John Cowdrey was Anglican chaplain and medieval scholar at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His work Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 was hailed as a masterpiece. Obituary by Jean Dunbabin.

Among the high aristocrats of the Carolingian and post-Carolingian world, the naming of children was a serious business—so serious as to be almost immune to fashion and to personal taste. Before the twelfth-century demographic upswing, the number of children in each family who survived childhood and could be counted on to continue the tradition of their parents was small. Many illustrious lines, like that of Gerald of Aurillac or of William the Pious, duke of Aquitaine, died out rapidly; other families, (...) like those of the dukes of Normandy or the counts of Flanders, survived by the skin of their teeth. Therefore, in christening their first legitimate male offspring, early-medieval aristocrats would choose a name designed to underline family continuity, usually the name of the child's paternal grandfather. (shrink)

The author argues the following hypothesis: the medical clinic is an experimental practice, in the sense given to this term by Claude Bernard, and the clinic is its specific laboratory. Its object is not the disease, but the patient. Careful examination of the clinic attests to its very close proximity to the experimental method, and the comparison also raises a number of difficulties. The main obstacle arises from the specificity of medicine, which involves treating individual human subjects whose words cannot (...) be suppressed. Its main challenge is to combine a linguistic practice with an experimental method. (shrink)

"In this groundbreaking book Jean Walton subjects psychoanalysis to a sustained and highly illuminating ethnographic critique.

Bathos - remarque -- Pt. 1. Le champ de bataille -- Pt. 2. Kant et ses juges -- Pt. 3. Traité de bathologie.

Comment Bachelard, fils d'un cordonnier, professeur de physique et chimie, a-t-il pu devenir cet humaniste aussi savant que philosophe, aussi penseur que poète? Il n'a pas emprunté les chemins balisés, ceux des élites universitaires et culturelles. Il a contrarié les pronostics et les conventions. Il s'est adjugé contre vents et marées le droit de penser par lui-même en bousculant les frontières des savoirs et de la culture et en dérangeant les us et coutumes établis. "Un ouvrage aussi lumineux que la (...) destinée et l'oeuvre de Gaston Bachelard. Au plus près de sa vie et de sa pensée". (Philippe Meirieu). (shrink)

1. De Dieu -- 2. L'être au féminin -- 3. L'alliance.

Des Herrn Doct. und Prof. Joachim Langens, oder, Der Theologischen Facultaet zu Halle Anmerckungen über des Herrn Hoff-Raths und Professor Christian Wolffens Metaphysicam ... nebst beygefügter Hr. Hoff-R. und Prof. Christian Wolffens gründlicher Antwort -- Herrn D. Joh. Francisci Buddei S.S. Theol. P.P.O. zu Jena Bedencken über die Wolffianische Philosophie, mit Anmerckungen erläutert von Christian Wolffen.

In his masterly work on Tarentum, P. Wuilleumier identifies the Galaesus with the Citrezze or Giadrezze, a small stream running into the north side of the Mare Piccolo, about two miles from the channel on the west side of the citadel of Tarentum which connects the Mare Piccolo with the sea. This identification, which has been often repeated since Lenormant's time and spread beyond the narrow bounds of pure scholarship by the writings of George Gissing , Norman Douglas , and (...) David Randall-Madver , is likely to hold the field by virtue, of Wuilleumier's support. But it is irreconcilable with the only ancient evidence on the position of this river, given in the account of Hannibal's movements in 212 B.C. (shrink)

_The VaKE Handbook: Theory and Practice of Values and Knowledge Education_ presents a theoretical model and many examples in various fields of education and training for the realization of the principle "Values without knowledge are blind, while knowledge without values is irresponsible".

People are motivated by shared social values that, when held with moral conviction, can serve as compelling mandates capable of facilitating support for ideological violence. The current study examined this dark side of morality by identifying specific cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with beliefs about the appropriateness of sociopolitical violence, and determining the extent to which the engagement of these mechanisms was predicted by moral convictions. Participants reported their moral convictions about a variety of sociopolitical issues prior to undergoing functional (...) MRI scanning. During scanning, they were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of violent protests that were ostensibly congruent or incongruent with their views about sociopolitical issues. Complementary univariate and multivariate analytical strategies comparing neural responses to congruent and incongruent violence identified neural mechanisms implicated in processing salience and in the encoding of subjective value. As predicted, neuro-hemodynamic response was modulated parametrically by individuals’ beliefs about the appropriateness of congruent relative to incongruent sociopolitical violence in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and by moral conviction in ventral striatum. Overall moral conviction was predicted by neural response to congruent relative to incongruent violence in amygdala. Together, these findings indicate that moral conviction about sociopolitical issues serves to increase their subjective value, overriding natural aversion to interpersonal harm. (shrink)

One of the most perceptive and ambidextrous social commentators of our day, Augustinian scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain furnishes in ever fresh ways through her writings a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between politics and ethics, between timeless moral wisdom and cultural sensitivity. To read Elshtain seriously is to take the study of culture as well as the "permanent things" seriously. But Elshtain is no mere moralist. Neither is she content solely to dwell in the domain of the (...) theoretical. For it is Elshtain the citizen - the creatively engaged and contributing citizen - whom the reader encounters on virtually every page of her writings. But reader beware: Elshtain does not shy away from controversy. At the same time, she is anything but a controversialist. In the essay that follows, several prominent themes that emerge from Elstain's writings - civic responsibility, justice, gender, and war - are considered afresh. Whether one agrees with her positions or not, one is forced to confess in the end that she cares deeply about the common good. And this alone makes her required reading for any engaged citizen of the republic. (shrink)

Jean Starobinski, one of Europe's foremost literary critics, examines the life that led Rousseau, who so passionately sought open, transparent communication with others, to accept and even foster obstacles that permitted him to withdraw into himself. First published in France in 1958, Jean-Jacques Rousseau remains Starobinski's most important achievement and, arguably, the most comprehensive book ever written on Rousseau. The text has been extensively revised for this edition and is published here along with seven essays on Rousseau that (...) appeared between 1962 and 1970. (shrink)