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- Volume 109, Issue 1, 2017
Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte - Volume 109, Issue 1, 2017
Volume 109, Issue 1, 2017
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Sophie de Grouchy, de traditie(s) van de twee vrijheden en de missende moeder(s) van het liberalisme1
More LessAbstractSophie de Grouchy: The Tradition(s) of Two Liberties and the Missing Mother(s) of Liberalism
In this paper, I treat Sophie de Grouchy as an important contributor to liberal reflection on the famous distinction between two kinds of liberty. I place her in the intellectual context of Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and show it is likely that Benjamin Constant was familiar with her work. Along the way, by engaging with Isaiah Berlin and with Jason Stanley and Vesla Weaver, I make some suggestions on the nature of an intellectual tradition worth having.
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Filosoferen over littekens
More LessAbstractPhilosophizing on Scars: Plea for a Material Turn in Phenomonology
In this paper, I provide a philosophical reflection on the meaning of scars while drawing on phenomenological studies of the body. According to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the body as Leib or corps vécu (lived body) functions as a transcendental condition for world disclosure. Because of this transcendental reasoning, phenomenological studies concerning embodiment often prioritize a form of embodied subjectivity that is virtually immaterial. Endowing meaning to one’s world by becoming engaged in actions and projects is most successful when one’s body is ‘absent,’ ‘transparent,’ or, at least, if it is not in the center of one’s attention. This taken-for-granted nature can be disturbed by discomfort, disability, and disfigurement. Habituation to these kinds of disturbances aims at maintaining or restoring the body’s taken-for-grantedness. Successful restoration of this taken-for-grantedness is mostly understood in terms of incorporation. My analysis of the case of a woman who successfully habituated to her mastectomy scar demonstrates, however, that habituation to a perceptible scar can be understood only partly in terms of incorporation. Next to a decrease of explicit attention for the scar and the discomfort it produces (i.e. incorporation), the scar should also stop being a sign that refers to something else than itself. This is only possible, I argue, by taking the body’s materiality seriously, rather than it being wiped out as a result of transcendental reasoning.
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Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí, de uitvinding van ‘de vrouw’ en de grenzen van de (feministische) filosofie
More LessAbstractOyèrónké Oyĕwùmí, the Invention of Women and the Limits of (Feminist) Philosophy
In this paper I argue that the work of Nigerian feminist scholar Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí reveals the limitations of the attempts by Western feminist philosophers to subvert philosophy’s occupation with the universal. By paying close attention to the particularities of Yorùbá society, Oyĕwùmí creates a knowledge framework or epistemology that poses a profound challenge to Western feminist thought by undermining and disputing the universality of its foundational concepts. She illustrates how the concepts central to Western feminist thought, such as ‘woman’ and ‘gender’ are constructed on the basis of Western cultural particulars which are universalized at the expense of societies with alternative cultural and social configurations. Her work therefore reveals the way in which Western feminist thought, despite its attempts to produce knowledge that is situated and rooted in the particular, remains permeated with and reliant on Western concepts that it uncritically assumes to be universal. I place Oyĕwùmí in dialogue with Belgian feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray to illustrate this point in more concrete terms. I show that although Irigaray identifies and explains how philosophy works to silence and erase Others, and what must be done to overcome this, her focus on sexual difference leads her to step into the same trap as the philosophers she criticizes.
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Een blik vanuit de marge
Authors: Senne Nout & Katrine SmietAbstractA View from the Margins. A Situated Intersectional Perspective in Philosophy
In this article, we introduce a situated intersectional perspective as an approach to look critically at the ways in which philosophical knowledge is constructed, and to question what disappears from sight in the process. ‘Intersectionality’ and ‘situated knowledges’ are two concepts that have been developed within feminist scholarship. While they have been taken up widely in gender studies and other social science disciplines, their reception within the field of philosophy has been limited. However we contend this approach has a lot to offer philosophy, and can serve as a fruitful strategic tool for making difference visible within philosophical discussions. After introducing and contextualizing these central concepts, the article puts a situated intersectional perspective in practice through an analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body. Looking at Merleau-Ponty’s theory through this lens shows both how his thought on the body is shaped through his own historical and geo-political situatedness, as well as the intersectional blind spots that this situatedness brings with it. We argue that this case study demonstrates the importance of diverse voices and perspectives within the field, not in order to dismiss Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, but rather in order to use it as a starting point for a multiplicity of embodied experiences. By opening up a space for critical reflection on one’s own situation and recognizing the partiality of our perspectives, a situated intersectional perspective challenges exclusionary tendencies in philosophy.
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Kunnen moslims denken?
More LessAbstractCan Muslims Think? The Invisibility of the Islamic Philosophical Tradition
This paper discusses some authors and genres of the classcial Islamic tradition not generally recognized as philosophical, but relevant both for the understanding of today’s confrontation between the Islamic world and the liberal West, and for academic philosophical discussions of Islam. I focus on the theologian Ibn Taymiyya, who has been hijacked by modern salafi-jihadi activists, but who gives a critique of Aristotelian syllogistic that is philosophically serious and substantial, and on the classical Persian poetic tradition, which turns out to embody an ethical tradition of practical humanist wisdom. An awareness of the very existence of such traditions can help to combat the reductionist and ahistorical views of the Islamic world that pervade the contemporary public debate.
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Is de filosofie te links?
Authors: Andreas De Block & Olivier LemeireAbstractIs Philosophy too Left-wing?
Ideological diversity has been on the research agenda in the social sciences for a couple of years. Yet in philosophy, the topic has not attracted much interest. This article tries to start filling this gap. We discuss a number of possible causes for the underrepresentation of right-wing and conservative philosophers in the academic profession. We also argue why this should be an important concern, not only morally, but also and primarily epistemically. Lastly, we explore whether the situation in philosophy is more problematic than the situation in other fields, and what kind of ideological diversity would be desirable for academic philosophy.
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Werkzame principes
By Menno RolAbstractWorking principles: Building scientific memories in social research
Internal and external validity of experimental and quasi-experimental research are both essential in the evaluation of interventions; this is true in such diverse practices as social policy and pharmacology. However, they may trade-off if the quest for internal validity brings about the treatment of contextual variables – that helped to make or fail the intervention – as competing with the intervention instead of necessary for its success. Investment in internal validity takes the form of many types of correction for bias, often obscuring the role of contextual factors.
As helping factors make or break the intervention, they should rather be treated as causal factors of interest no less than the intervention. I claim that, only then, the conclusions of the (quasi)experiment can serve to gain knowledge of working principles in a variety of contexts.
Correction for bias is useful, but only if the evaluation of the success of an intervention is theory driven. Ex ante explanatory hypotheses must be the starting point of evaluation research and testing them the object of it. Thus, the empirical cycle is covered entirely. If no theoretical hypotheses guide the questions of evaluation research, all we will learn is that ‘most interventions sometimes work’, to speak with Pawson and Tilley (1997). What we are left with is little more than meaningless intervention-impact couples that cover half the empirical cycle lacking any cognitive value.
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De eenheid van een gedachte
More LessAbstractThe Unity of a Thought. On the Relation Between Logic and Metaphysics, and the Nature of Thought
What does the unity of a thought consist in? The analytic tradition typically accepts the Fregean answer to this question: a thought is, in the fundamental case, the result of applying a concept to an appropriate range of objects. Yet upon reflection this turns out to be insufficient. I follow Rödl’s exploration of the unity of temporal thoughts, which shows this unity to be differentiated in such a way as to give rise to the basic metaphysical categories of time, causality, essence, and power. These considerations seem to warrant three conclusions: first, reality is conceptual in nature; second, metaphysics and logic are one and the same subject; and third, these two conclusions are to be taken in an absolute metaphysical sense.
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