DURING THE PAST TWO DECADES, much has been said about the ostensible exhaustion of the age of metaphysics. This thesis is closely related to the claim that history, or western European history, is over, or else that we have shifted from the historical epoch of modernism to that of postmodernism. We can bring out the underlying relation between these two claims by a brief reflection on Hegel and Heidegger. In the Hegelian teaching, the entrance of God into history in the (...) person of Jesus Christ is taken as the paradigm for the eventually coincident development of absolute and historical time. The parousia of God is interpreted as the self-manifestation of the Absolute by stages which correspond to the major stages in the history of philosophy. These in turn are expressed concretely in the domain of art and religion, and, most comprehensively, within the political articulation of world history. The unification of theory and practice is thus equivalent to the complete accessibility of wisdom and human self-satisfaction. (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 ...

Stem-cell nomenclature is in a muddle! So-called stem cells may be self-renewing or emergent, oligopotent (uni- and multipotent) or pluri- and totipotent, cells with perpetual embryonic features or cells that have changed irreversibly. Ambiguity probably seeped into stem cells from common usage, flukes in biology's history beginning with Weismann's divide between germ and soma and Haeckel's biogenic law and ending with contemporary issues over the therapeutic efficacy of adult versus embryonic cells. Confusion centers on tissue dynamics, whether stem cells are (...) properly members of emerging or steady-state populations. Clarity might yet be achieved by codifying differences between cells in emergent populations, including embryonic stem and embryonic germ (ES and EG) cells in tissue culture as opposed to self-renewing (SR) cells in steady-state populations. BioEssays 28: 301–308, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this book a distinguished philosopher offers a comprehensive interpretation of Plato’s most controversial dialogue. Treating the _Republic _as a unity and focusing on the dramatic form as the presentation of the argument, Stanley Rosen challenges earlier analyses of the _Republic _ and argues that the key to understanding the dialogue is to grasp the author’s intention in composing it, in particular whether Plato believed that the city constructed in the _Republic _is possible and desirable. Rosen demonstrates that the (...) fundamental principles underlying the just city are theoretically attractive but that the attempt to enact them in practice leads to conceptual incoherence and political disaster. The _Republic, _says Rosen, is a vivid illustration of the irreconcilability of philosophy and political practice. (shrink)

Stanley Hauerwas's Gifford Lectures are, at least in part, an interpretation of the Giffords that came before him. As a contribution to intellectual and theological history, however, I wish Hauerwas had given witness to Santayana's Hermes the hermeneut, along with the considerable, indeed considerate, witness he does give to his own Christian faith. Hauerwas seems to dislike Reinhold Niebuhr and, by my account, misreads William James. Thus I have to conclude that "With the Grain of the Universe" does not (...) measure up to his own more capacious and incisive works. (shrink)

Proceeding on the assumption that confusion in Renaissance criticism arises from the way we talk and the vocabularies we use, Stewart investigates typical assertions in recent criticism of Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert, using a Wittgensteinian method of investigation. This involves taking a thing, usually a statement, apart. If a statement, under such scrutiny, seems to make no sense, or to lead critics into blind alleys, then we must try to clarify the expression. As Stewart asserts, if we are to (...) go on together in critical conversation, then we must find a way to sort out the confusion that arises from our language. While Wittgenstein's thought has long been utilized by literary critics, this study represents the first sustained application of ordinary language philosophy to the vocabulary and assumptions of current criticism. This study is an original and important book⎯one likely to be of great interest to philosophers as well as literary theorists. While Renaissance Talk is primarily concerned with Renaissance and early modern studies, its patient but relentless exposure of what sometimes passes for scholarly criticism, along with its exemplary corrective explication of misinterpreted passages from the writings of major authors, makes it useful reading for a wide range of Literary Studies students and scholars. (shrink)

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 volume presents the excellent and popular translation by Haldane and Ross of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy , an introduction by Stanley Tweyman which explores the relevance of Descartes' Regulae and his method of analysis in the Meditations , and six articles which indicate the diversity of scholarly opinion on the topic of method in Descartes' philosopy.

Françoise Baylis’s “aim in writing this book is to improve the ethics literacy and science literacy of those who are keen to reflect on the ethics and governance of deliberately altering the genome...

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 711-712, August 2012.

Volume 25, Issue 5, August 2020, Page 609-612.