The church mission and objectives are more and more difficult to accomplish because of the secularization of the today’s society. Church’s use of marketing is a sensitive issue that has both supporters and critics. This article subscribes to the positive point of view that suggests that religious organizations can apply marketing in order to fulfill their mission and to obtain better results. It also claims that the use of marketing by the church and clergy does not contradict the religious core (...) values and that church marketing should develop a theoretical framework of its own and a specific set of methods, techniques and instruments. The present paper reveals the complexity of religious marketing. It presents a holistic view of the church marketing and proposes a specific conceptual framework for it. The article demonstrates that religious organizations’ marketing should be regarded as a form of social marketing and it briefly describes the church marketing process. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The present study focuses on explaining the incremental role of emotion regulation and hostility in the tendency of young adults to use moral disengagement strategies to avoid self-condemnation for their immoral conduct. We aimed to extend the area of investigation concerning the moral effects of emotion regulation and hostility, by exploring the association between hostility and civic moral disengagement (CMD), and the moderating role of emotional regulation strategies within this association. One hundred and sixty-three young adults aged 16 to (...) 30 were administered a global measure of moral disengagement, namely the Civic Moral Disengagement scale, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory. Our results confirmed that cognitive reappraisal moderates the relation between hostility and CMD. We conclude that young adults’ tendency to reappraise emotional events, when conjoined with high levels of hostility, might enhance their tendency to build convenient moral justifications for their immoral conduct, which in turn might have significant behavioral consequences. (shrink)

Provides a comparative study in the history of modern philosophy focused on Spinoza and Nietzsche's recourse to physiology. Proposes Nietzsche and Spinoza's appeal to physiology as the key to solving fundamental philosophical problems. Taps into the heart of the growing interest in the Spinoza-Nietzsche connection through detailed discussions of substance metaphysics and the ontology of power, as well as their ethical and political positions.

Against much of the philosophical tradition, Spinoza and Nietzsche defend an understanding of freedom opposed to free will and formulated as an ethical ideal consisting in a transition from a smaller to a greater power of acting. Starting from a shared commitment to necessity and radical immanence, they present freedom as a passage to a greater power of self-determination and self-expression of the body. Nevertheless, the continuities between their power ontologies and their respective commitments to a life of knowledge break (...) down in their discussion of the various possible manifestations of power. I will argue that Nietzsche's distinctive formulation of power as struggle between wills to power enables him to formulate the question of the qualitative dimension of empowerment in a way that is foreign to Spinoza's rational determinism. While acknowledging the profound similarities, I will argue that we must see Nietzsche's discussion of affirmation as the culmination of his disagreement with his predecessor on the topic of freedom and empowerment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT What is the best way to confront the thought of eternal recurrence—the thought that we would have to live our life “once again and innumerable times again”—this great, heavy burden that, as Nietzsche warns, may crush us? In this article, I argue that learning to love oneself plays a privileged role in preparing us for facing this abysmal thought. Self-love consists in the cultivation of self-knowledge and in an engagement with the past that enables us to give it new (...) meaning and significance. Furthermore, Nietzsche’s revaluation of self-love in Thus Spoke Zarathustra brings with it a rethinking of our relations to others. To love oneself implies care for the empowerment and growth of others, as well as the capacity for self-sacrifice. (shrink)

The ability to memorize changes in the environment is present at all biological levels, from social groups and individuals, down to single cells. Trans‐generational memory is embedded subcellularly through genetic and epigenetic mechanisms. Evidence that cells process and remember features of the immediate environment using protein sensors is reviewed. It is argued that this mnemonic ability is encapsulated within the protein conformational space and lasts throughout its lifetime, which can overlap with the lifespan of the organism. Means to determine diachronic (...) changes in protein activity are presented. (shrink)

This paper investigates Nietzsche’s reception of Spinoza in order to develop our understanding of the complex relations between their respective philosophies starting from their shared commitment to ontologies of power. The first three sections of this essay contain a diachronic analysis of Nietzsche’s engagement with Spinoza and a discussion of the major themes in play. The last section consists in an evaluation of Nietzsche’s explicit and implicit criticisms that helps us gain a sense of the coherence running through them, as (...) well of the core similarities and differences between two philosophies steeped in immanence and naturalism. Even if Nietzsche’s criticisms do not always do justice to Spinoza’s thinking, they nevertheless offer invaluable clues to guide our comparative project. (shrink)

Nietzsche seeks, through the turn to the body, to uncover a path towards empowerment and life-affirmation through a critique of metaphysics and morality and their manifestations in décadence and nihilism. This chapter presents a discussion of the content of Nietzsche’s turn to the body, beginning with the conceptual structure of his philosophical physiology. My thesis is that the turn to the body has three functions: interpretative, diagnostic, and normative. This chapter ends with an argument that Nietzsche’s physiology must be understood (...) as a philosophical physiology, and rebuts the accusation that he abandons philosophy for natural science. Contra Heidegger, I argue that this can be done without having to understand Nietzsche’s philosophy as metaphysics. (shrink)

This chapter addresses Nietzsche’s critique of substance ontology when applied to Spinoza’s concept of ‘substance’. The main result of this section is that Spinoza’s understanding of ‘substance’ allows for the existence of genuine multiplicity, the endogenous power of modes, and includes a relational account of power, but that it does not fully escape Nietzsche’s critique because the production of individual essences that are in agreement can only be explained if the activity of substance is governed by reason. A key difference (...) is that Nietzsche places his philosophical discourse in the context of a historical and developmental account of individuals and societies that does not have a parallel in Spinoza. (shrink)

Chapter 10.1007/978-3-030-20987-2_7 shows how, against much of the philosophical tradition, Spinoza and Nietzsche defend an understanding of freedom opposed to free will and formulated as an ethical ideal consisting in a transition from a smaller to a greater power of acting. Freedom is a passage to a greater power of self-determination and self-expression of the body. Nevertheless, the continuities between their power ontologies and their respective commitments to a life of knowledge break down in their discussion of the various possible (...) manifestations of power. I will argue that Nietzsche’s distinctive formulation of power as struggle between wills to power enables him to formulate the question of the qualitative dimension of empowerment in a way that is foreign to Spinoza’s rational causal determinism. (shrink)

I focus on the value of agreement and cooperation in Spinoza, over and above both conflict and uniformity. A well-ordered society favors the empowerment of humans who, together, form a power greater than that of any single person. For Nietzsche, the role of physiology is to evaluate peoples and individuals and, in accordance with these findings, it must show us how to breed or cultivate humankind as a whole. Physiology plays a privileged role in Nietzsche’s analysis of institutions, and the (...) beneficial or harmful role they can play in promoting growth. Nietzsche is highly critical of Spinoza because he believes that the Dutch thinker ignores the perils of democracy and of the pursuit of the common good. (shrink)

Spinoza is an ally for Nietzsche in his struggle against what he understands to be the crisis of nihilism and the harmful effects of the morality of compassion. The proximity with Spinoza helps us sharpen our understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophical project. At the same time, our comprehension of Spinoza benefits from confronting his thought with Nietzsche’s powerful criticisms.

The introduction provides an outline of the major points of contact between Spinoza and Nietzsche that will serve to orient the research presented in the rest of the book. This helps us, by using their recourse to the body, to contrast their thinking with the condemnation of our corporeal nature dominant in much of Platonism and Christianity.

I argue that Spinoza turns to the body in order to show the path towards empowerment and liberation. Firstly, I highlight the importance of the turn to the body for Spinoza’s epistemology: we have inadequate knowledge because we misunderstand our body; adequate knowledge must begin with adequate understanding of our body. The focus on the body provides important strategic advantages in allowing us to avoid various moral and metaphysical illusions. Secondly, I submit that there are three ways Spinoza talks about (...) the body. While all three give us important clues about how we should understand it, the first method of knowing the body is inadequate, whereas the third does not do enough to illuminate the dynamic nature of Spinoza’s notion of ‘power’. (shrink)

What are Descartes’s views on the body and how do they change? In this article, I try to make clearer the nature of the shift towards an increased focus on the body as ‘my’ body in Descartes’s Passions of the Soul. The interest in the nature of passions, considered from the point of view of the ‘natural scientist’, is indicative of a new approach to the study of the human. Moving beyond the infamous mind-body union, grounded in his dualist metaphysics, (...) Descartes begins developing a philosophical anthropology centred on the notion of power and better suited to practical philosophy. (shrink)

Chez les commentateurs de l’oeuvre de Michel Foucault, le concept de sujet est communément analysé en termes de processus historiques de subjectivation. Contrairement à ce type d’analyse, l’enjeu de ce travail est de montrer l’émergence d’une problématique de la désubjectivation à partir de la notion foucaldienne de déprise de soi. Il s’agit de montrer d’abord que cette notion aménage à la fois la dispersion et l’effacement de l’auteur. Deuxièmement, la conceptualisation de la déprise sera traitée à travers l’analyse de pratiques (...) spécifiques d’écriture. Enfin, nous verrons comment la déprise de soi est investie dans le champ de l’identité subjective. (shrink)

This article analyzes the emergence of a political rationality of groundwater in contemporary California. It contrasts a new government of nature that we call a ‘political physics of vital processes’, operative in the case of the Orange County Water District, with juridical and biopolitical rationalities of groundwater governance. To do so, we propose a genealogical account grounded in a reading of a key concept in Aristotle’s first book of Politics. The case is analyzed along the axes of subjectivity, space, and (...) temporality, opening to a novel way of conceptualizing the relation between power and nature. (shrink)

The fourth chapter discusses Nietzsche’s reception of Spinoza. Nietzsche’s explicit and implicit criticisms will be used in order to identify key points of contact that can help us compare and contrast two philosophies steeped in immanence and naturalism. The first and second parts of this project consist in a diachronic analysis of Nietzsche’s engagement with Spinoza, as Nietzsche knew him from various commentaries, and in a discussion of the major themes in play. The third part is an evaluation of Nietzsche’s (...) criticisms that helps us gain a sense of the coherence running through them, as well as of the core similarities and differences between their philosophies. (shrink)

Our work offers a new answer to a growing theoretical and practical demand within diverse domains of investigation by redefining the concept of political action. It grounds and elucidates some of the manifestations of a distinctive mode of the political. Its regulative idea is that of the assemblage. The overall aim of this volume is to show that the political assemblage should be productively distinguished from both the limiting concepts of proceduralist and identitarian politics. One can broadly define proceduralist politics (...) as being grounded in autonomous individuals pursuing their own self-interests under the standardized rules of the political game. Identitarian politics is a mode of communitarian... (shrink)

La notion de déprise joue un rôle central dans le traitement de la subjectivité chez Michel Foucault. Notre objectif est d’établir que cette notion ne peut pas être réduite à une économie du soi, comme il est communement admis par les commentateurs de son oeuvre. Dans ce sens, il faudrait la distinguer à la fois du souci de soi et de la pratique de la sagesse. De manière positive, il s’agit de montrer que la déprise joue plutôt comme modalité politique (...) de désubjectivation. L’analyse de la stultitia chez Sénèque nous permettra de montrer que la déprise est investie non pas comme modalité de subjectivation, mais comme pratique de disqualification de soi. (shrink)

In October 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would not participate in a $17 billion ‘WaterFix’ plan to remake California’s water conveyance system by drilling two massive tunnels und...

During the afternoon of December 21, 1989, in Bucharest, a mass of demonstrators gather in a public square at the request of Nicolae Ceausescu, then president of Romania. In the previous days, students had shaken the country by taking to the streets in protest in the city of Timisoara. These mass protests had been preceded that year by a wave of other social movements that took place in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. Now in a broadcast from the (...) balcony of the square, Ceausescu tries to reassure the population while making distressed appeals to preserve the unity of the political regime in the country. In the front row of the assembled crowd... (shrink)

I will begin with the end. Marcel Hénaff's sudden death in June 2018 opened a space of silence and surely did not prepare me to speak or write publicly about his passing. In his unexpected death, as a friend, Marcel left me with a problem. His death is now my problem. Yet, death is not a persistent question in Marcel Hénaff's thinking. At the very least, I will start by positing here that in his last book, Violence dans la raison? (...) Conflit et cruauté, both death and cruelty are enigmas.I will now attempt to elucidate the relationship between these two concepts by articulating two enigmas of death.First enigma: We usually say that in death, one deserves to eternally rest in peace.1 This claim is not totally... (shrink)

How should we understand Spinoza’s views on consciousness against the background of his interest in the pursuit of empowerment and freedom? This paper argues that consciousness consists in a plurality of affections of substance that do not necessarily help us in our striving for liberation. Spinoza wants to dispel various moral and metaphysical illusions associated with previous accounts of consciousness. Nevertheless, he does not provide more details, because an in-depth analysis of consciousness is not the best — nor the most (...) direct — path to empowerment. (shrink)

In Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-20987-2_6, we see how both believe that the turn to the body, with its emphasis on self-knowledge, is the best way to undermine metaphysical illusions that have enabled theologians and moralists to maintain their power and inhibit authentic self-transformation. I argue that while Deleuze’s analysis reveals much that is of importance, it ignores crucial differences between Spinoza’s and Nietzsche’s accounts of consciousness, their views on how we can know the body, and between the various practical implications of their (...) claims. Both focus on remarkably similar notions of endogenous power and place great emphasis on discussing the multiplicity that constitutes the body. They differ when it comes to the value they assign to conflict in their physiologies and in their power ontologies more broadly. (shrink)

Nicht-westliche Gemeinwohlkonzeptionen sind so vielfältig und heterogen, dass sie sich keinesfalls auf einen gemeinsamen Nenner bringen lassen. In manchen Fällen sind die Unterschiede zu westlichen Konzeptionen offensichtlich, andere Konzeptionen dagegen sind den westlichen durchaus ähnlich. Wichtig ist, dass eine ernsthafte Beschäftigung mit nicht-westlichen Gemeinwohlkonzeptionen nicht bei der Kenntnisnahme zusätzlicher Vielfalt stehenbleiben darf, sondern nach den Grunderfahrungen fragen muss, die sich in den verschiedenen Konzeptionen wiederfinden. Darin liegt die Chance, rückblickend auch auf jene Grunderfahrungen aufmerksam zu werden, die westlichen Gemeinwohlkonzeptionen zugrunde (...) liegen. (shrink)

I shall argue here that Trinity is a leitmotiv in Marion’s works and that his latest analysis on said concept can enlighten us on the function of the icon and on the structure of his phenomenology of givenness. As such I will argue for a Trinitarian character of givenness. To prove this, I shall structure this paper as a commentary on Givenness and Revelation that will show how this book reveals unclear functions of the Trinity involved in givenness, such as (...) the role of the Holy Spirit, and relate these functions to the strict phenomenological structure of the act of giving. I shall first set the stage for a phenomenological interpretation of Trinity, showing which concepts are at play in Marion’s analysis of revelation. This will be followed by the integration of Trinity in the immanent field of phenomenology. Further, I shall show how revelation serves as the model for a new phenomenal logic, and I shall try to explain its manifestation. This will be followed by a presentation of how Marion’s new considerations on the topic of revelation can clarify both the role of the given and in addition the role of the subject within Marion’s phenomenology of givenness. (shrink)

Drawing on stakeholder theory and the evolutionary approach to institutions, this paper investigates the channels through which corporate social responsibility (CSR) is developed in post-communist economies by focusing on the employee background factors that shape the employees' expectations with regard to corporate socially responsible behaviour. We identify three channels through which exogenous and endogenous CSR are developed: employees with work experience in multinational enterprises (MNEs) (leading to exogenous CSR), employees with CSR knowledge (leading to exogenous CSR) and employees with experience (...) of the socialist system (leading to endogenous CSR). Furthermore, we argue that the interactions between these channels lead to hybrid CSR in transition economies. We use a questionnaire-based survey with employees of domestic and MNEs in Romania and we conduct regression analysis. We find that employees with work experience in MNEs act as channels for exogenous CSR, while employees with experience of the socialist system act as channels for endogenous CSR. Furthermore, employees with experience of the socialist system and CSR knowledge or work experience in an MNE act as channels for hybrid CSR in transition economies. Based on our results, we put forward implications for theory, managers and policy makers. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of a within-subject experiment testing whether an increase in the monetary stakes by a factor of 50 – which had never been done before – influences individual behavior in a simple ultimatum bargaining game. Contrary to current wisdom, we found that lowest acceptable offers stated by the responder are proportionally lower in the high-stake condition than in the low-stake condition. This result may be interpreted in terms of the type of utility functions which characterize the (...) subjects. However, in line with prior results, we find that an important increase of the monetary stakes in the ultimatum game has no effect on the offers made by the proposer. Yet, the present research suggests that the reasons underlying these offers are quite different when the stakes are high. (shrink)

Ich werde zunächst Kants Darstellung des Raumes skizzenhaft darstellen. Dabei gehe ich auf die Dualität des Raumes ein als reine Anschauung, die sich formell bestimmen lässt, obwohl streng von Begriffen unterschieden. Diese Dualität wird dann ausführlich in der Behandlung der Zeit dargestellt. Ich setze hier den Fokus auf die Untersuchung der Zeit, da die formellen Bestimmungen der Zeit und des Raumes erst durch Zeitbestimmungen von der Einbildungskraft durchgeführt werden. Weiterhin wird diese Dualität als Hinweis auf die Autonomie der Empfänglichkeit im (...) Gemüt gedeutet. Dieser letzte Punkt gestaltet auch die Richtung meiner Kant-Interpretation auf eine phänomenologische und objektorientierte Weise. (shrink)

Kant beschreibt Begriffe als allgemeine Vorstellungen, die Merkmale enthalten, wodurch der Begriff sich auf mehrere Objekte beziehen kann. In der KrV sind Begriffe als Regel definiert. Longuenesse beschreibt diese Regeln basierend auf Kant zweifach: 1) als Schemata, die die Art und Weise der Synthesis der Mannigfaltigkeit bestimmen und 2) als diskursive Regeln, die die begrifflichen Relationen normieren. Anschauungen sind im Gegensatz dazu einzelne Vorstellungen, die sich unmittelbar auf Gegenstände beziehen. Obwohl Kant in der metaphysischen Deduktion die Existenz und die Apriorität (...) der Kategorien bestimmt und in der transzendentalen Deduktion ihren realen Charakter dargestellt hat, hat er in der letzteren nur den Bezug auf eine (apriorische oder empirische) Anschauung überhaupt festgestellt. Wie die Kategorien sich spezifizieren und auf das Einzelne anwenden lassen, ist Thema des Schematismus-Kapitels Kants. (shrink)

Louis Sass’s interpretation of schizophrenia as a self-disturbance has helped advance phenomenological psychopathology. Nevertheless, his ipseity model has received criticism for allegedly treating schizophrenia primarily through “top-down” reflective processes, neglecting the pre-reflective layers of experience, and lacking empirical support. I address these critiques by drawing on recent neuropsychiatric studies that indicate a correlation between semantic alterations and disturbances in the broader system of relational knowledge, suggesting contextual instability. I argue that these studies support Sass’s claim that a core aspect of (...) schizophrenia is the disturbance of the sense of contex­tual relevance that unfolds on both reflective as well as pre-reflective levels of experience, thus defending the inclusion of passive dimensions of experience in his ipseity model. (shrink)

In their paper exploring patient ambivalence in the context of medical decision-making Bryanna Moore, et al. state, “While bioethicists have not paid much attention to ambivalence and related menta...

Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) emphasizes the autonomy of objects, positing a withdrawn surplus of being that resists reduction to its parts or the sum of its parts. However, Harman’s framework faces conceptual tensions, including challenges in reconciling epistemological and ontological dimensions, explaining the formation of compound objects, and ascribing determinate features to experientially inaccessible objects. I argue that these issues arise mostly due to Harman’s over-commitment to a withdrawn substantial core of objects. To address these issues, I propose turning (...) to Jean-Luc Nancy’s post-phenomenological materialism and Alain Badiou’s mathematical realism. Both Nancy and Badiou offer alternatives to Harman’s substantialist core, emphasizing a local, contextually bound identity of things, which describes a restricted domain from the endlessly broader horizon of relations and situations in which each thing is or can be involved. They thus account for the surplus of being in each thing and consequently their ontological autonomy without recourse to a substantive grounding. I argue such a relational-friendly account of pluralism avoids the conceptual issues Harman’s OOO runs into. Lastly, I emphasize the value of OOO as an advocate for ontological equality that seeks to avoid the emergence of privileged actors or centralized discourse. This dialogue between Harman, Nancy, and Badiou thus seeks to advance the possibility of pluralistic ontologies within relational frameworks, combining the perspectives of OOO with post-phenomenological theories to explore the complexities of relationality without recourse to non-relational substrata. (shrink)