Fellow travellers on different paths: A conversation with Charles Taylor

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (8) ◽  
pp. 985-1002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michiel Meijer ◽  
Charles Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Kantian Constructivism ◽  
Strong Evaluation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship

This interview with Charles Taylor explores a central concern throughout his work, namely, his concern to ‘reenchant’ self and world through a careful examination of value as emanating from the world rather than from ourselves. It focuses especially on the status of his central doctrine of ‘strong evaluation’ against the background of mainstream meta-ethical theories, such as neo-Kantian constructivism and robust realist non-naturalism. Additionally, the relationship between Taylor’s theism and his moral–political philosophy is discussed. A key issue that is examined is what ontological background picture can make sense of the strong evaluative experience of higher worth. Some other related issues that are explored revolve around Taylor’s papers ‘Disenchantment-Reenchantment’ and ‘Recovering the Sacred’, which tentatively explore the meaning of reenchantment.

scholarly journals What Difference Does Posthumanism Make?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Rachel J. Crellin ◽  
Oliver J.T. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Productive Force ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper we argue that to understand the difference Posthumanism makes to the relationship between archaeology, agency and ontology, several misconceptions need to be corrected. First, we emphasize that Posthumanism is multiple, with different elements, meaning any critique needs to be carefully targeted. The approach we advocate is a specifically Deleuzian and explicitly feminist approach to Posthumanism. Second, we examine the status of agency within Posthumanism and suggest that we may be better off thinking about affect. Third, we explore how the approach we advocate treats difference in new ways, not as a question of lack, or as difference ‘from’, but rather as a productive force in the world. Finally, we explore how Posthumanism allows us to re-position the role of the human in archaeology,

Witnessing and Victimhood

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Walklate
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Victim Status ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Global Events ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Varied History

It is without doubt that the 21st century is marked by ever-present 24-hour media. Mobile phones, iPads, and Wi-Fi networks mean that many people in many different parts of the world are “connected” to each other and to global events as they happen in ways not really imagined less than a century ago. Of course the nature of this connectivity is variable. It dominates more in some parts of the world than others, in urban areas more than rural, among wealthier communities more than poorer ones, and perhaps among younger people more than older people. Such variations notwithstanding, it is the case that the minute-by-minute live reporting of events, as they happen, exposes the nature of those events to people not necessarily close to them or impacted by them, albeit vicariously. Such exposure means that people are potentially witnesses to events and images they would not otherwise have experience of. It is within this context this article considers the concepts of victim, witness, and the linkages between them. The concept of the witness has a varied history, from its presence in the law, to its connections with religious affiliation, to its legacy in experiences of atrocity. These different historical legacies are suggestive of different claims to victimhood. Simultaneously, these different claims to the status of victim (who constitutes a victim and under what conditions) have become conflated. In mapping the trajectories of each of these concepts, it is possible to discern considerable fuzziness in the relationship between victim and witness, suggestive of a continuum from the victim as witness to the witness as victim. Moreover, when these two concepts are put in such a relationship with each other, it is possible to observe how transgressive capacity takes its toll on people, how to make sense of the issues that concern them, and how best to respond to those concerns. This article considers the questions posed by the relationship between being a victim and being a witness, paying particular attention to who is and who is not considered to have a legitimate claim to victim status, and the role of ever-present media coverage in contributing to such claims and/or even creating them.

Islam and international law

2005 ◽  
Vol 87 (858) ◽  
pp. 269-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheikh Wahbeh al-Zuhili
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Rules And Principles ◽  
Internal Affairs ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article by an Islamic scholar describes the principles governing international law and international relations from an Islamic viewpoint. After presenting the rules and principles governing international relations in the Islamic system, the author emphasizes the principles of sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of other States and the aspiration of Islam to peace and harmony. He goes on to explain the relationship between Muslims and others in peacetime or in the event of war and the classical jurisprudential division of the world into the abode of Islam (dar al-islam) and that of war (dar al-harb). Lastly he outlines the restrictions imposed upon warfare by Islamic Shari'a law which have attained the status of legal rules.

scholarly journals Paradigm change and power in the world food system—Synthesis paper

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Matthew Gaudreau
Keyword(s):  
Food System ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
World Food ◽  
Dominant Model ◽  
System Synthesis ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship

The articles by Friedmann, Koç and Wise draw out overarching issues in the world food system, offering complementary views of the relationship between the dominant model of the world food system and its myriad issues. This contribution uses the concept of transnational policy paradigms to illustrate the key tension between the status quo of food policy and emerging alternatives.

Tact

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Russell
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

The social practice of tact was an invention of the nineteenth century, a period when Britain was witnessing unprecedented urbanization, industrialization, and population growth. In an era when more and more people lived more closely than ever before with people they knew less and less about, tact was a new mode of feeling one's way with others in complex modern conditions. This book traces how the essay genre came to exemplify this sensuous new ethic and aesthetic. It argues that the essay form provided the resources for the performance of tact in this period and analyzes its techniques in the writings of Charles Lamb, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, and Walter Pater. The book shows how their essays offer grounds for a claim about the relationship among art, education, and human freedom—an “aesthetic liberalism”—not encompassed by traditional political philosophy or in literary criticism. For these writers, tact is not about codes of politeness but about making an art of ordinary encounters with people and objects and evoking the fullest potential in each new encounter. The book demonstrates how their essays serve as a model for a critical handling of the world that is open to surprises, and from which egalitarian demands for new relationships are made. Offering fresh approaches to thinking about criticism, sociability, politics, and art, the book concludes by following a legacy of essayistic tact to the practice of British psychoanalysts like D. W. Winnicott and Marion Milner.

Cybercafés and Youth Development

2012 ◽  
pp. 422-433
Author(s):  
Sebnem Cilesiz
Keyword(s):  
Youth Development ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Future Research Directions ◽  
The Relationship

Among various forms of public access to computers and the Internet, cybercafés are a specific phenomenon around the world. Predominantly, they are frequented by young people, thus attracting the attention of educators and policymakers. Despite the worldwide prominence of cybercafés, very little research has examined youth’s activities at cybercafés and the outcomes of their participation. This chapter reviews the literature on cybercafés in general, followed by the status of current knowledge about the role of cybercafés in social interaction, informal learning, and youth development. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research directions on the relationship between cybercafés and youth development.

Sternberg and Dietrich

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
German American ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Josef Von Sternberg ◽  
At Home ◽  
Ethics And Politics

James Phillips’s Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle reappraises the cinematic collaboration between the Austrian-American filmmaker Josef von Sternberg (1894–1969) and the German-American actor Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992). Considered by his contemporaries to be one of the most significant directors of Golden-Age Hollywood, Sternberg made seven films with Dietrich that helped establish her as a style icon and star and entrenched his own reputation for extravagance and aesthetic spectacle. These films enriched the technical repertoire of the industry, challenged the sexual mores of the times, and notoriously tried the patience of management at Paramount Studios. Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle demonstrates how under Sternberg’s direction Paramount’s sound stages became laboratories for novel thought experiments. Analyzing in depth the last four films on which Sternberg and Dietrich worked together, Phillips reconstructs the “cinematic philosophy” that Sternberg claimed for himself in his autobiography and for whose fullest expression Dietrich was indispensable. This book makes a case for the originality and perceptiveness with which these films treat such issues as the nature of trust, the status of appearance, the standing of women, the ethics and politics of the image, and the relationship between cinema and the world. Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle reveals that more is at stake in these films than the showcasing of a new star and the confectionery of glamor: Dietrich emerges here as a woman at ease in the world without being at home in it, as both an image of autonomy and the autonomy of the image.

Marriage

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-116
Author(s):  
Sanford N. Katz
Keyword(s):  
Special Kind ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Business Association ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Marriage Formation ◽  
Individual Nature ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the establishment of formal marriage, including same-sex marriage, and the legal issues involved in maintaining that relationship. While in the past the marital relationship was wholly defined by the state, now certain aspects of the relationship can be negotiated by the parties, which may result in a more egalitarian relationship. Also, by including the marriage within the world of contract, one effect is to move the status away from its religious roots and aspects and toward its being a secular relationship. The benefit of treating marriage as a special kind of partnership contract is that it emphasizes the individual nature of the relationship and downplays its community aspects. Indeed, the modern marriage is more like an association, in some situations a business association, of two adults who have preserved their individual rights. The chapter then considers freedom to marry as a fundamental right and looks at how states have limited marriage formation throughout history.

scholarly journals Hope Abjuring Hope: On the Place of Utopia in Realist Political Theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 671-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Thaler
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Utopian Fiction ◽  
Double Function ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Judith Shklar ◽  
The Relationship

This essay reconstructs the place of utopia in realist political theory, by examining the ways in which the literary genre of critical utopias can productively unsettle ongoing discussions about “how to do political theory.” I start by analyzing two prominent accounts of the relationship between realism and utopia: “real utopia” (Erik Olin Wright et al.) and “dystopic liberalism” (Judith Shklar et al.). Elaborating on Raymond Geuss’s recent reflections, the essay then claims that an engagement with literature can shift the focus of these accounts. Utopian fiction, I maintain, is useful for comprehending what is (thus enhancing our understanding of the world) and for contemplating what might be (thus nurturing the hope for a better future). Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed deploys this double function in an exemplary fashion: through her dynamic and open-ended portrayal of an Anarchist community, Le Guin succeeds in imagining a utopia that negates the status quo, without striving to construct a perfect society. The book’s radical, yet ambiguous, narrative hence reveals a strategy for locating utopia within realist political theory that moves beyond the positions dominating the current debate. Reading The Dispossessed ultimately demonstrates that realism without utopia is status quo–affirming, while utopia without realism is wishful thinking.

scholarly journals At Home in the World: Wandering Earth, Environmentalism, and Reimagined Homelands

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
World Order ◽  
Chinese Film ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Original Novella ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Based on a 2000 novella by Cixin Liu with the same title, Frant Gwo’s 2019 film Wandering Earth has been celebrated as China’s first big-budget science fiction film. As a Chinese film with a global theme that simultaneously targets both a domestic and an international audience, accordingly, the work invites a reflection on the relationship between the local and the global—on how we understand the concept of home, and what it might mean to be home in the world. This essay, accordingly, examines three intersecting ways in which Wandering Earth (both the film and the original novella) explores the relationship between home and the world, including the status of the Earth as an ecological system, the planet’s status as a lived environment, as well as a set of contemporary geopolitical discourses about China’s shifting position within the contemporary world order, and particularly its relationship to the Global South.

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