The purpose of this paper is to offer a conceptual analysis of the space created by the Willing Workers on Organic Farms host as a part of the organic farming movement and how that space now collides with the idea of tourism heterotopias as the changing market sees WWOOFers who may be less motivated by organic farming and more by a cheaper form of holiday. The resulting contested space is explored looking at the role and delicate balance of WWOOFing as (...) a form of sustainable tourism in the context of socially constructed understandings of space. Poststructural concepts of space suggest that it is impermanent, fragile and under constant threat of change. Space is constantly produced and reproduced in the process, spaces become sites where struggle and contestation occur, in this instance as one discourse or discursive practice, namely WWOOFing, intersects with and is influenced by the more dominant capital centric discourse of mass tourism. (shrink)

This text explores three variations on the original figure of the “leap into nature” found in Jean Epstein’s Mauprat (1926): when the human being implements an aesthetic perception that immerses him in natural elements (Jonas Mekas, Chris Welsy, Ralph Steiner); when a body is itself immersed in a natural environment, giving rise to forms of entanglement (Zachary Epcar, Rose Lowder, Helena Gouveia Monteiro); and when the very processes of image production resemble a dive into the deep end, notably to reveal (...) silver images through ecoprocessing (MTK workshop, Philip Hoffman, Karel Doing). (shrink)

Les images sont-elles des imitations ou des signes conventionnels? Sont-elles ressemblantes ou dénotatives? Pour tenter de dépasser ces oppositions devenues classiques, cet article part du constat que les images sont d’abord et avant tout réalisées en fonction de certains moyens techniques de production et selon des attentes liées à l’usage qui en sera fait. Ce faisant, au lieu de récuser la ressemblance ou de nier qu’il puisse y avoir des conventions dans les images, il montre que la ressemblance est toujours (...) relative à une visibilisation spécifique de la réalité, laquelle peut à l’occasion recourir à des conventions. Cet article défend ainsi l’idée que les images sont originaires : fondatrices de nos manières de voir. (shrink)

For Georg Simmel, humans confront their basic contradiction in the city, and such contradiction warrants critical assessment to help in the long tradition of articulating the problematic development of cities or metropolises, and hopefully advocate for the kind of life we want. This contradiction is a corollary to the modern visual aesthetics of young, contemporary artists such as Iza Caparas, Farley del Rosario and Daniel Aligaen. Their works not only depict the city or urban living; also their styles or sense (...) of aesthetics are informed on a larger scale by the geopolitics of the ’70s up to the present, the influence of the early modernist artists, and their own estimation as well of what is happening in the country. This paper uses visual impairment or blindness as a trope for modernist aesthetics. The contradiction of city life produces this particular problematic vision that is then appropriated by these young painters. In this paper I am guided by three important questions: How do I understand the city and its contradictions? How is the city depicted in the paintings of young contemporary artists? How do I talk about modernist paintings and aesthetics in terms of the dynamics of city or urban life? (shrink)

À travers une vingtaine de contributions de chercheurs et d'artistes, L'art tout contre la machine invite à réfléchir à la médiation de la technique dans notre rapport au monde telles que les pratiques artistiques contemporaines en esquissent le sens. Il se divise en trois parties, qui tissent de nombreux liens entre elles : « Technique et nature » ; « Interfaces relationnelles et dispositifs génératifs » et « Outils conviviaux et machines domestiques ». Les objectifs sont multiples : interroger des (...) œuvres et des procédures artistiques pour leur capacité à mettre en évidence les incidences des dispositifs machiniques sur nos environnements d'existence ; faire apparaître les filiations de dispositifs de création a priori hétérogènes en interrogeant les circulations entre différents régimes de technicité ; mettre en relief enfin la portée politique et artistique d'une compréhension conviviale des outils de création et la spécificité du rapport à la technique qui la sous-tend. (shrink)

Consumer culture and neoliberal political economy are often viewed by social psychologists as topics reserved for anthropologists, economists, political scientists and sociologists. This paper takes an alternative view arguing that social psychology needs to better understand these two intertwined institutions as they can both challenge and provide a number of important insights into social psychological theories of self-identity and their related concepts. These include personality traits, self-esteem, social comparisons, self-enhancement, impression management, self-regulation and social identity. To illustrate, we examine how (...) elements of consumer culture and neoliberal political economy intersect with social psychological concepts of self-identity through three main topics: ‘the commodification of self-identity’, ‘social categories, culture and power relations’ and the ‘governing of self-regulating consumers’. In conclusion, we recommend a decommodified approach to research with the aim of producing social psychological knowledge that avoids becoming enmeshed with consumer culture and neoliberalism. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo further delineate risk and resilience factors contributing to trajectories of mental health symptoms experienced by college students through the pandemic.Participantsn = 183 college students.MethodsLinear mixed models examined time effects on depression and anxiety. Propensity-matched subgroups exhibiting “increased” versus “low and stable” depression symptoms from before to after the pandemic-onset were compared on pre-pandemic demographic and psychological factors and COVID-related experiences and coping strategies.ResultsStudents experienced worsening of mental health symptoms throughout the pandemic, particularly during Fall 2020 compared with Fall 2019. (...) The propensity-matched subgroup exhibiting relative resilience reported less alcohol use prior to the pandemic, greater use of active coping strategies, and less of an impact on their college progress.ConclusionsResults point to several potential targets of screening and intervention to decrease residual impacts of the pandemic. (shrink)

In The Devil and Philosophy, 34 philosophers explore questions about one of the most recognizable and influential characters (villains?) of all time. From Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion to Bram Stoker's Dracula to Darth Vader to Al Pacino's iconic performance in The Devil's Advocate, this book demonstrates that a little devil goes a long way. From humorous appearances, as in Kevin Smith's film Dogma and Chuck Palahniuk's novels Damned and Doomed, to more villainous (...) appearances, such as Gabriel Byrne's cold outing as Satan in End of Days, The Devil in Philosophy proves that the Devil comes in many forms. Are there any good arguments for the actual existence of the Devil? Does demonic evil thrive in Gotham City? Can humans really be accountable for all evil? Which truths about the Devil are actual facts? Is Milton correct, in that the Devil believes he is doing good? Through the lenses of Jung, Kant, Kundera, Balkan, Plato, Bradwardine, Aristotle, Hume, Blackburn, Descartes, Lavey, Thoreau, and Aquinas, The Devil and Philosophy takes a philosophical look at one of time's greatest characters. (shrink)

This book argues that the sin of the devil compels a view of moral responsibility that undermines concerns about luck. It surveys the biblical account of the primal sin, its major interpretation in the tradition, and navigates that interpretation through objections from the perspective of moral luck.

Batterman examines a form of scientific reasoning called asymptotic reasoning, arguing that it has important consequences for our understanding of what physicists call universal behavior, as well as of the scientific process as a whole.

The Devil's Whore is a collection of essays from the foremost Luther Scholars in the English speaking world on the topic of the impact of Martin Luther's thought on philosophy. The first essays discuss Luther's own views on philosophy. The second set of essays discuss the impact of Luther's thought on particular continental philosophers such as Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. The final set of essays discuss the use of Lutheran theology on philosophical issues debated today.

"In this exquisitely written book, Denery draws on centuries of rumination on the moral issues surrounding lying to address the question of how we should live in a fallen world. The serpent in the Garden of Eden led humankind astray with lies. The Devil is the father of lies. Premodern sources agonized constantly over the act of lying. Denery not only superbly narrates the long history of this obsession, but also locates the conditions that reveal an Enlightenment shift toward a (...) not entirely comfortable modernity."--William Chester Jordan, Princeton University "Can God lie? Are women 'born liars'? These are just two of the questions Denery asks--and answers--in his wide-ranging, erudite study. Written in an engaging and accessible style, The Devil Wins sheds a new and fascinating light on a mendacious world stretching from the Book of Genesis to the dawn of the Enlightenment."--Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, author of Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417 "This is a wonderful and beautifully written book. The fruit of extensive research, The Devil Wins traces the history of lying and deception through the medieval and early modern periods. Denery offers compelling and immensely significant arguments."--Ian P. Wei, author of Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris "This is a marvelous book. Denery uses a fundamental question--when, if ever, is it acceptable to lie?--to explore a vast intellectual and historical terrain. In doing so, he gives us one of the most subtle and penetrating briefs I have read for the importance of medieval thought for modern efforts to understand ethics, politics, and conscience. I read this book with enormous delight."--Jonathan Sheehan, author of The Enlightenment Bible. (shrink)

Health professionals do not always have the luxury of making “right” choices. This article introduces the “devil's choice” as a metaphor to describe medical choices that arise in circumstances where all the available options are both unwanted and perverse. Using the devil's choice, the paper criticizes the principle of double effect and provides a re-interpretation of the conventional legal and ethical account of symptom relief in palliative care.

The meridian demon prowls our time: boredom, anguish, restlessness and despair really seem to be the evil of our time. Spectators of our own lives, everything is presented to us under the illusory light of a theater stage. But what if we could assume our roles as actors; what if we could, at the very moment of our departure from the scene, fly away with new clothes, touch up old makeup, dance new steps? Learning to dance in the theater of (...) life: perhaps this is what this demon teaches us. Making the theater the theatrum mundi in a mirror: this is how the Baroque played in the devil's throw of the dice. Perhaps this is the way to lighten the heaviest of burdens. At the masquerade ball, what used to be a tragic fate presents itself as a comical staging – and on the stage of history, staging is nothing but endless repetition. Making the disease its own cure – such what is revealed in the game of transfiguration. (shrink)

dimension is actually “the typical.”[i] There would seem to be little typical about a world of comatose women, a barely sane, largely delusional male nurse, a woman bullfighter, and a rape that leads to a “rebirth” in a number of senses. But comatose women, the central figures in Almodóvar’s Talk to Her, are, oddly, very familiar in that mythological genre closest to us: fairy tales. Both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are comatose women who endure, “non-consensually” we must say, a (...) male kiss, male sexual attention. (Siegfried’s awakening kiss of Brunnhilde in the extraordinary third act of Siegfried should also be mentioned.)[ii] Someone apparently must manifest some act of faith, must believe that these corpse-like women are not dead, and believe it strongly enough to kiss them. Then there is a kind of inversion of these fairy tales in Kleist’s story and Roehmer’s film, “Die Marquise von O.” Here the kiss is actually a rape, but the rapist again emerges as some sort of Prince Charming after all (he had originally saved the Marquise from rape by a group of Russian soldiers), and there are echoes of that somewhat disturbing notion of reconciliation as well in the Almodóvar film. (Alicia, after all, does awaken.) In the Kleist story, a woman must place an ad in a newspaper asking her unknown rapist (she was drugged and asleep) and the father of her unborn child to come forward. He does eventually and the story ends with their marriage and with one of the most enigmatic lines in all of literature, as enigmatic, I think, as our complex reactions to Benigno’s act: the Marquise says that she would not have thought her new husband a devil if he had not first appeared as an angel, as if one person can be both devil and angel, that, to the extent that one can be an angel, to that extent he also can be a devil. (shrink)

What is so appealing about the figure of the master criminal? The answer lies in the kind of solution he provides to the problem of suffering. Rather than just accounting for affliction—as, for example, does Leibniz’s theodicy—such a figure enchants it, transforming mundane objects into actual or potential clues, everyday incidents into moves in a cosmic conflict, random misery into a purposeful pattern. The master criminal (the shadowy villain of _The Usual Suspects_, say) thus constitutes a secular replacement for the (...) Devil, making possible a negative reenchantment of the world. (shrink)

RESUMO O presente trabalho tem como objetivo compreender a trajetória suicida do personagem Stavróguin, no romance Os demônios, de Fiódor Dostoiévski, a partir do conceito de “mal parasitário”, desenvolvido por Luigi Pareyson. Busca-se analisar como o mal dissolve a personalidade do anti-herói e o conduz ao suicídio. Para isso, a pesquisa está fundamentada em contribuições bibliográficas que têm como foco o tema do mal na obra do escritor, com a finalidade de examinar a manifestação do mal parasitário, o qual exerce (...) a sua força negativa alimentando-se da deterioração moral e existencial do personagem. Como resultado, a pesquisa demonstra que o mal age infiltrado no ser por meio de ideias niilistas, cindindo, assim, a personalidade de Stavróguin, o que o conduz a uma liberdade arbitrária, à indiferença e, consequentemente, ao suicídio. (shrink)

The protagonist of Thomas Mann’s short story The Clown (Der Bajazzo) cannot became an artist because he hasn’t got enough talent. He is also unable to live among people as an ordinary citizen because his social competencies haven’t been completely developed. That is why he can be regarded as a literary figure who tries to leave the real world and to penetrate the literary world. The devil who appears in Charles Gounod’s opera Faust based on Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s drama Faust (...) and who is watching the protagonist from the stage during the opera performance seems to be the only person who can help him to find his existential space. (shrink)

This article focuses on the body of the witch as her bond to the Devil. Witches were identified and punished through the guidance of the Malleus Malleficarum, a key text of the Inquisition, and based on Aristotelian ideas and demonology borrowed from Augustine and other ideas from Scholasticism. A kind of alternative anthropology that also included a gender analysis that women were particularly susceptible to such evil was a part of this system. They also personified a hidden and heretical connection (...) with nature. Following De Certeau and Foucault, this article looks past these ancient concepts to distinguish witchcraft and possession as two frameworks explaining the relation between body and soul. (shrink)

Women accused of murder fascinated nineteenth-century Americans, and spectators crowded into courtrooms to witness their trials. Female lecturers and Civil War workers striving to improve society also attracted enormous attention. The era's most controversial women seemed to either publicly maintain American morality—or publicly betray it. Why did such women—both criminals and caretakers—simultaneously captivate and trouble America? Antebellum Americans believed that proper women should be virtuous, but the meaning of feminine virtue was highly contested. One minister condemned abolitionist Abby Kelley as (...) a "servant of Satan" for giving public lectures against slavery, but others asserted that Kelley did her duty as a moral woman by protesting an unjust system. In a different arena, even prostitutes could serve as examples of virtue if they were perceived as working to feed their families. Cutter argues that "redemptive womanhood"—the idea that women hold active responsibility for the nation's moral and religious health—is the key element of gender ideology in antebellum and Civil War America. In this era, society for the first time allowed and encouraged women's involvement in the public sphere, as long as women worked for the good of the country. The ideal of redemptive womanhood prepared them to go to any lengths to defend the virtue of their nation. During the Civil War, this ideology encouraged women, particularly those from the North, to organize relief efforts, nurse soldiers, and even enlist in the army disguised as men. Exploring the ways in which nineteenth-century women transformed American society, _Domestic Devils, Battlefield Angels_ sheds new light on a gender ideology that fostered public participation and action—even violence—in the name of women's redemptive moral power. (shrink)

Martin Luther famously called Reason the Devil's most lovely whore. This volume shows how Luther's skepticism about reason actually opened up new ways of doing philosophy by tracing his own philosophical work and that of Lutheran philosophers including Leibniz, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. The third section of the book explains new paths for philosophy using some of Luther's propositions about about the use and abuse of reason.

In La Téntation de Saint Antoine Gustave Flaubert dramatizes a philosophical exchange about the nature of divine providence and the efficacy of petitionary prayer. The Devil and Antony consider the question of whether God can be called upon for relief from suffering. The Saint assumes as popular religion teaches that it is possible to ask for God's help in emergency situations, while the Devil poses a dilemma to challenge Antony's faith. The Devil seeks to expose contradictions in some of the (...) beliefs Antony holds about God's infinite perfection. The Devil's argument purports to prove that God is not a person, and that for this reason God is inaccessible to human interaction. The Devil's dilemma is supposed to be this: If God as an infinitely perfect being created the universe, then divine providence is not needed [does not exist]. If divine providence is needed [exists], then the universe is defective [not the creation of God as an infinitely perfect being].Although these look at first to be the opposite poles of an excluded middle, propositions and are mere contrapositives. Since the Devil's propositions and are logically equivalent, the Devil can only proceed to the conclusion that God does not exist or that divine providence is not needed or does not exist paradoxically by assuming that God exists or that divine providence is needed or exists. Yet if divine providence is needed or exists, then God exists as its divine source. If the Devil is supposed to succeed by logic, his dilemma as Flaubert portrays it is powerless to prove that the only reasonable religious attitude is an impassionate metaphysical acknowledgement of the existence of an impersonal infinitely perfect Substance, which is absolute unchanging unmoveable Being. (shrink)

Unlike anarchocapitalists such as Jesús Huerta de Soto, classical liberals believe that the devil cannot be destroyed. For classical liberals it is human nature itself what carries the seeds of its own destruction and the best we can do is to tame it. Even in absence of a state there will be violence, murder and crime by more or less organized groups. Research shows that in stateless societies, the probability to be killed by someone else was substantially higher than in (...) societies with a state. Experience also demonstrates that it is possible to enjoy large degrees of individual freedom under a state as long as the basic structure of the rule of law is kept in place. Ultimately, classical liberals believe that freedom under the law depends on the ideas, values and traditions that prevail in society. In this context, Huerta de Soto’s anarchocapitalism constitutes a necessary and urgent ideal that keeps us from falling into the devil’s seductive and corrupting power. (shrink)

An Impartial Collection of the Great Affairs of State was published in London, in two volumes, between 1682 and 1683. Its author John Nalson was a fervent believer in the twin pillars of the monarchy and the Anglican Church. In An Impartial Collection he holds up the internecine conflict of the 1640s as an example not to be followed during the 1680s, a period of further religious and political upheaval. Nalson’s text is anything but neutral, and its perspective is neatly (...) summarised in the engraved frontispiece which prefaces the first volume. This article examines how this illustration, depicting a weeping Britannia accosted by a two-faced clergyman and a devil, adapts and revises an established visual vocabulary of ‘otherness’, implying disruption to English lives and liberties with origins both foreign and domestic. Such polemical imagery relies on shock value and provocation, but also contributes to a sophisticated conversation between a range of pictorial sources, reshaping old material to new concerns, and raising important questions regarding the visual literacy and acuity of its viewers. (shrink)

In this paper I critically evaluate the Devil Simulation Argument for cognitive immoralism—the position that moral flaws with a work of art can be cognitively virtuous, and thereby artistically valuable. I focus on Matthew Kieran's version of the argument. Kieran holds that by simulating the attitudes of fictional devils we can come to gain important moral insights. In response, I argue that we have no reason to believe that we can effectively adopt immoral attitudes, that any successful narrative artworks (...) ask us to do so, or that it would be an effective means of moral instructions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Devil's Stratagem or Human Fraud:Ippolito Desideri on the Reincarnate Succession of the Dalai LamaMichael J. SweetThe institution of the Dalai Lama and the narrative of his reincarnate succession have become so familiar in the course of the past few decades as to seem almost unremarkable. But, let us imagine hearing the story of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama's succession for the first time: the prophecies of his dying predecessor, (...) the cryptic words of the state oracle, dreams, omens, a mummy turning its head and a fungus growing on a pillar (both indicating the direction of the birthplace of the new incarnation), visions in a sacred lake, and finally the discovery and recognition of a remarkable child who gives incontrovertible evidence of remembering his past life,2 followed by his enthronement and veneration as a virtual god-king—some people will take this story as a factual report, others will find it a captivating fairy tale,3 while still others would dismiss it as a sham. The process of reincarnate succession is unique to what Ippolito Desideri called "the false and most singular religious sect found in Tibet.... this hodgepodge of bizarre dogmas which make up a religious monstrosity unlike any other religion in the world that I know of,"4 and in the shock of first encounter it has appeared either miraculous, fraudulent, or diabolical to many outsiders who heard about it through the middle twentieth century, before Tibet was forcibly incorporated into China, when it could still be viewed as a remote and mysterious theocratic kingdom.5 The reception of the reincarnate succession narrative in the West, in China, and elsewhere certainly warrants a full-length treatment. Here I will focus on a small aspect of this subject, namely, how this narrative was received by one exceptional individual, the Italian Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733). In describing his understanding of reincarnate succession, applied in particular to the case of the Dalai Lama, I hope to illuminate Desideri's struggle in engaging with Tibetan Buddhism, caught as he was between acceptance and even enthusiasm for many aspects of Tibetan culture and religious life and his unswerving commitment to the faith and doctrine of the Catholic Reformation; the motive for all of his trials and labors in the Tibet mission was a burning desire to win the imperiled souls of the Tibetans for Christ. [End Page 131]Reincarnate succession has a long history in Tibet. Almost five hundred years before Desideri's sojourn, the Franciscan William of Rubruck (ca. 1220–after 1257) mentioned hearing of a boy who was less than three years old "yet was fully capable of rational thought; he said of himself that he was in his third incarnation, and he knew how to read and write."6 William, whose journey (1253–1255) to the court of the Mongol great khan Mönke occurred not very long after the institution of incarnate lamas originated in Tibet,7 was the first to introduce the figure of the infant tulku [incarnate lama] as child prodigy, which we will encounter subsequently.Aside from this one early reference, the subject truly surfaced for the first time in Athanasius Kircher's 1667 China Illustrata;8 the section dealing with Tibet was based on the account given to him by the German Jesuit Johannes Grüber, who had briefly visited Lhasa in 1661.9 Kircher's depiction of Tibet is a second- or third-hand mishmash of misinformation, fantasy, and the barest minimum of fact. The Dalai Lama is presented as a demonically inspired antipope: "He is worshiped like a divinity... They kiss his feet with incredible veneration, as if he were the Pope... by this the deceitfulness of the evil spirit is wondrously shown, for the veneration due only to... the Pope of Rome is transferred to the heathen worship of savage nations, like all the other mysteries of Christianity."10 Kircher here resorts to the principle of diabolical plagiarism, originating in early Christian apologetics, to explain the perceived resemblances of Tibetan practices and institutions to those of Roman Catholicism.11 However, he regarded the Dalai Lama's succession as a purely human deception in which a... (shrink)

In this article we shall attempt to show that despite the originality of Sartre's writings and the original philosophical views they contain, his reliance on Goethe's Faust in The Devil and the Good Lord proves that he was quite familiar with the components of the former and made intensive use of them in his own play. A comparative analysis of the two texts will show that Sartre exploited any ethical problem, human act, historical name and fact which he was able (...) to fit into his own philosophical and social positions and which could contribute to his dramatic art. (shrink)