WINNER OF THE SIMON HAILWOOD ESSAY PRIZE. This paper discusses the problem of alienation from nature, considered through the phenomena of reification and de-objectification. I propose understanding alienation as the result of a distorted relation between the subjective and the objective and I suggest a tentative solution via the combination of two ethico-political practices: releasement and reappropriation. In doing so, I put forward a structural-ethical critique and response to our current ecological crisis.

The concept of mindlessness is tacitly present in Heidegger’s earlier and later works. In Being and Time, Dasein is mindless insofar as it engages with the world in ways already publicly interpreted by das Man. In Heidegger’s later work, mindlessness reaches its peak in the technological mode of revealing, according to which reality is disclosed as a standing reserve. In this technological mode, efficiency becomes an end in itself. Mindlessness is present here in two senses: (a) efficiency is a publicly (...) dictated norm, which we adopt more or less automatically and (b) efficiency demands that we are never fully absorbed in our work, but always concerned to move on to the next task. The question then arises as to what extent mindfulness is associated with the structures Heidegger describes as being opposed to inauthenticity and technology, namely authenticity and releasement. In what follows, I argue that mindfulness can be understood as a tool to cultivate the distance from the they-self necessary to engage more authentically with the world or to cultivate a free relation to technology. Mindfulness can also be viewed as a tool to dwell in the fourfold. I conclude by drawing distinctions between Heidegger’s thought and the practice of mindfulness. (shrink)

Now in Paperback "This remarkable set of essays defines the role of imagination ingeneral education, arts education, aesthetics, literature, and thesocial and multicultural context.... The author argues for schoolsto be restructured as places where students reach out for meaningsand where the previously silenced or unheard may have a voice. Sheinvites readers to develop processes to enhance and cultivate theirown visions through the application of imagination and the arts.Releasing the Imagination should be required reading for alleducators, particularly those in teacher education, (...) and for generaland academic readers." --Choice "Maxine Greene, with her customary eloquence, makes an impassionedargument for using the arts as a tool for opening minds and forbreaking down the barriers to imagining the realities of worldsother than our own familiar cultures.... There is a strong rhythmto the thoughts, the arguments, and the entire sequence of essayspresented here." --American Journal of Education. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a significant health threat to people in corrections facilities due to communal living, inability to social distance, and high rates of comorbidity among incarcerated populations. Combined with the First Step Act of 2018, which granted incarcerated individuals seeking compassionate release access to the courts, the pandemic increased the number of people in federal prisons petitioning for early release due to health risk. Analysis of federal compassionate release case law throughout the pandemic reveals inconsistent judicial reasoning (...) related to COVID-19-based requests. Inconsistently interpreted compassionate release factors include vaccination status, COVID-19 reinfection, and the “degree” of extraordinary circumstances considered. Varied application among federal districts produced inequitable access to compassionate release. Therefore, this analysis provides insight into how an unclear policy can create disparate public health outcomes and considerations for compassionate release determinations in future times of uncertainty, such as a pandemic. (shrink)

Abstract“Sign stimuli” elicit specific patterns of behavior when an organism's motivation is appropriate. In the toad, visually released prey-catching involves orienting toward the prey, approaching, fixating, and snapping. For these action patterns to be selected and released, the prey must be recognized and localized in space. Toads discriminate prey from nonprey by certain spatiotemporal stimulus features. The stimulus-response relations are mediated by innate releasing mechanisms (RMs) with recognition properties partly modifiable by experience. Striato-pretecto-tectal connectivity determines the RM's recognition and localization (...) properties, whereas medialpallio-thalamo-tectal circuitry makes the system sensitive to changes in internal state and to prior history of exposure to stimuli. RMs encode the diverse stimulus conditions referring to the same prey object through different combinations of “specialized” tectal neurons, involving cells selectively tuned to prey features. The prey-selective neurons express the outcome of information processing in functional units consisting of interconnected cells. Excitatory and inhibitory interactions among feature-sensitive tectal and pretectal neurons specify the perceptual operations involved in distinguishing the prey from its background, selecting its features, and discriminating it from predators. Other connections indicate stimulus location. The results of these analyses are transmitted by specialized neurons projecting from the tectum to bulbar/spinal motor systems, providing a sensorimotor interface. Specific combinations of such projective neurons – mediating feature- and space-related messages – form “command releasing systems” that activate corresponding motor pattern generators for appropriate prey-catching action patterns. (shrink)

In some cases, you may release someone from some obligation they have to you. For instance, you may release them from a promise they made to you, or an obligation to repay money they have borrowed from you. But most take it as clear that, if you have an obligation to someone else, you cannot in any way release yourself from that obligation. I shall argue the contrary. The issue is important because one standard problem for the idea of having (...) duties to oneself relies on the impossibility of self-release. The argument is that a duty to oneself would be a duty from which one could release oneself, but that this is an absurdity, and so there can be no duties to oneself. This argument is to be rejected because a duty from which one can release oneself is perfectly possible, and such release occurs quite properly from time to time. (shrink)

In this contribution the author tries to formulate an approach to the art of living with technology based on Heidegger’s The Principle of Reason, a work often overlooked by contemporary commentators in the philosophy of technology. This approach couples the concept of releasement to insights hailing from Wolfgang Schirmacher concerning Heidegger’s nihilism.

It is inevitable that some inmates in large state prison systems will suffer from terminal conditions and die while incarcerated. But how those inmates experience that event is primarily controlled by correctional policies and by the prison medical and correctional staff assigned to their care. Compassion for inmates who are dying cannot be legislated or mandated, but humane and compassionate care for the dying can be facilitated or thwarted by legislative and correctional policies, and by the manner in which correctional (...) personnel interpret those policies.Death in New York State prisons is a frequent event, occurring at a rate substantially higher than that in most other states. With a prison population that has risen to 70,000 inmates and with the nation’s highest rate of human immunodeficiency virus infection, more than 2,817 inmates died in New York prisons during the period 1990-1998. In April 1992, in the face of an ever-increasing death rate in its prisons, the New York State legislature passed the Medical Parole Law, a measure designed to permit dying inmates to be released on parole prior to their normal release eligibility date. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FDA Releases Draft Guidance on Regulation of Genetically Engineered AnimalsJohn P. Gluck (bio) and Mark T. Holdsworth (bio)On 18 September 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a draft set of guidelines for those involved in developing genetically engineered animals with heritable recombinant DNA (rDNA) constructs and is requesting comment from industry and the public about their content. The document does not impose new regulations but details (...) how existing laws and regulations apply to genetically engineered (GE) animals and offers advice to developers on how to negotiate the laws in the most efficient and productive manner. The draft guidance document is not legally enforceable at this juncture, but the guidelines are recommendations reflecting the FDA's "current thinking on a topic."The modification of GE animals being developed for commercialization, which are the focus of the document, fall into six categories: modifications intended to (1) enhance food quality—e.g., faster growing fish and meats with better nutritional profiles; (2) improve animal health via increased resistance to disease—e.g., mastitis in dairy cattle and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE); (3) create so-called "biopharm" animals capable of producing therapeutic products such as insulin, clotting factors, and tissues for human transplantation; (4) reduce the barriers to human animal interaction—e.g., hypoallergenic pets; (5) develop valid animal models of human disease—e.g., Parkinson's disease, Lesh-Nyhan's syndrome, and cancer; and (6) improve production of industrial or consumer products such as fiber. The timing of the guidelines coincides with the FDA's belief in an expected boon in the number of GE animals approaching the stage of commercialization.The FDA's involvement in the approval process emerges from the new animal drug provisions of the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act and the definition of what constitutes a drug. The Act defines a new animal drug as "an article (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of... animals." A rDNA construct intended to affect the structure or function of an animal meets the definition of a new animal drug, regardless of whether the resulting GE animals are intended for human food or the production of pharmaceuticals or any other substances. [End Page 393]Before proceeding to a review of the draft guidelines, it is important briefly to set the controversies around GE animals in historical and ethical context.The Ethical DebateFrom its inception, the intentional genetic modification or genetic engineering of molecules, plants, and animals by the techniques of gene splicing has consistently elicited strong responses from both the scientific community and the public. There are some data to suggest that although the concerns of scientists fall primarily into the category of possible biohazards, those of the public also reflect great concern about the intrinsic moral issues, such as whether there is something fundamentally wrong with this line of work, making it a form of forbidden knowledge (see, e.g., Gaskell 1997). When news of Paul Berg's attempts in 1970 to graft the primate tumor virus (SV 40) onto the intestinal tract bacteria Escherichia coli for the purpose of studying how normal cells may be transformed into cancerous cells was shared with colleagues, he was strongly encouraged to reflect on the potential public health risks if somehow the altered bacteria broke containment and entered the environment. Thanks to Berg's leadership, these concerns soon resulted in conferences held in Asilomar, California, and New Hampton, New Hampshire, where the ethical responsibilities of microbiologists involved in this research were discussed. These initial discussions resulted in what has come to be known as "The Moratorium Letter" (Shattuck 1996) published in the journal Science in 1974. This letter, signed by 11 leaders in the field, actually recommended restrictions on several types of experiments that were considered to be particularly risky and stated "that adherence to our major recommendations will entail postponement or possibly abandonment of certain types of scientifically worthwhile experiments" (Berg 1974). An international conference on the issues came to similar conclusions about the need for a research moratorium for the sake of public safety. Recommendations arising from conference participants led to the formation of the National Institutes... (shrink)

A May 2023 article in The New York Times reported the alarm of industry insiders that the continued advancement of GenAI technologies has the unintended consequence of “releasing something dangerous into the wild.” This ecological analogy is our point of departure. Our chapter approaches the GenAI-Academic Integrity nexus from a media ecological standpoint. Nested in critical communication studies, this perspective assumes complementarities between communication technologies and societal change. In the context of this book, to what extent does GenAI problematize academic (...) gate-keeping, and what do the societal changes attendant to the existence of GenAI mean for academic citizenship? We draw from our observations teaching communication studies in a small university in Atlantic Canada which has situated the GenAI-Academic Integrity question within the context of academic citizenship, and is evolving policies and best practices to address GenAI use within the academy. (shrink)

This work interfaces the philosophies of Jean Baudrillard and Martin Heidegger. It hopes to contribute to both Heideggerian and Baudrillardian scholarship by employing Baudrillardian ideas in more effectively describing the historical happening of the so-called withdrawal of Being from man, which preoccupied much of Heidegger’s body of work. The work argues that by re-visiting an earlier idea of Baudrillard, which he termed as seduction, one finds a possible way of navigating the obscenity of the current epoch of Being. Akin to (...) Heidegger’s idea of Gelassenheit or releasement, Baudrillard’s concept of seduction invites one to allow the real to once again appear, no longer by way of subjective representation, but to let it appear in its very disappearance in hyperreality. (shrink)

It has become a commonplace that "images" were central to the twentieth century and that their role will be even more powerful in the twenty-first. But what is an image and what can an image be? _Releasing the Image_ understands images as something beyond mere representations of things. Releasing images from that function, it shows them to be self-referential and self-generative, and in this way capable of producing forms of engagement beyond spectatorship and subjectivity. This understanding of images owes much (...) to phenomenology—the work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty—and to Gilles Deleuze's post-phenomenological work. The essays included here cover historical periods from the Romantic era to the present and address a range of topics, from Cézanne's painting, to images in poetry, to contemporary audiovisual art. They reveal the aesthetic, ethical, and political stakes of the project of releasing images and provoke new ways of engaging with embodiment, agency, history, and technology. (shrink)

Mystic -- Grundriss -- Breath -- The poem as a visual opening -- Silences of depth -- Multiple meanings of the heart -- Ariel -- The sacramental value of colors -- The turning -- Performing the feminine -- Bodies in poetry, bodies in the world -- White as lighting and depth -- In her own voice -- Striking a balance -- The moon and the yew tree -- A heavy light-ing -- Opening onto the feminine body -- Other ways of (...) listening and seeing the poem -- In the name of the mother -- Inside the suicidal body -- Facing the other -- Engendering sexes -- The arrival of the bee box -- Arriving -- Tensions and resistance -- The blond colonnades -- Swarms: plath's stereotypes -- Plath and racial imagery -- Plath's racism, beyond the bee box -- Letting be(e) -- Appropriation and releasement -- The box is only temporary -- Epilogue: Performing the spiritual for Plath, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

The ring‐shaped ATPase machine, cohesin, regulates sister chromatid cohesion, transcription, and DNA repair by topologically entrapping DNA. Here, we propose a rigid scaffold model to explain how the cohesin regulators Pds5 and Wapl release cohesin from chromosomes. Recent studies have established the Smc3‐Scc1 interface as the DNA exit gate of cohesin, revealed a requirement for ATP hydrolysis in ring opening, suggested regulation of the cohesin ATPase activity by DNA and Smc3 acetylation, and provided insights into how Pds5 and Wapl open (...) this exit gate. We hypothesize that Pds5, Wapl, and SA1/2 form a rigid scaffold that docks on Scc1 and anchors the N‐terminal domain of Scc1 (Scc1N) to the Smc1 ATPase head. Relative movements between the Smc1‐3 ATPase heads driven by ATP and Wapl disrupt the Smc3‐Scc1 interface. Pds5 binds the dissociated Scc1N and prolongs this open state of cohesin, releasing DNA. We review the evidence supporting this model and suggest experiments that can further test its key principles. (shrink)

The comparative historical method provided the possibility to perform a retrospective analysis of parole release, learn about the origin of the institution and the trends of its development within the historical dialectics, evaluate its social importance and benefits, distinguish its positive and negative characteristics, and forecast the model that would be more acceptable in Lithuania today. In order to create a versatile standpoint regarding the variety of conceptions (models) of this institution, the author analyzes the evolution of release on parole, (...) because without an analysis of the historic world outlook it would be impossible to perceive the essence of the modern model of release on parole, to disclose its content, to identify the factors influencing its formation and foresee the perspectives of its further evolution. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on learning outside the classroom (LOtC) in places such as in museums and art galleries, in forests, and by natural water courses; this has bec...

Never-before-published writing from a key twentieth-century philosopher. In 1962, Reiner Schürmann began studying at the Dominican school of theology Le Saulchoir, outside Paris. That experience radically shaped his life and work, enabling him to begin to develop many of the ideas for which he would later be known: letting be, life without why, ontological anarchy, and the tragic double bind. Ways of Releasement contains never-before-published material from Schürmann's early period as well as a report Schürmann wrote about his encounter with (...) Heidegger; a précis of his autobiographical novel, Origins; and translations and new editions of later groundbreaking essays. Ways of Releasement concludes with an extensive afterword setting Schürmann's writings in the context of his thinking and life. (shrink)

Animal release has long been a component of Buddhist practice, although it is little studied contemporarily. This paper examines the historical roots of these rituals, arguing that they may ultimately have been adopted into Chinese Buddhist practices. A short survey of contemporary Buddhist practice in various traditions is given, including references to important scriptural authority. Practices involving large-scale, ritualized animal release is then argued to have a number of unintended negative environmental repercussions, resulting in potential new, non-native invasive species. These (...) practices are also considered from contemporary economic and public health perspectives, culminating in the argument that their compassionate intentions are often lost in the act. (shrink)

This book moves beyond seeing the commons in the past tense, an entity passed over from the public into the private, to reimagine the commons as a process, a contest of force, a reconstitution, and a site of convening practices. It highlights new spaces of gathering opening up, such as the digital commons, and new practices of being in common, such as community economies and solidarity networks. The commons is seen as a contested domain of the collective and as a (...) changing way of being in common, with the balance poised in the tensile play between political economy and social innovation. The book focuses on the possibility of recovering a future in which more can be held by the many, focusing on three concepts: nation and nature as a commons, publics and rights, and bodies, concerning the management of lives and livelihoods. Across these three passage points, the book finds evidence of a commons under attack but also defended in fragile though promising ways. With contributions from leading scholars, this thought provoking book will be of great interest to students and scholars in geography, environmental studies, politics, anthropology, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 185-187.

Heidegger's thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed irreconcilable with that work. Critics contrast the notion of "resoluteness" in Being and Time with Heidegger's post-war account of "releasement" in an attempt to establish a discrepancy between the allegedly voluntarist humanism of his early work and the supposedly 'anti-humanist' thinking of his later work. By contrast, Mahon O'Brien argues for the structural and thematic coherence of Heidegger's movement from authenticity to the search for an (...) authentic free relation to the world - as captured by the term "releasement". By demonstrating the structural and thematic unity of Heidegger's thought in its entirety, O'Brien paves the way for a more measured and philosophically grounded understanding of the issues at stake in the Heidegger controversy. (shrink)

Three thousand years of India’s Sanskrit—and later Hindi—literature reveal persistent themes and motifs with respect to cows and the humans who engage with cows. From the Rigvedic hymns and the Upanishads, to the Bhagavata Purana and later bhakti poetry, emerge two polarities—one of value (between dharma and bhakti sensibilities) and the other of meaning (between literal and figurative senses of language). These two polarities converge in the Sanskrit term artha, which indicates both value and meaning. Thus cows as living beings (...) and “cow” as a concept converge as a central locus of thought and action that strives for ethical integrity in all aspects of human life. (shrink)

This article draws out two injustices to which retrospective criminal legislation may give rise: undermining accessibility of law and challenging equality before the law. It is argued that the censuring function of criminal law exacerbates both wrongs. This sets the stage for an analysis of delaying prisoners’ release. It is suggested that retrospective reform in this context threatens the same values as those threatened by retrospective criminalisation. Yet, the safeguards against retrospective reform of release provisions are weak due to two (...) important strands of case law, one concerning which penalty was ‘applicable at the time’ of the offence and another which draws a distinction between penalties and their execution. Both strands of case law are in need of fundamental reconsideration if article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights is to realise its purposes of upholding rule-of-law values and providing practicable safeguards. (shrink)

本文以新媒体严肃游戏为研究对象, 以弗洛伊德的精神分析和马斯洛的心理学为主要方法论, 思考新媒体严肃游戏的心理功能, 并认为随着现代社会逐步进入后现代社会, 再加上计算机技术的发展和更新, 包括新媒体严肃游戏在内的游戏类极容易引起的心理功能便是压抑、释放和膨胀｡ 这里既有后现代社会的碎片化与欲望化的特征, 同时也因为计算机技术的更新带来更好的游戏体验｡这些都是影响游戏体验者心理功能的重要因素｡.

The identification of neural substrates underlying the long lasting debilitating impact of drug cues is critical for developing novel therapeutic tools. Metabolic coupling has long been considered a key mechanism through which astrocytes and neurons actively interact in response of neuronal activity, but recent findings suggested that disrupting metabolic coupling may represent an innovative approach to prevent memory formation, in particular drug‐related memories. Here, we review converging evidence illustrating how memory and addiction share neural circuitry and molecular mechanisms implicating lactate‐mediated (...) metabolic coupling between astrocytes and neurons. With several aspects of addiction depending on mnemonic processes elicited by drug experience, disrupting lactate transport involved in the formation of a pathological learning, linking the incentive, and motivational effects of drugs with drug‐conditioned stimuli represent a promising approach to encourage abstinence. (shrink)

In South Africa, the majority of the population suffers from the inadequacy of learning opportunities and poor access to the higher education system. This causes the widening of the knowledge gap and increased socio-economic marginalisation, which threatens community agency. Critical knowledge created by academics at South African higher education institutions often culminates in access-controlled, costly scientific publications, thus limiting public access. On the other hand, because of the distance between universities and communities, community knowledge and intelligences are never fed back (...) into the university to enrich scholarship and enhance relevance. This paper explores the need for higher education to be freed from its elitist captivity in order to widen access to knowledge that would enhance community agency and revitalise academic agency for social change. The paper starts with a discussion on the need for change in the elitist nature of higher education. I will recount how essential shifts in thinking and action created the Chance 2 Advance programme hosted by the largest provider of higher education on the continent, the University of South Africa. This programme was designed in an attempt to re-vision academic scholarship for the benefit of the poor. Chance 2 Advance is an engaged scholarship and community-learning programme designed to bring communities and academics closer, in a mutual and reciprocal process of knowledge creation and knowledge mobilisation for social change. The programme has been replicated in urban and rural areas with success. At the end of 2018, the programme is poised to reach 100 000 participants, since its inception in 2010. (shrink)

I develop a phenomenological hermeneutics of four poems by Sylvia Plath: 'Mystic,' 'Ariel,' 'The Moon and the Yew Tree,' and 'The Arrival of the Bee Box.' Inspired by the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I illustrate how we can experience individual poems through the multiple aspects of our embodiment. Importantly, single artworks are treated here with the same respect as single philosophical texts. Heidegger treats poems similarly in his "later" philosophy, which also influenced this dissertation. This emphasis on embodiment does not (...) mean to privilege the body over the cognitive. Instead, the cognitive is revealed as one aspect of our bodily existence. ;Plath's poetic themes intertwine with philosophical questions, such as the difference between instituted and creative language, the nature of gender, and the ethical status of the non-human. For example, Plath's work offers new ways of addressing feminist concerns over essentialism, identity, and spirituality. Plath's emerging notion of a feminine divine resonates with Luce Irigaray's call for a philosophical revisioning of the God of Western metaphysics. Plath's articulations of the body as it lives through pain contribute to the existentialist task of drawing us closer to an authentic experience of death. I show how pain possesses a spiritual dimension for Plath and connect this phenomenon with the act of writing poetry. ;The poetic dimension of language has been suppressed by reductive accounts that theorize language and the body's involvement in language in terms of representation rather than embodiment. I reveal the non-linguistic meanings within the lines and silences of poetic space that impact and alter our bodily being. Poetry allows us to experience, among other things, the flow of lived time, the colors of sounds, and our body's fusion with the world. Significantly, phenomenology bends with these issues in a chiasmic gathering where we can experience the affinity between these two discourses. Phenomenological hermeneutics uncovers the depth of language that is usually suppressed in calculative-rational discourses. ;Through these poetic phenomenological meditations, I open up ways of understanding spiritual and poetic language that impact our ethical encounters with one another, the environment, and the divine. (shrink)

While we often think of pain and suffering as a private experience or sensation that we endure in isolation, some philosophies have interpreted these phenomena in terms of our ontological character as beings who are in relation with other beings and our world more generally. We find complementary but distinct conceptions of pain in two differently situated philosophical projects, namely the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and the tradition of Madhyamaka Buddhism. When we take these expositions together, we find that the (...) same personal boundaries that make us understand pain to be lodged in a private, alienated sphere are conducive to a... (shrink)