This article argues that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by claiming certain inheritances from eighteenth-century American and French rights declarations, simultaneously disavowed others, reshaping the genre of the rights declaration in ways amenable to forms of imperial and racial domination. I begin by considering the rights declaration as genre, arguing that later participants can both inherit and disavow aspects of what came before. Then, drawing on original archival research, I consider the drafting of the UDHR, using as an entry (...) point the reception of the NAACP’s Appeal to the World petition, edited by W.E.B. DuBois. I reconstruct conversations within the drafting committee about the right to petition, self-determination, and the right to rebellion, and the separation of the Declaration from the rights covenants, to illustrate the allegiances between US racial politics and French imperial politics, and their legacies for our contemporary conceptions of human rights. (shrink)

Substantial form is a pivotal topic in the Metaphysics. While being is the subject of the entire work, ousiai are the primary cases of being. Among ousiai, individual material things are the ones directly available for examination. Substantial form is the chief determinant of such things. Aristotle assures us, moreover, that an understanding of this type of form will carry us forward, eventually, to an understanding of the formal being which exists totally apart from matter and change--the necessary reality somewhat (...) inadequately discerned by Plato. (shrink)

Jacob Weinrib's Dimensions of Dignity 1 [DD] joins a small but growing literature committed to the reconstruction, as applied theory, of foundational concepts such as justice, authority, and the ru...

A primary problem in the area of natural language processing has been semantic analysis. This book looks at the semantics of natural languages in context. It presents an approach to the computational processing of English text that combines current theories of knowledge representation and reasoning in Artificial Intelligence with the latest linguistic views of lexical semantics. The book will interest postgraduates and researchers in computational linguistics as well as industrial research groups specializing in natural language processing.

'Middle' Platonism has some claim to be the single most influential philosophical movement of the last two thousand years, as the common background to 'Neoplatonism' and the early development of Christian theology. This book breaks with the tradition of considering it primarily in terms of its sources, instead putting its contemporary philosophical engagements front and centre to reconstruct its philosophical motivations and activity across the full range of its interests. The volume explores the ideas at the heart of Platonist philosophy (...) in this period and includes a comprehensive selection of primary sources, a significant number of which appear in English translation for the first time, along with dedicated guides to the questions that have been, and might be, asked about the movement. The result is a tool intended to help bring the study of Middle Platonism into mainstream discussions of ancient philosophy. (shrink)

Is there anything that is given immediately? This question seems to be of crucial importance for Phenomenology, a field perhaps known most principally for its attempt to return directly to the “things themselves.” The seeming simplicity of the idea is appealing: after all, where better for us to start in any philosophical investigation than with things as they appear to us in their most pure or “immediate” state? When put in its historical context as well, Husserl’s phenomenological project could even (...) be interpreted as a breath of fresh air in the midst of the environment of early 20th century philosophy in comparison with the seemingly constructive philosophy of its Neo-Kantian contemporaries. Indeed, rather than starting with a merely systematic account of our cognition and reality, is it not better for us to first return to the world just as it is given to us in perception or intuition in order to have a more faithful account of these issues? (shrink)

This book traces, for the first time, a revolution in philosophy which took place during the early centuries of our era. It reconstructs the philosophical basis of the Stoics' theory that fragments of an ancient and divine wisdom could be reconstructed from mythological traditions, and shows that Platonism was founded on an argument that Plato had himself achieved a full reconstruction of this wisdom, and that subsequent philosophies had only regressed once again in their attempts to "improve" on his achievement.

Joan Scott's poststructuralist critique of experience demonstrates the dangers of empiricist narratives of experience but leaves feminists without a meaningful way to engage nonempiricist, experience-oriented texts, texts that constitute many women's primary means of taking control over their own representation. Using Chandra Mohanty's analysis of the role of writing in Third World feminisms, I articulate a concept of experience that incorporates poststructuralist insights while enabling a more responsible reading of Third World women's narratives.

This article argues against the view put forward by Margaret Archer that there is an irreconcilable divide between realist social theory and structuration theory. Instead, it argues for the systematic articulation of the two theories at both the ontological and the methodological levels. Each has developed a range of insightful and commensurable conceptualizations either missing or underdeveloped in the other. Archer's contention that structuration theory rejects the notion of `analytical dualism' central to the realist approach is shown to be mistaken; (...) Giddens's rejection of `dualism' refers to a different conceptualization of the term. Similarly, Archer's critique of structuration's notion of a `duality' involving structure and agency is rejected by showing that Archer's own morphogenetic approach itself relies upon such a notion. A final section distinguishes between six key problematics of social analysis. It is clear that, for a large number of possible questions within the majority of these problematics, it is a combination of both ontologies that would facilitate the most adequate substantive account. (shrink)

Joan Scott's poststructuralist critique of experience demonstrates the dangers of empiricist narratives of experience but leaves feminists without a meaningful way to engage nonempiricist, experience-oriented texts, texts that constitute many women's primary means of taking control over their own representation. Using Chandra Mohanty's analysis of the role of writing in Third World feminisms, I articulate a concept of experience that incorporates poststructuralist insights while enabling a more responsible reading of Third World women's narratives.

This paper examines how a delusive social imaginary of criminal-justice has underpinned contemporary U.S. mass incarceration and encouraged widespread indifference to its violence. I trace the complicity of this criminal-justice imaginary with state-organized violence by comparing it to an imaginary that supported colonial violence. I conclude by discussing how those of us outside of prison can begin to resist the entrenched images and institutions of mass incarceration by engaging the work and imagining the perspective of incarcerated people.

This essay considers Simone Weil's experiences in factories and her social–political reflections on work, time and energy, in conjunction with arguments from theorists Melissa Gregg, Theodor Adorno and Sara Ahmed, to raise questions about supposedly humane interventions, including the cultivation of resilience, in the contemporary workplace. The transition from time‐sense in factory work at the turn of the century is examined, along with the growth of corporate time management ideologies and practices in the mid–late 20th century, and finally, the associated (...) forms of disciplining resilience/elasticity in the worker that bring together certain notions of time, space and psychological investments. (shrink)

This article discusses the paradox of exclusion/inclusion: U.S. health policy prohibits Latinos who fall under certain classifications from accessing health services and insurance yet permits them to be human subjects in health research. We aim to advance the discussion of health research ethics post the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in Latinos by (a) tracing the impacts of policy exclusion and the social context of anti-Latino sentiment on Latinos' low participation rates in health research and inequitable access to treatment modalities; (b) challenging (...) researchers to address social sources of vulnerabilities; and (c) offering recommendations on adapting a social justice ethical stance to address these challenges, which are part of the Tuskegee Study legacy. (shrink)

Phaedo of Elis was well-known as a writer of Socratic dialogues, and it seems inconceivable that Plato could have been innocent of intertextuality when, excusing himself on the grounds of illness, he made him the narrator of one of his own: the "Phaedo". In fact the psychological model outlined by Socrates in this dialogue converges with the evidence we have (especially from fragments of the Zopyrus) for Phaedo's own beliefs about the soul. Specifically, Phaedo seems to have thought that non-rational (...) desires were ineliminable epiphenomena of the body, that reason was something distinct, and that the purpose of philosophy was its 'cure' and 'purification'. If Plato's intention with the "Phaedo" is to assert the separability and immortality of reason (whatever one might think about desire and pleasure), then Phaedo provides a useful standpoint for him. In particular, Phaedo has arguments that are useful against the 'harmony-theorists' (and are the more useful rhetorically speaking since it is only over the independence of reason that Phaedo disagrees with them). At the same time as allying himself with Phaedo, however, Plato is able to improve on him by adding to the demonstration that reason is independent a proof that it is actually immortal. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, feminist epistemologists have exposed the cultural biases that have denied epistemic value to certain epistemic styles and agents while they have explored ways to reclaim the devalued epistemic modes--including more practical, emotionally invested, and community-situated modes of knowing--that many of us have found to be meaningful ways of engaging the world. At the same time, feminist critics have sought not merely to reverse received epistemic hierarchies but to explore more pluralistic epistemologies that appreciate as well as examine (...) critically the diverse ways that humans engage the world. This paper examines how Simone Weil’s concept of paying attention can contribute to such a critical and pluralist epistemology. By reading Weil’s account of “a certain kind of attention” together with feminist and decolonial critiques of modern epistemic norms, I show how Weil points toward an epistemic framework that would open our intellectual communities to a greater plurality of epistemic styles and agents and, ultimately, would make possible richer knowledge practices more responsive to world problems. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays written by leading experts in honour of Christopher Rowe, and inspired by his groundbreaking work in the exegesis of Plato. The authors represent scholarly traditions which are sometimes very different in their approaches and interests, and so rarely brought into dialogue with each other. This volume, by contrast, aims to explore synergies between them. Key topics include: the literary unity of Plato's works; the presence and role of his contemporaries in his dialogues; the function (...) of myth (especially the Atlantis myth); Plato's Socratic heritage, especially as played out in his discussions of psychology; his views of truth and being. Prominent among the dialogues discussed are Euthydemus, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic, Theaetetus, Timaeus, Sophist and Laws. (shrink)

How closely do the theoretical notions of 'metaphor' and 'allegory' developed by ancient rhetoricians reflect the practice of classical writers? This question is tackled through eleven new essays by a team of distinguished academics. Ancient theories of metaphor are compared with twentieth century alternatives; theory is tested against practice; and allegory - a distinctive though neglected feature of ancient literature and philosophy - is explored against the background of the rhetoricians' claim that it is one form of metaphor.

A collection of essays exploring the relationship between Plato and the poet Hesiod. The volume covers a wide variety of thematic angles, brings new and sometimes surprising light to a large range of Platonic dialogues, and represents a major contribution to the study of the reception of archaic poetry in Athens.

The de primo frigido has long been recognized as an important text for our understanding of Plutarch′s epistemological position. It is the aim of this paper to show, however, that the sophistication of the work, and with it of Plutarch′s epistemology, is not generally given the credit due to it.

Offering new insight into the pertinence of Simone Weil’s thought, this volume situates her in the Continental discourses which constituted her philosophical background, her milieu, and which frequently reflected her departures from her contemporaries.

Bringing together the work of Hannah Arendt, poststructuralist and hermeneutic theories of narrative, and feminist standpoint theory, this book examines the role of narrative in both ideological and critical political thinking. The book recasts feminist affirmations (and critiques) of "marginal experience" by situating experience and identity within a theory of narrative and it identifies the specific narrative strategies that impede, and those that facilitate, feminist and democratic struggles.

Drawing on the work of Enrique Dussel, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and other scholars of colonialism, this essay traces colonialist legacies in the popular global-ethics literature. I argue that colonialist elements implicit in prominent global-ethics anthologies can foster attitudes of superiority over and aloofness toward economically struggling communities, even when the texts argue for aid to “the global poor.” Finally, I offer suggestions for how those of us who study and teach global ethics in the affluent world might begin to unsettle (...) colonialist baggage and cultivate skills more conducive to democratic global communities. (shrink)

According to a report in Athenaeus, the qualities of Erosled the Stoic Zeno to make him the tutelary god of his ideal state:Pontianus said that Zeno of Citium took Eros to be the god of love and freedom, and even the provider of concord, but nothing else. This is why he said in his Republic that Eros was the god who contributed to the safety of the city.

A debate between Proclus and Damascius over whether intellect ‘remembers’ the forms in contemplating them is explained by Professor Adamson as a disagreement over the nature of memory looking back to Plato and Aristotle. But I argue that it is rather symptomatic of a disagreement stretching back through Plotinus to Middle Platonism over the nature of the intellect. This gives the debate its urgency; and it coheres better with the fact that, Plato and Aristotle aside, there is vanishingly little evidence (...) in ancient philosophy for a thematized interest in memory. (shrink)

In chapters 30–1 of the de Stoicorum repugnantiis, Plutarch sets out to show that the Stoics involve themselves in self-contradiction if they claim that their philosophy allows them an intelligible notion of providence. In the first place, he says, this is so because the traditional boons which men expect to receive from the gods do not benefit them at all if they do not have wisdom. Indeed, the fool uses all things badly, so that to give him anything at all (...) without giving him virtue should be positively harmful to him. Yet the gods never give virtue to anyone so, on this score, they benefit no one either. (shrink)

The de primo frigido has long been recognized as an important text for our understanding of Plutarch′s epistemological position. It is the aim of this paper to show, however, that the sophistication of the work, and with it of Plutarch′s epistemology, is not generally given the credit due to it.

This paper traces the ethnocentric structure of U.S.-published anthologies in global ethics and related fields and it examines the ethical and philosophical implications of such ethnocentrism. The author argues that the ethnocentric structure of prominent work in global ethics not only impairs the field's ability to prepare students for global citizenship but contributes to the ideological processes that maintain global inequities. In conclusion, the author makes a case that fuller engagement with global-South and indigenous writers on global issues can encourage (...) U.S. students and scholars to examine more closely the ideologies that order our lives and to risk the kind of selfexamination that is necessary in order to build effective relationships with diverse global communities. (shrink)

This paper examines the particular relevance of feminist critiques of epistemic authority in contexts of institutionalized violence. Reading feminist criticism of “experts” together with theorists of institutionalized violence, Stone-Mediatore argues that typical expert modes of thinking are incapable of rigorous knowledge of institutionalized violence because such knowledge requires a distinctive kind of thinking-within-discomfort for which conventionally trained experts are ill-suited. The author demonstrates the limitations of “expert” modes of thinking with reference to writings on the Iraq war by Michael (...) Ignatieff and Fouad Ajami. Finally, the author turns to a newly active group of epistemic agents—anti-war relatives of soldiers--to examine the role that undervalued epistemic traits can play in knowledge of war and other forms of structural violence. (shrink)