Thoughts on the "global turn" as a disciplinary future

With a special emphasis on regional studies, this chapter takes up the challenge to theorize about the complexities of cultural interaction without imposing ethnocentric categories such as those that historically defined the discipline of art history on Euro-American terms. One of the primary obstacles to rethinking the discipline of art history has been the segmentation of our archives by period style and national culture. How can we access this past (and present) without also passing on values that may no longer be tenable but are inherent in our classifying terms and structures? I review issues of shared concern across a wide expanse of methods and subjects under four categories: (1) the problem of universals and universalism; (2) working within a national culture model in a transcultural setting; (3) the epistemic and ontological ground of research; and (4) the ethics of scholarship. I advocate for a material-based, non-transcendental ontology capacious enough to appeal to many different interpretative aims at the center of transcultural approaches, such as what happens when values, beliefs, and information are not held in common. In such cases, interpretation focuses on the heterogeneity of the artwork itself.

Tragic Stability and Elusive Selfhood: On the Drive for Self-Development in Contemporary China

The requirement for “self-development” through the ceaseless acquisition of skills and credentials has long been central for young adults in China. However, due to the multiple and unpredictable demands of social institutions, many social actors also prime the cultivation of a self that does not succumb to immediate occupational and material impositions. In this article, I describe how young adults in a second-tier city pursue a model of personhood that brings together socioeconomic competence and singular individuality. These individuals aspire to expand their range of experiences and their spatial mobility, thereby reifying an image of a self that transcends narrow social roles and networks. Drawing on Jean-Paul Sartre's dualistic philosophy, I analyse young adults’ attempts to realise individualised selves by destabilising their ontological ground. I argue that this phenomenon is magnified in China through widespread notions of a “moral crisis” and its supposable suppression of social actors’ agency.

The Ontology of Discrimination

Discrimination is a social phenomenon which seems to be widespread across different societies and cultures. Examples of discrimination concerning race, class, gender, and sexual orientation are not difficult to find in contemporary western societies. In this article, the author focus on the ontological ground of this phenomenon, with particular attention to its diffuse and institutionalised forms. The author defends a broadly speaking reductionist approach, according to which the various manifestations of discrimination are grounded on the existence of the effects of “discriminatory stances” in social contexts. Discrimination may become part of the institutional sphere, either by way of bottom-up “crystallisation” of discriminatory practices, or by top-down “dilution” of institutional defaults into ordinary interactions.

Nature at the Limits of Science and Phenomenology

Kant and Heidegger argue that our subjectivity escapes scientific explanation, while also providing the conditions that enable it. This understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and science places limits on the explanatory scope of the sciences. But what makes transcendental reflection on the structure of subjectivity possible in the first place? Fink argues that transcendental philosophy encounters its own limits in attempting to characterize its own conditions of possibility. I argue that the limits of science and transcendental philosophy entail that nature cannot be conceived as a specific object, or as a totality of objects in the world, but only as the ontological ground of phenomenal manifestation in general. Nature is not identical with anything discoverable in either science or phenomenology; it is, rather, the origin from which discovery of phenomena proceeds.

The Concepts of Risk, Safety, and Security: A Fundamental Exploration and Understanding of Similarities and Differences

When discussing the concepts of risk, safety, and security, people have an intuitive understanding of what these concepts mean and to a certain level, this understanding is universal. However, when delving into the meaning of the words and concepts in order to fully understand all their aspects, one is likely to fall into a semantic debate and ontological discussions. As such, this chapter explores the similarities and differences behind the perceptions to come to a fundamental understanding of the concepts, proposing a common semantic and ontological ground for safety and security science, introducing a definition of objectives as a central starting point in the study and management of risk, safety, and security.

Existentialism and Ecstasy: Colin Wilson’s Phenomenological Account of Peak Experiences

This paper critically examines the philosophical foundations of Colin Wilson’s New Existentialism. I will show how Wilson’s writings promoted a phenomenological strategy for understanding states of ecstatic affirmation within so-called ‘peak experiences’. Wilson subsequently attempted to use the life affirming insights bestowed by peak states to establish an ontological ground for values to serve as a foundation for his New Existentialism. Because of its psychological focus however, I argue that Wilson’s New Existentialism contains an ambivalent framework for establishing ontological categories, which leads his thought into theoretical difficulties. More precisely, Wilson’s strategy runs into problems in coherently integrating its explicitly psychological interpretation of Husserl’s theory of intentionality within a broader, and philosophically coherent, phenomenological framework. Wilson’s psychological reading of Husserl’s transcendental reduction, for example, manifests tensions in how it reconciles the empirical basis of acts of transcendence with an essentialist conception of the self as a transcendental ego. The above tensions, I argue, ultimately render the New Existentialism susceptible to criticism from a Husserlian-transcendental perspective. After outlining a Husserlian critique of Wilson’s position, I end the paper by suggesting how some of the central insights of the New Existentialism might help to bridge the gap that persists between pure phenomenological description and metaphysics.

Prohairesis on the Inside: The Duchess of Malfi and Epictetian Volition

This chapter traces the indebtedness of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi to Epictetian philosophy. For Epictetus, those who assent to false impressions, or phantasiai, enslave themselves, lessening their humanity. Conversely, those who reject false impressions remain free and fully human, however physically enslaved they might otherwise be. While the doctrines of Epictetian philosophy may seem a retreat from the political sphere into the untouchable recesses of an imperceptible interiority, Webster's play reveals the threat such a radical notion of liberty might pose to a repressive political system. For the playwright subtly depicts the prospect that solidarity across the various strata of society, built upon a shared sense of interior liberty, could prevail, where secret defiance and violent rebellion had not, in displacing systemic inequity. By aligning Bosola's revenge, as well as the Duchess' remarriage and death, with a strain of Epictetian prohairesis, Webster tethers the play's multiple acts of resistance into a complex yet coherent ontological ground. In doing so, he figures the imperceptible stirrings of human volition as a potent political force – if distributed broadly among the dehumanized and dispossessed – rife with revolutionary potential.

Autonomy as a Social Role and the Function of Diversity

In the ambit of the debate on “personal autonomy”, we propose to intend “personal autonomy” in a social sense. We undertake this move because we think that autonomy is compatible with socialization and we will give reasons for this claim. Moreover, we must consider the role of the wide variety of informational sources we are exposed to that influence our behavior. Social background represents the ontological ground from which we develop the capacity for autonomy; at the same time, interaction with others (real or virtual) enlarges the possibility for autonomous judgements. Our attempt is, first, to try to sketch a social notion of personal autonomy and, second, to elucidate the connection between autonomy and the exposition to informational and social diversity.