T.S. Eliot and others: the (more or less) definitive history and origin of the term “objective correlative”

This paper draws together as many as possible of the clues and pieces of the puzzle surrounding T. S. Eliot’s “infamous” literary term “objective correlative”. Many different scholars have claimed many different sources for the term, in Pound, Whitman, Baudelaire, Washington Allston, Santayana, Husserl, Nietzsche, Newman, Walter Pater, Coleridge, Russell, Bradley, Bergson, Bosanquet, Schopenhauer and Arnold. This paper aims to rewrite this list by surveying those individuals who, in different ways, either offer the truest claim to being the source of the term, or contributed the most to Eliot’s development of it: Allston, Husserl, Bradley and Bergson. What the paper will argue is that Eliot’s possible inspiration for the term is more indebted to the idealist tradition, and Bergson’s aesthetic development of it, than to the phenomenology of Husserl

Situating Martin Heidegger’s claim to a “productive dialogue” with Marxism

This critical review aims to more fully situate the claim Martin Heidegger makes in ‘Letter on Humanism’ that a “productive dialogue” between his work and that of Karl Marx is possible. The prompt for this is Paul Laurence Hemming’s recently published Heidegger and Marx: A Productive Dialogue over the Language of Humanism (2013) which omits to fully account for the historical situation which motivated Heidegger’s seemingly positive endorsement of Marxism. This piece will show that there were significant external factors which influenced Heidegger’s claim and that, when seen within his broader corpus, these particular comments in “Letter on Humanism” are evidently disingenuous, given that his general opinion of Marxism can only be described as vitriolic. Any attempt to explore how such a “productive dialogue” could be construed must fully contextualise Heidegger’s claim for it. This piece will aim to do that, and more broadly explore Heidegger’s general opinion of Marxism

Lubricated wrinkles: imposed constraints affect the dynamics of wrinkle coarsening

We study the dynamic coarsening of wrinkles in an elastic sheet that is compressed while lying on a thin layer of viscous liquid. When the ends of the sheet are instantaneously brought together by a small distance, viscous resistance initially prevents the sheet from adopting a globally buckled shape. Instead, the sheet accommodates the compression by wrinkling. Previous scaling arguments suggested that a balance between the sheet's bending stiffness and viscous effects lead to a wrinkle wavelength $\lambda$ that increases with time $t$ according to $\lambda\propto t^{1/6}$. We show that taking proper account of the compression constraint leads to a logarithmic correction of this result, $\lambda\propto (t/\log t)^{1/6}$. This correction is significant over experimentally observable time spans, and leads us to reassess previously published experimental data.Comment: 12 pages. Version accepted in Phys. Rev. Fluids (with small correction to bibliography

Reconceptualising teaching as transformative practice: Alasdair MacIntyre in the South African context

In its ideal conception, the post-apartheid education landscape is regarded as a site of transformation that promotes democratic ideals such as citizenship, freedom, and critical thought. The role of the educator is pivotal in realising this transformation in the learners she teaches, but this realisation extends beyond merely teaching the curriculum to the educator herself, as the site where these democratic ideals are embodied and enacted. The teacher is thus centrally placed as a moral agent whose behaviour, in the classroom space particularly, should, ideally, represent and communicate the values we aspire to cultivate in post-apartheid South African society generally. Thus, this notion of what teaching encompasses fits broadly into the conception of a “practice” in the sense developed by Alasdair MacIntyre, in that it is a transformative activity the enactment of which not only benefits the practitioner, but also extends to and benefits the broader community as well. Furthermore, practices are grounded in features of social or moral life we hold to be significant and, importantly, it is only through their active cultivation that they can be made tangible and further developed. MacIntyre’s theory of virtue is based on a three-fold interrelationship between practices, how they meaningfully narrate and shape an individual life, and how, in turn, this builds and sustains our moral and social traditions. Using these ideas to analyse post-apartheid South Africa, and the structural transformation paradox it is in, reveals the difficult and complex nature of a society that is in this transitional space. The claim is that attentiveness to practices in the educational space, and to the way they shape and inform moral and social traditions, is necessary to more fully understand and guide this societal transformation

Using a virtue ethics lens to develop a socially accountable community placement programme for medical students

Background: Community-based education (CBE) involves educating the head (cognitive), heart (affective), and the hand (practical) by utilizing tools that enable us to broaden and interrogate our value systems. This article reports on the use of virtue ethics (VE) theory for understanding the principles that create, maintain and sustain a socially accountable community placement programme for undergraduate medical students. Our research questions driving this secondary analysis were; what are the goods which are internal to the successful practice of CBE in medicine, and what are the virtues that are likely to promote and sustain them? Methods: We conducted a secondary theoretically informed thematic analysis of the primary data based on MacIntyre’s virtue ethics theory as the conceptual framework. Results: Virtue ethics is an ethical approach that emphasizes the role of character and virtue in shaping moral behavior; when individuals engage in practices (such as CBE), goods internal to those practices (such as a collaborative attitude) strengthen the practices themselves, but also augment those individuals’ virtues, and that of their community (such as empathy). We identified several goods that are internal to the practice of CBE and accompanying virtues as important for the development, implementation and sustainability of a socially accountable community placement programme. A service-oriented mind-set, a deep understanding of community needs, a transformed mind, and a collaborative approach emerged as goods internal to the practice of a socially accountable CBE. The virtues needed to sustain the identified internal goods included empathy and compassion, connectedness, accountability, engagement [sustained relationship], cooperation, perseverance, and willingness to be an agent of change. Conclusion: This study found that MacIntyre’s virtue ethics theory provided a useful theoretical lens for understanding the principles that create, maintain and sustain CBE practice

Perspective chapter: learning to work smarter with teaching assistants to develop a dyslexia-friendly school

Schools now widely rely on the deployment of teaching assistants (TAs) to support the inclusion of students with learning differences, including students with dyslexia. However, research findings forthe effectiveness of their deployment has been mixed. This chapter therefore seeks to draw upon research evidence of best practice to aid teachers in maximising the quality of their collaborative work with TAs, where TAs are working in-class or in teaching structured programmes of literacy support with individual or small groups of students. This chapter take a critical stance, framed by the social model of disability, advocating a whole-school approach to managing TAs’ deployment and recommending a rethinking of joint working practices with teachers, so that they are both fully involved with supporting students with dyslexia and other learning challenges in the classroom. It also warns of the double-edged nature of the \'paradox of the expert\', where classroom teachers maybe working alongside dyslexia specialist-qualified TAs

Decoloniality and the (im)possibility of an African feminist philosophy

This article offers a prolegomenon for an African feminist philosophy. The prompt for this as an interrogation of Oluwele’s claim that an African feminist philosophy cannot develop until identifiable African worldviews that guide the relationship between men and women have been established. She argues that until there is general agreement about the nature of African philosophy itself, African feminist philosophy will remain impoverished. I critique this claim, unpacking Oluwele’s argument, and examine the contested nature of both African and Western philosophy. Drawing from the work of Mignolo and decolonial thinking, I then argue for the possibility of “epistemic disobedience” concerning the emergence of an African feminist philosophy. Engaging with precolonial African examples which disrupt modern normative gender assumptions and looking at the project of decoloniality, I issue a call for an African feminist philosophy unfettered by the falsely universal claims of modernity/coloniality. My call is for an African feminist philosophy from African loci of enunciation, rooted in the epistemes and experiences of African women