At the Heart of the Death Penalty

2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy Kamuf
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western Tradition

Derrida's seminar The Death Penalty is to an important extent taken up with unpacking the significance of the fact (a ‘stupefying fact’, he calls it) that there is in our Western tradition no philosophy as such against the death penalty. This essay follows the seminar into the heart of its engagement with that legacy, where it traces out the condition of its own interested abolitionist stand. This condition is named ‘the heart of the other in me’, which is the pulse of every finitude, every ‘my’ life. It also gives the impulse in this essay to follow the thread of the ‘heart’ across the seminar's readings of Rousseau, Genet, Hugo and Camus.

Does Literature Matter Today? Thoughts of the Outside

CounterText ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Shaobo Xie
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Education ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
The World

The paper celebrates the publication of Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literature across Continents as a significant event in the age of neoliberalism. It argues that, in spite of the different premises and the resulting interpretative procedures respectively championed by the two co-authors, both of them anchor their readings of literary texts in a concept of literature that is diametrically opposed to neoliberal rationality, and both impassionedly safeguard human values and experiences that resist the technologisation and marketisation of the humanities and aesthetic education. While Ghosh's readings of literature offer lightning flashes of thought from the outside of the Western tradition, signalling a new culture of reading as well as a new manner of appreciation of the other, Miller dedicatedly speaks and thinks against the hegemony of neoliberal reason, opening our eyes to the kind of change our teaching or reading of literature can trigger in the world, and the role aesthetic education should and can play at a time when the humanities are considered ‘a lost cause’.

Loving the Other Beyond Death

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-155
Author(s):  
Kas Saghafi
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Limit Case ◽  
Western Tradition

Turning to an example provided by Aristotle and taken up by Derrida in Politics of Friendship, which functions as a limit case—loving the other beyond death—I argue that Derrida's short-lived term, aimance, gently and lovingly contests the primacy given either to love or to friendship in the Western tradition, but also to the living act of loving and the figure of the lover, putting pressure on the very conceptual differences between these terms.

scholarly journals PAKARTOJIMAS IR NIHILIZMAS

Problemos ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 46-59
Author(s):  
Rita Šerpytytė
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Models ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Text Fragment ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Universal Structure ◽  
The One

Straipsnio tikslas yra atskleisti Vakarų filosofijos tradicijoje savitai įsitvirtinusios patyrimo struktūros, įvardijamos pakartojimu, nihilistinę prasmę. Šioje hermeneutinėje analizėje, viena vertus, re­miamasi tam tikra nihilizmo samprata, numatančia du nihilizmo teorinius modelius – nihilizmą, parem­tą Überwindung teorija, ir nihilizmą, paremtą différance idėja. Kita vertus, remiamasi tam tikru („onto-teologiniu“) pretekstu Vakarų mąstymo tradicijoje atpažįstant pakartojimo struktūrą – Pauliaus Laiško efeziečiams Ef. I, 10 teksto fragmentu, laikomu paradigmine pakartojimo struktūros išsklaida. Herme­neutinė analizė projektuojama į Kierkegaardo ir Agambeno filosofiją, atskirus jų mąstyme atpažįstamus pakartojimo invariantus atskleidžiant kaip minėto Pauliaus Laiško fragmento eksplozijos atvejus. Ke­liamas klausimas, kas yra pakartojimas, kur slypi jo negatyvumas ir kaip pasirodo jo nihilistinė prasmė? Kaip šioje negatyvumo ir nihilizmo atskleistyje „tarpininkauja“ différance? Straipsnyje parodoma, jog skirtis kaip neigimo judesys, atstovaujantis nihilistinei logikai, gali būti traktuojamas ir vien formaliai, ir realiai. Skirties kaip realaus neigimo traktavimas Kierkegaardo ir Agambeno mąstyme atitinka pačios patirties struktūros – pakartojimo – ontologinį (tikrovišką) įšaknytumą.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: pakartojimas, nihilizmas, différance, negatyvumas, laikasPakartojimas ir nihilizmasRita Šerpytytė   AbstractThe purpose of this article is to reveal the nihilistic sense of an experiential structure, which has been distinctively rooted in Western philosophical tradition. On the one hand, this hermeneutical analysis will be based on a certain conception of nihilism presupposing two theoretical models of nihilism – nihilism, which refers to the theory of Überwindung, and nihilism associated with the idea of différance. On the other hand, it builds upon a certain (the so-called “onto-theological”) pretext, which might be used for recognition of the structure of repetition in Western tradition of thinking, – i.e. the fragment of a text from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians Eph. I, 10 – the paradigmatic passage proposing this universal structure of repetition. Focused both on philosophy of Kierkegaard and Agamben, hermeneutical analysis will aim to disclose the separate invariants of such repetition as cases of explosion of the mentioned text fragment. The question is raised – what is repetition? Where does its negativity lie? How does its nihilistic sense appear? How does the différance mediate in this process of revealing of negativity and nihilism? The article argues that difference, as a motion of negation representing nihilistic logic, can be treated both in merely formal and in a realistic way. The treating of différance as real denying in Kierkegaard’s and Agamben’s thinking corresponds to the ontological rootedness of the very structure of experience – repetition.Keywords: repetition, nihilism, différance, negativity, time

Visual Perspective in Causal Attribution, Empathy and Attitude Change

2003 ◽  
Vol 93 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1035-1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Özdem M. Önder ◽  
Bengi Öner-özkan
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Attitude Change ◽  
Causal Attribution ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Observer Bias

The aim of the present study was to test the effect of visual perspective on the actor–observer bias. For this aim, we examined the effects of different visual perspectives on individuals' external and internal attributions. In addition to this, we examined the presence or absence of an attitude change toward the death penalty due to participants' visual perspective. One week before the experiment, we measured the participants' attitudes toward the death penalty. Then, during the experiment, films produced by one of the authors of this study were shown to two separate groups of participants. There were two films, each film constituting one of the two levels of visual perception. The content of each film was the memories of a person who was given the death penalty for the murder of his own brother. Level of visual perception was manipulated by using different camera perspectives, one from the actor's point of view and the other from the observer's point of view. At the end of the experiment, participants' attitudes toward the death penalty were measured again.

What is the Nature of the Crime of the Delinquent Daughter in Deuteronomy 22:13-21? A Rejoinder to J. Fleishman's Suggestion

2009 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-459
Author(s):  
Meir Malul
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Previous Suggestion ◽  
Social Community ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

AbstractThe exact nature of the girl's crime in the law of the delinquent daughter in Deut 22:13-21 is examined, starting by a detailed critique of J. Fleishman's previous suggestion in this journal (vol. 58, pp. 191-210) to construe it in the light of the law of cursing the parents in Exod 21:17 and understand it as an innovation and restriction of the latter law. In his view, the girl's sin is tantamount to cursing her parents, which, like the sin of the glatton and drunkard son according to Deut 21: 18-21, meant the undermining of the parents' authority and status, for which both boy and girl deserved the death penalty. In the following critique, it is underlined that the girl's sin is, first, not one of omission but of commission, and, second, it is not against her parents but against her husband, who is also the one to initiate the legal proceedings. A new interpretation is suggested, according to which the girl's crime, defined in v. 21 as an act of and a deed of, consisted not only in concealing her previous loss of virginity from her husband, thus deceiving him and her parents, but also in duping her husband into committing a sin comparable to that of lying with a menstruating, and thus desolate, woman. Being deprived of virginity, and thus of the socially recognized status of a virgin, she became, like Tamar (2 Sam 13:20), “desolate, forlorn”, an unenviable state from which only her seducer/ravisher could redeem her (thus are the sense and goal of the laws of the seduced virgin in Exod 22:15-16 and Deut 22:28-29). Trying to dupe her husband into steping in and performing what custom and law dictated the other man—the seducer/ravisher—should have done, and thus to arrogate to herself a social status she did not deserve, was then tantamount to undermining social structure and striking at the fibers that constituted the essence and integrity of the social community (cf. Prov 30:21-23).

scholarly journals Turning the Other Lobe: Directional Biases in Brain Diagrams

i-Perception ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 204166951770776
Author(s):  
Richard Wiseman ◽  
Adrian M. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Human Head ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Exhaustive Search ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western Tradition

Past research shows that in drawn or photographic portraits, people are significantly more likely to be posed facing to their right than their left. We examined whether the same type of bias exists among sagittal images of the human brain. An exhaustive search of Google images using the term ‘brain sagittal view’ yielded 425 images of a left or right facing brain. The direction of each image was coded and revealed that 80% of the brains were right-facing. This bias was present in images that did not contain any representation of a human head. It is argued that the effect might be aesthetic in nature, the result of the Western tradition of reading left to right or due to the facial factors that underlie the bias previously found in portraits.

The Waltham Black Act: A Study of the Legislative Attitude Towards Crime in the Eighteenth Century

1945 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Radzinowicz
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Large Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Robin Hood ◽  
Accurate Knowledge ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
Almost All

In 1723 a statute was enacted (9 Geo. I, c. 22) bearing the following title: ‘An Act for the more effectual punishing wicked and evil disposed Persons going armed in Disguise, and doing Injuries and Violences to the Persons and Properties of His Majesty's Subjects, and for the more speedy bringing the Offenders to Justice.’ This statute is commonly known as the Waltham Black Act—a name indicative of the local circumstances which led to its being passed. According to Blackstone, the statute was enacted to stop the depredations which were being committed near Waltham, in Hampshire, by persons in disguise or with their faces blacked; he also observes that the technique of these offenders, who operated in the forests of Waltham, seemed to have been modelled on the criminal activities of the famous band of Roberdsmen, or followers of Robert, or Robin, Hood, who committed great outrages in the reign of Richard the First on the border of England and Scotland. An interesting reference to the Waltham Black Act occurs in Gilbert White's ‘The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne in the County of Southampton,’ and it is significant that while Blackstone cautiously refrains from expressing any opinion on this statute, White says that it is ‘severe and sanguinary’ and that ‘it comprehends more felonies than any law that ever was framed before.’ Actually, no other single statute passed during the eighteenth century equalled 9 Geo. I, c. 22, in severity, and none appointed the punishment of death in so many cases. The Waltham Black Act may, in fact, be looked upon as a kind of ‘ideological index’ to the large body of laws based on the death penalty which were in force in England at the end of the eighteenth, and the beginning of the nineteenth, centuries. The main features peculiar to this Act reappear, sometimes in a modified form, in almost all the other capital statutes of the period. Thus, an accurate knowledge of the Waltham Black Act is essential if the structure and guiding principles of the capital enactments in general are to be understood; moreover, the fact that the struggle for the repeal of this extraordinary statute was both intense and prolonged, further enhances the symptomatic importance of the Act, which might otherwise seem to be but an obscure enactment designed to meet a purely local emergency.

scholarly journals RIGHT TO LIFE IN HUNGARY AND IN THE EU: THE EVER-TROUBLESOME ISSUE OF ABORTION

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-90
Author(s):  
Ferenc Zoltán Simó
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Termination Of Pregnancy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Modern Sense ◽  
The Eu

In relation to one of the human rights, right to life, most frequently there are, at least, two challenging fields might be brought up, one is death penalty, and the other is termination of pregnancy or abortion. If one intends to comprehend how abortion has been dealt with historically in the western legal tradition one must first come to terms with two quite different but interrelated historical trajectories, the ancient Judeo-Christian condemnation of prenatal homicide as a wrong justifying retribution; and, there is the juristic definition of "crime" in the modern sense of the word.

Undoing Death I

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The Other ◽  
Average Period

Capital punishment has been described as a ‘lottery’, implying that it operates at random; but in Ireland a pattern can be discerned. Murderers who avoided execution fell into one of six categories, with a clear gradient in how sympathetically they were viewed, as indicated by the duration of their coercive confinement and the likelihood that mercy would be recommended. At one end of the scale were those who destroyed an unwanted child, 92 per cent of whom aroused the sympathy of judge and jury and who were denied their liberty for 44 months, on average. At the other extreme were those whose treatment was capricious, only 20 per cent of whom received recommendations to mercy and whose average period of coercive confinement was 115 months. This chapter explores cases where the death penalty was imposed for the murder of an infant (usually, but not always, by the mother), romantic entanglements that had lethally soured, and sexual violence resulting in death.

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