The author takes up a provocative question poised by Charles Taylor about the relationship between our commitments to a good such as neighbor love and the possibilities of achieving and sustaining social justice. Taylor's concern is not only that we make such a commitment but that we make it in such a way that we avoid its ability to lead us towards injustice rather than justice. After articulating conceptions of love, justice, and injustice, the author turns to Charles Dickens's treatment (...) of love and injustice in Bleak House, to explore more fully how love can lead to injustice, and also its potential role in promoting justice. Dickens's view, profoundly shaped by his own sense of Christian virtues, helps us see the inner workings of love, justice, and injustice, so that we can appreciate their interconnectedness anew and understand better the urgency of Taylor's question for our time. (shrink)

The author takes up a provocative question poised by Charles Taylor about the relationship between our commitments to a good such as neighbor love and the possibilities of achieving and sustaining social justice. Taylor's concern is not only that we make such a commitment but that we make it in such a way that we avoid its ability to lead us towards injustice rather than justice. After articulating conceptions of love, justice, and injustice, the author turns to Charles Dickens's treatment (...) of love and injustice in Bleak House, to explore more fully how love can lead to injustice, and also its potential role in promoting justice. Dickens's view, profoundly shaped by his own sense of Christian virtues, helps us see the inner workings of love, justice, and injustice, so that we can appreciate their interconnectedness anew and understand better the urgency of Taylor's question for our time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective by Matthew A. ShadleJoyce Kloc BabyakThe Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective Matthew A. Shadle Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011.246pp. $29.95Matthew A. Shadle’s The Origins of War, in Georgetown University Press’s Moral Traditions series, makes a genuinely fresh contribution to contemporary scholarship on Christianity and war. This is not a work on the morality of war, just war theory, (...) or alternatives to that theory. Instead, Shadle directs our attention to Christian understandings of war’s origins. Through a rich and careful analysis of the early tradition’s treatment of the origin of war in light of its overall understanding of human existence, Shadle sets the stage for his examination of the decentering of Christianity in modernity and the implication of this for assumptions about humanity and human possibilities that became encoded in both political theory and Catholic writings on war. In the process, Shadle offers us not only a primer on international theory but also an account of the transition of fundamental liberal assumptions from their beginnings as anti-Christian to their twentieth-century embrace by Catholic theologians and a thoughtful new approach to understanding the causes of war today.Making his case serially, Shadle moves from biblical and early Christian thought on the origins of war to the Middle Ages and onward. He argues that the overriding context for a Christian understanding of the origins of war is the Christian worldview that sees human life in a theological framework (25), and he locates the impulse to war in the human struggle between sin and grace (5). With modernity, however, war has come to be seen as a result not of sin but of unresolved conflicts, clashes of interest and power—all viewed in materialist rather than transcendent terms. Moving into the twentieth century, he demonstrates that Roman Catholic writings on war, including church writings, have adopted a liberal framework for articulating positions on the causes of war. This liberal framework has in turn supported the hope that international institutions will be able to resolve the conflicts of interests that lead to war by fostering dialogue across divides but at the same time have also led away from the more fundamental Christian view that sees war as the result of sin.Shadle criticizes the liberal optimism that has infused Catholic writings with the hope that international structures will succeed at preventing war. Linking [End Page 215] that optimism to dominant versions of international relations theory, he argues instead for a new version of international relations theory known as “constructivism.” This theory challenges presumptions of earlier versions of international relations theory and sees war as the result of “a clash of the identities, interests, and norms of states... all of which are socially constructed by both domestic and international factors” (86). In Shadle’s view, constructivism is a theory that is more compatible with traditional Christian views on the origin of war as well as contemporary Catholic theology because it focuses on clashes in socially constructed (though not entirely relativistic) identities and values as causes of war. Avoiding war on this view will take more than relying on international structures such as the United Nations to resolve conflicts by translating conflicting interests into terms erroneously presumed to be accessible to all.The Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective deserves serious study. From its careful account of the biblical and early Christian understanding of the origin of war to its analysis of the ways that liberal assumptions came to undergird Catholic writings on war, it sheds new light on how assumptions about the origins of war influence all aspects of our thinking about war. And it is in the end provocative. Shadle’s historicist orientation reminds us that the liberal optimism that undervalued the role of sin as a cause of war was itself tempting because of the challenges of the time and dominant political theories. Yet Shadle’s preference for constructivism is no less historically shaped. Liberalism’s fit with Catholic understanding of human existence has certainly been strained, but it remains to be seen whether a historicist, constructivist set of assumptions can do... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective by Matthew A. ShadleJoyce Kloc BabyakThe Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective Matthew A. Shadle Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011.246pp. $29.95Matthew A. Shadle’s The Origins of War, in Georgetown University Press’s Moral Traditions series, makes a genuinely fresh contribution to contemporary scholarship on Christianity and war. This is not a work on the morality of war, just war theory, (...) or alternatives to that theory. Instead, Shadle directs our attention to Christian understandings of war’s origins. Through a rich and careful analysis of the early tradition’s treatment of the origin of war in light of its overall understanding of human existence, Shadle sets the stage for his examination of the decentering of Christianity in modernity and the implication of this for assumptions about humanity and human possibilities that became encoded in both political theory and Catholic writings on war. In the process, Shadle offers us not only a primer on international theory but also an account of the transition of fundamental liberal assumptions from their beginnings as anti-Christian to their twentieth-century embrace by Catholic theologians and a thoughtful new approach to understanding the causes of war today.Making his case serially, Shadle moves from biblical and early Christian thought on the origins of war to the Middle Ages and onward. He argues that the overriding context for a Christian understanding of the origins of war is the Christian worldview that sees human life in a theological framework (25), and he locates the impulse to war in the human struggle between sin and grace (5). With modernity, however, war has come to be seen as a result not of sin but of unresolved conflicts, clashes of interest and power—all viewed in materialist rather than transcendent terms. Moving into the twentieth century, he demonstrates that Roman Catholic writings on war, including church writings, have adopted a liberal framework for articulating positions on the causes of war. This liberal framework has in turn supported the hope that international institutions will be able to resolve the conflicts of interests that lead to war by fostering dialogue across divides but at the same time have also led away from the more fundamental Christian view that sees war as the result of sin.Shadle criticizes the liberal optimism that has infused Catholic writings with the hope that international structures will succeed at preventing war. Linking [End Page 215] that optimism to dominant versions of international relations theory, he argues instead for a new version of international relations theory known as “constructivism.” This theory challenges presumptions of earlier versions of international relations theory and sees war as the result of “a clash of the identities, interests, and norms of states... all of which are socially constructed by both domestic and international factors” (86). In Shadle’s view, constructivism is a theory that is more compatible with traditional Christian views on the origin of war as well as contemporary Catholic theology because it focuses on clashes in socially constructed (though not entirely relativistic) identities and values as causes of war. Avoiding war on this view will take more than relying on international structures such as the United Nations to resolve conflicts by translating conflicting interests into terms erroneously presumed to be accessible to all.The Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective deserves serious study. From its careful account of the biblical and early Christian understanding of the origin of war to its analysis of the ways that liberal assumptions came to undergird Catholic writings on war, it sheds new light on how assumptions about the origins of war influence all aspects of our thinking about war. And it is in the end provocative. Shadle’s historicist orientation reminds us that the liberal optimism that undervalued the role of sin as a cause of war was itself tempting because of the challenges of the time and dominant political theories. Yet Shadle’s preference for constructivism is no less historically shaped. Liberalism’s fit with Catholic understanding of human existence has certainly been strained, but it remains to be seen whether a historicist, constructivist set of assumptions can do... (shrink)

Atheism is a familiar kind of skepticism about religion. Moral error theory is an analogous kind of skepticism about morality, though less well known outside academic circles. Both kinds of skeptic face a "what next?" question: If we have decided that the subject matter (religion/morality) is mistaken, then what should we do with this way of talking and thinking? The natural assumption is that we should abolish the mistaken topic, just as we previously eliminated talk of, say, bodily humors and (...) unicorns. The fictionalist, however, offers a less obvious recommendation. According to the fictionalist, engaging in the topic in question provides pragmatic benefits that do not depend on its truth-in a way roughly analogous to engaging with a novel or a movie. The religious fictionalist maintains that even if we were atheists, we should carry on talking, thinking, and acting as if religion were true. The moral fictionalist maintains a similar view regarding moral talk, thought, and action. Both forms of fictionalism face serious challenges. Some challenges can be levelled at either form of fictionalism (or at any form of fictionalism), whereas others are problems unique to moral fictionalism or to religious fictionalism. There are important questions to be asked about the relationship between these two kinds of fictionalism. Could moral fictionalism be plausible even if religious fictionalism is not (or vice versa)? This is a volume of thirteen previously unpublished papers on the topics of religious fictionalism, moral fictionalism, and the relation between these views. (shrink)

Joyce Avrech Berkman interprets Edith Stein’s autobiography as time and space bound, yet arrestingly transgressive. She probes the origins, nature, and afterlife of Stein’s work, which sheds light on Stein’s response to Nazi antisemitism and the roots of her key philosophical and spiritual concerns.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 304-317 [Access article in PDF] Sovereign Love and Atomism in Racine's Bérénice Ellen Mcclure ALTHOUGH CRITICS HAVE NOTED links between the new science of the seventeenth century and the works of La Fontaine and Molière, 1 a similar influence of Epicureanism or even Cartesianism upon French classical tragedy is harder to trace. No two areas of seventeenth-century cultural life would seem farther apart (...) than the emerging science, with its rejection of Aristotelian categories as inadequate to experienced reality, and classical French tragedy, with its antimaterialism and claims to universal truth often bolstered by references to none other than Aristotle himself. Yet René Pintard reminds us that the 1660s and 1670s—the period when many of the tragedies we regard as "classical" were written—saw a strong renewal of interest in the philosophies articulated in the first half of the century. 2 So widespread was this interest that Pierre Gassendi's friend and follower Bernier was able to publish an edition and translation of the philosopher's works in 1674-1675 which proved to be a resounding success. It is hard to believe that the much-discussed new science somehow missed writers of tragedies, especially given the extensive contacts between Molière, La Fontaine and Racine.In this article, I demonstrate this influence by positing that Racine's play Bérénice, ostensibly a reworking of a well-known love story that Corneille was also producing on the Paris stage at the same time, is in part a reflection on the pressing question of what holds the universe together. Through his exploration of the possibility of satisfactory love between two independent sovereigns, Racine explores issues that the revival of Epicureanism had brought into the philosophical foreground. This reading of the play brings into focus the incredibly [End Page 304] important, yet too-often neglected, 3 role of Antiochus, the character whom Racine invented for his version of the play. I will show that his tragic in-betweenness offers a necessary alternative to Titus' and Bérénice's valorization of self-contained sovereignty. I Before embarking on a close reading of the play itself, however, I would like to offer a brief survey of the debate to which I believe Racine refers. Both Michel Foucault and Timothy Reiss have identified the seventeenth century as a transitional period between the age of correspondences exemplified in Aristotelian philosophy and the age of representation and quantification that characterized eighteenth-century thought. 4 This transition, however, was far from smooth, as philosophers sought to articulate a universe whose separate and radically de-hierarchized elements remained somehow joined together.For most seventeenth-century philosophers, the sacrifice of Aristotelian categories and scholasticism in no way lessened the imperative for a sense of divine order and causation. Gassendi's often self-contradictory efforts to reconcile Epicurus and Christianity provide perhaps the most striking example of this transitional struggle. The atomism posited by Epicurus through Lucretius posed particular difficulties for a Christian worldview. A world governed by the chance interactions of atoms eliminates any sense that things happen for a purpose; God cannot be the benevolent author and overseer of the universe. Gassendi's equal respect for atomism and for Christianity should be read as evidence of the profound struggle between separateness and interconnection (or, as Gassendi would call it, harmony) taking place during this period. 5 For, as Bloch points out, although Gassendi partially reconciled the demands of the two systems by situating atoms in an uncreated, infinite, and contiguous space and time, he continued to hold to the profoundly troubling existence of the void in the universe. Once again, the chief objection to the void implicit in atomism was religious, since if God is everywhere, the void cannot exist, and likewise, God cannot create nothing. The revival of stoicism supplied instead a vision of the universe ultimately comprised and held together by an ethereal pneuma that some neo-Stoics did not hesitate to identify as a sort of divine presence. 6 Descartes himself made heroic attempts, in his Principes... (shrink)

Long considered "the noblest of the senses," vision has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by a wide range of thinkers who question its dominance in Western culture. These critics of vision, especially prominent in twentieth-century France, have challenged its allegedly superior capacity to provide access to the world. They have also criticized its supposed complicity with political and social oppression through the promulgation of spectacle and surveillance. Martin Jay turns to this discourse surrounding vision and explores its often contradictory implications (...) in the work of such influential figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Jay begins with a discussion of the theory of vision from Plato to Descartes, then considers its role in the French Enlightenment before turning to its status in the culture of modernity. From consideration of French Impressionism to analysis of Georges Bataille and the Surrealists, Roland Barthes's writings on photography, and the film theory of Christian Metz, Jay provides lucid and fair-minded accounts of thinkers and ideas widely known for their difficulty. His book examines the myriad links between the interrogation of vision and the pervasive antihumanist, antimodernist, and counter-enlightenment tenor of much recent French thought. Refusing, however, to defend the dominant visual order, he calls instead for a plurality of "scopic regimes." Certain to generate controversy and discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences, _Downcast Eyes_ will consolidate Jay's reputation as one of today's premier cultural and intellectual historians. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Descartes' Cogito Augustine's “Si fallor, sum” Argument (If I Am Mistaken, I Exist).

Background: Emergency exception to informed consent regulation was introduced to provide a venue to perform research on subjects in emergency situations before obtaining informed consent. For a study to proceed, institutional review boards need to determine if the regulations have been met.Aim: To determine IRB members’ experience reviewing research protocols using emergency exception to informed consent.Methods: This qualitative research used semistructured telephone interviews of 10 selected IRB members from around the US in the fall of 2003. IRB members were chosen (...) as little is known about their views of exception to consent, and part of their mandate is the protection of human subjects in research. Interview questions focused on the length of review process, ethical and legal considerations, training provided to IRB members on the regulations, and experience using community consultation and notification. Content analysis was performed on the transcripts of interviews. To ensure validity, data analysis was performed by individuals with varying backgrounds: three emergency physicians, an IRB member and a layperson.Results: Respondents noted that: emergency exception to informed consent studies require lengthy review; community consultation and notification regulations are vague and hard to implement; current regulations, if applied correctly, protect human subjects; legal counsel is an important aspect of reviewing exception to informed-consent protocols; and IRB members have had little or no formal training in these regulations, but are able to access materials needed to review such protocols.Conclusions: This preliminary study suggests that IRB members find emergency exception to informed consent studies take longer to review than other protocols, and that community consultation and community notification are the most difficult aspect of the regulations with which to comply but that they adequately protect human subjects. (shrink)

Following Kripke and Putnam, the received view of chemical kinds has been a microstructuralist one. To be a microstructuralist about chemical kinds is to think that membership in said kinds is conferred by microstructural properties. Recently, the received microstructuralist view has been elaborated and defended, but it has also been attacked on the basis of complexities, both chemical and ontological. Here, I look at which complexities really challenge the microstructuralist view; at how the view itself might be made more complicated (...) in order to accommodate such challenges; and finally, at what this increasingly complicated picture implies for our standard assessment of chemical kindhood—primarily, for the widespread assumption that chemical kinds in general are more neat and tidy than those messy biological ones. _1_ The Received View _2_ A Taxonomy of Chemical Kinds _3_ Atomic Number _4_ H2O, H3O+, OH−, and More _5_ Complicating the Microstructuralist Picture _6_ Concrete and Other Mixtures _7_ Macromolecules, Especially Proteins _8_ Abandoning Sameness of Elemental Composition _9_ Not So Different after All. (shrink)

In "A Serpentine Gesture": John Ashbery's Poetry and Phenomenology Elisabeth W. Joyce examines John Ashbery's poetry through the lens of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's conception of phenomenology. For Merleau-Ponty, perception is a process through which people reach outside of themselves for sensory information, map that experiential information against what they have previously encountered and what is culturally inculcated in them, and articulate shifts in their internal repositories through encounters with new material. Joyce argues that this process reflects Ashbery's classic statement (...) of poetry being the "experience of experience." Through incisive close readings of Ashbery's poems, Joyce examines how he explores this process of continual reverberation between what is sensed and what is considered about that sensation and, ultimately, how he renders these perceptions into the 'serpentine gesture' of language. (shrink)

More than a decade of exacting scientific research involving paleontological fragments and ancient DNA has lately produced a series of pronouncements about a purportedly novel population of archaic hominins dubbed “the Denisova.” The science involved in these matters is both technically stunning and, socially, at times a bit reckless. Here I discuss the responsibilities which scientists incur when they make inductively risky pronouncements about the different relative contributions by Denisovans to genomes of members of apparent subpopulations of current humans. This (...) science is sensational: it is science which empirically speculates, to the public delight’s and entertainment, about scintillating topics such as when humans evolved, where we came from, and who else we were having sex with during our early hominin history. An initial characterization of sensational science emerges from my discussion of the case, as well as a diagnosis of an interactive phenomenon termed amplified inductive risk. (shrink)

This volume explores numerous themes (including the influence of ethnography on religious education research and pedagogy, the interpretive approach to religious education, the relationship between research and classroom practice in religious education), providing a critique of contemporary religious education and exploring the implications of this critique for initial and continuing teacher education.

There is a perennial philosophical dream of a certain natural order for the natural kinds. The name of this dream is ‘the hierarchy requirement’. According to this postulate, proper natural kinds form a taxonomy which is both unique and traditional. Here I demonstrate that complex scientific objects exist: objects which generate different systems of scientific classification, produce myriad legitimate alternatives amongst the nonetheless still natural kinds, and make the hierarchical dream impossible to realize, except at absurdly great cost. Philosophical hopes (...) for a certain order in nature cannot be fulfilled. Natural kinds crosscut one another, ubiquitously so, and this crosscutting spells the end of the hierarchical dream. (shrink)

Skipper and Millstein analyze natural selection and mechanism, concluding that natural selection is not a mechanism in the sense of the new mechanistic philosophy. Barros disagrees and provides his own account of natural selection as a mechanism. This discussion identifies a missing piece of Barros's account, attempts to fill in that piece, and reconsiders the revised account. Two principal objections are developed: one, the account does not characterize natural selection; two, the account is not mechanistic. Extensive and persistent variability causes (...) both of these difficulties, so further attempts to describe natural selection as a mechanism are also unlikely to succeed. (shrink)

Many male traits are well explained by sexual selection theory as adaptations to mating competition and mate choice, whereas no unifying theory explains traits expressed more in females. Anne Campbell's “staying alive” theory proposed that human females produce stronger self-protective reactions than males to aggressive threats because self-protection tends to have higher fitness value for females than males. We examined whether Campbell's theory has more general applicability by considering whether human females respond with greater self-protectiveness than males to other threats (...) beyond aggression. We searched the literature for physiological, behavioral, and emotional responses to major physical and social threats, and found consistent support for females' responding with greater self-protectiveness than males. Females mount stronger immune responses to many pathogens; experience a lower threshold to detect, and lesser tolerance of, pain; awaken more frequently at night; express greater concern about physically dangerous stimuli; exert more effort to avoid social conflicts; exhibit a personality style more focused on life's dangers; react to threats with greater fear, disgust, and sadness; and develop more threat-based clinical conditions than males. Our findings suggest that in relation to threat, human females have relatively heightened protective reactions compared to males. The pervasiveness of this result across multiple domains suggests that general mechanisms might exist underlying females' unique adaptations. An understanding of such processes would enhance knowledge of female health and well-being. (shrink)

Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any (...) implications follow from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking--staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms--if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"--might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject.Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality. (shrink)

Is there a compensation gap between female CEOs and male CEOs? If so, are there mechanisms to mitigate the compensation gap? Extending role congruity theory, we argue that the perception mismatch between the female gender role and the leadership role may lead to lower compensation to female CEOs, resulting in a gender compensation gap. Nevertheless, the compensation gap may be narrowed if female CEOs display agentic traits through risk-taking, or alternatively, work in female-dominated industries where communal traits are valued. Additionally, (...) we expect that female CEOs’ risk-taking is less effective in reducing the gender compensation gap in female-dominated industries due to the conflicting emphases on agentic and communal traits. Leveraging a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms, we find support for our hypotheses. Overall, this study contributes to the ethics literature on income inequality issues, by highlighting the effectiveness of potential mechanisms to close the gender compensation gap between female and male CEOs. (shrink)

Its critics to the contrary, the “gift of life” metaphor is not to be blamed for the indebtedness and guilt that organ recipients often experience. It is certainly misused, however, both by post‐transplant caregivers, who exploit it to manipulate recipients' behavior, and by the organ procurement system, which has failed to understand that the decision to give the gift of life must be approached communally.

Evidence-based practice in education involves basing decisions about what to do on evidence about the relative effectiveness of available interventions (e.g. programmes, products, practices). This article considers two influential critiques of evidence-based education (EBE) pertaining to its treatment of values. The ‘general critique’ condemns EBE for excluding values from decisions about what to do in education. The ‘specific critique’ condemns EBE for relying on a deterministic view of causality in education which disregards the complex, value-laden nature of educational contexts. I (...) argue that virtually all versions of EBE escape the general critique, including the dominant intervention-centred approach that relies on experimental research to discover ‘what works’, because the predictions EBE aims to support are only one premise in a broader normative argument. Further, intervention-centred EBE can avoid much of the specific values-based critique because it is consistent with a probabilistic, rather than deterministic, understanding of causality. However, I argue that only a context-centred approach to EBE that relies on evidence about the specific target setting from local sources in addition to evidence from theory and mixed methods research can fully address the specific critique by accommodating critics’ descriptive claims about the nature of educational contexts. (shrink)

In The Myth of Morality, Richard Joyce argues that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed. At the heart of ordinary moral judgements is a notion of moral inescapability, or practical authority, which, upon investigation, cannot be reasonably defended. Joyce argues that natural selection is to blame, in that it has provided us with a tendency to invest the world with values that it does not contain, and demands that it does not make. Should we therefore do away with morality, (...) as we did away with other faulty notions such as witches? Possibly not. We may be able to carry on with morality as a 'useful fiction' - allowing it to have a regulative influence on our lives and decisions, perhaps even playing a central role - while not committing ourselves to believing or asserting falsehoods, and thus not being subject to accusations of 'error'. (shrink)

Introduction to "A World without Values....".

Ulysses is certainly the greatest novel in the English language, and one might argue for its being the greatest single work of art in our tradition. How significant, then, and how teasing, that this masterwork should be a comedy, and that its creator should have explicitly valued the comic "vision" over the tragic—how disturbing to our predilection for order that, with an homage paid to classical antiquity so meticulous that it is surely a burlesque, Joyce's exhibitionististicicity is never so (...) serious as when it is most outrageously comic. Joyce might have been addressing his readers when he wrote to Nora in 1909: "Now . . . I want you to read over and over all I have written to you. Some of it is ugly, obscene, and bestial, some of it is pure and holy and spiritual: all of it is myself." Joyce Carol Oates is the author of, among others, them, Wonderland, and The Assassins. "Jocoserious Joyce" is part of a book on tragedy and comedy. Her contributions to Critical Inquiry, include "Lawrence's Gotterdammerung" and “The Picture of Dorian Gray: Wilde's Parable about the Fall". (shrink)