This chapter argues that our subjective experiences – how we experience the world and understand ourselves within it – are just as closely governed as our objective conduct, discussed in Chapter 5. Whether they realise it or not, contemporary teachers are expected to play a significant role in this form of regulation. After all, teachers are now not simply responsible for transmitting a given curriculum and keeping children in line; they are de facto psychologists, responsible for the mental health, regulation and development of their pupils.

This essay discusses Pablo Neruda’s youth love poetry collection Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1924) in relation to situated subjectivities, from decolonial, intersectional feminist perspectives. One hundred years after the collection was published, we briefly account for Neruda’s inter- and intra-subjective exploration of love and otherness. Particular attention is given here to the poetic process as an unending dialogue between production and reception, including some current poetic and nonpoetic canceling, as well as rediscoveries of his rich eco- and geopoetic vocation.

This chapter contains a first formulation of the question ‘What is science?’, followed by a brief treatment of realism vs. antirealism and an introduction to how observations can be made more trustworthy. The theory-dependence of ‘facts’ and the resulting fallibility of observations are introduced - how scientific findings can turn out to be wrong. A first brief treatment of how science is used and misused in society is also included as a stepping stone to why some understanding of the philosophy of science matters to everybody.

The concern of this chapter is with varieties of philosophical humanism and their own conceptions of the nature and significance of science. After an initial characterization of major themes in Renaissance humanism, it describes three main varieties that are evident in twentieth-century European philosophy – humanism as essentialism, humanism as rational subjectivity, and existential humanism. Different varieties of humanism are associated with different conceptions of science, some allied to the sciences, others antipathetic to them, while yet others offer subtler positions. The upshot is that there are different tales to tell about the relationship of (varieties of) philosophical humanism to (conceptions of) science, only some of which fit popular modern celebratory claims about a necessary alliance of humanism and science. If we take a wider look at the history of philosophy, we find ongoing experimentation with forms of humanism and explorations of diverse ways of understanding and evaluating scientific knowledge and ambitions. What we find is what we ought to expect of social, creative, epistemically sophisticated, self-expressive creatures: endless variety.

The introduction sets the scene at the catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples, where our only early Christian fresco from the Shepherd of Hermas is painted on a tomb wall. I lay out the thesis and roadmap for the book, namely, that the Shepherd crafts obedient early Christian subjects within the ancient Mediterranean discourse of enslavement. A brief overview of the Shepherd’s content is provided, as well as regarding its popularity and transmission history across the ancient, late ancient, and medieval worlds. I especially note how the Shepherd became a pedagogical tool in late antiquity, and that the Shepherd’s teachings are even placed in Jesus’s own mouth by some late ancient writers, heightening the stakes for understanding how enslavement is utilized in a text used to shape Christian thought and practice for centuries after its composition. Also provided is a brief introduction to slavery in antiquity to situate the reader, as well as outline some of the major influences on my approach to reading the text, especially womanist translational theory and Chris de Wet’s concept of doulology.

The book concludes by pointing out two major shifts that my reading of the Shepherd produces: one focused on how the centrality of slavery in the Shepherd that complicates earlier treatments of the text as most invested in baptism and/or repentance, and the other focused on the ethical and historical anxieties that emerge from the enslaved–enslaver relationship being so deeply embedded in early Christian literature, ethics, and subject formation. Additionally, I point to how my findings reveal why the Shepherd would be appealing to late ancient Christians: its visionary, dialogical, parabolic, and ethical content are aimed toward crafting obedient enslaved believers who were unified in their ecclesiastical vision. The work of feminist, womanist, Africana, and slavery studies scholars offer an intellectual and ethical scaffolding upon which I contend with the centrality in early Christian thought of God as an enslaver and believers as enslaved persons, as well as the continuations and challenges of the embeddedness of slavery in Christian vocabulary into the twenty-first century.

This chapter is a description and analysis of the modern and postmodern periods and how they influenced theologians from a variety of traditions as they wrestled anew with the doctrine of Christ. In characterizing modernity as an era which celebrates universal reason and human progress, the author examines the ways in which modern theologians both chafed against and conformed to these insights as they developed their ideas about the person and work of Christ. Likewise, the author engages postmodernity as a disavowal of universal reason and progress, and thereby examines the manner in which these concepts were both rejected and embraced by various theologians as they sought to answer Christ’s question: “Who do you say I am?” within a postmodern era.

This chapter discusses the role of phenomenology in psychological anthropology, with an emphasis on its ongoing productive potential for the field. The chapter explores how a phenomenological framework has been mobilized in psychological anthropology to illuminate central concepts like subjects and lifeworlds, intersubjectivity, and the aspectual nature of consciousness and experience. The chapter also emphasizes the valuable methodological implications of bringing a phenomenological framework to the practice of anthropology. Throughout, recent ethnographic examples are engaged to illustrate how psychological anthropologists have generated innovative insights through the use of phenomenological approaches.

Lacan’s writings were for many decades the primary mode of access that the public had to his work. This was unfortunate because Lacan disdained writing and strove to write in a way that could not be readily understood. His oral seminars, which are now available, provide an enlightening contrast. This introduction concentrates on Lacan’s seminars to present a philosopher preoccupied with the problem of subjectivity and how the insights gleaned from psychoanalysis might be able to contribute to thinking through this problem. Many critics have wrongly associated Lacan with other French thinkers of his time, such as Jacques Derrida or Michel Foucault. This book will draw a significant contrast between them and highlight their irreconcilable differences.

Lacan attempts to bring the psychoanalytic insights of Sigmund Freud into the philosophy of German Idealism, specifically that of Kant and Hegel. Unlike Freud, Lacan was schooled in the history of philosophy, and this allowed him to trace the implications of introducing the unconscious into the theory of subjectivity in Kant and Hegel. Throughout his career, Lacan insists on the subject as what sticks out from its social context thanks to the existence of the unconscious. The unconscious marks the subject’s failure to fit within its social world, and Lacan makes this failure to fit the basis for his philosophy. Although Lacan sees himself as a psychoanalyst rather than a philosopher, we must recognize the significance of his philosophical contribution.

This chapter considers how advocacy of press freedom necessarily implicates contested political questions about desirable structures of governance and social interaction. Professor Magarian discusses two political oppositions that strongly influence how the free press functions: objectivity vs. subjectivity and institutionalism vs. populism. First, the chapter describes the late-twentieth-century news media’s heightened commitment to objective reporting. That commitment has strong political resonance with our era’s anxiety about submergence of objective truth in political debates. At the same time, the news media’s push toward objectivity fostered a stultifying homogeneity that prompted dynamic efforts, embodied imperfectly in the Fairness Doctrine, to complicate hegemonic narratives. Present advocates for press freedom must assess which truths the press should propound and which positions it should interrogate. Second, the chapter juxtaposes the institutionalized character of dominant late-twentieth-century news media with the populist fragmentation of news sources in the age of online communication. Institutionalized mass media have inculcated valuable journalistic norms of professionalism and ethics that contemporary online news sources often elide. However, populist mass media present a wider, more diverse range of voices than institutionalized media support. Present advocates for press freedom need to pursue the optimal balance between these opposing virtues.