work, I will then discuss whether one can speak of a method for analyzing historiographical works. After considering two possible approaches,the philosophy of science and literary criticism,I offer my own proposal. This involves breaking the dichotomy between making and talking about history, adopting a fuzzy method that overcomes the isolation of self-named scientific communities, and that destroys the barriers among disciplines that work with the same texts but often from mutually excluding perspectives. Talking about history is only possible if one knows about history and about its sources and methods, but also about the foundations of the other social sciences and about the continuing importance of traditional philosophical problems of Western thought in the fields of history and the human sciences. [source] Conceptualising spirituality and religion for healthcareJOURNAL OF CLINICAL NURSING, Issue 21 2008Barbara Pesut Aims., To discuss some of the challenges of conceptualising spirituality and religion for healthcare practice. Background., With the growing interest in spirituality in healthcare, has come the inevitable task of trying to conceptualise spirituality, a daunting task given the amorphous nature of spirituality, the changing understandings of spirituality among individuals and the diverse globalised society within which this task is taking place. Spirituality's relationship to religion is a particularly challenging point of debate. Design., Critical review. Conclusions., Three social and historical conditions , located in the context of Western thought , have contributed to current conceptualisations of spirituality and religion: the diminishment of the social authority of religion as a result of the Enlightenment focus on reason, the rise of a postmodern spirituality emphasising spiritual experience and current tensions over the ideological and political roles of religion in society. The trend to minimise the social influence of religion is a particular Western bias that seems to ignore the global megatrend of the resurgence of religion. Current conceptualisations are critiqued on the following grounds: that they tend to be ungrounded from a rich history of theological and philosophical thought, that a particular form of elitist spirituality is emerging and that the individualistic emphasis in recent conceptualisations of spirituality diminishes the potential for societal critique and transformation while opening the door for economic and political self interest. Relevance to clinical practice., Constructing adequate conceptualisations of spirituality and religion for clinical practice entails grounding them in the wealth of centuries of philosophical and theological thinking, ensuring that they represent the diverse society that nursing serves and anchoring them within a moral view of practice. [source] No Shades of Gray: The Binary Discourse of George W. Bush and an Echoing PressJOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, Issue 2 2004Kevin Coe Binary communications represent the world as a place of polar opposites. Such conceptions of reality, although not uncommon in Western thought, take on a heightened importance when political leaders employ them in a concerted, strategic discourse in a mass media environment. With this in mind, this research offers a conception of binary discourse and uses this as a foundation to examine (a) the use of binaries by U.S. President George W. Bush in 15 national addresses, from his inauguration in January 2001 to commencement of the Iraq War in March 2003, and (b) the responses of editorials in 20 leading U.S. newspapers to the president's communications. [source] A Critique of Occidental Geist: Embedded Historical Culturalism in the Works of Hegel, Weber and HuntingtonJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2006FETHI AÇIKEL Hegel's contribution to the philosophy of history is most clearly seen where he introduces a theory of historical development based on the secularisation of Christian cosmology. With Hegel, the Spirit (Geist), previously theologically understood, gradually becomes the embodiment of historical development. In the Hegelian vocabulary, the phenomenology of religion is formulated along with the theory of historical progress. In this article, I will argue that the question of historical development has been continuously elaborated in a culturalist fashion in works of Friedrich Hegel, Max Weber and Samuel Huntington as those scholars, through different intellectual traditions, essentialises the spiritual backgrounds of world religions and ties the phenomenology of religion with the philosophy of history in their historical analyses. This paper will argue that these scholars, by relying on the idealised images of religions and particularly of the Occidental Spirit, subtly elaborate the historical culturalist notion of development within Western thought. By arguing for an inherent link between religion and development, these scholars implicitly institutionalize a Eurocentric understanding of Western Christianity and the Occidental path of development within mainstream social theory. Be they philosophical (Hegel), sociological (Weber) or political (Huntington), the historical culturalism of these approaches shape our understanding of historical change, and ironically, instead of countering the excesses of crude materialism, they lead social theory into a form of Eurocentic historical culturalism. [source] The Writing of the Kingdom: Thirty-Seven Aphorisms Towards an Eschatology of the TextMODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 2 2000D. Bentley Hart Starting from the question of the identities,in a given text,of author and reader, subsumed under the broader (Hegelian and post-Hegelian) question of "self" and "other" in exteriority, this essay attempts a theological response in three critical moments: the first follows the transcendental tradition of Western thought from the (Cartesian) turn towards transcendental subjectivity to the collapse of the dialectics of subjectivity in "postmodern" thought; the second moves the problem of exteriority from the realm of recognition that of promise and expectation (eschatology); and the third formulates a Trinitarian ontology of distance that accommodates this eschatology. [source] Les horizons géographiques, entre continu et discontinu1THE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER/LE GEOGRAPHE CANADIEN, Issue 2 2005Olivier Lazzarotti Cet article analyse la métaphore de l'éducation et du politique, couramment désignée comme allégorie de la caverne de Platon. Il développe la notion géographique d'horizon de nouveauté et d'altérité comme , dialectique , du continu et du discontinu autant que comme articulation entre mobilité et immobilité humaines. En retour, il pose la question de l'horizontalité, toujours montrée mais jamais dite, comme critique d'une métaphore écrasée par la verticalité qui institue le lien politique non dans le rapport à l'autre mais comme transcendance et fonde l'éducation humaine sur l'écrasement de l'émotion. Au-delà de ces lectures, le texte de Platon permet d'articuler philosophie et géographie dans un , logos , commun et constitue, ainsi, non seulement l'un des fondements d'une approche anthropologique de la géographie mais, avec elle, l'un de ceux du monde occidental et de sa pensée. This article analyses the metaphor of education and politics, commonly referred to as the allegory of Plato's cave. It develops the geographic concept of the horizon of novelty and otherness as a ,dialectic' of continuity and discontinuity, as well as an articulation between human mobility and immobility. In return, it poses the question of horizontality, always shown but never stated, as a critique of a metaphor crushed by the verticality that institutes the political connection, not in relation to the other but as a transcendence, and bases human education on the crushing of emotion. Beyond these readings, Plato's text allows the articulation of philosophy and geography in a common ,logos' and thus constitutes not only one of the foundations of an anthropological approach to geography but also one of the bases of the Western world and Western thought. [source] The Place Of Geometry: Heidegger's Mathematical Excursus On AristotleTHE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 3 2001Stuart Elden ,The Place of Geometry' discusses the excursus on mathematics from Heidegger's 1924,25 lecture course on Platonic dialogues, which has been published as Volume 19 of the Gesamtausgabe as Plato's Sophist, as a starting point for an examination of geometry in Euclid, Aristotle and Descartes. One of the crucial points Heidegger makes is that in Aristotle there is a fundamental difference between arithmetic and geometry, because the mode of their connection is different. The units of geometry are positioned, the units of arithmetic unpositioned. Following Heidegger's claim that the Greeks had no word for space, and David Lachterman's assertion that there is no term corresponding to or translatable as ,space' in Euclid's Elements, I examine when the term ,space' was introduced into Western thought. Descartes is central to understanding this shift, because his understanding of extension based in terms of mathematical co-ordinates is a radical break with Greek thought. Not only does this introduce this word ,space' but, by conceiving of geometrical lines and shapes in terms of numerical co-ordinates, which can be divided, it turns something that is positioned into unpositioned. Geometric problems can be reduced to equations, the length (i.e, quantity) of lines: a problem of number. The continuum of geometry is transformed into a form of arithmetic. Geometry loses position just as the Greek notion of ,place' is transformed into the modern notion of space. [source] Private or public: debating the meaning of tenure legalizationINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2002Ann Varley Hernando de Soto's book The mystery of capital has renewed debate about illegality in low,income housing in Latin America, Asia and Africa. De Soto and others argue that property titles provide the poor with collateral for loans to improve their housing or set up a business. Critics argue that incorporation into the formal market will displace the original inhabitants. In this article I analyse these debates about legalization as expressions of the dualisms that have shaped western thought. The relation between legal and illegal can be understood as a variant of the public/private dichotomy. Challenging the opposition of legal to illegal, I argue that the difference between them is not as great as the proponents of legalization assume. This questions the efficacy of legalization as an engine of change. In Mexico, the beneficiaries of legalization have little interest in formal credit, preferring loans from friends or relatives, and legalization does not lead to displacement. The failure of theories about legalization to predict the outcome is a product of their reliance on dualistic thinking and of the exclusion of the private from their accounts of the process. Le livre d'Hernando de Soto, The mystery of capital, a relancé le débat sur l'illégalité de l'habitat à faible revenu en Amérique latine, Asie et Afrique. Selon de Soto et d'autres, les titres de propriété procurent aux pauvres une garantie pour emprunter afin d'améliorer leur logement ou de créer une entreprise. Les opposants affirment qu'une intégration au marché officiel déplacerait les habitants d'origine. L'article analyse ces débats sur la légalisation en tant qu'expressions des dualismes qui ont façonné la pensée occidentale. On peut appréhender la relation entre le légal et l'illégal comme une variante de la dichotomie public,privé. En contestant l'opposition légal,illégal, on peut affirmer que la différence n'est pas aussi importante que le supposent les partisans de la légalisation, ce qui remet en cause l'efficacité de celle,ci en tant que moteur de changement. Au Mexique, les bénéficiaires de la légalisation s'intéressent peu au crédit officiel, préférant les prêts entre amis ou parents, et cette légalisation ne provoque pas de déplacement. Les théories sur la légalisation ont échoué dans leur prédiction des résultats, car elles s'appuient sur une réflexion dualiste et excluent le privé de leur évaluation du processus. [source] | ||||||||||