Taylor analyzes Nietzsche's thoughts on the state, culture and education.

The Other Machiavelli is a unique compendium of the Florentine political thinker's writings on liberty and self-government. The selections, drawn from the Discourses and Machiavelli's other "republican" writings, are conveniently organized on the basis of subject matter. As such, The Other Machiavelli constitutes a much-needed corrective and companion to "The Prince.".

For much of the twentieth century Ernest Barker was the most frequently cited authority on Greek political thought in the English-speaking world. The centenary of his first publication, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, provides a fitting occasion to commemorate his seminal and enduring contribution to the subject. In the first of two articles, I explore Barker’s treatment of Plato, particularly as a foil for developing his own synthetic brand of neo-idealism. With a focus on the Republic, Barker crafts (...) an erudite yet lively account that leaves little of Plato’s political thought left standing. Yet for all this damning criticism, Barker remained under the ‘spell of Plato’ insofar as he saw in his organic and ethical conception of the polis a foundation for the state far superior to the mechanical and legalist orientation of classical liberalism. In fine, Barker provides an engaging, if occasionally anachronistic reading of Plato’s politics, one marked by an eclecticism and ambivalence that would characterize his own political commitments over the course of a long career. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes is often credited as the “founder of modern liberalism” for grounding his political theory in individualism, natural right, and the social contract. The irony, of course, is that upon this foundation he built an imposing edifice of absolutism. What has escaped most observers, however, is the extent to which Hobbes' absolutism is mitigated by his own principles, qualifications, and doctrines. Hence, “saving Hobbes from himself,” is not simply a matter of correcting his errors, but requires drawing out the (...) implications of his first principles and identifying the additional supports he provides for an essentially liberal order. In this way it is possible to “bind” Leviathan through a process of internal domestication, as opposed to looking backward to Aristotle or forward to Locke. The result is a “reformed” Hobbes who can be readily acknowledged as “the true ancestor of constitutional liberal democracy.”. (shrink)

I argue that four-dimensionalism and the desire satisfaction account of well-being are incompatible. For every person whose desires are satisfied, there will be many shorter-lived individuals (‘person-stages’ or ‘subpersons’) who share the person’s desires but who do not exist long enough to see those desires satisfied; not only this, but in many cases their desires are frustrated so that the desires of the beings in whom they are embedded as proper temporal parts may be fulfilled. I call this the frustrating (...) problem for four-dimensionalism. In the first half of the paper I lay the groundwork for understanding the frustrating problem, and then in the second half, I will examine six possible responses to the frustrating problem on behalf of the four-dimensionalist, (i) the Parfit (1984) inspired claim that identity is not what matters, (ii) the personal pronoun revisionism of Noonan (2010), (iii) the indirect concern account of Hudson (2001), (iv) the sensible stages account of Lewis (1986), (v) a multiple-concepts account of desire satisfaction, and (vi) a No Desire View according to which subpersons have no mental states and thus no desires to frustrate. I argue that none of these solutions will help the four-dimensionalist; she does better to reject the desire satisfaction theory, while the defender of the desire satisfaction theory does better to reject four-dimensionalism. (shrink)

We present a scientific analysis of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings and show that his patterns are fractal. The analysis also shows that he refined the fractal content of his paintings over the period 1943 -- 1952. We present a novel interpretation of Pollock's work described as Fractal Expressionism -- a direct expression of the generic imagery of nature's scenery.

We argue that animalism is the only materialist account of personal identity that can account for the autonomy that we typically think of ourselves as possessing. All the rival materialist theories suffer from a moral version of the problem of too many thinkers when they posit a human person that overlaps a numerically distinct human animal. The different persistence conditions of overlapping thinkers will lead them to have interests that conflict, which in many cases prevents them both from autonomously forming (...) and acting on the same intentions. These problems are exacerbated by problems of self-reference plaguing the overlapping thinkers. We contend that the impossibility of simultaneous autonomous action by animals and persons provides a reason to favor animalism over Neo-Lockeanism, Four-Dimensionalism, Constitution theory, and brain-size views of the person. We anticipate and reject arguments that the autonomy of the person and the animal can be shown to be compatible by relying upon either the Parfitian thesis that identity isn’t what matters or claiming that animals acquire the interests of the person they constitute. (shrink)

We argue that the secular cannot offer a materialist response to “The Problem of Too Many Thinkers” that makes autonomy possible. The materialist can accommodate what truths about respecting personal freedom and autonomy only by accepting a counterintuitive sparse ontology. Immaterial accounts of the person look good by comparison. However, those immaterialist theories that don’t posit a divinely created soul suffer from certain metaphysical puzzles avoided by those who do claim divine creation. A soul that requires divine creation strongly suggests (...) that such immaterial beings were made for a purpose. Such purposeful creation makes theistic ethics seem far more plausible. (shrink)

Split brains that result in two simultaneous streams of consciousness cut off from each other are wrongly held to be grounds for doubting the existence of the divinely created soul. The mistake is based on two related errors: first, a failure to appreciate the soul's dependence upon neurological functioning; second, a fallacious belief that if the soul is simple, i.e. without parts, then there must be a unity to its thought, all of its thoughts being potentially accessible to reflection or (...) even unreflective causal interactions. But a soul theorist can allow neurological events to keep some conscious thoughts unavailable to others. (shrink)

In this essay, P. Taylor Webb and Kalervo N. Gulson argue that educational policy is a spatial process and that implementation processes in particular produce crucial emergent geographies for policy research. Webb and Gulson describe how emergent geographies are produced when policy folds actors through senses and enactments of policy. The idea that policy is sensed and enacted is developed into the concept of a policy intension that extends approaches to spatial and, in particular, micropolitical analyses in policy research. Webb (...) and Gulson conclude by discussing cartographical methods that better map the geographies of subjectivity produced through policy intensions. (shrink)

Working parents in are struggling to balance the demands of their occupation with those of childcare and homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, studies show that women are shouldering more of the burden and reporting greater levels of psychological distress, anxiety, and depression relative to men. However, research has yet to show that increases in psychological symptoms are linked to changes in stress during the pandemic. Herein, we conduct a small-N study to explore the associations between stress and psychological symptoms (...) during the pandemic among mothers using structural equation modeling, namely latent change score models. Thirty-three mothers completed questionnaires reporting current anxious and depressive symptoms, as well as stressful life experiences prior to-versus during the pandemic. Women endorsed significantly more stressful events during the pandemic, relative to the pre-pandemic period. Additionally, 58% of mothers scored as moderate-to-high risk for developing a stress-related physical illness in the near future because of their pandemic-level stress. Depressive symptoms were associated with the degree of change in life stress, whereas anxiety symptoms were more related to pre-pandemic levels of stress. The present study preliminarily sheds light on the nuanced antecedents to mothers’ experiences of anxious and depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although further work is needed in larger, more diverse samples of mothers, this study highlights the potential need for appropriate policies, and prevention and intervention programs to ameliorate the effects of pandemics on mothers’ mental health. (shrink)