The global pandemic needs to mark a turning point for the peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand. How can we make sure that our culturally diverse nation charts an equitable and sustainable path through and beyond this new world? In a less affluent future, how can we ensure that all New Zealanders have fair access to opportunities? One challenge is to preserve the sense of common purpose so critical to protecting each other in the face of Covid-19. How can we centre (...) what we have learnt about resilience within Māori and wider Pacific communities in our reforms? How can public understanding of Covid-19 science create a platform for the future social valuing of expertise? How can we ensure that the impact of Covid-19 in New Zealand results in a more sustainable, and inclusive workforce–for instance by expanding our perceptions of the value of our workers through promoting digital inclusion? To meet these challenges, we must reimagine our existing traditions of thought, breathing new life into perennial concepts and debates. Our paper indicates some of the ways that Philosophy is central to this collective reimagining, highlighting solutions to be found across our rich philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Ayn Rand argued that “selfish” is the correct designation for a person living according to the Objectivist ethics and that selfishness is a virtue. The accuracy of this claim is examined along with the meaning of “selfish,” the wider implications for the Objectivist ethics, and ethics in general. Alternatives to the term are suggested.

This paper examines Irish campaigns for condom access in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, activists campaigned against a law which would not allow condoms to be sold from ordinary commercial spaces or vending machines, and restricted sale to young people. Advancing a conception of ‘transformative illegality’, we show that illegal action was fundamental to the eventual legalisation of commercial condom sale. However, rather than foregrounding illegal condom sale as a mode of spectacular direct action, we (...) show that tactics of illegal sale in the 1990s built on 20 years of everyday illegal sale within the Irish family planning movement. Everyday illegal sale was a long-term world-making practice, which gradually transformed condoms’ legal meanings, eventually enabling new forms of provocative and irreverent protest. Condoms ‘became legal’ when the state recognised modes of condom sale, gradually built up over many years and publicised in direct action and in the courts. (shrink)

The Repeal campaign articulated new and transformative relationships between law, reproduction and the political in Ireland. During the campaign, ordinary people took ownership of and participated in mutual teaching and critique of law on a wide scale. Art, along these lines, was often used to document and archive the injustices worked by the 8th Amendment. However, art also became a means of imagining law otherwise. In this piece, I use Jacques Rancière’s work on the relationship between aesthetics and politics to (...) analyse artistic contributions to feminist legal discourses associated with Repeal. (shrink)

Due to a widespread belief in mechano-reductionism, most intellectuals reject the idea that nonconscious living beings act toward goals. Proposing otherwise is mostly rejected as unscientific anthropomorphizing or necessitating appeals to a supernatural power. This false dichotomy has stymied biology and its related sciences. Herein, I present a new naturalistic gestalt on the nature of life—one based on facts and evidence. It incorporates Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s and Arthur Koestler’s theories of systems and hierarchies with the ideas of Aristotle, Hans Jonas, (...) and Ayn Rand, to identify fundamental formulations on the nature of life, consciousness, free will, and meaning. (shrink)

This article compares case studies to better understand how third grade teachers, serving low-income (including Title I) schools, adapted their instruction in the midst of a global pandemic to better support their students’ learning about locally-relevant civic issues. Civic perspective-taking components were embedded in the unit design with the aim of building deliberative, inclusive classrooms. The team designed lessons drawing from theories of culturally sustaining pedagogy. Using semi-structured interview data, we examined teachers’ reported thinking and perceptions about students’ needs and (...) their own struggles to deliver purposeful, equitable instruction. Findings indicate that as teachers collaboratively designed the lessons they discussed how to balance relevance and sensitivity in relation to content that mirrored students lived realities. This study advances our understanding of what challenges teachers overcome to integrate culturally-sustaining practices in their social studies instruction. (shrink)

Though the literature on the topic has been slim, several recent commentators have identified a close affinity between the philosophical project of Giorgio Agamben, as articulated in his Homo Sacer series, and René Girard's theory of mimetic rivalry with its resolution through sacrificial scapegoating.1 Both are theories of social unity made possible through highly ritualized forms of exclusion. Girard's work posits desire and its conflictual consequences as the ultimate ground for all social systems, while Agamben views the same systems with (...) an eye toward the maintenance of sovereign power. Agamben begins his study with an obscure figure of Roman law, the "sacred man," who is excluded from the laws of both the... (shrink)

Can a bomb ever be "clean"? Are we relieved to be warned that there will be an " odor " when once we were told that something would "stink"? Or, to put it another way, when is a euphemism a mark of good taste and when is it a sign of verbal obfuscation? To answer such questions, D.J. Enright invited sixteen distinguished writers to ponder and explore the ubiquitous phenomenon of euphemism. The result is a delightful and provocative collection that (...) not only includes general reflections on euphemism and its history but also treats such specific categories as sex, death, and other natural functions; politics; the language of the great Christian texts; euphamisms spoken to and by children; the law; medicine; office life; and the jargon of official spokesmen, military communiques, and tyrants. Such writers as Diane Johnson, Robert Nisbet, John Gross, Robert Burchfield, and Joseph Epstein bring a variety of perspectives and sensibilities to bear on these topics. Because euphemisms are so intimate and integral to our thinking, any study of them is bound to throw light on the human condition, both past and present. In these essays, humor jostles horror and the homely alternates with the farfetched. Taken together they form an eloquent and often amusing testament to the richness of the subject. About the Author: D.J. Enright is a noted English poet and critic. He recently compiled and edited The Oxford Book of Death. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 48 Heft: 1 Seiten: 207-236.

Unferth the troublesome þyle, the spokesman of King Hrothgar at Heorot, has seldom rested easily in the annals of Beowulf scholarship. Disputes about his behavior and character were already dividing scholars in the nineteenth century, and the last generation has seen a flurry of conflicting analyses. James Rosier, for example, viewed him as a quarrelsome braggart, Norman Eliason as a “mere jester” and perhaps also scop, and Fred Robinson as a “blustering mean-spirited coward.” Other critics contest virtually every aspect of (...) those readings. More recently, R. D. Fulk in an impressively learned paper has furthered our understanding by showing that Unferth's name does not mean “mar-peace” or “Hun-spirited” but is an authentically early Germanic name and not an allegorical coinage of later Anglo-Saxon times. In the wake of that demonstration, more scholars have tended to endorse a rather positive assessment of Unferth, seeing him as “part of the heroic world's gritty reality” in which a good flyting did not necessarily mean earnest enmity. He may be a “dull foil,” but he is also an honorable, if flawed, man, a leading warrior in Hrothgar's comitatus, and, more certainly now, a “speaker” or “privileged spokesman” for the king. (shrink)

Forgiveness education has demonstrated psychological, social and academic benefits; however, it has not been discussed as a means of promoting character development for children and adolescents. In this paper, we discuss forgiveness as a moral concept and explain how forgiveness can contribute to current discussions of character education. After reviewing relevant literature we describe how a forgiveness programme can be an effective form of character education and attempt to clarify the contributions the forgiveness literature can make to the field of (...) character education. We argue that forgiveness provides those interested in character development with a programme that can enhance educational initiatives and advance the character education research agenda. (shrink)

Brings into conversation research in two separate disciplines, offering readers a comprehensive guide to current forgiveness research. Its 42 chapters are divided into five sections: I. Religious Traditions; II. Historic Treatments; III. The Nature of Forgiveness; IV. Normative Issues; V. Empirical Findings.

Brings into conversation research in two separate disciplines, offering readers a comprehensive guide to current forgiveness research. Its 42 chapters are divided into five sections: I. Religious Traditions; II. Historic Treatments; III. The Nature of Forgiveness; IV. Normative Issues; V. Empirical Findings.

According to the theory of internal working model, belief in altruistic human nature positively influences prosocial behavior. However, the precise influencing mechanism remains unclear. Based on the determinants of human behavior theory and self-efficacy theory, we hypothesized that belief in altruistic human nature indirectly influences prosocial behavior through causally linked multiple mediators of prosocial attitude and prosocial self-efficacy. The results of the current research supported our hypothesis and demonstrated that this serial mediation model could be generalized across individualistic and collectivistic (...) cultures. (shrink)