Sinhababu, Neil. Review of James Luchte, ed. NIETZSCHE'S THUS SPOKE ZARATHRUSTRA. NDPR (April 2009).

Luchte, James, ed. Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise. London: Continuum, 2008. As James Luchte writes in his introduction, Thus Spoke Zarathustra "simultaneously plays in the fields of literature and of philosophy" (1). This is part of why Zarathustra is both delightful to read and difficult to understand. Even as its enchanting images and metaphors draw us in, they often leave us puzzled about its philosophical content. Help in solving its riddles would replace our puzzlement with a better understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy, and give us the greater appreciation that one has for a good riddle when one knows the answer. Some of the essays in this volume help us, either by interpreting difficult passages or by presenting interpretive hypotheses that allow us to make better sense of the text. Those who would like to better understand Zarathustra will gain by reading them. . . . Read the rest here: .

Cfp: "Immanence and Materialism," Queen Mary College, University of London, June 23, 2009.

Keynote Speakers: Professor James Williams (University of Dundee) Dr Ray Brassier (American University of Beirut) Dr Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London) The concepts of immanence and materialism are becoming increasingly important in political philosophy. This conference seeks to analyse the connections between these two concepts and to examine the consequences for political thought. It is possible, as Giorgio Agamben has done, to make a distinction within modern philosophy between a line of transcendence (Kant, Husserl, Levinas, Derrida) and a line of immanence (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze, Foucault). If we follow this distinction, then the 'line of immanence' might include Spinozist interpretations of Marx, Althusser's aleatory materialism, and Deleuze's superior empiricism. But what is the value of this work and is it useful to distinguish it from 'transcendent' philosophies? Distinctions between materialism and idealism are equally complex: Derrida, for example, might as easily be classed a materialist as an idealist. And where can we place more recent work like the critiques of Deleuze by Badiou and Zizek, or Meillassoux's speculative materialism? Papers may wish to consider the following questions: What is materialist philosophy? How can it be distinguished from idealist philosophy, and is it useful to do so? Are all philosophies of immanence necessarily materialist? Is it legitimate or useful to make a clear distinction between philosophies of immanence and philosophies of transcendence? How have the concepts of immanence and materialism traditionally been conceived within political philosophy? What, if any, are the political consequences of pursuing a philosophy of immanence? Paper titles and a 300-word abstract should be sent by Friday 22 May, 2009 to Simon Choat at s.j.choat@qmul.ac.uk, Department of Politics, Queen Mary College, University of London.

"Lucretius in the European Enlightenment," School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, September 3–4, 2009.

The aim of this conference is to explore the impact of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura on the intellectual and cultural history of Enlightenment Europe. Since its fifteenth-century rediscovery Lucretius’ work has never lacked for readers, critics and imitators. It is a text that has aroused unusual passions both positive and negative because of its philosophical content and the uncompromising voice in which that content is delivered. Virtually every major figure in the European Enlightenment was in some way influenced by Lucretius, and examining the reactions to Lucretius in the eighteenth century is essential to understanding the central intellectual concerns of the Enlightenment more generally, ranging from materialism and the influence of the passions on human affairs to the origins of organised religion. And yet, surprisingly little work has been done on the reception of Lucretius in the eighteenth century and the precise role his work played in the key intellectual debates of that period. Although recent important studies on the Enlight enment have given considerable attention to eighteenth-century Epicureanism, they have conceived of it as an abstract set of philosophical ideas, rather than the product of an ongo ing reception of Lucretius’ text and a complex dialogue among Lucretius’ readers. By focusing on various specific engagements with the text of De rerum natura in certain intellectual and literary contexts we shall not only provide a new and robust foundation for the study of Epicureanism in the Enlightenment, but also establish a new model for understanding the role the reception of ancient philosophy and literature played in European thought more generally.

Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.shca.ed.ac.uk/conferences/lucretius09/index.html.

Cfp: The Philosophy of Computer Games 2009, University of Oslo, August 13-15, 2009.

We hereby invite scholars in any field who take a professional interest in the phenomenon of computer games to submit papers. Accepted papers will have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical issues in relation to computer games. They will also attempt to use specific examples rather than merely invoke"computer games" in general terms. We invite submissions focusing on, but not limited to, the following three headings: Fictionality and Interaction Computer games are often conceived as a setting for fictional narratives, facts, objects and events, although the interactive setting is thought to give fictionality a special character and to be intertwined with non-fictional aspects in various ways. We invite papers on relevant discussions of fictionality, narrative, fictional objects, simulation, virtuality, and kindred cognitive notions like make-believe, pretense, and imagination. Defining Computer Games Is it possible to point to some defining characteristic(s) of computer games? We are especially interested in discussions of formal definitions of computer games in terms of characteristics such as rules, play, representation, computation, affordances, interaction, negotiable consequences, and so on. We welcome both constructive and critical discussions, as long as they are directed at clearly articulated proposals. Ethical and Political Issues What are the ethical responsibilities of game-makers in relation to individual gamers and society in general? What role, if any, can games serve as a critical cultural corrective in relation to traditional forms of media and communicative practices, for example in economy and politics? Also, what is the nature of the ethical norms that apply within the gaming context, and what are the factors that allow or delimit philosophical justifications of their application there or elsewhere? Your abstract should not exceed 1000 words. If your submission falls under one of the three headings, please indicate which one. Send your abstract to submissions@gamephilosophy.org. All submitted abstracts will be subject to double blind peer review, and the program committee will make a final selection of papers for the conference on the basis of this. Full manuscripts must be submitted by August 8, and will be made available on the conference website. Deadline for submissions is June 1, 2009. Notification of accepted submissions will be sent out byJune 10, 2009. Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.gamephilosophy.org/.

Cfp: "The Bible and Philosophy: Rethinking the Fundamentals," Shalem Center in Jerusalem, October 25-28, 2009.

Hosted by the Department of Philosophy, Political Theory and Religion. Philosophers have gradually become accustomed to the idea that the classic texts of Indian and Chinese religion can be fruitfully interrogated for insights in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and other fields. But the classical texts of the Bible remain largely outside the scope of philosophical discourse. To be sure, there is a rich tradition of “theistic” philosophy, which begins with the medieval thesis that the God of the Bible is “the most perfect being”. But in recent years, philosophers, theologians and scholars of Bible have asked whether this tradition accurately reflects the worldview(s) of the biblical authors; and whether this discourse exhausts the possible subjects for fruitful philosophical investigation of the biblical texts. Interdisciplinary papers are invited on subjects related to the philosophical elucidation of the Hebrew Bible, or to the relationship between philosophy and the biblical texts. Although papers on later interpretive traditions (rabbinic, Catholic, Protestant, etc.) will be considered for presentation at the conference, priority will be given to papers involving direct philosophical engagement with the biblical texts. Participants to include: Lenn Goodman (Vanderbilt), Alan Mittleman (JTS), David-Hillel Ruben (Birkbeck College, London), and Howard Wettstein (UC Riverside). Questions philosophers, theologians and scholars of Bible and religion may wish to investigate in the context of this conference include, but are not limited to, the following: Are there distinct biblical concepts of truth, being, justice or love? Does the Bible have a distinct approach (or approaches) to familiar questions in ontology, epistemology, philosophy of language, or hermeneutics? Does the Bible have a distinct approach (or approaches) to human nature? To the nature of the mind? To the nature of the spoken word? To what does the biblical concept of the soul refer? What is the biblical authors’ view (or views) of reason and argument? Of the search for wisdom, knowledge, and truth? Of conscience? To what does the biblical concept of God refer? Does the Bible really conceive of God as perfect being? And if not, then what? Is there a distinctive biblical approach (or approaches) to morals? To self-improvement and virtue? To law? How does the biblical concept of holiness differ from its meaning in other traditions, and how is it related to goodness? Does the central narrative sequence of the Bible (Genesis to Kings), if considered as a whole, raise questions of philosophical significance? What about the corpus of the later prophets (Isaiah to Malachi)? The biblical compilation as a whole? Is there a distinctive biblical approach to history? To narrative? To time? Do particular biblical stories or books of the Bible advance philosophically significant teachings or points of view? What about the “biographies” of particular biblical figures? What do the various genres by means of which the biblical authors express their ideas (narrative, law, prophetic oration, psalm, etc.) tell us about the content of those ideas? How do biblical concepts, issues, and viewpoints compare with those of ancient Greece? Of the ancient Near East and India? Of later Western philosophy, including modern philosophy? Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be submitted together with a current cv no later than May 22, 2009. Select conference papers will appear subsequently in a conference book. A limited travel fund will be available to assist graduate students wishing to attend the conference. Please direct correspondence to Meirav Jones, meiravj@shalem.org.il.

12th Annual Summer Institute in American Philosophy, University of Oregon, July 13-18, 2009.

The Summer Institute in American Philosophy is designed for faculty members and advanced graduate and postdoctoral students in philosophy and related disciplines interested in research and study in the American philosophic tradition. The program consists of a series of lectures and discussions focused on central figures and problem areas in the tradition. Lecture and Discussion Topics Topics for the Twelfth Annual Institute include Rereading William James; Feminism in the American Tradition; Environmental Philosophy; and Philosophy of Education in America. Registration and Program Information For registration forms, up-to-date program information, including speakers, session topics, reading lists, and events in Eugene, Oregon, please go the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy web page at www.american-philosophy.org.

Cfp: "The Remix: Revisit, Rethink, Revise, Renew," CCCC, Louisville, March 17-20, 2010.

Annual Convention, Conference on College Composition and Communication. Whether it’s taking the old and making it fresh and new or taking the current and giving it a different spin, to remix a thing is to try and make it better. In our 61st year, after decades of innovative teaching and cutting-edge scholarship, the CCCC remix provides us with a way to revisit, rethink, revise and renew our vision for the future of our field. Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.ncte.org/cccc/conv.

"Genealogies: Excavating Legal Modernity," Critical Legal Conference 2009, University of Leicester, September 11-13, 2009.

Theme: The ongoing publication and translation of Michel Foucault's Collège de France lectures has revived an interest in scholarship reviewing the philosopher's deliberations on law. The lectures have generated a new wave of governmentality studies within critical legal scholarship and, moreover, a number of secondary texts reassessing Foucault's relationship with law have either recently been published or are imminently due for publication. The default view on Foucault's relationship with law was often modelled on the so-called "expulsion thesis" (Hunt-Wickham): for Foucault, law is irrelevant. The lectures, especially from the mid and late 1970s, have provided a wealth of new material that would suggest that Foucault's take on law was much more nuanced and complex than had previously been thought. Several possible perspectives can be adopted. The law (or more accurately the "juridical") was, perhaps, less a social institution and more a rationality that permeated the political and epistemic technologies of early modernity. Understood rather as a rationality than an institution, the juridical may well have subsided in late modernity in relation to a rationality of the norm even when legislative initiatives have quantitatively speaking proliferated (e.g. François Ewald's social law). But some aspects in the newly published lectures would call for an even more radical rehabilitation. Not only does the juridical provide distortive "ideological" cloaking functions, but institutions still adhering to a juridical rationality may also offer the ultimate structural guarantee for the optimal functioning of both disciplinary and governmental technologies (the family and disciplinary institutions, legislation and the economy, etc.). Plenaries: The Keynote Address of the conference will be delivered by Marcela Iacub (EHESS/CNRS), French legal historian, feminist and author of, amongst other books, a genealogy of the legal concept of "propriety" (Par le trou de la serrure. Une histoire de la pudeur publique, XIXème-XXIème siècle, Fayard, 2008). A second plenary session will be a panel discussion on the necessity to revise the so-called expulsion thesis often attributed to Michel Foucault in secondary literature: law is irrelevant. Panellists are Peter Fitzpatrick (Birkbeck), Colin Gordon (Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust) and Véronique Voruz (Leicester). Streams: Revolutions in Natural Law Critical Property Theory: The Powers of Property Labour, Work and Equality Tragic Jurisprudence Laws of Empire Virtual Worlds, Virtual Law? Mapping the Terrain of WTO Law Genealogy of Human Rights from a Third-World Perspective Further information may be found here: http://www.le.ac.uk/la/clc2009/index.html.

"Understanding Human Nature: Biological Explanations and Beyond," Department of Philosophy, University of Antwerp, May 11, 2009.

Joint organisation by the Centre for Ethics and the Centre for Philosophical Psychology; sponsored by the Research Foundation - Flanders. The explanation of human behaviour and cognition has become more and more inspired by biological models and evolutionary theory. Are the human sciences becoming the handmaiden of biology (or vice versa)? To answer this question one has to understand better what it means to understand and explain specific aspects of human behaviour and cognition, such as perception, emotions, moral conduct and cultural practices. This symposium wants to stimulate critical reflection on these issues and help to understand what it means to understand and explain human beings. Schedule: 9.15 Welcome 9.30 Filip Buekens, “Evolutionary Psychology and the Calm Sunshine of the Mind” 10.30 Coffee 11.00 Peter Goldie, “Bald Naturalism and the Personal Perspective” 12.00 Fred Keijzer, “Making a difference: Can representations influence biological behavior?” 13.00 – 14.30 Lunch 14.30 Jesse Prinz, “Where does Morality come from?” 15.30 Coffee 16.00 Andreas De Block, “Darwin meets Douglas: Culturally evolving disgust” Further information may be found here: http://www.ua.ac.be/main.aspx?c=*WIJSBEG&n=74156&ct=69169.

Henderson, Mark. "Nature v Nurture? Please Don't Ask." TIMES March 28, 2009.

The monster Caliban, according to his master, Prospero, was “a devil, a pure devil, on whose nature nurture can never stick”. Yet only a few decades before Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, St Ignatius Loyola had founded the Jesuit order, with its famous maxim: “Give me the child until he is 7, and I will show you the man.” This ancient debate over the relative contributions of inheritance and experience to the human condition has never been more charged than in the genetic age. On one side stood those who sought and saw genetic explanations for human psychology; on the other, those who believed it to be moulded by culture. There was little common ground. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an evolutionary psychologist, has even joked that perhaps we are genetically programmed to set nature against nurture. Since the middle of the last century the nurture camp has been dominant. Just as molecular biology began to unravel the secrets of DNA, genetics and evolution were relegated to psychological bit-players by a new orthodoxy, which held that biology has forged a human mind of almost limitless malleability. It was the doctrine of the blank slate. The idea, usually traced to the 17th-century philosopher John Locke, grew popular in the Enlightenment, fitting the mood of challenge to the supposedly innate authority of monarchy and aristocracy. It was a statement of individual freedom, which became strongly associated with the political Left. Though many early socialists were enthusiasts for eugenics, later generations grew suspicious of genetics, particularly after it was abused to justify oppression of disadvantaged racial and social groups, most brutally in Nazi Germany. Liberal opinion turned against the concept of a biological human nature, which was increasingly seen as a tool with which male and bourgeois elites could rationalise hegemony. The movement was driven by the social sciences. From psychology came Sigmund Freud's notion that attitudes and mental health are explained by childhood experience. The behaviourism of B.F.Skinner added the claim that human beings could be conditioned by training, much as Ivan Pavlov's celebrated dogs salivated at the sound of a bell. From anthropology came the research of Franz Boas and Margaret Mead, whose comparative studies of different societies suggested that traditions could steer human behaviour in a multitude of directions. Mead's purported discovery of free love among Samoan women was influential because - though founded on poor data - it challenged prevailing sexual mores. Karl Marx's political and economic theories saw human nature as something to be reshaped and directed to facilitate revolution. And postmodernism contributed the mantra that even knowledge and truth are socially constructed and relative. What emerged was a new model of behaviour, in which human nature is anything but fixed or shared, but can be moulded into many configurations by culture. If genetic influences are allowed at all, they are wholly secondary to those of the environment. To its supporters, this became axiomatic to a fair society: if anything can be learnt, and anybody can do the learning, then people can be taught to value equality. Social justice and morality became intertwined with the concept that little in life is laid down, or even much affected, by inherited genes. Though well-intentioned, and in some respects an important antidote to pseudoscientific genetic determinism, this view was dangerously inflexible. Any evidence that genetics might be seriously influential after all would threaten the very foundations of liberty and equality - so it would have to be resisted, as would research that might provide it. The result was that scientists who investigated effects on human behaviour found their positions caricatured and their politics demonised as reactionary, even fascist. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5986239.ece.

"Thomas Szasz Speaks: Interview with Natasha Mitchell." ALL IN THE MIND. ABC NATIONAL RADIO April 4, 2009.

In 1961 maverick psychiatrist and libertarian Professor Thomas Szasz published his controversial and influential epic, The Myth of Mental Illness. In it he argued that mental illness is a fiction and a medical metaphor. Half a century later he maintains we live in a therapeutic state—a 'pharmacracy' where psychiatry is synonymous with coercion. On the eve of his 89th birthday he joins Natasha Mitchell in conversation over two weeks about his contentious legacy. Listen here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2009/2530830.htm.

Alain Badiou on BBC's HARDTALK March 24, 2009.

Watch him here: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7936414602517427743&ei=Nm_NSce7OsW2-AaTtdngBQ&q=badiou+hardtalk&hl=en.

Cfp: "Is Logic Universal?" LOGICA UNIVERSALIS (forthcoming).

There will be a special issue of the journal logica universalis dedicated to the question 'Is logic universal?' Many questions are connected to this issue: 1. Do all human beings have the same capicity of reasoning? Does a man, a woman, a child, a papuan, a yuppie, reason in the same way? 2. Does reasoning evolve? Did human beings reason in the same way two centuries ago? In the future will human beings reason in the same way? Did computers change our way to reason? Is a mathematical proof independent of time and culture ? 3. Do we reason in different ways depending on the situation? Do we use the same logic for everyday life, physics, economy? 4. Do the different systems of logic reflect the diversity of reasonings? 5. Is there any absolute true way of reasoning ? Any contibutions dedicated to one aspects of the question "Is logic universal?" is welcome. Submit your paper to mailto:universal.logic@ufc.br before August 31st 2009. Visit the journal's homepage here: http://www.birkhauser.ch/LU.

Pub: RADICAL PSYCHOLOGY 7.2 (2008).

• Editorial by Brenda A. LeFrançois
• Theorizing distress: Critical Reflections on Bi-polar and Borderline by Christina Martens
• Stranger Neighbours by Helen Douglas
• Making Bipolar Britney: Proliferating psychiatric diagnoses through tabloid media by Jijian Voronka
• A "Patient-Centred" Path towards Ignoring Patient Rights by Rob Wipond
• We All Go Astray by Leon Redler

Visit the journal's homepage here: http://radicalpsychology.org/vol7-2/index.html.

Nelson, Eric Sean. Review of Lin Ma's HEIDEGGER ON EAST-WEST DIALOGUE. NDPR (April 2009).

Ma, Lin. Heidegger on East-West Dialogue: Anticipating the Event. London: Routledge, 2008. Lin Ma's Heidegger on East-West Dialogue is a rigorous, detailed, and attentive study of Martin Heidegger's complex, ambiguous, and overly interpreted relations with Eastern thought. In this work, Ma meticulously interrogates Heidegger's constructions of the "Asiatic" and the "Eastern," his references to Asian words, texts, and traditions, and his interactions with individuals from China, Japan, and -- to a lesser extent -- South and Southeast Asia. In this carefully crafted inquiry, Ma examines the texts and contexts of Heidegger's occasional references to Eastern thought and Asia. This includes remarks that have been discussed multiple times in previous literature without sufficient attention to their context and trajectory. She also considers a number of previously unexamined remarks from recently published works and collections of correspondence. This book is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the actuality and possibilities of Heidegger's thinking with respect to Eastern and intercultural philosophy. Ma offers a critical and balanced -- and accordingly less speculative and optimistic -- assessment of Heidegger's interest in Eastern thought and his import for East-West and intercultural dialogue. Through a meticulous reading of the texts, she convincingly and forcefully -- indeed, devastatingly for overly indulgent interpretations -- reveals the stakes and limits of Heidegger's actual interest in and import for Eastern thought. Heidegger never carefully distinguishes the various cultures nor the varieties of what he considers Eastern thought, which is neither philosophy (metaphysics) nor genuinely inceptive thinking insofar as these both concern Being. Likewise, Heidegger's significance for intercultural thought has been uncritically appropriated and imaginatively exaggerated in East and West. This book is not another creative yet ahistorical work in "comparative philosophy," which is one of the dangers of cross-cultural philosophy. Ma traces how Heidegger influenced East Asian intellectuals and how they drew connections between Heidegger's thinking and Eastern traditions that in turn shaped the context of the question of Heidegger and the East and the formation of "resonances" between them. It should be noted, however, that previous interpreters have been more aware of these difficulties than admitted in this work, which is precisely why they stressed and over-emphasized the few resonances, influences, and connections that they recognized. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15705.

"Speculative Materialism / Speculative Realism," Philosophy Research Unity, University of the West of England, April 24, 2009.

Participants: Ray Brassier (American University of Beirut), Iain Hamilton Grant (University of the West of England), Graham Harman (American University in Cairo), Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London) with a paper by Quentin Meillassoux (Ecole Normale Supérieure) The first 'Speculative Realism' workshop at Goldsmiths College, London, in 2007 sparked considerable interest and debate in contemporary European philosophy circles. This second workshop shall pursue some of the fundamental issues that emerged out of the first, principal among them the relation of speculative philosophy to materialist metaphysics. Materialism emerges at two key yet divergent junctures: firstly at the physicalist level, raising the problems of reduction and epistemic change, and in consequence, confronting the viability of any kind of speculative philosophy. The second juncture concerns the practically oriented materialism that constrains its ontologies accordingly. Yet to the reductionist programme apparently mandated by materialism, it is possible to oppose an ontologically inflationary account; this same position can equally give rise to a consistent account of causality that, if not an immaterialism, does not rest on a material base. Similarly, while materialists adhere to reductionist research programmes, such programmes are themselves highly speculative, leading therefore to the question whether materialism’s epistemic and ontological problems may more consistently be addressed by overtly speculative means. Finally, does a problematical use of materialism as a politically operative concept entail a rejection or an augmentation of speculative philosophy? None of the contributors to this second International Workshop on speculative philosophy and materialism share a position on these problems; yet the necessity that they be confronted is incontrovertible. This workshop therefore provides a focus for the exercise of speculative philosophy, rather than for metaphilosophical commentary on it. Further information may be found here: http://www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/courses/philosophy/events/2009-04_spec_conference.shtml.

Froman, Wayne J. Review of John Sallis' TRANSFIGUREMENTS. NDPR (April 2009).

Sallis, John. Transfigurements: On the True Sense of Art. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. Transfigurements: On the True Sense of Art by John Sallis is an exceptionally rich and rewarding text. The text comprises an introduction, titled "Prefigurements," and eight chapters. The first chapter, "The Invisibility of Painting," calls attention to the current significance of art for philosophy and signals how Sallis will address art in this volume. The import of art today pertains to the collapse of the distinction, beginning in Plato, between the sensible and the intelligible. It is this distinction that has governed philosophy of art. The distinction's collapse means that the essence of art has to be rethought "from the ground up." . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15725.

Westlund, Andrea C. Review of Two Works by Kim Atkins. NDPR (April 2009).

Atkins, Kim. Narrative Identity and Moral Identity: a Practical Perspective. London: Routledge, 2008. Atkins, Kim, and Catriona Mackenzie, eds. Practical Identity and Narrative Agency. London: Routledge, 2008. Narrative conceptions of agency have attracted considerable philosophical interest in recent years, and both of these books make significant contributions to the growing literature on this theme. Each treats a wide range of related concepts, including not just narrative agency itself but also personal and practical identity, temporality and the self, practical reasoning, and autonomy. Kim Atkins' Narrative Identity and Moral Identity is a book about the nature of human selfhood. Atkins uses the terms "selfhood" and "identity" interchangeably, and approaches her subject in part through a discussion of theories of personal identity. Her central interest, however, is in practical rather than metaphysical identity. A person, in the sense of interest to Atkins, is a practical unity of first-, second-, and third-personal perspectives (more on this below), and questions about personal identity, in her sense, are questions about the continuity of this practical unity over time. . . . Atkins and Mackenzie's edited volume, Practical Identity and Narrative Agency, is organized around many of the same themes that are central to Atkins' own book. Its papers treat topics including the relationship between metaphysical and practical identity, the relationship between practical reasoning and practical identity, the reflective capacities required for practical reasoning and autonomy, and, of course, the role of narrative in all of the above. For the most part I will limit myself to brief summaries of the main claims defended in each paper, and will reserve my more extended remarks for those that most centrally involve the concept of narrative. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15745.

Pub: Amossy, Ruth, et Roselyne Koren, eds. RHETORIQUE ET ARGUMENTATION. ARGUMENTATION ET ANALYSE DU DISCOURS 2 (2009).

Introduction:

• Ruth Amossy et Roselyne Koren Rhétorique et argumentation : approches croisées [Texte intégral] (Current Approaches to Rhetoric and Argumentation)

Considérations théoriques:

• Michel Meyer Comment repenser le rapport de la rhétorique et de l’argumentation ? [Texte intégral] (How should we consider the relationship between rhetoric and argumentation?)
• Michael Leff Perelman, argument ad hominem et ethos rhétorique [Texte intégral] (Perelman, ad Hominem Argument, and Rhetorical Ethos)
• Christopher W. Tindale L’argumentation rhétorique et le problème de l’auditoire complexe [Texte intégral] (Rhetorical Argumentation and the Problem of the Complex Audience)
• Michael A. Gilbert La normativité naturelle : une théorie de l’argumentation comme discipline engagée [Texte intégral] (Natural Normativity : Argumentation Theory as an Engaged Discipline)

Les Figures entre rhétorique et argumentation:

• Marc Bonhomme De l’argumentativité des figures de rhétorique [Texte intégral] (The Argumentativity of Figures)
• Christian Plantin Un lieu pour les figures dans la théorie de l’argumentation [Texte intégral] (A Place for Rhetorical Figures in Argumentation Theory)
• Francisca Snoeck Henkemans La prétérition comme outil de stratégie rhétorique [Texte intégral] (Manoeuvring strategically with praeteritio)
• Ekkehard Eggs Rhétorique et argumentation : de l’ironie [Texte intégral] (Rhetoric and Argumentation : on Irony)

Bibliographie annotée:

• Michael Leff et Steven R. Edscorn Bibliographie sélective annotée des publications en langue anglaise sur la rhétorique, la critique rhétorique et l’argumentation [Texte intégral]

Comptes rendus:

• Roselyne Koren Figures et points de vue, Langue Française, n° 160 [Texte intégral] Sous la dir. d’Alain Rabatel, décembre 2008

Visit the journal's homepage here: http://aad.revues.org/.

Cfp: "Taking the Body Seriously," Sixth Annual Conference, UK and Ireland Association for Medical Humanities, University of Durham, July 6-8, 2009.

The conference's aim is to bring humanities resources, both single-discipline and inter-disciplinary, to bear upon our understanding of how our bodies constitute both the possibilities of, and the constraints upon, leading flourishing lives. Key themes include: * the role of the body in framing experience, knowledge, values and the imagination * the place of the body in relation to creativity and the arts, both as generator and as object * how science's methods and agenda reflect the fact and form of our embodiment; and * the place of medical conceptions of the body, health and well-being within prevalent contemporary understandings of human flourishing In addition to these themes, there will also be a general section accommodating papers on topics of broad interest within medical humanities. Abstracts of up to 250 words should be submitted electronically by 24th April 2009 to the organisers at cmh.admin@durham.ac.uk. Further information is here: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/amh/callfopapersannualmeetingdurham2009/.