Of mountains, lakes and essences: John Teasdale and the transmission of mindfulness

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 107-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Drage
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Therapy ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Theoretical Support ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective

In this article I examine an important episode in the growth of ‘mindfulness’ as a biomedical modality in Britain: the formation and establishment of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) by John Teasdale and his colleagues Mark Williams and Zindel Segal. My study, focusing on Teasdale’s contribution, combines ethnographic, oral historical and archival research to understand how mindfulness was disseminated or, to use a term sometimes used by mindfulness practitioners themselves, ‘transmitted’. Drawing on theoretical support from Max Weber, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, I argue that transmission had a very specific form within the Buddhistic milieu that Teasdale occupied and within which he developed MBCT. To ‘transmit’ mindfulness was to transmit an experiential essence; a type of subjectivity that was seen as perennial, universal and radically distinct from its historical context. In tracing the recurring metaphysical, metaphorical and visual tropes of mindfulness and its transmission, I attempt to understand how Teasdale was embedded in both local and global networks of discourse and practice, and how his life and work contributed and depended upon an assemblage whose elements (institutional, technical, conceptual, textual) straddled empiricist psychology and religious mysticism. I also examine how authority, experience and knowledge were closely interwoven in the birth of British mindfulness, coming together to form an affectively compelling ‘diagram’ that shaped the way mindfulness was practiced and disseminated. In doing so, I aim to open up the possibility of studying the history of the human sciences from a new perspective: one which places an emphasis on the emotional impetus generated by metaphysical assumptions.

scholarly journals The metaphysical standing of the human: A future for the history of the human sciences

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Edmund Husserl ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Century Science

I reconstruct my own journey into the history of the human sciences, which I show to have been a process of discovering the metaphysical standing of the human. I begin with Alexandre Koyré’s encounter with Edmund Husserl in the 1930s, which I use to throw light on the legacy of Kant’s ‘anthropological’ understanding of the human, which dominated and limited 19th-century science. As I show, those who broke from Kant’s strictures and set the stage for the 20th-century revolutions in science - from Hegel, to John McTaggart, to Max Weber - typically were pursuing crypto-theological questions about how a finite being can comprehend an infinite universe. This journey is about the ‘common measure’ of being human, which is what links Plato to Kuhn, but has been most consistently taken up by law. I suggest that in seeking this ‘measure of man’, we may discover that to be human is not necessarily to be Homo sapiens, which would suggest a radical reorientation of the history of the human sciences.

The State of the Political

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The State ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Franz Neumann

This book offers a broad-ranging re-interpretation of the understanding of politics and the state in the writings of three major German thinkers, Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Franz Neumann. It rejects the typical separation of these writers on the basis of their allegedly incompatible ideological positions, and suggests instead that once properly located in their historical context, the tendentious character of these interpretative boundaries becomes clear. The book interprets the conceptions of politics and the state in the writings of these three thinkers by means of an investigation of their adaptation and modification of particular German traditions of thinking about the state, or Staatsrechtslehre. Indeed, when the theoretical considerations of this state-legal theory are combined with their contemporary political criticism, a richer and more deeply textured account of the issues that engaged the attention of Weber, Schmitt and Neumann is possible. Thus, the broad range of subjects discussed in this book include parliamentarism and democracy in Germany, academic freedom and political economy, political representation, cultural criticism and patriotism, and the relationship between rationality, law, sovereignty and the constitution. The study attempts to restore a sense of proportion to the discussion of the three authors' writings, focusing on the extensive ideas that they shared rather than insisting on their necessary ideological separation. It is a detailed re-appraisal of a crucial moment in modern intellectual history, and highlights the profound importance of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Franz Neumann for the history of European ideas.

Nouvelles perspectives sur la réception de la littérature castillane en français à la fin du Moyen Âge

2018 ◽  
Vol 134 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-61
Author(s):  
Olivier Delsaux
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The One ◽  
French Texts ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Duke Of Burgundy

Abstract This paper aims to get a better insight into the material, literary and historical context surrounding two important, but neglected or unknown, evidences of the dissemination of Castillan literature in the French literature at the end of the Middle Ages. The French translations of Diego de Valera’s Crónica abreviada de España o Valeriana, on the one part, and of Pero López de Ayala’s Crónicas, on the other part, were both achieved between 1504–1506 for the last « Duke of Burgundy » Philip the Fair. Through the investigation of the surviving manuscripts, of the paratext and of the content of these two French texts, will be argued that Vasco de Lucena or Fernando de Lucena are two ideal candidates for their attribution. Moreover, the paper will offer a new perspective on a major evidence of the History of the Castillan language : the Epistola latina et hispanica.

Philosophic Pride

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. The book delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, the book details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. The book shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.

Divination and Human Nature

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter T. Struck
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Observable Fact

This book casts a new perspective on the rich tradition of ancient divination—the reading of divine signs in oracles, omens, and dreams. Popular attitudes during classical antiquity saw these readings as signs from the gods while modern scholars have treated such beliefs as primitive superstitions. The book reveals instead that such phenomena provoked an entirely different accounting from the ancient philosophers. These philosophers produced subtle studies into what was an odd but observable fact—that humans could sometimes have uncanny insights—and their work signifies an early chapter in the cognitive history of intuition. Examining the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Neoplatonists, the book demonstrates that they all observed how, setting aside the charlatans and swindlers, some people had premonitions defying the typical bounds of rationality. Given the wide differences among these ancient thinkers, the book notes that they converged on seeing this surplus insight as an artifact of human nature, projections produced under specific conditions by our physiology. For the philosophers, such unexplained insights invited a speculative search for an alternative and more naturalistic system of cognition. Recovering a lost piece of an ancient tradition, this book illustrates how philosophers of the classical era interpreted the phenomena of divination as a practice closer to intuition and instinct than magic.

A França no limiar de novos tempos: Paul Vidal de La Blache e a regionalização

GEOgraphia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Vic Ozouf-Marignier ◽  
Marie-Claire Robic
Keyword(s):  
Economic Impacts ◽  
Geographic Thought ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective

No âmbito da renovação dos estudos sobre a história do pensamento geográfico, este artigo se opõe as interpretações que consagraram Paul Vidal de la Blache como um intelectual restrito às relações homem-meio e nostálgico da França camponesa. Uma leitura mais atent valiando a dinâmica sócio-econômica e seus impactos espaciais, a contribuição de Vidal de la Blache propunha, como solução para o futuro da França, uma nova regionalização do território nacional. Abstract This article presents a new perspective in the history of geographic thought, by opposing established approaches to Paul Vidal de Ia Blache as an intelectual restrict to relations man-environment and as a nostalgic of peasant France. A deeper reading of his work reveals a progressive passage from an initial "naturalistic" view to a socio-economic and urban-industrial approach. Through these economic impacts, Vidal proposes, as a solution for the future of France, a new regionalization of national temtory.

Truth to Power

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Intelligence Support ◽  
The Cold War

This first-ever history of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) is told through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Coeditors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments. The historic mission of this remarkable but little-understood organization is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. It has been at the center of every critical foreign policy issue during the period covered by this volume: helping shape America’s post–Cold War strategies, confronting sectarian conflicts around the world, meeting the new challenge of international terrorism, and now assessing the radical restructuring of the global order. Each chapter places its particular period of the NIC’s history in context (the global situation, the administration, the intelligence community) and assesses the most important issues with which the NIC grappled during the period, acknowledging failures as well as claiming successes. With the creation of the director of national intelligence in 2005, the NIC’s mission mushroomed to include direct intelligence support to the main policymaking committees in the government. The mission shift took the NIC directly into the thick of the action but may have come at the expense of weakening its historic role of providing over-the horizon strategic analysis.

Empiricisms

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Allen
Keyword(s):  
John Dewey ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
William James ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Chinese Tradition ◽  
Experimental Practice ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
History Of

Empiricisms reassesses the values of experience and experiment in European philosophy and comparatively. It traces the history of empirical philosophy from its birth in Greek medicine to its emergence as a philosophy of modern science. A richly detailed account in Part I of history’s empiricisms establishes a context in Part II for reconsidering the work of the so-called radical empiricists—William James, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, and Gilles Deleuze, each treated in a dedicated chapter. What is “radical” about their work is to return empiricism from epistemology to the ontology and natural philosophy where it began. Empiricisms also sets empirical philosophy in conversation with Chinese tradition, considering technological, scientific, medical, and alchemical sources, as well as selected Confucian, Daoist, and Mohist classics. The work shows how philosophical reflection on experience and a profound experimental practice coexist in traditional China with no interaction or even awareness of each other. Empiricism is more multi-textured than philosophers tend to assume when we explain it to ourselves and to students. One purpose of Empiricisms is to recover the neglected context. A complementary purpose is to elucidate the value of experience and arrive at some idea of what is living and dead in philosophical empiricism.

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