Jon Fennell
Biographic Data
| ID | 454720 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jon Fennell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jon |
| FAMILY NAME | Fennell |
| SIGNATURE | FENNELL J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Gallaudet University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6048-4957 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Reconceptualizing Sexual Assault in the Twenty-First Century
Whereas homicide laws categorize charges by intent, sexual assault laws do not. This essay considers how updating our legal and cultural vocabulary around sexual violation could benefit both survivors and offenders
Epistemological Foundations of Liberal Education for Democratic Life
This paper explores the epistemological justification of liberal education for all, and of foundations courses for teachers, set forth by Harry Broudy, the paramount voice in philosophy of education during the mid to late twentieth century. This justification, grounded in Michael Polanyi’s revolutionary theory of tacit knowing, reveals that such education and preparation, issuing in a capable and confident person, is entailed by commitment to equ…
A Polanyian rationale for a liberal arts core curriculum
What would we have the school teach? To what end? In the name of democracy, and building on the pioneering epistemology of Michael Polanyi, Harry S. Broudy, a leading voice in philosophy of education during the twentieth century, calls for a liberal arts core curriculum for all. The envisioned product of such schooling is a certain sort of person. Anticipating the predictable relativistic challenge so much on display in our own time, Broudy justi…
The Educational Prerequisites of Rehabilitation
In response to the events of January 6 and the second impeachment trial, which made clear the fragility of democracy in the USA, several scholars whose work has appeared in this journal comment on one or more of the following questions: (1) What causes, epistemic and/or social, might Polanyi see as contributing to the incivility, rancor, and division that now characterize American politics? (2) What would Polanyi say about the events of January 6…
It’s complicated
Drawing from extensive insider ethnographic work and an internet survey with a convenience sample of 1642 BDSM practitioners, I show that the social context of the BDSM subculture has a profound impact on pansexual BDSM practitioners’ interpretation of the relationship between BDSM and sex. Greater involvement in the public BDSM subculture and participation in feminine Dominance/masculine submission are both strongly associated with less preferen…
Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Is Socialism Feasible? Towards an Alternative Future
Author and Reader
In An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis demonstrates why, within traditional academic circles, he is best known and most respected for his accomplishments in regard to the study of English literature. Lewis’s important monograph aims to illuminate a new direction in literary criticism, and succeeds marvelously. Interestingly, Lewis’s analysis is paralleled at every turn by Polanyian insights. We have therefore yet a further instance of the inte…
Polanyian Educational Dimensions of Mill's Mental Crisis
“Balance of Mind”
It's All About the Journey”
Previous research on BDSM (bondage & discipline, dominance & submission, sadism & masochism) subcultures has largely ignored the spiritual aspects of BDSM for participants. Drawing primarily from my years of experience and participant observation as an insider in the DC /Baltimore BDSM pansexual community and 70 interviews conducted with self‐identified kinksters throughout the Mid‐Atlantic United States, as well as a convenience sample (n >1,100…
The children of converts
Very little is known about the adult religious retention of children and adolescents in New Religious Movements (NRMs). The current study seeks to examine the factors that determine the success of one NRM, contemporary Paganism, at retaining the children of its first generation of converts. Using a small convenience internet sample (n=183), we found that 45% of our sample continued to practice Paganism as adults, and a further 25% remained spirit…
Polanyi’s “Illumination
A Polanyian Perspective on C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man
The Abolition of Man is sometimes viewed as an attack on science. This interpretation is, of course, erroneous. Anticipating this criticism, Lewis states that his remarks are not an attack on science but instead a defense of value—the value, among other things, of science. Lewis goes on to suggest that science might itself be the remedy for the dark moral malady that The Abolition of Man accounts for and describes. The purpose of this study is to…
On Authority and Political Destination
What are the implications for political life of Polanyi's conception of knowing and being? How do Polanyi's philosophic foundations situate him in relation to the political dimensions of postmodernism? In examining these questions, let us take as the representative of political postmodernism the neo-pragmatism of Richard Rorty. Assisted by Oakeshott's portrayal of political life as like a ship at sea, we will discover that while there are importa…
Men Bring Condoms, Women Take Pills
The most popular form of reversible contraception in the United States is the female-controlled hormonal birth control pill. Consequently, scholars and lay people have typically assumed that women take primary responsibility for contraceptive decision making in relationships. Although many studies have shown that men exert strong influence in couple's contraceptive decisions in developing countries, very few studies have considered the gendered d…
Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss is commonly cited as a seminal influence for the neoconservatism that, in the minds of many commentators, dominates the administration of George W. Bush. What intersection, if any, exists between Strauss's views and neoconservatism? This paper investigates that question by studying Strauss's writings on liberal education and assessing whether, and on what grounds, liberal education as conceived by Strauss is capable of the vital role …
Wolfe Howling, or The Metamorphosis of Charlotte Simmons
Tom Wolfe offers a chilling picture of the postmodern multiversity and its impact on the souls of the young. Seizing upon the motif of neuroscience, Wolfe shows how the twin kingdoms of darkness—Jerusalem and Athens—have been routed by a simple but virile Darwinian analysis in which man is fully explainable in terms of evolutionary biology. In his chronicle, Wolfe reveals that the multiversity has become a site of metamorphosis... a place where w…
Foster McMurray's Philosophy of Public Education
(2006). Foster McMurray's Philosophy of Public Education. Educational Studies: Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 152-163
Jaffa, Nominalism, and the Fate of the Common Noun
Nietzsche Contra “Self-Reformulation”
Bloom and His Critics
Men Bring Condoms, Women Take Pills
The most popular form of reversible contraception in the United States is the female-controlled hormonal birth control pill. Consequently, scholars and lay people have typically assumed that women take primary responsibility for contraceptive decision making in relationships. Although many studies have shown that men exert strong influence in couple's contraceptive decisions in developing countries, very few studies have considered the gendered d…
It's All About the Journey”
Previous research on BDSM (bondage & discipline, dominance & submission, sadism & masochism) subcultures has largely ignored the spiritual aspects of BDSM for participants. Drawing primarily from my years of experience and participant observation as an insider in the DC /Baltimore BDSM pansexual community and 70 interviews conducted with self‐identified kinksters throughout the Mid‐Atlantic United States, as well as a convenience sample (n >1,100…
Nietzsche Contra “Self-Reformulation”
Polanyian Educational Dimensions of Mill's Mental Crisis
Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss is commonly cited as a seminal influence for the neoconservatism that, in the minds of many commentators, dominates the administration of George W. Bush. What intersection, if any, exists between Strauss's views and neoconservatism? This paper investigates that question by studying Strauss's writings on liberal education and assessing whether, and on what grounds, liberal education as conceived by Strauss is capable of the vital role …
Bloom and His Critics
Bloom and His Critics
Nietzsche Contra “Self-Reformulation”
Foster McMurray's Philosophy of Public Education
(2006). Foster McMurray's Philosophy of Public Education. Educational Studies: Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 152-163
Jaffa, Nominalism, and the Fate of the Common Noun
Wolfe Howling, or The Metamorphosis of Charlotte Simmons
Tom Wolfe offers a chilling picture of the postmodern multiversity and its impact on the souls of the young. Seizing upon the motif of neuroscience, Wolfe shows how the twin kingdoms of darkness—Jerusalem and Athens—have been routed by a simple but virile Darwinian analysis in which man is fully explainable in terms of evolutionary biology. In his chronicle, Wolfe reveals that the multiversity has become a site of metamorphosis... a place where w…
Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss is commonly cited as a seminal influence for the neoconservatism that, in the minds of many commentators, dominates the administration of George W. Bush. What intersection, if any, exists between Strauss's views and neoconservatism? This paper investigates that question by studying Strauss's writings on liberal education and assessing whether, and on what grounds, liberal education as conceived by Strauss is capable of the vital role …
Men Bring Condoms, Women Take Pills
The most popular form of reversible contraception in the United States is the female-controlled hormonal birth control pill. Consequently, scholars and lay people have typically assumed that women take primary responsibility for contraceptive decision making in relationships. Although many studies have shown that men exert strong influence in couple's contraceptive decisions in developing countries, very few studies have considered the gendered d…
On Authority and Political Destination
What are the implications for political life of Polanyi's conception of knowing and being? How do Polanyi's philosophic foundations situate him in relation to the political dimensions of postmodernism? In examining these questions, let us take as the representative of political postmodernism the neo-pragmatism of Richard Rorty. Assisted by Oakeshott's portrayal of political life as like a ship at sea, we will discover that while there are importa…
A Polanyian Perspective on C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man
The Abolition of Man is sometimes viewed as an attack on science. This interpretation is, of course, erroneous. Anticipating this criticism, Lewis states that his remarks are not an attack on science but instead a defense of value—the value, among other things, of science. Lewis goes on to suggest that science might itself be the remedy for the dark moral malady that The Abolition of Man accounts for and describes. The purpose of this study is to…
Polanyi’s “Illumination
The children of converts
Very little is known about the adult religious retention of children and adolescents in New Religious Movements (NRMs). The current study seeks to examine the factors that determine the success of one NRM, contemporary Paganism, at retaining the children of its first generation of converts. Using a small convenience internet sample (n=183), we found that 45% of our sample continued to practice Paganism as adults, and a further 25% remained spirit…
“Balance of Mind”
It's All About the Journey”
Previous research on BDSM (bondage & discipline, dominance & submission, sadism & masochism) subcultures has largely ignored the spiritual aspects of BDSM for participants. Drawing primarily from my years of experience and participant observation as an insider in the DC /Baltimore BDSM pansexual community and 70 interviews conducted with self‐identified kinksters throughout the Mid‐Atlantic United States, as well as a convenience sample (n >1,100…
Author and Reader
In An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis demonstrates why, within traditional academic circles, he is best known and most respected for his accomplishments in regard to the study of English literature. Lewis’s important monograph aims to illuminate a new direction in literary criticism, and succeeds marvelously. Interestingly, Lewis’s analysis is paralleled at every turn by Polanyian insights. We have therefore yet a further instance of the inte…
Polanyian Educational Dimensions of Mill's Mental Crisis
Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Is Socialism Feasible? Towards an Alternative Future
A Polanyian rationale for a liberal arts core curriculum
What would we have the school teach? To what end? In the name of democracy, and building on the pioneering epistemology of Michael Polanyi, Harry S. Broudy, a leading voice in philosophy of education during the twentieth century, calls for a liberal arts core curriculum for all. The envisioned product of such schooling is a certain sort of person. Anticipating the predictable relativistic challenge so much on display in our own time, Broudy justi…
The Educational Prerequisites of Rehabilitation
In response to the events of January 6 and the second impeachment trial, which made clear the fragility of democracy in the USA, several scholars whose work has appeared in this journal comment on one or more of the following questions: (1) What causes, epistemic and/or social, might Polanyi see as contributing to the incivility, rancor, and division that now characterize American politics? (2) What would Polanyi say about the events of January 6…
It’s complicated
Drawing from extensive insider ethnographic work and an internet survey with a convenience sample of 1642 BDSM practitioners, I show that the social context of the BDSM subculture has a profound impact on pansexual BDSM practitioners’ interpretation of the relationship between BDSM and sex. Greater involvement in the public BDSM subculture and participation in feminine Dominance/masculine submission are both strongly associated with less preferen…
Epistemological Foundations of Liberal Education for Democratic Life
This paper explores the epistemological justification of liberal education for all, and of foundations courses for teachers, set forth by Harry Broudy, the paramount voice in philosophy of education during the mid to late twentieth century. This justification, grounded in Michael Polanyi’s revolutionary theory of tacit knowing, reveals that such education and preparation, issuing in a capable and confident person, is entailed by commitment to equ…
Reconceptualizing Sexual Assault in the Twenty-First Century
Whereas homicide laws categorize charges by intent, sexual assault laws do not. This essay considers how updating our legal and cultural vocabulary around sexual violation could benefit both survivors and offenders
Philosophy (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Politics (6 works) · Higher education (5 works) · Philosophy of education (5 works) · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education (5 works)