Works by Todd Mei
29 found
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| Todd Mei [17] | Todd S. Mei [13] |
- The poetics of meaningful work: An analogy to speech acts.Todd Mei -2018 -Philosophy and Social Criticism 45 (1):1-21.Meaningful work refers to the idea that human work is an integral part of the way we think of our lives as going well. The concept is prevalent in sociology and business studies. In philosophy, its discussion tends to revolve around matters of justice and whether the State should take steps to eradicate meaningless work. However, despite the breadth of the recent, general literature, there is little to no discussion about how it is in fact the case that work is (...) meaningful. There is a basic assumption that certain facts about work make it meaningful. After noting the shortcomings in the literature, this essay argues that we can better understand the production of meaning in work by an analogy to speech acts. Using Paul Ricoeur’s theory of action as discourse, one can see how meaning is predicated in the performance of work in ways that are locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. (shrink)
- Heidegger, Work, and Being.Todd S. Mei -2009 - Continuum.This book provides a novel interpretation of the Aristotelian understanding of work in light of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. In a world of changing work patterns and the global displacement of working lifestyles, the nature of human identity and work is put under great strain. Modern conceptions of work have been restricted to issues of utility and necessity, where aims and purposes of work are reducible to the satisfaction of immediate technical and economic needs. Left unaddressed is the larger (...) narrative context in which humans naturally seek to understand a human contribution to and responsibility for themselves, others and being as a whole. What role does human work play in the development of the world itself? Is it merely a functional activity or does it have a metaphysical and ontological calling? "Heidegger, Work, and Being" elucidates Heidegger's philosophy of work, providing a novel interpretation of the Aristotelian understanding of work in relation to Heidegger's ontology and notion of thanking. Todd S. Mei employs Heidegger's hermeneutical approach to a critique and reconstruction of an understanding of work to show that work, at its core, is an activity centred on thanking and mutual recognition. "Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy" presents cutting-edge scholarship in the field of modern European thought. The wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and stimulating resource for students and academics from across the discipline. (shrink)
- Incorporating Virtues: A Speech Act Approach to Understanding how Virtues Can Work in Business.Todd Mei -2022 -Philosophy of Management 21 (1):15-29.One of the key debates about applying virtue ethics to business is whether or not the aims and values of a business actually prevent the exercise of virtues. Some of the more interesting disagreement in this debate has arisen amongst proponents of virtue ethics. This article analyzes the central issues of this debate in order to advance an alternative way of thinking about how a business can be a form of virtuous practice. Instead of relying on the paired concepts of (...) internal and external goods that define what counts as virtuous, I offer a version of speech act theory taken from Paul Ricoeur to show how a business can satisfy several aims without compromising the exercise of the virtues. I refer to this as a polyvalent approach where a single task within a business can have instrumental, conventional, and imaginative effects. These effects correspond to the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary dimensions of meaning. I argue that perlocution provides a way in which the moral imagination can discover the moral significance of others that might have not been noticed before, and furthermore, that for such effects to be practiced, they require appropriate virtues. I look at two cases taken from consultation work to thresh out the theoretical and practical detail. (shrink)
- Heidegger in the machine: the difference between techne and mechane.Todd Mei -2015 -Continental Philosophy Review 49 (3):267-292.Machines are often employed in Heidegger’s philosophy as instances to illustrate specific features of modern technology. But what is it about machines that allows them to fulfill this role? This essay argues there is a unique ontological force to the machine that can be understood when looking at distinctions between techne and mechane in ancient Greek sources and applying these distinctions to a reading of Heidegger’s early thought on equipment and later thought on poiesis. Especially with respect to Heidegger’s appropriation (...) of Aristotle’s conception of dunamis, it becomes apparent from a Heideggerian perspective that machines provide an increase in capacity to its human users, but only so at a cost. This cost involves a problem of knowledge where the set of operations required in machine use results in the loss of understanding our dependency on being. The essay then concludes with a discussion of how this relation to machinic capacity is not merely pessimistic and deterministic, but indicates what might constitute a free relation to machines. (shrink)
- Are Reasons Enough? Sen and Ricoeur on the Idea of Impartiality.Todd S. Mei -2014 -Dialogue 53 (2):243-270.Amartya Sen argues that a conception of impartiality built upon “trans-positional objectivity” provides a potential remedy to conflicts of distributive justice by securing the most “reasonable reasons” in a debate. This article undertakes a critical analysis of Sen’s theory by contrasting it with Paul Ricoeur’s claim that impartiality is a normative concept and therefore that the demand faced within the arena of competing distributive claims is not one of providing the most reasonable reasons but of exposing and understanding the role (...) of convictions that underwrite normative frameworks, or ethical orders. -/- Amartya Sen soutient qu’une idée de l’impartialité qui se fonde sur une objectivité «trans-positionelle» offre un remède possible aux conflits de la justice distributive en s’assurant d’obtenir les «raisons» les plus «raisonnables» dans un débat. Cet article a pour intention principale de formuler une critique de l’hypothèse de Sen en la contrastant avec l’interprétation de l’impartialité proposée par Paul Ricœur. Selon Ricœur, l’impartialité est un concept normatif. Par conséquent, la tâche à assumer est de révéler et de comprendre le rôle des convictions qui établissent les bases des cadres normatifs et des systèmes éthiques, et non de procurer les raisons les plus raisonnables. (shrink)
- The Preeminence of Use: Reevaluating the Relation Between Use and Exchange in Aristotle’s Economic Thought.Todd S. Mei -2009 -Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (4):pp. 523-548.Aristotle’s economic thinking in the Nicomachean Ethics 5.5 and Politics 1 provides one of the earliest analyses of the economic nature exchange. Establishing the significance of Aristotle in this area has often led modern commentators to equate Aristotle’s descriptive analysis of use and exchange to the definitions of use-value and exchange-value as it is found in Karl Marx. In this article, I show that Aristotle’s understanding of use and exchange is qualitatively different from this interpretation, focusing in particular on the (...) ethical nature of use and how, for Aristotle, exchange is an extension of practical deliberation. (shrink)
- An Economic Turn: A Hermeneutical Reinterpretation of Political Economy with Respect to the Question of Land.Todd S. Mei -2011 -Research in Phenomenology 41 (3):297-326.The philosophy of economics has been largely guided by analytic philosophy. Even Marx has been appropriated without much scandal by economists who separate his scientific contributions from his politics. In this article, I place philosophical hermeneutics (i.e., Heidegger and Ricoeur) in dialogue with the conventional understanding of land as a factor of production. The history of political economy misunderstands land as an entity classifiable as property and capital. I argue instead that land's ontological role, deriving from Heidegger's concept of earth, (...) suggests that economics needs to account for it in a new way according to David Ricardo's notion of land rent. (shrink)
- Commitment and Communication: The Aesthetics of Receptivity and Historicity.Todd S. Mei -2006 -Contemporary Aesthetics 4:30-30.A general tension in contemporary aesthetics can be described as existing between objective truth claims and historical relativity. The former is generally represented by the Enlightenment approaches and its descendants that ground aesthetic judgment in rationality. The latter characterizes the postmodern appeal to historicity and the exposure of historical prejudice. Following mostly the hermeneutical philosophy of Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Dupré, this paper argues how aesthetic theory, defined by either pole, inadequately accounts for historicity. In response to this critique, this (...) paper attempts to navigate between these two poles in returning to an analysis of the nature of history and its phenomenological and ontological significance. It is in the very depth of the historical experience that aesthetics gains its greatest fecundity by means of its commitment to meaning and communication within history. (shrink)Export citation
Bookmark - Deleuze and Ricoeur: Disavowed Affinities and the Narrative Self. By Declan Sheerin. (London: Continuum, 2009. Pp. xix + 240. Price £65.00.).Todd Mei -2013 -Philosophical Quarterly 63 (252):612-614.
- Economy of the gift: Rethinking the role of land enclosure in political economy.Todd S. Mei -2009 -Modern Theology 25 (3):441-468.The theological revivification of the concept of gift and gift exchange in the last two decades has provoked questions on how notions of divine superabundance can be translated into economics. In this article, I relate the thinking of Paul Ricoeur, John Milbank, Philip Goodchild and Albino Barrera to a specific economic reform that entails seeing land enclosure as inimical to the stability and fairness of an economy. I refer to the political economy of Henry George which takes land value taxation (...) to be its centrally defining principle for a just economy. (shrink)
- Form and Figure: Paul Ricoeur and the Rehabilitation of Human Work.Todd S. Mei -2006 -Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 16 (1-2):57-70.This article examines the way in which Paul Ricoeur's philosophy of metaphor can help to rehabilitate the traditional reduction of work to an activity of mere necessity.
- From Ricoeur to Action: The Socio-Political Significance of Ricoeur’s Thinking.Todd S. Mei &David Lewin (eds.) -2012 - Continuum.From Ricoeur to Action engages with the thinking of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) in order to propose innovative responses to 21st-century problems actively contributing to global conflict. Ricoeur's ability to draw from a diverse field of philosophers and theologians and to provide mediation to seemingly irreconcilable views often has both explicit and implicit practical application to socio-political questions. Here an international team of leading Ricoeur scholars develop critical yet productive responses through the development of Ricoeur's thought with respect (...) to such topics as race, environmental ethics, technology, political utopia and reinterpreting religion. Representing a new generation of Ricoeur scholarship that attempts to move beyond an exegetical engagement with his philosophy, this collection of original essays examines key problems in the 21st-century and the ways in which Ricoeur's philosophy understands the subtleties of these problems and is able to offer a productive response. As such it presents an elucidation of the practical significance of Ricoeur's thinking and an innovative contribution to resolving socio-political conflicts in the 21st century. (shrink)No categories
- Heidegger and teilhard de chardin: The convergence of history and future.Todd S. Mei -2008 -Modern Theology 24 (1):75-101.This article explores the significant theoretical links between the two thinkers and how each can help to correct some misunderstandings about the other.
- (1 other version)Heidegger and the appropriation of metaphysics.Todd S. Mei -2007 -Heythrop Journal:070526091654001-???.The article examines Heidegger's understanding of metaphysics, arguing that he never intended its obsolescence.
- Introduction.Todd Mei -unknownThis chapter argues about the distinction of Ricoeur's hermeneutical philosophy as it bears on questions of socio-political import. In particular it examines how Ricoeur's dialectical approach is able to maintain a theoretical balance between antinomies, such as universality and particularity, tradition and emancipation, and relativism and absolutism. The chapter also provides an overview of each chapter contribution and how the book contents contribute to an overall thesis on Ricoeur's socio-political thought.No categories
- Justice and the Banning of the Poets.Todd S. Mei -2007 -Review of Metaphysics 60 (4):755-778.Interpretations of Plato’s consideration of poetry often see his position either as a rejection or an admittance of only a certain kind. This article offers a more complex analysis: questions concerning the nature of justice and poetry should be taken as mutually illuminating inquiries. This constitutes Plato’s hermeneutics which shows how understanding poetry ideally effects a metanoia (new understanding) that requires the harmony between ethical deliberation and narrative self-understanding. The dialogue is a mimesis of this process, and the conclusion in (...) Book X does not represent Plato’s final position but the trajectory of the dialogue when such a metanoia is incomplete. (shrink)
- Ricoeur and the Symbolism of Sainthood: From Imitation to Innovation.Todd Mei -2013 - In Colby Dickinson,Post Modern Saints of France: Refiguring 'the Holy' in Contemporary French Philosophy. London: A&C Black.Despite the way we think of saints as belonging to a certain historical period and confronting specific historical obstacles, we tend to see their acts as being universally meaningful, and therefore, that these acts are practices which should be imitated in some manner. However this understanding carries with it a significant difficulty: namely, there is a risk of interpreting the lives and actions of saints as providing rules of conduct to be followed, as if their enactment was an end in-itself. (...) In other words, a simplistic notion of imitation can lead to the problem of voluntarism, where the intention to imitate an action is viewed to be sufficient or equal to actualizing goodness or piety. But there is a further, perhaps more significant problem with this understanding, and this involves how we tend to conflate the performance (or doing) of actions with their meaning. Does an action, especially that of a saint, have a meaning that is identical to its effect? Or, does the action itself produce a sense of meaning that outruns its effect? If the answer to this last question is affirmative, then the actions of a saint can be said to predicate an emergent meaning, that is, a meaning that has not yet been articulated, let alone realized. A saint would therefore be less a figure of convention and more a figure of innovation. In this chapter, I employ Paul Ricoeur’s theory of symbol to show how, beyond the historical specificity of the lives of saints, their actions can be understood to offer new ways of understanding the possibility for being, which I will unapologetically link to the Christian notion of “the New Being.” My discussion will first include a summary of Ricoeur’s theory of symbol, turning next to an application of this theory to saints and the contrasting context of the Prophet in the Hebrew Bible. The chapter will conclude with an elaboration of a symbolic understanding of action in relation to the New Being. (shrink)
- Ricoeur Economicus: Can Market Exchange Involve Mutual Recognition?Todd Mei -2012 - In Greg Johnson Dan Stiver,Paul Ricoeur and the Task of Political Philosophy. Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur. pp. 65-84.Poststructural criticisms of classical and neoclassical economic conceptions of human motivation and agency often include rejections of how market exchange is conceived to involve only the desires and rationality of a solitary human agent. While many of these criticisms are illuminating, they also tend not to offer a positive, constructive alternative. In this chapter, I discuss the contributions of Paul Ricoeur's understanding of mutual recognition and how it can be used--albeit perhaps despite Ricoeur's own intention and critical assessment of economics--to (...) retrieve a theory of exchange in which mutuality is possible. My analysis consists of five sections. First, I recapitulate Ricoeur’s criticism of exchange. Second, I examine how the economist Richard Ebeling attempts to read mutuality in exchange through the hermeneutics of Ricoeur and why this attempt fails. Third, I revive Ricoeur’s broader conception of value in relation to care for the other. This allows me, in the fourth section, to correlate Ricoeur’s discussion of ethical value to exchange-value. Finally, I join exchange to mutual recognition via Ricoeur’s discussion of epieikeia. (shrink)
- Review of Heidegger and the Measure of Truth.Todd Mei -2013 -Philosophical Quarterly 64 (254):193-195.A review of D. McManus' Heidegger and the Measure of Truth.
- Till Düppe , The Making of the Economy: A Phenomenology of Economic Science . Reviewed by.Todd Mei -2012 -Philosophy in Review 32 (6):462-464.A review of Düppe's book on a Husserlian critique of economics.No categories
- The poetics of meaningful work: An analogy to speech acts.Todd Mei -2019 -Philosophy and Social Criticism 45 (1):50-70.Meaningful work refers to the idea that human work is an integral part of the way we think of our lives as going well. The concept is prevalent in sociology and business studies. In philosophy, its discussion tends to revolve around matters of justice and whether the State should take steps to eradicate meaningless work. However, despite the breadth of the recent, general literature, there is little to no discussion about how it is in fact the case that work is (...) meaningful. There is a basic assumption that certain facts about work make it meaningful. After noting the shortcomings in the literature, this essay argues that we can better understand the production of meaning in work by an analogy to speech acts. Using Paul Ricoeur’s theory of action as discourse, one can see how meaning is predicated in the performance of work in ways that are locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. (shrink)No categories
- The Relevance of an Existential Conception of Nature.Todd Mei -2014 -Cosmos and History 10 (2):138-157.It is often assumed that science provides the most accurate knowledge about nature. This view not only collapses distinctions between different forms of knowing but also results in a paradox whereby understanding what it means to exist in the world is dictated by practioners of science. In this essay I argue for the relevance of an existential conception of nature via the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and how his notions of thrownness and phusis enable us to recognize a certain ethical (...) bond to nature. I conclude with a critical analysis of liability insurance and actuarial science to demonstrate my points. (shrink)
- Review of Paul Ricoeur between Theology and Philosophy. [REVIEW]Todd Mei -unknownNo categories
- Boyd Blundell , Paul Ricoeur Between Theology and Philosophy: Detour and Return. Reviewed by. [REVIEW]Todd Mei -2010 -Philosophy in Review 30 (3):389-392.A book review of Blundell's _Paul Ricoeur between Theology and Philosophy_.
- Review of Debating God’s Economy: Social Justice in America on the Eve of Vatican II. [REVIEW]Todd S. Mei -2011 -Research in Phenomenology 41 (3):367-368.Export citation Bookmark
- Review of Deleuze and Ricoeur: Disavowed Affinities and the Narrative Self. [REVIEW]Todd Mei -unknownNo categories
- Review of Mortal Subjects: Passions of the Soul in Late Twentieth-Century French Thought.Todd Mei -2012 - Dissertation,
- Review of The Metaphysics of Capitalism in Marx and Philosophy. [REVIEW]Todd Mei -2010 -Journal of European Studies 42 (3):7-9.
- Review of The Making of the Economy: A Phenomenology of Economic Science. [REVIEW]Todd Mei -unknownNo categories
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David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
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Howard Sankey
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Thomas Senor
Daniel Star
Jussi Suikkanen
Aness Kim Webster
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