This book evaluates traditional musical performance and asks where its unique value lies.

Is wisdom a virtue? I think it is and also that it is an important virtue. But, it should be granted at the outset that the claim is controversial, that there are philosophers who either do not think of wisdom as a virtue1, or do not think of it as relevantly similar to other virtues. For example, Stanley Godlovitch comments: Wisdom sits alone. We cannot rehearse or practice it. We cannot be prompted to assume it—wheth er for our (...) sake or for the sake of others. We cannot expect, should we be in possession of it, to win friends and influence people. Wisdom calls into prominence a state of mind rather than a readiness to act in specified ways. As such, its status as a virtue must remain rather aloof.2. (shrink)

People maintain a positive identity in at least two ways: They evaluate themselves more favorably than other people, and they judge themselves to be better now than they were in the past. Both strategies rely on autobiographical memories. The authors investigate the role of autobiographical memories of lying and emotional harm in maintaining a positive identity. For memories of lying to or emotionally harming others, participants judge their own actions as less morally wrong and less negative than those in which (...) other people lied to or emotionally harmed them. Furthermore, people judge those actions that happened further in the past to be more morally wrong than those that happened more recently. Finally, for periods of the past when they believed that they were very different people than they are now, participants judge their actions to be more morally wrong and more negative than those actions from periods of their pasts when they believed that they were very similar to who they are now. The authors discuss these findings in relation to theories about the function of autobiographical memory and moral cognition in constructing and perceiving the self over time. (shrink)

In this bracing book, Fish argues that there is no realm of higher order impartiality--no neutral or fair territory on which to stake a claim--and that those ...

Richard Ryder created the term speciesism in early 1970 and shared the idea with Peter Singer, who popularised it in his classic work _Animal Liberation_. A key figure in the modern animal rights revival Ryder appeared on the first-ever televised discussion of animal rights in December 1970. He further promoted the ideas around speciesism in recorded discussions with Bridget Brophy, for the Open University, and in his contribution to the seminal philosophical work _Animals Men and Morals_ edited by the Oxford (...) philosophers Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris in 1971. From 1969 Ryder organised protests against animal experiments and bloodsports. He continued to promote his ideas about speciesism in leaflets and broadcasts, culminating in the publication of his _Victims of Science_ in 1975 - a book that provoked debates in Parliament and on television and was described by _The Spectator_ at the time as "a morally and historically important book". Dr Ryder was elected to the RSPCA Council in 1971, first becoming Chairman in 1977. In 1980 he was founding Chairman of the Liberal Democrat Animal Protection Group, and later ran for Parliament, was Director of the Political Animal Lobby and then Mellon Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tulane University. Ryder coined the term painism to describe his wider moral theory in 1990. He has several times broadcast on the BBC's Moral Maze. (shrink)

Something out of the ordinary -- The interminable Shakespearean text -- Fred Astaire asserts the right to praise -- Henry James returns to America and to Shakespeare -- Philosophy the day after tomorrow -- What is the scandal of skepticism? -- Performative and passionate utterance -- The Wittgensteinian event -- Thoreau thinks of ponds, Heidegger of rivers -- The world as things.

This book offers philosophy in the key of life.

This paper compares the two known logical forms of hierarchy, both of which have been used in models of natural phenomena, including the biological. I contrast their general properties, internal formal relations, modes of growth (emergence) in applications to the natural world, criteria for applying them, the complexities that they embody, their dynamical relations in applied models, and their informational relations and semiotic aspects.

A philosophical study of popular movies uses the viewer as a point of reference.

My purposes in this paper are to explain the constitutive-regulative distinction as set out by Kant in the Dialectic and Methodology, and to note its reappearance in contemporary philosophy.

This collection of essays explores Thoreau's Walden, and discusses the importance of Thoreau and Emerson on American thought.

This work investigates the distinctiveness of virtues as illuminated by Christian practise using a discussion of Aristotle's ethics with contemporary scholars. It contrasts non-Christian accounts of virtue with Christian accounts of key virtues, including obedience, hope, courage, and patience.

We present here a cosmological myth, alternative to "the Universe Story" and "the Epic of Evolution", highlighting the roles of entropy and dissipative structures in the universe inaugurated by the Big Bang. Our myth offers answers these questions: Where are we? What are we? Why are we here? What are we to do? It also offers answers to a set of "why" questions: Why is there anything at all? and Why are there so many kinds of systems? - the answers (...) coming from cosmology and physics ; Why do systems not last once they exist? - the answer coming from a materialist interpretation of information theory; and, Why are systems just the way they are and not otherwise? - the answer coming from evolutionary biology. We take into account the four kinds of causation designated by Aristotle as efficient, final, and material formal, with the Second Law of thermodynamics in the role of final cause. Conceptual problems concerning reductionism, "teleology", and the choice/chance distinction are dealt with in the framework of specification hierarchy, and the moral implications of our story explored in the conclusion. (shrink)

In this book, controversial and world-renowned theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, tackles the issue of theology being sidelined as a necessary discipline in the modern university. It is an attempt to reclaim the knowledge of God as just that – knowledge. Questions why theology is no longer considered a necessary subject in the modern university, and explores the role it should play in the development of our “knowledge” Considers how theology is often excluded from the knowledges of the modern university because (...) these are constituted by an understanding of time necessary to make economic and state realities seem inevitable Argues that it is precisely this difference that makes Christian theology an essential resource for the university to achieve its task - that is, to form people who are able to imagine a different world through critical and disciplined reflection Challenges the domesticated character of much recent theology by suggesting how prayer and the love of the poor are essential practices that should shape the theological task Converses with figures as diverse as Luigi Giussani, David Burrell, Stanley Fish, Wendell Berry, Jeff Stout, Rowan Williams and Sheldon Wolin Published in the new and prestigious Illuminations series. (shrink)

The concepts of rationality that are used by social scientists in the formation of hypotheses, models and explanations are explored in this collection of original papers by a number of distinguished philosophers and social scientists. The aim of the book is to display the variety of the concepts used, to show the different roles they play in theories of very different kinds over a wide range of disciplines, including economics, sociology, psychology, political science and anthropology, and to assess the explanatory (...) and predictive power that a theory can draw from such concepts. (shrink)

Liberal/conservative and modern/postmodern concepts define contemporary theological debate. Yet what if these categories are grounded in a set of assumptions about what it means to be the church in the world, presuming we must live as though God's existence does not matter? What if our theological discussion distracts us from the fact that the church is no longer able to shape the desires and habits of Christians? Hauerwas wrestles with these and similar questions constructing a theological politics necessary for the (...) church to be the church in the world. In so doing, he challenges liberal notions of justice and freedom. (shrink)

Critical theorist Aronowitz (sociology, CUNY) contends that the centrality of cultural categories, as raised by the feminist, ecology, and racial freedom movements, among others, provides the crucial difference for the late industrial world, demanding a break from the dominant tendencies of Marxism to reduce causality to its economic features. Acidic paper. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics presents a comprehensive and systematic exposition of Christian ethics, seen through the lens of Christian worship.

By focusing on questions concerning what kind of training graduate students in theology and ethics and religious ethics should receive, I try to initiate a conversation we need to have about the kind of work the JRE should foster.

To set medicine within the context of a good or faithful life requires virtues that give physicians and patients the skills to understand and practice the kind of care medicine is capable of giving. We begin with a prayer that names some of these virtues. We then show how the language of medicine impedes these virtues by fostering the illusion that medicine will free us from illness and mortality. While Aristotle’s account of virtue and happiness seems capable of telling us (...) how to live with finitude, Jonathan Lear shows how it involves another fantasy of escape from it. We then show how Karl Barth’s account of health offers physicians and patients a language by which both the capabilities and the limitations of medicine may serve rather than undermine a good life. 1. (shrink)

Essays by 13 contributors on the philosophical writings of Hume, Comenius, Kant, & Spinoza.

In Good Company is a book about the politics and practices that constitute the salvation made possible by God through the church. By exposing a different account of politics - the church as polis and "counter-story" to the world's politics - Hauerwas helps Christians see that in fact God has given them the means to escape the destructive practices of the world by placing them "in good company" with one another, Catholic and Protestant alike. Hauerwas explains: "What we Christians have (...) lost is [the sense of] just how radical our practices are, since they are meant to free us from the... lies so characteristic of the world. The difficulty is that the church... is constantly tempted to imitate the false politics of the world for its own life". He thus urges Christians to discover the narratives, skills, and practices that they share and how these elements of the faith are crucial for confronting the false politics of the present-day world. The animating conviction underlying this volume is that the church and the Christian faith offer resources not available to the world at large, and by turning political theology into theological politics, Hauerwas helps all Christians to recognize how these resources empower them to discover and build a stronger religious and political identity. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is part of the concept of the positive integers that they are for the sake of numbering things (what Benacerraf calls transitive counting). Numbers are necessarily associated with standard, conventionally established counting sets constituted by the Peano axioms; they cannot be specified independently of a paradigm counting stock, any more than lengths can be part of a system of assessment without appeal to some standard object. Scepticism deriving from Kripke and Salmon is countered by acknowledgement (...) that the paradigms themselves are among the means by which the terms of the system get applied and adjudicated. (shrink)

The Supper is indeed the memorial of a childless man, Jesus of Nazareth, who still today gives life to countless sons and daughters.