Veronica Vasterling

In this article three viewpoints on the relation of body and language are discussed: the poststructuralist viewpoint of Judith Butler, the phenomenological viewpoint of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the postmodernist viewpoint of Jean-François Lyotard. The reason juxtaposing for these three accounts is twofold. First, the topic requires a combination of post-structuralist and phenomenological insights, and second, the accounts are supplementary. Butler's account raises questions that can be answered with the help of Merleau-Ponty's work. Lyotard's anthropology of the inhuman offers a perspective of finitude that is missing in the other two. The aim of the article is to outline the necessary ingredients of an adequate conception of the speaking embodied subject.

'Deconstruction' as a way of philosophizing fits in with an important aspect of the tradition of modern philosophy, i.e. the reflection on philosophical thinking itself, on the rules and conditions of its thinking, yet it differs from this tradition in that it starts from the non-traditional conception of philosophy as being — primarily and factually — an activity of text-reading and - production. As such, the 'method' of deconstruction follows a double path : on the one hand, the analysis or the disentanglement of lines, structures and motives in a given text, a process which involves the command and the acknowledgement of the rules and inner coherence of philosophical thinking; but on the other hand, working on those aspects of a text, e.g. the syntax, the style etc., which exceed the semantic structure and the conceptual finality of philosophy, working in such a way that the bounds of philosophical command, the fissures opening up in its text, are made 'readable'

Throughout the 1990-ies Nussbaum, in collaboration with others, has elaborated and argued for a list of human capabilities which specifies necessary conditions of human flourishing. The capabilities approach has been enormously influential in putting issues of global development and justice, and especially justice for women, on the philosophical and political agenda. Moreover, many international agencies and institutions, including the United Nations Development Program, have started to make use of this approach. Despite of its obvious good intentions the approach deserves more serious critical attention from philosophers than it has received until now. In my paper I take up some fundamental problems with Nussbaum’s philosophical framework. I will argue that Nussbaum’s conception of human nature is still (implicitly) Cartesian and, more in particular, that her conception of reason is outdated. It raises problems with respect to the question of universal values, the possibility of which Nussbaum defends by reference to the faculty of reason.

Hermeneutic phenomenology is absent in 4 EAC literature . The aim of this article is to show that hermeneutic phenomenology as elaborated in the work of Heidegger is relevant to 4 EAC research. In the first part of the article I describe the hermeneutic turn Heidegger performs in tandem with his ontological turn of transcendental phenomenology, and the hermeneutic account of cognition resulting from it. I explicate the main thesis of the hermeneutic account, namely that cognition is interaction with the world, followed by a discussion of the modes of cognition distinguished in the hermeneutic account. In the second part of the article I discuss the implications of this account with respect to the status and meaning of first, second and third person perspective of cognition. The article concludes with the draft and discussion of an exploratory model of hermeneutic cognition