Academic social scientists and professional practitioners could increase the effectiveness of their undertakings to advance positive change toward solving social and organizational problems by more effectively combining their efforts. Historically, both realms have used reductionist techniques and methodologies that are unsuited for understanding and solving problems in social and organizational systems. Their efforts could be significantly enhanced by using a grounded theory/grounded action approach. Grounded theory/grounded action is designed to generate explanations directly from data that provide a theoretical foothold for (...) effecting optimal and sustainable change in social and organizational systems. (shrink)

Very few—if any—will doubt Hobbes's aversion to the state of nature and sympathy for civil society. On the other hand, it is not quite news that it would be inaccurate to claim that Hobbes rejected the state of nature entirely. Indeed, he embraced or at the very least tolerated the state of nature at the international level in order to escape from the individual state of nature. Hobbes's recommended exchange of an individual state of nature for an international one does (...) seem to have a smack of contradiction, arguably first noted by Rousseau. There is yet another charge of contradiction lurking around Hobbes's account of the state of nature. Hobbes's political thought would still reflect an ambivalent attitude towards a third instantiation of the state of nature, i.e. civil war. This is one of the main reasons why the political allegiance of Thomas Hobbes has been an issue ever since the publication of De Cive at the very least. This paper deals with Hobbes's differential treatment of the original and the international states of nature and discusses the source of Hobbes's somewhat ambivalent attitude towards civil war. It is here argued that Hobbes can fairly hold his ground vis-à-vis Rousseau's criticism, in spite of the normative resemblance between the international state of nature and the initial state of nature, and that Hobbes ambivalent attitude of attraction and repulsion towards civil war is actually due not so much to opportunism on his part as to the normative autonomy he has granted to the state of nature. (shrink)

The detailed interpretation and translation of Nietzsche’s early Latin odes clearly show that Horace’s lyric poetry has an exemplary function for the development of Nietzsche’s own poetic language. Even in his later works, such as Twilight of the Idols and the Dionysos-Dithyrambs, Nietzsche’s poetic style and rhetorical strategies remain indebted to his early attempts to emulate classical Latin poetry when he was a pupil at the Pforta boarding school.

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

In China, guanxi is the basis on which Chinese exchange a lifetime of favors, resources, and business leverage. Guanxi is considered a unique construct and a product of Confucian values and the contemporary political and socioeconomic system in Chinese society. With its cultural embeddings guanxi , as the social norm of conduct, functions as complex adaptive systems that expand and interconnect to become well-knit social networks; meanwhile the functions of well-fixing and self-reinforcement of the guanxi networks ( chuens ) are (...) synergetically activated internally, externally, and interactively, which shows their extreme flexibility of adaptation. Taking as a case study an outside direct investment (ODI) Taiwanese firm in China, we address and conduct a survey to examine the effect of guanxi on management. Results of the research suggest that guanxi is not limited to interpersonal links; it is also the switch that activates social networks and that reconciles interpersonal and internetwork mismatches to influence management efficacy. (shrink)

We describe a prototype ontology-driven information system (ODIS) that exploits what we call Portion of Reality (POR) representations. The system takes both sensor data and natural language text as inputs and composes on this basis logically structured POR assertions. The goal of our prototype is to represent both natural language and sensor data within a single framework that is able to support both axiomatic reasoning and computation. In addition, the framework should be capable of discovering and representing new kinds of (...) situations and thematic roles, (e.g., roles such as agent, patient and instrument), based on new compositions of existing representations. We applied our prototype in an intelligence analysis use case to test the hypothesis that a framework of this sort can produce usefully structured information from combined natural language and sensor data inputs. We further tested our hypothesis by adding an enhanced US Air Force ontology framework to our ODIS in order to (1) process a collection of sensor data, intel reports, and mission plans; (2) build composite POR representations from these data; and (3) machine analyze the fused results to infer mission threats. (shrink)

odi profanum uulgus et arceo.fauete linguis: carmina non priusaudita Musarum sacerdosuirginibus puerisque canto.I hate and spurn the unversed crowd.Mind your tongues: songs yet unheardI sing to boys and virgin girls,the Muses' priest.

Drawing on the moving story of the last year of the life of her own treasured dog, Ody, she presents an in-depth exploration of the practical, medical, and moral issues that trouble pet owners confronted with the decline and death of their ...

From the moment when we first open our homes—and our hearts—to a new pet, we know that one day we will have to watch this beloved animal age and die. The pain of that eventual separation is the cruel corollary to the love we share with them, and most of us deal with it by simply ignoring its inevitability. With _The Last Walk_, Jessica Pierce makes a forceful case that our pets, and the love we bear them, deserve better. Drawing (...) on the moving story of the last year of the life of her own treasured dog, Ody, she presents an in-depth exploration of the practical, medical, and moral issues that trouble pet owners confronted with the decline and death of their companion animals. Pierce combines heart-wrenching personal stories, interviews, and scientific research to consider a wide range of questions about animal aging, end-of-life care, and death. She tackles such vexing questions as whether animals are aware of death, whether they're feeling pain, and if and when euthanasia is appropriate. Given what we know and can learn, how should we best honor the lives of our pets, both while they live and after they have left us? The product of a lifetime of loving pets, studying philosophy, and collaborating with scientists at the forefront of the study of animal behavior and cognition, _The Last Walk_ asks—and answers—the toughest questions pet owners face. The result is informative, moving, and consoling in equal parts; no pet lover should miss it. (shrink)

A partire dal XX secolo si è fatta strada l’idea che l’istituzione di tribunali penali internazionali sia un fondamentale e necessario contributo al processo di ricostruzione della pace in contesti post-bellici. Attraverso l’imparzialità nell’individuazione delle colpe e nella distribuzione delle pene, i tribunali penali internazionali sarebbero in grado, secondo questa linea interpretativa, di sopire odi e divisioni, di scoraggiare la commissione di ulteriori crimini e di porre così le basi per una nuova convivenza pacifica. Questa fiducia nella funzione pacificatrice del (...) diritto internazionale penale ne ha sostenuto lo sviluppo storico. Sulla base di questa funzione il Consiglio di Sicurezza ha motivato la creazione di tribunali penali internazionali negli anni Novanta. L’atteggiamento del Consiglio di Sicurezza nei confronti del rapporto tra giurisdizioni penali internazionali e pace non si è però mantenuto lineare nel tempo. Il Consiglio di Sicurezza ha infatti mostrato successivamente di nutrire scarsa fiducia nella funzione pacificatrice del diritto internazionale penale e talvolta di ritenere che i procedimenti penali internazionali possano ostacolare il processo di pace. Il saggio indaga questo complesso rapporto e le ambiguità dell'atteggiamento del Consiglio di Sicurezza rispetto ai tribunali penali internazionali. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe novel coronavirus is linked to increases in emotional distress and may be particularly problematic for those with pre-existing mental and physical conditions, such as chronic pain and posttraumatic stress disorder. However, little empirical research has been published on resilience factors in these individuals. The present study aims to examine authenticity as a resilience factor among those with chronic pain and/or PTSD.MethodsPrior to the national response to the pandemic, participants were screened for pain-related disability and PTSD symptoms, and on the (...) basis of those responses were categorized into one of four groups: healthy, chronic pain only, PTSD only, or comorbid chronic pain and PTSD. During the CV-19 pandemic, participants responded again to the ODI and PCL-5, in addition to the Wood Authenticity Scale, Brief Pain Inventory, and items related to the CV-19 pandemic.ResultsA total of 110 participants, aged 42.19, completed the survey during the pandemic. The comorbid group endorsed higher levels of CV-19 Threat and Impact compared to all other groups. Authenticity moderated this relationship relevant to CV-19 Threat among those in the chronic pain only group, and not in any other group.ConclusionThe comorbid group endorsed higher levels of CV-19 Threat and Impact compared to all other groups. Importantly, greater authenticity was associated with less CV-19 Threat in the chronic pain only group, and not in any other group. The present study also highlights the importance of engaging authentically for those with chronic pain during the pandemic. (shrink)

Fierce debates surround the conceptualization and measurement of job-related distress in occupational health science. The use of burnout as an index of job-related distress, though commonplace, has increasingly been called into question. In this paper, we first highlight foundational problems that undermine the burnout construct and its legacy measure, the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Next, we report on advances in research on job-related distress that depart from the use of the burnout construct. Tracing the genesis of the burnout construct, we observe (...) that burnout’s definition was preestablished rather than derived from a rigorous research process and the MBI has little in the way of a theoretical or empirical foundation. Historical analysis suggests that the burnout construct was cobbled together from unchallenged personal impressions and anecdotal evidence before getting reified by the MBI. This state of affairs may account for many of the disconcerting problems encountered in burnout research. We close our paper by presenting the Occupational Depression Inventory, a recently developed instrument reflective of a renewed approach to job-related distress. The ODI has demonstrated robust psychometric and structural properties across countries, sexes, age groups, occupations, and languages. The instrument addresses job-related distress both dimensionally and categorically. A dimensional approach can be useful, for instance, in examining the dynamics of etiological processes and symptom development. A categorical approach can serve screening and diagnostic purposes and help clinicians and public health professionals in their decision-making. It is concluded that the ODI offers occupational health specialists a promising way forward. (shrink)

While histories of literature and philosophy have till now presented Calcidius as if he were no more than a secondhand mediator of Platonic thought, Peter Dronke, in The Spell of Calcidius, shows that this judgement must be radically revised. Calcidius' commentary (probably of the early fourth century) on Plato's Timaeus is a deeply individual work, which was able to inspire a fresh way of looking for truth, of searching for a world-picture that was not ready-made, among exceptional thinkers across eight (...) centuries. The spell Calcidius cast was intellectual freedom, a Christian's refusal to make Christian propaganda, a spirit of open enquiry. After the discussion of some key cosmological motifs in Calcidius himself and in Boethius, there follow chapters on the brilliant transformations of Calcidian thought in the ninth century by Eriugena and others; on the odi et amo towards Calcidius of Manegold of Lautenbach in the eleventh century; and on the ardent assimilation of his thought in the early twelfth by “us who love Plato”, as William of Conches proclaimed. The final chapter shows how in Bernardus Silvestris' epic, the Cosmographia (1147/8), the daring uses of language and speculation begun by Calcidius find their culminating creative renewal. (shrink)

Two of the most moving personal poems of Catullus, 8 and 76, present the reader with difficulties of interpretation which highlight the inadequacy of a very widely-held view of the nature of Catullus' personal poetry. In this view the poet is regarded as handling his own actual experience directly, so that the poems present reality, perhaps not entirely, but certainly to a degree that is not the case with the elegiac poets or with the Horace of the Odes. Extreme forms (...) of this view may be seen in the old idea that Catullus threw off the Lesbia poems as the odi or the amo of the moment constrained him, and in the more recent view that the poems can usefully be seen as either attempts to contain an overpowering wave of emotion or to state, and so get to grips with, a baffling personal problem. The first of these extreme forms has been long discredited, but the second still exerts a persuasive pressure, to judge by recent discussion of Catullus. (shrink)

Two of the most moving personal poems of Catullus, 8 and 76, present the reader with difficulties of interpretation which highlight the inadequacy of a very widely-held view of the nature of Catullus' personal poetry. In this view the poet is regarded as handling his own actual experience directly, so that the poems present reality, perhaps not entirely, but certainly to a degree that is not the case with the elegiac poets or with the Horace of the Odes. Extreme forms (...) of this view may be seen in the old idea that Catullus threw off the Lesbia poems as the odi or the amo of the moment constrained him, and in the more recent view that the poems can usefully be seen as either attempts to contain an overpowering wave of emotion or to state, and so get to grips with, a baffling personal problem. The first of these extreme forms has been long discredited, but the second still exerts a persuasive pressure, to judge by recent discussion of Catullus. (shrink)

Ratom pʻilosopʻia, rogorcʻ kritikuli azrovnebis gamocʻdileba -- Kritikuli azrovnebis metʻodis żiritʻadi kitʻxvebi -- Kritikuli azrovnebis metʻodis żiritʻadi debulebebi.