Humane Philosophy as Public Philosophy

2018 ◽  
Vol 92 ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
David McPherson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Engagement ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Public Philosophy ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Existential Issues

Public philosophy is typically conceived as philosophical engagement with contemporary social and political issues in the public sphere. I argue that public philosophy should also aim to engage with existential issues that arise from the human condition. In other words, we should engage in “humane philosophy.” In the first section I fill out and show the attractions of this humane conception of philosophy by contrasting it with a rival scientistic conception. In the second section I demonstrate how the practice of humane philosophy is important for engaging with contemporary social and political issues and how it offers the best path for religious engagement with these issues. Contra John Rawls and other liberal political philosophers, I argue that public engagement with controversial issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, and genetic engineering requires engaging competing existential stances and I show how this can be done.

Embodied Reasons in the Public Sphere: The Example of the Hijab

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-512
Author(s):  
Thomas Wabel
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
The Public Sphere

In public debates on moral or political issues between participants from different religious backgrounds, liberal and secular thinkers like John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas recommend to restrict oneself to free-standing reasons that are independent of their religious, social or cultural origin. Following German philosopher Matthias Jung, however, I argue that such reasons fall short of describing the relevance of the issue in question for the adherents of a specific religion or worldview. Referring to the debates in several European countries about the hijab, I am showing how a deeper understanding of reasons as embodied in social practices and as embodied in individual biographies can help to disentangle such debates and to facilitate a dialogue on these issues.

Marginalia as narratives of ordinary lives: Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s Down to This

2021 ◽  
pp. 002198942098111
Author(s):  
Silvia Julia Caporale-Bizzini
Keyword(s):  
Public Perception ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Personal Journey ◽  
The Public ◽  
Big City ◽  
The Human Condition

This article examines Canadian author Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s 2004 memoir Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City Shantytown through the notions of marginalia and the ordinary in order to question dichotomic representations of homelessness. It explores how the author moves beyond binaries, interrogating the dichotomy ordinary/out of the ordinary lives by narrating his ethical encounter with the other (Butler, 2004). The text is written as a journal where Bishop-Stall describes his personal journey through homelessness; and more importantly, it gives a voice to the other down-and-out people in notorious Toronto’s Tent City. The characters’ unreliable and fragmented storytelling uncovers the lives of the faceless others. I contend that in Down to This individuals’ life stories are connected to realities which question binaries through the re/mapping of ordinary experiences and affects; they disintegrate the opposition materiality vs abstraction, or as I argue, exclusion vs inclusion (out of the ordinary/ordinary). Down to These bridges the private details of the residents’ life stories, and the public perception of the problem of homelessness, illustrating how everyday moments of precarity intersect with wider political issues. In the process, the narrative also questions the binary attitudes of exclusion (disfranchisement) and inclusion (privilege). This literary strategy gives the constellation of stories a profound illuminating vision of the human condition. I show my point by drawing on the of marginalia (Kistner 2014), and by analysing the characters’ narratives of precariousness through the notions of editing and affective assemblage (Gerlach, 2015; Hamilakis, 2017).

Does Your Research Really Matter? Revitalizing Public Engagement in the Study of Emerging Adulthood

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 383-390
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Emerging Adulthood ◽  
Emerging Adults ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Research Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Societal Relevance ◽  
The World ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
The Public Sphere

The broad goal of researchers of emerging adulthood can be construed as wanting to advance the understanding of development in emerging adulthood with the outcome of bettering the lives of emerging adults throughout the world. However, the information we amass during the research process is rarely extracted into the public sphere to influence policy or practice. My goal in this article is to revitalize motivations to conduct research that matters and provide an overview of practices that enhance the societal relevance and translational nature of our research via public engagement. First, I will discuss what public engagement by researchers is and why it matters. Second, I will identify barriers to engaging in public engagement. Third, I will review practices that can move us toward greater public engagement as researchers of emerging adulthood. Overall, though it presents many challenges, public engagement is critical for using our research to invoke social change.

What Scope for Ethics in the Public Sphere? Principled Autonomy and the Antinomy of Practical Reason

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-498
Author(s):  
Maureen Junker-Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
The Public Sphere

Concepts of ‘public reason’ vary according to the underlying understandings of theoretical and practical reason; they make a difference to what can be argued for in the public sphere as justified expectations to oneself and fellow-citizens. What is the significance for the scope of ethics when two neo-Kantian theorists of public reason, John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, propose a reduced reading of the ‘antinomy’ highlighted in Kant’s analysis of practical reason? The desire for meaning, unrelinquishable for humans, is frustrated when moral initiatives are met with hostility. Kant resolves the antinomy between morality and happiness by invoking the concept of a creator God whose concern that our anticipatory moral actions should not fail encourages the hope on which human agency relies. Defining the scope of ethics by the unconditional character of reason ( Vernunft) rules out the minimisation of ethics to what can safely be expected to be delivered.

The Hijab Debate in the Norwegian Press: Secular or Religious Arguments?

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cora Alexa Døving
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Religious Motivation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
The Public Sphere

Do religious debaters challenge the secular public sphere? This article is an analysis of the largest religion related debate in Norway: the debate about the hijab and the use of religious symbols in the public sphere. The article is empirically founded on the debates in 2009 that began with the question about to which degree the hijab could become part of the Norwegian police uniform for those who would wish to use it. The analysis is mainly centred on the arguments of the hijab wearers: to what degree is their religious motivation translated into a secular language? The empirical examination will show that Muslim debaters arguments can be characterized by a striking absence of references to religious concepts, and a just as striking use of secular ones. The article suggests that the lack of religious argumentation is an expression of an Islamic secularism rather than a result of a translation process. The hijab wearer's arguments are presented in the light of John Rawls’ and Jürgen Habermas’ thoughts about the need for translation—and its price.

The U.S. Congressional Record as a technology of representation

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zornitsa Keremidchieva
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Congressional Debates ◽  
Congressional Record ◽  
Written Form ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Historical Controversies ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Argumentative Practice

Focusing on the historical controversies surrounding the development of the print records of the U.S. congressional debates, this essay explores how human, technological, and discursive agencies come together to constitute institutional argumentative practice. Examining the U.S. Congressional Record through the lens of Bruno Latour’s concept of dingpolitik reveals that as a technology of representation print records work less as mediators and more as agents of institutional contextualization. Print records do more than translate arguments from oral to written form or transfer arguments from the public sphere to the state. Rather, they assemble the disparate elements that constitute the terrains of governance, the character of political issues, and the norms of congressional deliberation. Hence, the material dynamics of congressional deliberation prompt not only a reconsideration of what and who is being represented by Congress, but also a methodological reorientation from normative to constitutive perspectives on institutional argumentation.

The big data public and its problems: Big data and the structural transformation of the public sphere

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (9) ◽  
pp. 1424-1439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tauel Harper
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Media Production ◽  
Audience Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Media Preferences ◽  
Media Experience

The use of algorithms to mine big data for media preferences presents a transformation in the structure of the public sphere that is amplifying the tyranny of the majority. Whereas previous scholarship has lamented the fragmentation of the public sphere caused by the use of big data to inform audience analysis and media production, I argue here that fragmentation itself is not an implicitly bad thing for public debate, as fragmentation can encourage participation from the otherwise disempowered. Instead, I suggest that the use of big data to inform media production causes problems in the public sphere not because it fragments public debate, but because it somewhat paradoxically recentres public engagement around the complementary interests of the broad majority and profitability. The problem for public engagement is not that there are no overarching or all-encompassing media structures anymore but rather that these systems are informed by algorithms that promote a particularly populist ‘profitable and normal’ media experience.

scholarly journals From Silence to Primary Definer: The Emergence of an Intelligence Lobby in the Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-430
Author(s):  
Paul Lashmar
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intelligence Services ◽  
Intelligence Agencies ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Cold War

Until the end of the Cold War the UK intelligence services were not officially acknowledged, and their personnel were banned from entering the public sphere. From 1989 the UK government began to put the intelligence services on a legal footing and to release the identity of the heads of the intelligence agencies. Since then, public engagement by the intelligence agencies has gathered pace. What this article hypothesises is that there is now, in the UK, an effective intelligence lobby of former insiders who engage in the public sphere – using on the record briefings – to counter criticism of the intelligence community and to promote a narrative and vision of what UK intelligence should do, how it is supported and how oversight is conducted. Content analysis and framing models of non-broadcast coverage of intelligence debates, focusing on the 36 months after the Snowden revelations, confirm an active and rolling lobby of current and former intelligence officials. The paper concludes that the extent of the lobby’s interventions in the public sphere is a matter for debate and possible concern.

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