The problems with grace and free will have prompted long-standing theological conflicts, chiefly revolving around certain disagreements over the nature of divine causality in respect to the free will's of creatures and His foreknowledge of free acts. Eleonore Stump offers a new interpretation of divine action on the will that holds God only acts by way of formal causality and that human cooperation with grace is only by way of "quiescence." I argue that this account lacks coherence in certain important (...) respects, especially in how human beings freely decide upon conversion - a process impossible on this model. I also argue that any model of divine causality cannot escape the dichotomy of holding a Molinist or a Banezian model of efficacious grace. In response, I offer a new interpretation of classical Thomist models of grace that preserves human freedom and divine sovereignty in grace. (shrink)

The article offers a critical biography, description and characteristic of method, fonts and doctrine of Master Paul of Soncino († 5 August 1495), friar of the Dominican Order, in particular his Acutissimae Quaestiones Metaphysicales. The life and work of this philosopher falls within the ambit of Italian Thomism of the 15th century. Between his masters we commemorate Peter Maldura of Bergamo and Dominic of Flanders. His exposition of Aristotle’s Metaphysic proceeds from a peculiar synthesis of Arabic Commentator Averroes and (...) Thomas Aquinas. Soncinas’ work and position was frequently discussed up to the 15th century. (shrink)

The article offers a critical biography, description and characteristic of method, fonts and doctrine of Master Paul of Soncino († 5 August 1495), friar of the Dominican Order, in particular his Acutissimae Quaestiones Metaphysicales. The life and work of this philosopher falls within the ambit of Italian Thomism of the 15th century. Between his masters we commemorate Peter Maldura of Bergamo and Dominic of Flanders. His exposition of Aristotle’s Metaphysic proceeds from a peculiar synthesis of Arabic Commentator Averroes and (...) Thomas Aquinas. Soncinas’ work and position was frequently discussed up to the 15th century. (shrink)

This paper explores the incongruence between white South Africans’ pre- and post-apartheid experiences of home and identity, of which a wave of emigration is arguably a result. Among the commonest reasons given for emigrating are crime and affirmative action; however, this paper uncovers a deeper motivation for emigration using Charles Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary and Martin Heidegger’s concept of dwelling. The skewed social imaginary maintained by apartheid created an unrealistic sense of dwelling for most white South (...) Africans. After 1994, the conditions supporting this imaginary disintegrated. Many white South Africans feel so strong a sense of unease they can no longer dwell in the country. Many try to escape through emigration, but carry unresolved questions of identity and belonging to their new “homes.”. (shrink)

On the stupidity of oysters -- Divining creaturely love -- Horsing around: the marriage blanc of Nietzsche, Andreas-Salomø, and Røe -- Groping for an opening: Rilke between animal and angel -- Electric caresses:Rilke, Balthus, and Mitsou -- Between perfection and temptation: Musil, Claudine, and Veronica -- The biological travesty -- "The creature whom we love": Proust and jealousy -- The love tone: capture and captivation -- "The soft word that comes deceiving": Fournival's bestiary of love -- The cuckold and the (...) cockatrice: Fourier and Hazlitt -- The animal bride and horny toads -- Unsettled being: Ovid's metamorphoses -- Fickle metaphysics -- Nymphomania and faunication -- Senseless arabesques: Wendy and Lucy -- The goat in the machine (a reprise) -- On cetaceous maidens -- Animal magnetism and alternative currents (or Tesla and the white dove). (shrink)

Introduction A book with this title, dealing as it does with the political machinery and political education appropriate to a democratic society, ...

This paper concerns the influence of gender on a firm’s moral and economic performance. It supports Thomas White’s intimation of a male gender bias in the value system underlying extant business theory. We suggest that this gender bias may be corrected by drawing on the concept of substantive rationality inherent in virtue-ethics theory. This feminine-oriented relationship-based value system complements the essential nature of the firm as a nexus of relationships between stakeholders. Not only is this feminine firm morally desirable, (...) but it is also economically more efficient in that trust becomes a more feasible implicit contractual enforcement mechanism. In an organizational context, therefore, from both a moral and an economic perspective, long established economic man is dominated by nascent economic woman. (shrink)

This paper concerns the influence of gender on a firm’s moral and economic performance. It supports Thomas White’s intimation of a male gender bias in the value system underlying extant business theory. We suggest that this gender bias may be corrected by drawing on the concept of substantive rationality inherent in virtue-ethics theory. This feminine-oriented relationship-based value system complements the essential nature of the firm as a nexus of relationships between stakeholders. Not only is this feminine firm morally desirable, (...) but it is also economically more efficient in that trust becomes a more feasible implicit contractual enforcement mechanism. In an organizational context, therefore, from both a moral and an economic perspective, long established economic man is dominated by nascent economic woman. (shrink)

The articles in this special issue of Environmental Values have a shared significance. In one way or another, all of them reflect contemporary concerns about issues of trust, risk, uncertainty, and the cultural shaping of science.These are matters of mounting significance for the politics of the environment in countries like Britain, and indeed for politics more generally, as we have seen in a succession of recent controversies. The Brent Spar oil platform farrago, the hugely costly BSE-CJD upsets, the continuing uproars (...) around genetically modified plants and foods ­ central in all of these have been challenges to the political authority of official patterns of scientifically-backed reassurance, concerning the impacts of deep and open-ended trajectories of technological transformation.To understand what is likely to be at stake in such matters for the politics of industrial democracies in the 21st century, there is now an urgent need to develop richer pictures than those currently dominant, of the cultural and epistemological architecture on which our regulatory institutions have been coming to rely. The contributions to this special issue can be pictured as building blocks in such a process.The present article offers a complementary perspective ­ one grounded in a degree of more hands-on personal experience of related matters. (shrink)

The Kantian philosophy, for many, largely represents the Modern West’s anthropocentric dominance of nature in its instrumental-rationalist orientation. Recently, some scholars have argued that Kant’s aesthetics offers significant resources for environmental ethics, while others believe that Kant’s flawed dualistic views in the second Critique severely undermine any environmental promise that aesthetic judgments may hold in Kant’s third Critique . This article first examines the meanings of nature in Kant’s three Critique s. It concludes that Kant’s aesthetic view toward sensible nature (...) is indeed inconsistent. The article, however, also suggests that the “I” as “transcendental apperception” discussed in the paralogisms of the first Critique holds some promise of “interthing intersubjective” thinking. The second half of the article demonstrates that Daoism with a dialectic concern similar to Kant’s has something insightful to offer in its idea of interthingness based on a phenomenal account of nature. The article investigates important Daoist ideas of interthing analogical experience, qi , spiritual exercise, and wuwei in its dialect relation to zizan . By bringing Daoism and Kant into dialogue, the author hopes to bring forth a synthetic approach that is better suited to today’s environmental concerns. (shrink)

This paper examines Augustine’s analysis of the possible causes of akrasia and suggests that an implicit two-phased consent process takes place in an akratic decision. This two-phased consent theory revolves around Augustine’s theory of the two wills, one carnal and the other spiritual. Without the help of grace, the fallen will dominated by the carnal will can only choose to sin. After exploration of this two-phased consent theory, the paper turns to examine the accusation made by Julian of Eclanum, a (...) fifth-century Pelagian, and J. Van Oort, a contemporary Augustinian scholar, that Augustine’s doctrine of the two wills and concupiscence led the Church into a Manichaean position. The paper concludes that this accusation fails to hold up, especially when one considers the more nuanced view on the human body and concupiscence in Augustine’s later works. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Margaret Cavendish’s remarks on beauty. According to it, Cavendish takes beauty to be a real, response-independent quality of objects. In this sense, Cavendish is an aesthetic realist. This position, which remains constant throughout her philosophical writings, contrasts with the non-realist views that were soon after to dominate philosophical reflections on matters of taste in the early modern period. It also, I argue, contrasts with the realism of Cavendish’s contemporary, Henry More. While (...) there are passages in Cavendish’s work that might seem to count against my reading—specifically, passages on disagreement in aesthetic judgement, on the power of beauty to elicit the passions, and on our inability to specify the nature of beauty—I show that, when situated against the background of Cavendish’s broader metaphysical and epistemological views, those passages in fact support the realist interpretation. (shrink)

The notion of respect for autonomy dominates bioethical discussion, though what qualifies precisely as autonomous action is notoriously elusive. In recent decades, the notion of autonomy in medical contexts has often been defined in opposition to the notion of autonomy favoured by theoretical philosophers. Where many contemporary theoretical accounts of autonomy place emphasis on a condition of “authenticity”, the special relation a desire must have to the self, bioethicists often regard such a focus as irrelevant to the concerns of medical (...) ethics, and too stringent for use in practical contexts. I argue, however, that the very condition of authenticity that forms a focus in theoretical philosophy is also essential to autonomy and competence in medical ethics. After tracing the contours of contemporary authenticity-based theories of autonomy, I consider and respond to objections against the incorporation of a notion of authenticity into accounts of autonomy designed for use in medical contexts. By looking at the typical problems that arise when making judgments concerning autonomy or competence in a medical setting, I reveal the need for a condition of authenticity—as a means of protecting choices, particularly high-stakes choices, from being restricted or overridden on the basis of intersubjective disagreement. I then turn to the treatment of false and contestable beliefs, arguing that it is only through reference to authenticity that we can make important distinctions in this domain. Finally, I consider a potential problem with my proposed approach; its ability to deal with anorexic and depressive desires. (shrink)

Habermas's paradigm of communicative action is usually taken to be pretty much dominated by consensus, "Yes-saying." What if this were a radically one-sided perception? We take up this unorthodox position by arguing that "no-saying" in this paradigm is typically overlooked and underemphasized. To demonstrate this, we consider how negativity is figured at the most basic onto-ethical level in communicative action, as well as expressed in civil disobedience, a phenomenon to which Habermas assigns the remarkable role of "touchstone" (Prufstein) of constitutional (...) democracy. Once the importance of no-saying is drawn out, the paradigm looks distinctly less hostile to dissensus and agonism in democratic life. (shrink)

Republicanism is a powerful resource for emancipatory struggles against domination. Its commitment to popular sovereignty subverts justifications of authority, locating power in the hands of the citizenry who hold the capacity to create, transform, and maintain their political institutions. Republicanism's conception of freedom rejects social, political, and economic structures subordinating citizens to any uncontrolled power - from capitalism and wage-labour to patriarchy and imperialism. It views any such domination as inimical to republican freedom. Moreover, it combines a revolutionary commitment to (...) overturning despotic and tyrannical regimes with the creation of political and economic institutions that realise the sovereignty of all citizens, institutions that are resilient to threats of oligarchical control. This volume is dedicated to retrieving and developing this radical potential, challenging the more conventional moderate conceptions of republicanism. It brings together scholars at the forefront of tracing this radical heritage of the republican tradition, and developing arguments, texts, and practices into a critical and emancipatory body of political and social thought. The volume spans historical discussions of the English Levellers, French and Ottoman revolutionaries, and American abolitionists and trade unionists; explorations of the radical republican aspects of the thought of Machiavelli, Marx, and Rousseau; and theoretical examinations of social domination and popular constitutionalism. It will appeal to political theorists, historians of political thought, and political activists interested in how republicanism provides a robust and successful radical transformation to existing social and political orders. (shrink)

Traditionally, the dominant theory of metaphor has taken the form of saying that metaphor is a matter of using a word with a figurative meaning, that is, a meaning which deviates from standard, literal, meaning. The present article challenges the assumption on which such a characterization rests: that there are standard meanings for words fixed by conventions normative for our use of words. It argues that the most sophisticated defence of such a conception of meaning‐that of David Lewis‐gives an account (...) of convention that cannot be coherently applied to the case of language, and which misdescribes the phenomena of language. The fluidity and flexibility exhibited in our normal literal uses of words is such that to say that a meaning deviates from past meanings assigned to a word registers no contrast between the metaphorical use of words and the literal. Hence if we contrast the literal and the metaphorical, we must do it in some other way than by talking about what happens to the meanings of words. (shrink)

This essay develops the idea that Analytic and Continental orientations to political theory are best comprehended not as mortal enemies, but rather as alternative lenses that, together, allow us to better perceive a broader range of significant aspects of political life than is possible by adhering to only one of these approaches. This claim is fleshed out by an analysis of the communicative action paradigm developed by Jürgen Habermas. If this paradigm is revised somewhat in order to make it less (...) dominated by the ideal of consensuality, it can then be taken to be quite attractive in the way it perceptively deploys these two lenses. (shrink)

In this brief history, philosopher Nicholas White reviews 2,500 years of philosophical thought about happiness. Addresses key questions such as: What is happiness? Should happiness play such a dominant role in our lives? How can we deal with conflicts between the various things that make us happy? Considers the ways in which major thinkers from antiquity to the modern day have treated happiness: from Plato’s notion of the harmony of the soul, through to Nietzsche’s championing of conflict over harmony. (...) Relates questions about happiness to ethics and to practical philosophy. (shrink)

Weaving together a diverse range of scholarly-activist intersectional voices from around the world, Critical Animal Studies and Activism: International Perspectives on Total Liberation and Intersectionality co-edited by Anthony J. Nocella II and Richard J. White makes a powerful contribution to knowledge and understanding. It is essential reading for environmentalists, animal advocates, social justice organizers, policy-makers, social change-makers, and indeed for all those who care about the future of this planet. This book spans many scholar disciplines and activist social movements, (...) and provides new insights to fundamental debates surrounding inter-species justice, liberation, and democracy. This critical theory for total liberation book expands the understanding of one struggle one fight: for human freedom, for animal rights, and for the liberation of the earth herself. Rooted in a radical praxis, the book argues that those in academia that claim critical animal studies, need to hit the streets with the protesters and the protesters need to join the theoretical conversations. Theory and practice and not binaries, but two pieces of a larger goal. Read this book and use its arguments to take the fight to smash capitalism, oppression, and domination in all its forms! (shrink)

Respect for autonomy and beneficence are frequently regarded as the two essential principles of medical ethics, and the potential for these two principles to come into conflict is often emphasised as a fundamental problem. On the one hand, we have the value of beneficence, the driving force of medicine, which demands that medical professionals act to protect or promote the wellbeing of patients or research subjects. On the other, we have a principle of respect for autonomy, which demands that we (...) respect the self-regarding decisions of individuals. As well as routinely coming into opposition with the demands of beneficence in medicine, the principle of respect for autonomy in medical ethics is often seen as providing protection against beneficial coercion (i.e. paternalism) in medicine. However, these two values are not as straightforwardly opposed as they may appear on the surface. In fact, the way that we understand autonomy can lead us to implicitly sanction a great deal of paternalistic action, or can smuggle in paternalistic elements under the guise of respect for autonomy. -/- This paper is dedicated to outlining three ways in which the principle of respect for autonomy, depending on how we understand the concept of autonomy, can sanction or smuggle in paternalistic elements. As the specific relationship between respect for autonomy and beneficence will depend on how we conceive of autonomy, I begin by outlining two dominant conceptions of autonomy, both of which have great influence in medical ethics. I then turn to the three ways in which how we understand or employ autonomy can increase or support paternalism: firstly, when we equate respect for autonomy with respect for persons; secondly, when our judgements about what qualifies as an autonomous action contain intersubjective elements; and thirdly, when we expect autonomy to play an instrumental role, that is, when we expect people, when they are acting autonomously, to act in a way that promotes or protects their own wellbeing. I then provide a proposal for how we might work to avoid this. I will suggest that it may be impossible to fully separate paternalistic elements out from judgements about autonomy. Instead, we are better off looking at why we are motivated to use judgements about autonomy as a means of restricting the actions of patients or research subjects. I will argue that this is a result of discomfort about speaking directly about our beneficent motivations in medical ethics. Perhaps we can reduce the incentive to smuggle in these beneficent motivations under the guise of autonomy by talking directly about beneficent motivations in medicine. This will also force us to recognise paternalistic motivations in medicine when they appear, and to justify paternalism where it occurs. (shrink)

Causality plays an important role in medieval philosophical writing: even before the rediscovery of Aristotle's major works, the created universe was seen as a rational manifestation of God's action. In the later Middle Ages, the dominant genre of medieval academic writing was the commentary on an authoritative work: Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics were frequently commented on, and both contain a great deal of material on causation. So the nature of the philosophical and theological themes which were popular in the Middle (...) Ages led to an emphasis on causality. Writers studied the interrelationship of divine grace and natural processes, the role of the will in ethics, free will and determinism: all of these problems have an important causal component. (shrink)

In recent years new discourses have emerged to inform philosophy and pedagogy in early childhood. These range from various postfoundational perspectives to objectivist accounts such as neuroscience in relation to brain development. Given the variety of competing narratives, the field is complex and multifaceted with potential to revision early childhood pedagogy through varied paradigms and philosophical orientations. This special issue sought scholarship on a range of philosophical perspectives about early childhood education, particularly those related to issues of pedagogy. In this (...) article, we develop an argument for philosophically informed pedagogy to balance some of the psychological and empirical approaches that dominate the field. Based on the provocations of the seven articles that comprise this issue, we argue for greater attention to subjective and even mysterious approaches to learning that call for ontological orientations to pedagogy as a relationship rather than a response or an intervention. (shrink)

Emergency care in large urban hospitals across the country is in the midst of major redesign intended to deliver quality care through improved access, decreased wait times, and maximum efficiency. The central argument in this paper is that the conceptualization of quality including the documentary facts and figures produced to substantiate quality emergency care is socially organized within a powerful ruling discourse that inserts the interests of politics and economics into nurses' work. The Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale figures prominently (...) in the analysis as a high‐level organizer of triage work and knowledge production that underpins the way those who administer the system define, measure and evaluate emergency care processes, and then use this information for restructuring. Managerial targets and thinking not only dominate the way emergency work is understood, determined, and controlled but also subsume the actual work of health‐care providers in spaces called ‘wait times’, where it is systematically rendered ‘unknowable’. The analysis is supported with evidence from an extensive institutional ethnography that shows what nurses actually do to manage the safe passage of patients through their emergency care process starting with the work of triage nurses. (shrink)

The conflict between Prometheus and Zeus has long dominated critical discussion of the play and diverted attention from the only mortal to appear onstage. Prometheus is widely applauded as humanity's saviour and Zeus condemned as an oppressive tyrant, but the fate of the maiden Io is largely discounted. Her encounter with Prometheus, however, is the longest and most complex episode in the play, and it provides a very different perspective on events. The elaborate forecast of her journeys delivered by Prometheus (...) deploys the ‘discourse of barbarism’ to picture a primitive world ravaged by savage violence and hostile monsters. The lands through which Io is to travel are devoid of the civil and religious institutions of the classical Greek polis and oikos. Yet the episode also foretells how this barbaric world will evolve under the aegis of Zeus. Argive Io, as ‘wife’ of Zeus, will found a ‘new family’ of mortals who will introduce and champion the norms of Greek civic culture in his and her name alike. Prophecy, allusion and foreshadowing thus reveal the Zeus of this play to be not the harsh and destructive despot imagined by most today, but the benevolent source and ultimate arbiter of justice for both gods and humanity. (shrink)

Abstract As non-state actors, PMSCs are not embraced by traditional state-dominated doctrines of international law. However, international law has itself failed to keep pace with the evolution of states and state-based actors, to which strong Westphalian notions of sovereignty are no longer applicable. It is argued that these structural inadequacies stand in the way of international regulation of PMSCs, rather than defects in international human rights and humanitarian law per se. By analyzing understandings of legal responsibility, where such structural issues (...) come to the fore, it is argued that, rather than attempting to resolve the essentially ideological dispute about the inherent functions of a state, regulatory regimes should focus on the positive obligations of states and PMSCs, and the interactions between them. Applying the results of this analysis, current and proposed regulatory regimes are evaluated and their shortcomings revealed. (shrink)

Well-being advocates state that it provides a more holistic, humanistic focus for public policy. Paradoxically, however, well-being debates tend to be dominated by highly quantitative, de-contextualised statistical methods accessible to only a minority of technical experts. This paper argues the need to reverse this trend. Drawing on original primary mixed method research in Zambia and India it shows the critical contribution of qualitative methods to the development of a quantitative model of subjective perspectives on well-being. Such contributions have a political, (...) ethical and practical urgency if subjective measures of well-being are to be used in policy. (shrink)

While Kazimir Malevich is widely known for his suprematist contributions to art, little attention has been granted to his articulated philosophical premise and methodological manifestation concerning the non-objectivity of thought and its relationship to feeling. This paper shows how Suprematist philosophy gives rise to the concept of pedagogical sensing that was first characterized by UNOVIS. Casting Suprematist aspersions on dominant educational practices that seek to reproduce what seemingly ‘is’, a non-objective collapse of all-too-certain frames is replaced by abstract essence. As (...) with the painter, teachers may be correspondingly invited to represent learning without past prejudice, as a creative contemplation in constituted spaces comprised of thoughts and feelings, that are so beautifully manifested through Malevich’s pieces of art and his associated, hitherto unrecognized, suprematist call to arms in education. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's notoriously elusive later writings are dominated by remarks on language. However, while the textual analysis of Wittgenstein's writings is presently a booming industry, the tendency is to focus narrowly on exegetical matters with little attention to their bearing on philosophy at large. Moreover, one finds in contemporary philosophy of language various ideas with a distinctively Wittgensteinian ring to them but whose pedigree is uncertain. This volume brings together distinguished Wittgenstein scholars and renowned philosophers of language in order to (...) examine just what Wittgenstein has to say about language and to assess its significance for current philosophy. The topics discussed include the connection between the meaning of a word and its use, the bearing the context of utterance has on how words are to be understood, the role of rules in the employment of language and whether Wittgenstein's reflections on these issues encourage sceptical or relativist thoughts."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

From the Preface: "The majority of the papers contained in this volume was delivered in the fall of 1978 at The Catholic University of America as part of the Machette series of lectures on Aristotle. Although collections of essays on Aristotle are hardly lacking at present, this volume presents new studies which, it is hoped, give some idea of the variety of philosophical perspectives in which Aristotle has held and continues to hold great interest and of the scholarly analysis needed (...) in order to reach a better understanding of a difficult author." • CONTENTS: 1. Categories in Aristotle, Michael Frede • 2. Definitions in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo • 3. Aristotle and Galileo: The Uses of ΥΠΟΘΕΣΙΣ (suppositio) in Scientific Reasoning, William A. Wallace • 4. Aristotle and the History of Greek Scepticism, A. A Long • 5. Aristotle's Metaphysics Viewed by the Ancient Greek Commentators, Gérard Verbeke • 6. ΕΙΔΗ in Aristotle's Earlier and Later Theories of Substance, John A. Driscol • 7. Averroes as Commentator on Aristotle's Theory of the Intellect, Arthur Hyman • 8. Aristotle's Method of Ethics, Terence Irwin • 9. Goodness and Human Aims in Aristotle's Ethics, Nicholas P. White • 10. Aristotle on the Essence of Happiness, Daniel T Devereux • 11. The ΚΑΛΟΝ in Aristotelian Ethics, Joseph Owens • 12. Telos and Teleology in Aristotelian Ethics, Henry B Veatch. (shrink)

In stressing the beauty of ignorance, of not knowing in the usual manner, Catherine Keller's Cloud of the Impossible evokes the death of a metaphysical uthorial presence and the dissolution of closed systems of meaning. In this article, I view her text as part of a crisis of modernity that challenges dominant theological pathways, on which certain problematic views of the human have been constructed. In my reading, Keller's Cloud enriches humanistic thinking in the West and I explore the themes (...) it shares with my own work in religious naturalism: there is no escape from the radical relationality and the irreducible materiality that structure human existence. I also emphasize that textual strategies are mere seductive, disembodied abstractions without acknowledging the force of materiality. Materiality matters; and I explore ways in which religious naturalism demonstrates how it does. In light of Keller's rich analysis, I focus on a “learned ignorance” that accompanies all of our limited interpretations emerging from the shifting, precarious positionalities as we rethink our relationality to each other and to all that it is. (shrink)

The nature of intelligence and how it can be measured has occupied psychologists, educationalists, biologists and philosophers for hundreds of years. However, there has been little investigation into the rise of the traditional dominant educational ideology that intelligence and IQ have innate limits and are unchanging and unchangeable. This book traces the roots of this mind set back to early puritan communities on both sides of the Atlantic, drawing parallels between puritan dogma and the development of the traditional curricula and (...) selection processes that are still firmly embedded in school practice today. Drawing on the work of Galton, Pearson, Burt, Goddard, Terman and others in his search for the truth about intelligence testing, John White looks at the personal histories and socialised religious backgrounds of these key psychologists and casts an entirely new light on schooling in Britain and the USA in modern times. This work also shows how we can transcend this heritage and base our educational system on values and practices more in tune with the twenty-first century. (shrink)

By any measure, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., led a full and remarkable life. He was tall and exceptionally attractive, especially as he aged, with piercing eyes, a shock of white hair, and prominent moustache. He was the son of a famous father, a thrice-wounded veteran of the Civil War, a Harvard-educated member of Brahmin Boston, the acquaintance of Longfellow, Lowell, and Emerson, and for a time a close friend of William James. He wrote one of the classic works of (...) American legal scholarship, The Common Law, and he served with distinction on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was actively involved in the Court's work into his nineties. In Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, G. Edward White, the acclaimed biographer of Earl Warren and one of America's most esteemed legal scholars, provides a rounded portrait of this remarkable jurist. We see Holmes's early life in Boston and at Harvard, his ambivalent relationship with his father, and his harrowing service during the Civil War. White examines Holmes's curious, childless marriage and he includes new information on Holmes's relationship with Clare Castletown. White not only provides a vivid portrait of Holmes's life, but examines in depth the inner life and thought of this preeminent legal figure. There is a full chapter devoted to The Common Law, for instance, and throughout the book, there is astute commentary on Holmes's legal writings. Indeed, White reveals that some of the themes that have dominated 20th-century American jurisprudence--including protection for free speech and the belief that "judges make the law"--originated in Holmes's work. Perhaps most important, White suggests that understanding Holmes's life is crucial to understanding his work, and he continually stresses the connections between Holmes's legal career and his personal life. For instance, his desire to distinguish himself from his father and from the "soft" literary culture of his father's generation drove him to legal scholarship of a particularly demanding kind. White's biography of Earl Warren was hailed by Anthony Lewis on the cover of The New York Times Book Review as "serious and fascinating," and The Los Angeles Times noted that "White has gone beyond the labels and given us the man." In Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, White has produced an equally serious and fascinating biography, one that again goes beyond the labels and gives us the man himself. (shrink)

Essays on Aristotle's "hylomorphism" - i.e., his conception of an organism's body as standing to its soul as matter (hulê) to form (morphê). Common readings - that there is only one form per species and that matter is what distinguishes individuals within a species from one another - are rejected in favor of the view that each member of a biological species has its own numerically distinct form. Original grounds are given for Aristotle's conception of soul as "the form and (...) essence" of an organic body: he thinks it needed to account for the distinction between generation and destruction simpliciter and the mere alteration of existing stuff. The compatibility of this with Aristotle's conception of matter as the substratum of coming-to-be and passing-away is defended by appeal to a distinction between functionally defined organic parts (such as eyes) and the elements that constitute them. An original reading of the perceiving part of soul as one with the desiring part is given and asymmetries afforded by Aristotle's teleology explored. "Normative" cases (where formal explanations dominate) are contrasted with "defective" ones (where matter is incompletely "mastered" by form), with special attention to akratic subjects: their desires are not fully mastered by practical reason, which stands in normative cases as form to matter. The role played by Aristotle's conception of soul in his account of rational agency is employed against the dogma that he lacked the allegedly "modern" conception of "self" found in Locke and an original reading of Locke's account of personal identity is developed. (shrink)

The purpose of this dissertation is to identify some of the most pressing problems in the dominant contemporary approach to research ethics, and to devise an alternative approach that avoids these problems. I contend that the fundamental ethical values invoked in human research are often appealed to in contradictory or ambiguous ways, or in ways that do not adequately capture or do not show an adequate understanding of the specific ethical concerns of human research. One significant problem in this domain (...) is that values for ethical research are often unreflectively imported from medical therapy, producing ill-suited guidelines that cannot capture the different ethical situations that arise in the context of research. Furthermore, ethical guidelines in this area are often not developed with a sufficient understanding of the deep philosophical issues that they invoke. I suggest that we can address these problems through examining the fundamental ethical concerns of research on a philosophical level. This method will reveal severe problems with the approach to two of the ethical values underlying research; beneficence and respect for autonomy (or respect for persons). Once the nature of these problems has been revealed, and with reference to ethical problems that typically arise in the domain of research, I construct a coherent philosophical foundation for research ethics, which both avoids these deep-seated problems and better captures the ethical issues that arise in the domain of human research. I argue that we need to radically depart from the values of beneficence and autonomy/respect for persons as they are currently understood in the guidelines. We need an idea of beneficence that is clearly distinct from that which is used in the therapeutic medical context from which this notion is currently drawn. I also contend that we need to move away from autonomy as a central value in research ethics. I posit an alternative choice-based approach to informed consent which is concerned both with respecting agents’ freedom of choice, and also with their wellbeing, as providing a good means of protecting and promoting the interests of the individual research subject. Although these two imperatives are often thought to clash on a fundamental level, I will show that, in research ethics, they can be reconciled with minimal conflict. Though this represents a departure from the ethics of medical therapy, this approach is far more suited to the context of research. This theoretical basis for informed consent can help to clarify the ethical problems that are specific to this domain and provide us with relevant ethical guidance in research ethics. (shrink)

Derrida on Formal Logic: An Interpretive Essay develops the dominant themes in Jacques Derrida's texts on the principles of formal logic, especially identity and contradiction, as these themes emerged from Derrida's discussion of Joyce's Ulysses. For students of Derrida and his place as a critic of western metaphysics, the work provides a clear account and critical evaluation of implications drawn from Derrida's conclusions concerning the strength of formal logic.

Delimitations is divided into fifteen sections arranged under four headings. Part 1, "Closure of Metaphysics," characterizes Sallis's interpretation of the end of metaphysics. Part 2, "Openings--To the Things Themselves," contains discussions of texts drawn from Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. These discussions open ways toward a post-metaphysical thinking which will reveal "the things themselves." Part 3, "Clearing," is comprised of analyses of Heidegger which "displace" the dominance of such metaphysical notions as "meaning" and "end." Part 4, "Archaic Closure," concludes the work (...) with reflections on the Allegory of the Cave and a Heraclitus fragment. (shrink)

The dominant paradigm of experiments in the social and behavioral sciences views an experiment as a test of a theory, where the theory is assumed to generalize beyond the experiment's specific conditions. According to this view, which Alan Newell once characterized as “playing twenty questions with nature,” theory is advanced one experiment at a time, and the integration of disparate findings is assumed to happen via the scientific publishing process. In this article, we argue that the process of integration is (...) at best inefficient, and at worst it does not, in fact, occur. We further show that the challenge of integration cannot be adequately addressed by recently proposed reforms that focus on the reliability and replicability of individual findings, nor simply by conducting more or larger experiments. Rather, the problem arises from the imprecise nature of social and behavioral theories and, consequently, a lack of commensurability across experiments conducted under different conditions. Therefore, researchers must fundamentally rethink how they design experiments and how the experiments relate to theory. We specifically describe an alternative framework, integrative experiment design, which intrinsically promotes commensurability and continuous integration of knowledge. In this paradigm, researchers explicitly map the design space of possible experiments associated with a given research question, embracing many potentially relevant theories rather than focusing on just one. Researchers then iteratively generate theories and test them with experiments explicitly sampled from the design space, allowing results to be integrated across experiments. Given recent methodological and technological developments, we conclude that this approach is feasible and would generate more-reliable, more-cumulative empirical and theoretical knowledge than the current paradigm – and with far greater efficiency. (shrink)

Among the morass of critical issues impacting the results of the midterm elections in 2022 were core public health issues related to health care access, justice, and reforms. Collectively, voters’ communal health and safety concerns dominated outcomes in key races which may shape national, state, and local legal approaches to protecting the public’s health in the modern era.