Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex moral decision-making have a deep connection? What are the moral responsibilities of the artist, critic, and reader? What can religious perspectives—from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon—contribute to literary criticism? Thirty well known contributors reflect on these questions, including iterary theorists Marshall Gregory, James (...) Phelan, and Wayne Booth; philosophers Martha Nussbaum, Richard Hart, and Nina Rosenstand; and authors John Updike, Charles Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and Bernard Malamud. Divided into four sections, with introductory matter and questions for discussion, this accessible anthology represents the most crucial work today exploring the interdisciplinary connections between literature, religion and philosophy. (shrink)

The Neoplatonist philosophers who flourished between the third and sixth centuries AD had a profound influence on western philosophy, on both Christian and Islamic literature and the visual arts from the Renaissance to modern times. This extensively revised and updated second edition of Neoplatonists provides a valuable introduction to the thought of four central Neoplatonic philosophers, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus and Iamblichus. John Gregory presents new translations of a selection of key passages from Neoplatonist writings, an introduction that puts (...) in context the writings, and an epilogue detailing the legacy and influence of Neoplatonist thought. (shrink)

Imre Lakatos' philosophical and scientific papers are published here in two volumes. Volume I brings together his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume 2 presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of science and some famous polemical writings on political and educational issues.

In this note I examine a case of teleological reasoning in international law and find it to be the fallacy of affirming the consequent.I then show that and how the basis of this fallacy is a manipulation (or juxtaposition) of ?necessary? and ?sufficient? conditions.I conclude by giving reasons for thinking that this kind of reasoning is a regular feature of international law.

This volume reprints in a scholar's edition the first English-language texts on bioethics, John Gregory's (1724-1773) Observations on the Duties and Offices of a Physician and on the Method of Prosecuting Enquiries in Philosophy (London, 1770) and Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician (London, 1772). Five previously unpublished manuscripts of Gregory's lectures are also included. An introduction places Gregory's medical ethics and philosophy of medicine in their eighteenth-century contexts of Scottish Enlightenment history and (...) culture, Baconian science and philosophy of medicine, medical practice, the feminine and feminist philosophy of the Bluestocking Circle, and moral sense philosophy, particularly David Hume's concept of sympathy, and provides a bibliography of primary and secondary sources as an aid to teaching and future scholarship. The book's index provides access to Gregory's texts, by using both historical terms and current terminology of bioethics. A volume in the subseries Classics of Medical Ethics. (shrink)

The Construction of Social Reality can be read at different levels, and this makes it hard to assess. At one level, it is a stunningly clear, comprehensive, and extremely simple introduction to the foundations of the social sciences. At another level, it is an idiosyncratic and interesting statement by a philoso pher of note who writes in a field with which he is barely acquainted. And at yet another level, it is a philosophical treatment of certain philosophical problems that Searle's (...) independent reflections on the nature and possibility of social reality have disclosed. Different readers will find different things in Searle's book. What I found is an original contribution to a theory of institu tional facts and to a certain kind of restricted idealism that Anscombe (1976) called "linguistic idealism.". (shrink)

Extending the dialogue on corporate social performance as descriptive stakeholder management, we examine differences in CSP activity between family and nonfamily firms. We argue that CSP activity can be explained by the firm’s identity orientation toward stakeholders. Specifically, individualistic, relational, or collectivistic identity orientations can describe a firm’s level of CSP activity toward certain stakeholders. Family firms, we suggest, adopt a more relational orientation toward their stakeholders than nonfamily firms, and thus engage in higher levels of CSP. Further, we invoke (...) collectivistic identity orientation to argue that the higher the level of family or founder involvement within a family firm, the greater the level of CSP toward specific stakeholders. Using social performance rating data from 1991 to 2005, we find that family and nonfamily firms demonstrate notable differences in terms of social initiatives and social concerns. We also find that the level of family and founder involvement is related to the type and frequency of a family firm’s social initiatives and social concerns. (shrink)

This book is a sustained examination of issues in the philosophy of ecology that have been a source of controversy since the emergence of ecology as an explicit scientific discipline. The controversies revolve around the idea of a balance of nature, the possibility of general ecological knowledge and the role of model-building in ecology. The Science of the Struggle for Existence is also a detailed treatment of these issues that incorporates both a comprehensive investigation of the relevant ecological literature and (...) the development of an explicit theoretical framework in the philosophy of science. It addresses issues in the philosophy of ecology that are of particular importance for the deployment of ecology in the solution of environmental problems. It will have a cross-disciplinary appeal and will interest students and professionals in science, the philosophy of science, and environmental studies as well as policy-makers. (shrink)

In the most general sense this thesis is about the formal structure of the Geisteswissenschaften. This does not mean that It presents a taxonomic classification of the special social sciences. It is a basic analysis of the structure of social reality that underlies all the special social sciences. Social facts have a basic ontological and logical structure that I believe can be displayed. By displaying this structure I show how we can transform inadequate prehensions of social facts into a more (...) complete or perfect grasp of the concept. The theory of social facts I present is broadly Hegelian. My analysis shows that it has practical applications. I apply the theory to the special science of legal anthropology in order to show that and bow it can be used to clarify methodological problems in the social sciences. (shrink)

The author calls attention to and discusses certain basic but neglected and/or obscured features of Hegel's idealism. He treats these features as paradigmati cally sociological and uses them as a baseline with which to chart Hegel's critique of, and against which to measure, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Section 1 introduces Hegel's criticism of Kant's idealism; in contrast to his own objective idealism, transcendental idealism is individualistic. This criticism is elaborated in section 2, issuing in the quasi-Wittgensteinian indictment that Kant (...) cannot account for the possibility of language and human thought. Section 3 argues that Hegel's criticism that mind is social and that objectivity cannot be understood in isolation from social interaction amounts to a sociological critique of Kant. (shrink)

In the first half of this paper I show how H. L. A. Hart's theory of rules can resolve, or at least clarify, a central methodological problem in legal anthropology that was first posed in Llewellyn and Egebel's The Cheyenñe Way In the second half I explore and develop Hart's theory of rules, and apply it to problems of agency and behaviourism in legal anthropology, and of legal development, and apply it to the problem of rule-scepticism in legal anthropology as (...) it is posed in Roberts and Comaroffs Rules and Processes and elsewhere. (shrink)

The author argues that Kant was working out a theory of society in his postcritical work, and that he intentionally, and studiously, kept the 1st Critique sociology-free.

When comparing alternative courses of action, modern military decision makers often must consider both the military effectiveness and the ethical consequences of the available alternatives. The basis, design, calibration, and performance of a principles-based computational model of ethical considerations in military decision making are reported in this article. The relative ethical violation (REV) model comparatively evaluates alternative military actions based upon the degree to which they violate contextually relevant ethical principles. It is based on a set of specific ethical principles (...) deemed by philosophers and ethicists to be relevant to military courses of action. A survey of expert and non-expert human decision makers regarding the relative ethical violation of alternative actions for a set of specially designed calibration scenarios was conducted to collect data that was used to calibrate the REV model. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the survey showed that people, even experts, disagreed greatly amongst themselves regarding the scenarios’ ethical considerations. Despite this disagreement, two significant results emerged. First, after calibration the REV model performed very well in terms of replicating the ethical assessments of human experts for the calibration scenarios. The REV model outperformed an earlier model that was based on tangible consequences rather than ethical principles, that earlier model performed comparably to human experts, the experts outperformed human non-experts, and the non-experts outperformed random selection of actions. All of these performance comparisons were measured quantitatively and confirmed with suitable statistical tests. Second, although humans tended to value some principles over others, none of the ethical principles involved—even the principle of not harming civilians—completely overshadowed all of the other principles. (shrink)

Extending the dialogue on corporate social performance (CSP) as descriptive stakeholder management (Clarkson, Acad Manage Rev 20: 92, 1995), we examine differences in CSP activity between family and nonfamily firms. We argue that CSP activity can be explained by the firm's identity orientation toward stakeholders (Brickson, Admin Sci Quart 50: 576, 2005; Acad Manage Rev 32: 864, 2007). Specifically, individualistic, relational, or collectivistic identity orientations can describe a firm's level of CSP activity toward certain stakeholders. Family firms, we suggest, adopt (...) a more relational orientation toward their stakeholders than nonfamily firms, and thus engage in higher levels of CSP.Further, we invoke collectivistic identity orientation to argue that the higher the level of family or founder involvement within a family firm, the greater the level of CSP toward specific stakeholders. Using social performance rating data from 1991 to 2005, we find that family and nonfamily firms demonstrate notable differences in terms of social initiatives and social concerns. We also find that the level of family and founder involvement is related to the type and frequency of a family firm's social initiatives and social concerns. (shrink)

Managers in Peru, South Africa, and the United States were classified into four groups along Singhapakdi et al. (J Bus Ethics 15:1131–1140, 1996) Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility (PRESOR) scale. In Peru and the United States, individuals in the ethics and social responsibility first category reported greater satisfaction with organizational performance than did those in the profits first category. Moral capitalists—individuals who report high emphases on both social responsibility and profits—reported the highest satisfaction with performance in the United (...) States. Managers in the United States are more likely than their counterparts in Peru and South Africa to reject the mutual exclusivity of prioritizing social responsibility and profits simultaneously. Directions for future research are outlined. (shrink)

This chapter talks about Ayn Rand's distinctive view of the philosophical roots and meaning of the events of her time ‐ especially the events of the 1960s and 1970s when she was most active as a commentator on current events. It begins with a section on Rand's political writings and activism in the 1930s and (especially) 1940s, which is followed by Rand's essays that provide a broad philosophical and historical context for the issues facing the world. While the third section (...) deals with antitrust and censorship which according to Rand were as the most pressing issues, the fourth discusses the Kennedy administration. The fifth section analyzes the brokering deals between pressure groups by the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Then, Rand's writings focus on the unprincipled nature of American foreign policy, especially during the “Cold War”. Her writings also cover the civil rights, feminist, New Left and Libertarianism movements. (shrink)

Glassary is a companion volume to Glas. It offers English readers fuller access to the masterwork of Jacques Derrida, the leading philosopher in France. Derrida is important for his investigations of language, philosophy, and writing. He has perforated the boundaries between academic disciplines, has demonstrated the theological underpinnings of apparently atheological philosophies, and has thrown into question traditional notions about the "ownership" of ideas. Glas exemplifies Derrida's methodology of reading and his central philosophical and literary concerns. The reader fascinated by (...) its complexities will appreciate the assistance of Glassary. Written by the chief translator of Glas, John P. Leavey, Jr., it includes an essay by Gregory Ulmer and a foreword by Jacques Derrida. The book provides all of the apparatus a reader of Glas might immediately desire, including notes on difficult or ambiguous passages, identifications of allusions and puns, locations of citations, and translations of passages in languages other than French. But Leavey does not stop there. He includes a glossary of use to readers of Glas in any language and essays that relate it to Derrida's texts and to the modern French critical enterprise as a whole. Leavey's essay focuses on Glas and literature and philosophy; Ulmer's on Glas and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

The excellent quality and depth of the various essays make [the book] an invaluable resource....It is likely to become essential reading in its field.—CHOICE.