In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Structure, Change, and Survival: A Response To Winthrop-youngFranco Moretti (bio)Geoffrey Winthrop-Young’s is the sort of review article one dreams of: long, intelligent, and very generous. So, first of all, thanks. And thanks also for the clarity with which disagreements are expressed. In the same spirit, here is a brief response.The first area of disagreement comes early in the article, when Winthrop-Young claims that in the Atlas, “the here and (...) now of a specific location suffers something akin to the fate of a Barthesian myth: its specificity is subordinated to a signifying function as part of an established narrative sequence. But as Moretti chooses not to address the question of how this transformation is achieved, his discussion tends to gloss over the differences between geographical, literary, and imaginary locations” [7]. Frankly, I don’t think this is true. I often do exactly what Winthrop-Young demands, using a sequence of maps to clarify the successive steps by which a geographical space ends up supporting a specific narrative strucure: see the Austen maps that open the book, or the picaresque sequence in the first chapter, or the Balzac and Dickens maps in the second chapter—where I also address the issue in conceptual terms in a section entitled “Stories of the Third.” It’s true that I don’t do so in every case (as perhaps I should), and Winthrop-Young may of course disagree with the way I chart the transformation of space into narrative, but he cannot deny that I am doing so. The fact that those maps compose sequences of increasing complexity (as is particularly clear for Austen and Our Mutual Friend) proves precisely that I am indeed mapping a “transformation” of relatively simple beginnings into a complicated final structure. Incidentally, I do something similar in Modern Epic, where I describe how Joyce’s stream of consciousness “grows” from rather slim paragraphs to the plump ones we read now, or follow the slow rise of Ulysses’s polyphony. Again: my theses may be wrong—but they are an attempt to follow the step-by-step structuration of a text (or genre). This, after all, is the basic test of critical materialism: if we cannot describe the how and the why of the various steps, we are implicitly invoking “creativity” as an explanation for literary products. Which is a bit like invoking God. But on the futility of this, Winthrop-Young and I probably agree.The second disagreement regards the tempo of literary history: does morphological change occur in brief bursts separated by long periods of stasis (as in Eldredge and Gould’s punctuated equilibria)—or is it more evenly distributed across time? Here, Winthrop-Young claims [36, fn 5] that my attempt to see Schwarz’s account of Brazilian modernism and the genesis of magic realism as a single instance of punctuated equilibria is contradicted by historical evidence. He is right. Years ago, I adopted punctuated equilibria because it proved better than any rival theory at explaining the peculiar rapidity of many literary turning points (baroque drama; the rise of the British novel; the modernist season of European literature). From this initial conviction, I was (unconsciously) led to generalize, and to treat every case of major morphological change as an instance of punctuated equilibria. This was silly, and Winthrop-Young is right in criticizing me. However, he would probably agree that a single (or even a few) contrary [End Page 41] instances do not invalidate a theory in its entirety, and that what we most need is to know more about how literary change occurs. Only after such an empirical reconnaissance will the testing of theories be on a truly sound basis. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if we discovered that literary change can occur in more than one way, and that we need more than one theory to account for it; still, all I know of literary history suggests that punctuated equilibria will be the theory with greatest explanatory power.The last disagreement concerns literary selection: specifically, whether my view of it is indeed Darwinian, or whether I Lamarck-like “transform the concept of selection from the traditional passive filter... (shrink)

In this paper, I look at Susan Stebbing’s articles and reviews that critically engage logical positivism. These appeared before the publication of A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic and helped shape the early British reception of logical positivism. I highlight Stebbing’s adoption of G.E. Moore’s tripartite distinction between knowing a proposition, understanding it, and giving an analysis of it and, in light of this distinction, her focus on whether the principle of verifiability can ground a plausible account of communication. (...) Stebbing thinks not, and I reconstruct her reasons, as well as her own account of communication. In doing this, I relate her criticisms to her rejection of methodological solipsism and her dissatisfaction with the logical positivist treatment of statements about other minds and the past. I also argue that Stebbing’s work provides a bridge to later criticisms of logical positivism from ordinary language philosophers. Foregrounding Stebbing’s engagement with logical positivism, especially her focus on communication, paints a fuller picture of how the logical positivists came to be part of analytic philosophy despite having different concerns than many of the British philosophers engaging their work. (shrink)

Taking a cue from remarks Thomas Kuhn makes in 1990 about the historical turn in philosophy of science, I examine the history of history and philosophy of science within parts of the British philosophical context in the 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, ordinary language philosophy's influence was at its peak. I argue that the ordinary language philosophers' methodological recommendation to analyze actual linguistic practice influences several prominent criticisms of the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation and that these (...) criticisms relate to the historical turn in philosophy of science. To show these connections, I primarily examine the work of Stephen Toulmin, who taught at Oxford from 1949 to 1954, and Michael Scriven, who completed a dissertation on explanation under Gilbert Ryle and R.B. Braithwaite in 1956. I also consider Mary Hesse's appeal to an ordinary language-influenced account of meaning in her account of the role of models and analogies in scientific reasoning, and W.H. Watson's Wittgensteinian philosophy of science, an early influence on Toulmin. I think there are two upshots to my historical sketch. First, it fills out details of the move away from logical positivism to more historical- and practice-focused philosophies of science. Second, questions about linguistic meaning and the proper targets and aims of philosophical analysis are part and parcel of the historical turn, as well as its reception. Looking at the philosophical background during which so-called linguistic philosophers also had a hand in bringing these questions to prominence helps us understand why. (shrink)

I argue that our everyday evaluations of architecture are primarily evaluations of spaces and, in particular, of their inhabitability— that is, whether they serve or can serve to the realization of our individual ideal of life. Inhabitability is not only a functional criterion but an aesthetic one as well. It is aesthetic insofar as the evaluations about inhabitability include evaluations about the quality of the experience of actually doing something in —or simply occupying—a particular space. This aesthetic aspect of our (...) everyday evaluations explains, on one hand, the distinctive features of our everyday preferences for some architectonic spaces over others—namely, their very personal nature; their noticeable value in our daily lives; their inseparability from the activities we plan to realize in those spaces; and the importance of the spaces which are contiguous to the one we are evaluating. And on the other, it both reveals architecture’s significance for the quality of our daily life and serves as a guide for us to choose spaces that improve that quality. (shrink)

Michael Oakeshott has long been recognized as one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century, but until now no single volume has been able to examine all the facets of his wide-ranging philosophy with sufficient depth, expertise, and authority. The essays collected here cover all aspects of Oakeshott’s thought, from his theory of knowledge and philosophies of history, religion, art, and education to his reflections on morality, politics, and law. The volume provides an authoritative and synoptic guide (...) to one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel interpretation of the 1890 British Ultimatum, by bringing to the front of the stage its techno-diplomatic dimension, often invisible in the canonical diplomatic and military narratives. Furthermore, we use an unconventional historical source to grasp the British–Portuguese imperial conflict over the African hinterland via the building of railways: the cartoons of the politically committed and polyvalent Portuguese artist and journalist Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846–1905), published in his journal Ponto nos iis, from the end (...) of 1889 and throughout 1890. We argue that the Ponto nos iis cartoons played a so far overlooked role in the unfolding of British–Portuguese affairs, as they shaped at a distance a diplomatic exchange with the British satirical journal Punch. Attacking and counterattacking his fellow cartoonists in Britain, Pinheiro surged into the role of informal diplomat. This cartoon visual and public diplomacy unfolded in the pages of both journals and was tied to the two countries’ colonial conquests in Africa, where the Portuguese and British empires were competing to dominate the African hinterland through large technological systems. Hence the cartoons made visible to wider audiences the otherwise hidden role that technologies played in the two countries’ affairs. In turn, the cartoons aimed at persuading the Portuguese public and ruling classes alike that only regime change, from monarchic to republican, would restore the wounded Portuguese national pride. (shrink)

Scholarship on the history of imperialism has tended to overly concentrate on Western imperial hegemony over non-Western societies. On the other hand forms of imperialism in societies elsewhere, particularly Africa, remain understudied. The frame of Western imperialism with its operational principles has generally been represented by non Western scholars as economically exploitative, culturally repressive, politically intrusive and disorienting. The rather limited literature on imperial systems in African political history has often been deconstructive of Western imperialism’s disruptive propensities in its target (...) societies. However, some referential frameworks employed in interpreting Western imperialism are also applicable to processes of empire building and maintenance in Africa. One of the most relevant of these conceptual frames, perhaps, is J.A. Hobson’s idea that imperialism was invariably fashioned through the ‘combination of economic and political forces’ whose sources are traceable to selfish capitalist interests. Using and modifying the Hobsonian economic model of interpretation, this paper analyses an imperial conflict between the British, a Western imperial power, and Asante, an African imperial overlord, in the interior of Ghana during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the ways in which the rivalry between the two imperial powers manifested as the two powers struggled over the control of Nkoransa, a state in northwestern Ghana, which was strategically situated to sway much of the tide of north-south commerce during the period. The paper argues that the pursuit of commercial domination in the area of modern Ghana was the key issue at the centre of all the imperial contestation between Asante and the British from 1874 to 1900 as represented by the struggle over Nkoransa. (shrink)

Scholarship on the history of imperialism has tended to overly concentrate on Western imperial hegemony over non-Western societies. On the other hand forms of imperialism in societies elsewhere, particularly Africa, remain understudied. The frame of Western imperialism with its operational principles has generally been represented by non Western scholars as economically exploitative, culturally repressive, politically intrusive and disorienting. The rather limited literature on imperial systems in African political history has often been deconstructive of Western imperialism’s disruptive propensities in its target (...) societies. However, some referential frameworks employed in interpreting Western imperialism are also applicable to processes of empire building and maintenance in Africa. One of the most relevant of these conceptual frames, perhaps, is J.A. Hobson’s idea that imperialism was invariably fashioned through the ‘combination of economic and political forces’ whose sources are traceable to selfish capitalist interests. Using and modifying the Hobsonian economic model of interpretation, this paper analyses an imperial conflict between the British, a Western imperial power, and Asante, an African imperial overlord, in the interior of Ghana during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the ways in which the rivalry between the two imperial powers manifested as the two powers struggled over the control of Nkoransa, a state in northwestern Ghana, which was strategically situated to sway much of the tide of north-south commerce during the period. The paper argues that the pursuit of commercial domination in the area of modern Ghana was the key issue at the centre of all the imperial contestation between Asante and the British from 1874 to 1900 as represented by the struggle over Nkoransa. (shrink)

The Tattvapaplavasimha is a philosophical text unique of its kind it is the only text of the Carvaka Lokayata school which has survived and the only Sanskrit work in which full-fledged scepticism is propounded. Notwithstanding that it has been hitherto almost completely ignored. The present book consists of an introduction detailed analysis edition translation with extensive notes of the first half of the text. In the introduction Jayarasi`s affiliation to the Lokayata school is reassessed and his place in the historical (...) development of Indian Philosophy evaluated. New evidence for the dating of Jayarasi is examined and a new dating is suggested. (shrink)

Introduction: Cartographies in becoming -- The happy depression -- Integrated world capitalism -- Planetary psychopathia -- Postmediatic affect -- User's manual-- Deleuze and the rhizomatic machine -- Why is anti-Oedipus the book of the '68 movement? -- Kafka, hypertext, and assemblages -- The tantric egg -- Chaosmosis -- The provisional eternity of friendship.

In this detailed study of the republican tradition in the development of the Enlightenment, the central problem of utopia and reform is crystallized in a discussion of the right to punish. Describing the political situation in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the author shows how the old republics in Italy, Poland and Holland stagnated and were unable to survive in the age of absolutism. The Philosophes discussed the ideal of republicanism against this background. They were particularly influenced by (...) the political and religious radicalism of John Toland, which had survived the English Restoration and was then reaching Europe. Professor Venturi traces the debate on the penal laws and the attempt to relate utopian ideas of society to the practical problem of dealing with man in society, which culminated in the assertion by many Philosophes that an unjust social system necessitated harsh penal laws, thereby rejecting the possibility of reform. (shrink)

Background:A growing number of frameworks for the practice of clinical ethics are described in the literature. Among these, hermeneutical frameworks have helped highlight the interpretive and contextual nature of clinical ethics practice.Objectives:The aim of this article is to further advance this body of work by drawing on the ideas of Charles Taylor, a leading hermeneutical philosopher.Design/Findings:A Hermeneutical Rapprochement Framework is presented for clinical ethics practice, based on Taylor’s hermeneutical “retrieval” and “rapprochement.” This builds on existing hermeneutical approaches for the practice (...) of clinical ethics by articulating a framework with interpretive and reconciliatory scope that extends beyond the presenting “local” context. A Hermeneutical Rapprochement Framework considers broader socio-historical horizons and imaginaries grounded on Taylor’s expansive work in epistemological, ontological, political, and moral philosophy.Discussion:The framework is discussed in terms of how it can be operationalized for clinical practice as well as normative development. Implications for the educational preparation of clinical ethicists are also discussed. Although this work is directly relevant for clinical ethicists, it can also help inform the ethical practice of all clinicians. (shrink)

Spingersi ai confini dell'esperienza del corpo - amore, sofferenza, vecchiaia, morte - attraverso la letteratura, la filosofia, le arti figurative, eventi etico-politici e personali, frammenti di racconto.

1. La filosofia antica-India, Cina, Grecia -- 2. La filosofia tardo-antica e medioevale: ebraismo, cristianesimo, islamismo -- 3.1. La filosofia moderna: umanesimo, Riforma, rivoluzione scientifica (1350-1715) -- 3.2. La filosofia moderna: illuminismo, criticismo, idealismo (1715-1815) -- 4.1. La filosofia contemporanea: scientismi, sroticismi, irrazionalismi -- 4.2. La filosofia contemporanea: filosofie analitiche e continentali.

In this article I argue for an interpretive approach to bioethics with critically ill children. I begin by highlighting the dominant Anglo-American bioethical framework that defines standards for ethical care in critically ill children and then outline a critique of this framework. Drawing predominantly on the ideas of Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer and Richard Zaner, I call for a reconception of bioethics and propose an interpretive ‘thick’ framework that is centred on culture and context. Finally, I illustrate this interpretive approach (...) through a comparative study of two cases in pediatric intensive care: the narratives of Marc and Larry. These case studies reveal that ethical dilemmas in pediatric critical care can be traced to relational tensions over respect, trust and power rooted in the disparity of moral horizons among the persons involved. (shrink)

The integration of artificial intelligence into bioethics education represents a new pedagogical approach that addresses complex moral issues in healthcare. The use of AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT in bioethics education can enhance critical thinking and decision-making skills among students by providing a diverse range of perspectives and solutions. To assess the ability of ChatGPT-4 to understand and resolve ethical dilemmas using validated clinical case vignettes, thereby determining its suitability as a teaching aid in bioethics. Ten clinical scenarios, each with inherent (...) ethical issues, were presented to ChatGPT-4. These scenarios were expert-validated to ensure relevance and complexity. ChatGPT's responses were evaluated by two blinded external raters to eliminate bias. The assessment criteria included identification of bioethical principles, recognition of stakeholders and their outcomes, and comprehension of ethical and legal frameworks. Additionally, the quality of responses was scored on a scale of 1–10. ChatGPT showed proficiency in identifying the pertinent bioethical principles and stakeholders involved in the ethical dilemmas presented. It achieved an overall score of 84.5%, with high marks for its analytical capabilities in complex scenarios. However, the study identified areas for improvement, particularly in proposing comprehensive solutions and alternative actions. ChatGPT demonstrates potential as an effective tool for bioethics education, capable of guiding learners through the resolution of ethical issues in clinical practice. However, to fully integrate ChatGPT into bioethics education, it requires enhancements in delivering detailed, actionable guidance in ethical decision-making. Future development should focus on refining ChatGPT’s ability to offer nuanced solutions aligned with patient values and clinician needs. (shrink)

This paper provides a historical reevaluation of the originality and implications of Avempace's critique of Aristotle's causal explanation of the motion of projectiles. It also offers a serious revision of the place which has usually been assigned to Avempace in the history of science. The views regarding projectiles defended in Avempace's Arabic commentary are in sharp opposition to the anti-Aristotelian Avempace that was known in the Medieval West through Averroes. Avempace's commentary reveals only a moderate critic of Aristotle, a critic (...) who did not, in any case, break with the master, and who, therefore, did not even go as far as Philoponus in creating a new and more profound theory of projectile motion. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses the discourses produced on their websites by the two organisations that conducted the official ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ campaigns in the Brexit referendum. The analysis, whi...

This analysis presents an epistemological and moral examination of suffering. It addresses the specific questions: (1) What is suffering? (2) Can one's suffering be assessed by another? and (3) What is the moral significance of suffering? The epistemological analysis is orientated by Peter Hacker's framework for the investigation of emotions, demonstrating that suffering is an emotion. This leads to a discussion of whether suffering is a phenomenon that can be evaluated objectively by another person who is not experiencing the suffering, (...) questioning the validity of some decisional models for limiting life-sustaining therapies with the aim of preventing suffering. This analysis highlights that understandings of suffering are value laden. It is conventionally implied that suffering is `bad' and that it should be eliminated. Suffering is commonly regarded as a moral wrong that needs to be made right by health care. This article concludes with a recommendation for a paradigm shift in how suffering can be better understood, through the practice of empathic attunement. (shrink)

The ground plan for the present volume is unique in Indological studies.