Drawing on the classical concept of rhetorical _dispositio_, this study gives new interpretations of a number of literary texts of the French Renaissance. The often problematic ordering of these texts is studied from a variety of perspectives, historical, theoretical and cultural.

This study explores humans’ ecological responsibility, firstly from an evolutionary perspective and then by emphasising especially the order and creation theology in the Old Testament wisdom literature. Ultimately, these entities will be connected. The following aspects will be addressed: cosmology, ecology, evolutionary biology and order in the wisdom literature. These concepts are seen by many as exclusive towards each other, but this article will endeavour to portray them as interlocutors in dialogue with each other.

This singular work presents the most comprehensive and nuanced studies available in any Western language of Chinese aesthetic thought and practice during the ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pleasure and Pain in LiteratureOliver ConollyWhy do we enjoy the depiction, in imaginative literature, of situations that typically arouse negative emotions such as pity, sadness, and horror? One view, which aims to dissolve rather than solve the problem, is that we do not enjoy them at all. According to this theory—the pure pain theory—the problem does not arise in the first place. But the theory must explain why (...) we chose to undergo such painful experiences. Are we simply aesthetic masochists? The pure pleasure theory, by contrast, denies that there are any painful aspects to our experience of such literature. This theory must explain how we can take pure delight in the literary depiction of suffering. Are we simply aesthetic sadists? Lying between both extremes is the hybrid theory, which asserts that there are both painful and pleasant aspects of such experiences. The hybrid theory must specify which aspects of the experience are painful and which pleasant. In this paper a version of the hybrid theory is advanced and defended.IThe pure pleasure theory denies that we feel painful emotional identification with fictional characters. Why take this view? One reason is that it is a way of resolving the paradox of fiction, as formulated by Colin Radford.1 The paradox asserts that there is an inconsistency between the propositions that: (1) we have emotions for fictional characters, (2) we know that they do not exist, (3) it is irrational to have emotions for non-existent objects. Each proposition seems plausible, yet one must be false. Whilst most of the participants in the debate have attacked the notion that feelings for fictions are irrational, some have [End Page 305] denied that we have such feelings in the first place. One intuition guiding this denial is that the depiction of a fictional horrible event is likely to be less painful than the depiction of an identical but real event. In other words, the mere fictionality of an event is liable, by itself, to diminish the pain we are liable to feel at its depiction in comparison with a real event: I label this the fictionality gap. If the fictionality gap exists, it applies across the board, to the sufferings of Pip in Great Expectations as well as those of King Lear. The characters in those works are fictional, and so the lessening of the pain we feel at their fates must, if the fictionality gap holds, hold merely in virtue of the fact that they are fictional.It has often been noted—rather than argued, but this is question of impression rather than logic—that one would feel more affected were the stories real rather than fictional. The kinds of events depicted in King Lear—ugly struggles for power, the manipulation of the naïve, the impotence of the good, inconsolable grief—are not in themselves other-worldly, and can be imagined taking place in reality. However it is much more difficult to imagine King Lear in its full particularity taking place in the real world, given the theatricality of its form and language. In order to imagine King Lear as real, one would have to rob it of Shakespeare's poetry, which is other-worldly in its eloquence. French proponents of the Three Unities thought that theatre should aim at, among other things, verisimilitude, but never overcame the problem that the fact that characters in French theatre speak in rhyming couplets might detract from that verisimilitude, which it clearly does. This worry about the transplantability of King Lear into the real world appears to be less of a problem in relation to realist novels, which, as their appellation suggests, are easier to imagine taking place in the real world. Not only is the language used in realist novels less exalted than that used in tragedies, the situations such novels depict tend to be more likely to occur. Clearly, the realist novel is capable of depicting horrible or unpleasant events. About such novels, say, Madame Bovary, it seems to make sense to ask ourselves how we would feel about them if we read them as true stories.I would like however to question the very intelligibility of the... (shrink)

The book considers biology in parallel with philosophical structuralism in order to argue that notions of form in the organism are analogous to similar ideas in structuralist philosophy and literary theory. This analogy is then used to shed light on debates among biological scientists from the turn of the 19th century to the present day, including Cuvier, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Dawkins, Crick, Goodwin, Rosen and West-Eberhard. The book critiques the endorsement of genetic manipulation and bioengineering as keys to solving agricultural (...) and environmental problems, suggesting that alternative models have been marginalized in the promotion of this discourse. Drawing from the work of philosophers including Cassirer, Saussure, Jakobson and Foucault the book ultimately argues that methods based on agroecology, supported by molecular applications (such as marker-assisted selection, MAS), can both advance agricultural development and remain focused on the whole organism. (shrink)

With unflinching gaze and uncompromising intensity Julius Evola analyzes the spiritual and cultural malaise at the heart of Western civilization and all that passes for progress in the modern world. As a gadfly, Evola spares no one and nothing in his survey of what we have lost and where we are headed. At turns prophetic and provocative, Revolt against the Modern World outlines a profound metaphysics of history and demonstrates how and why we have lost contact with the transcendent dimension (...) of being. The revolt advocated by Evola does not resemble the familiar protests of either liberals or conservatives. His criticisms are not limited to exposing the mindless nature of consumerism, the march of progress, the rise of technocracy, or the dominance of unalloyed individualism, although these and other subjects come under his scrutiny. Rather, he attempts to trace in space and time the remote causes and processes that have exercised corrosive influence on what he considers to be the higher values, ideals, beliefs, and codes of conduct--the world of Tradition--that are at the foundation of Western civilization and described in the myths and sacred literature of the Indo‑Europeans. Agreeing with the Hindu philosophers that history is the movement of huge cycles and that we are now in the Kali Yuga, the age of dissolution and decadence, Evola finds revolt to be the only logical response for those who oppose the materialism and ritualized meaninglessness of life in the twentieth century. Through a sweeping study of the structures, myths, beliefs, and spiritual traditions of the major Western civilizations, the author compares the characteristics of the modern world with those of traditional societies. The domains explored include politics, law, the rise and fall of empires, the history of the Church, the doctrine of the two natures, life and death, social institutions and the caste system, the limits of racial theories, capitalism and communism, relations between the sexes, and the meaning of warriorhood. At every turn Evola challenges the reader’s most cherished assumptions about fundamental aspects of modern life. A controversial scholar, philosopher, and social thinker, JULIUS EVOLA (1898-1974) has only recently become known to more than a handful of English‑speaking readers. An authority on the world’s esoteric traditions, Evola wrote extensively on ancient civilizations and the world of Tradition in both East and West. Other books by Evola published by Inner Traditions include Eros and the Mysteries of Love, The Yoga of Power, The Hermetic Tradition, and The Doctrine of Awakening. (shrink)

I reconstruct from Rietdijk and Putnam’s well-known papers an argument against the applicability of the concept of becoming in Special Relativity, which I think is unaffected by some of the objections found in the literature. I then consider a line of thought found in the discussion of the possible conventionality of simultaneity in Special Relativity, beginning with Reichenbach, and apply it to the debate over becoming. We see that it immediately renders Rietdijk and Putnam’s argument unsound. I end by (...) comparing my approach to others found in the literature, primarily Stein’s. (shrink)

There is currently unprecedented attention in Australia on the misidentification of women victim-survivors as family violence ‘predominant aggressors’—this focus has largely been oriented towards the role of the police. Less research has considered court responses to misidentification and specifically, the role that legal practitioners play in recognising and responding to clients who have been misidentified. This article addresses this key gap in the literature through an exploration of 18 legal practitioners’ experiences of representing misidentified clients in the civil protection (...) order system in the Australian state of Victoria. The findings suggest that legal practitioners face a number of challenges when representing clients who have been misidentified and that the magistrates’ courts are ill-equipped to respond to misidentification. As a consequence, a culture of respondents consenting to orders that should never have been made against them is maintained. This article calls for a greater focus on the role that the courts can play in providing a ‘safety net’ for victim-survivors who have been misidentified. (shrink)

In any event, I realize fully that the parole, the speech, the "word" of a writer such as myself, has something strange and even contradictory about it, even within its own creator. At the moment when I write, let us say, La Jalousie or Glissements progressifs du plaisir, what I propose is improbable and consequently unacceptable; that is, my parole as a writer or as a cinéaste in my novels or in my films is abrupt, inexplicable, nonrecuperable for any correctly (...) organized discourse. Nevertheless, you have noticed that I speak with the same clarity as any professor, and this constitutes an extremely interesting contradiction because it goes to the very heart of the debate; order and disorder never cease to interact, to contaminate each other, to practice a sort of mutual recuperation. If, having written a novel of disorder, I don't find someone—for example, Bruce Morrissette, about La Jalousie—to prove that it has order, I'll do it myself. The principle of order is so crucial that I wish to prove that the disorder which I've created I can myself transform into order. But, as soon as I have shown that it has its order, from that moment on I've destroyed the interest of my work. I have brought about within an organized discourse, organized according to the normal logic of Cartesianism, the recuperation of something which was in fact a machine of war against order. I often run into people who say to me after a film, "Ah, it's a pity that you didn't come to explain all of that before the film. We didn't understand a thing, and it is such a fine thing that you have explained it." And I reply, "Yes, but don't trust that too much," because what I've said is not at all the film. It is even almost the opposite; it is the way in which I show myself that there is in what I created a part which is in spite of everything, explainable by established order, and a part increasingly large, because order progresses. Alain Robbe-Grillet, novelist, film maker, and essayist, is the author of Les Gommes , Le Voyeur , La Jalousie , Dans le labyrinthe , La Maison de rendez-vous , Projet pour une révolution à New York , and Topologie d'une cité fantôme . His films include: L'Année dernière à Marienbad , L'Immortelle , Trans-Europ-Express , L'Homme qui ment , L'Eden et après , Glissements progressifs du plaisir , and Le Jeu avec le feu . He has presented his views on contemporary fiction in Pour un Nouveau Roman. Bruce Morrissette, author of books on Alain Robbe-Grillet and Sunny Distinguished Service Professor in the department of Romance languages and literature at the University of Chicago, has translated "Order and Disorder in Film and Fiction." He is the author of "Post-Modern Generative Fiction: Novel and Film". (shrink)

In this paper I have not, of course, presented all the embryological data that can be collected from the Talmudic and Midrashic literature. More details can be found in Julius Preuss' classical work on biblical and talmudic medicine, now available in Fred Rosner's English translation and in a French M.D. thesis by Martine Michel.75 I also did not present any data on teratology, and did not deal with the very rich Jewish mystical lore, the Cabbala. But a few comments (...) are in order here about the material on embryology.There are very few original ideas in the Talmudic corpus on embryology, but it is obvious that the Sages were well aware of the Greek and Roman theories on embryology.The fact that the Talmud is a compilation that was built up slowly, during several centuries, explains why the information recorded in it cannot be ascribed solely to one school of thought or one clear-cut influence.When a definite problem was difficult to solve because there were many different theories about it, the Sages based their opinion on a famous experiment that seemed to offer guarantees of validity. This was the case with the controversial problem of the formation of the embryo and its sexual differentiation, where the Sages made use of an experiment allegedly initiated by Cleopatra.The Sages were ready to discuss scientific problems with non-Jewish scholars and even to accept their arguments. This was the case with the important topic of the time of the entry of the soul into the embryo. But the legal conclusions drawn from the Sages' opinion were not consistent with those declared by Churth Fathers such as Tertullian. Embryotomy, for instance, was permitted by Jewish law.Wide interest, scholarly discussions, suggestive descriptions and readiness to inquire and to obtain detailed information characterized the Talmudic discussions of embryology.In conclusion, I quote a Talmudic text that reviews the whole process of embryological development through the sequence of prayers of a faithful Jew who learns that his wife is expecting a baby.The first three days, [he should pray to the Lord] that the seed should not putrefy.From the third to the fortieth day: that the child should be a male.From the fortieth day to the third month: that there should not occur any superfetation, which could lead the first embryo to be a fetus compressus.From the third to the sixth month: that an abortion should not occur.From the sixth to the ninth month: that the birth should be without problems.76. (shrink)

Research ethics is increasingly formally regulated, but little is known about how ethical considerations are reported in dissertations. The aim of this literature study was to describe the status and trends of ethical considerations in Swedish doctoral dissertations written by registered nurses. A total of 77 dissertations from 1987, 1997, and 2007 met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed by descriptive statistics. Ethical considerations were mostly overlooked in 1987, but almost ubiquitous by 2007. All dissertations in 2007, except one, (...) had a section on ethical considerations; however, these were short, lacking in references, and short on content. The most common topic was informed consent and approval from research ethics review boards, followed by confidentiality and ethical aspects of methodological issues. Our results imply that the quantity and quality of ethical considerations must be improved in order to assure ethical soundness for participants, patients, researchers, and society. (shrink)

This innovative critical study reinterprets Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy for the study of modernist and contemporary literature and brings Wittgenstein into literary conversations around problems of difficulty, ethical instruction, and the yearning for transformation. Central to Karen Zumhagen-Yekple͹'s book are her critical readings of key modernist texts by Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. Throughout, Zumhagen-Yekplé brings to bear an interpretive framework that she derives from Wittgenstein's gnomic "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (first published in English in 1922, the "annus mirabilis" of (...) modernism), which she treats not as a theory of logic or metaphysics but as a complex mock-theoretical puzzle. The book's final chapter turns to recent fiction by J. M. Coetzee, a living author conscious of his debts both to Wittgenstein and his modernist literary precursors. This book will interest students of literary modernism, Wittgenstein, and the interconnections between fiction and ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

One widely-endorsed argument in the experimental philosophy literature maintains that intuitive judgments are unreliable because they are influenced by the order in which thought experiments prompting those judgments are presented. Here, we explicitly state this argument from ordering effects and show that any plausible understanding of the argument leads to an untenable conclusion. First, we show that the normative principle is ambiguous. On one reading of the principle, the empirical observation is well-supported, but the normative principle is false. (...) On the other reading, the empirical observation has only weak support, and the normative principle, if correct, would impugn the reliability of deliberative reasoning, testimony, memory, and perception, since judgments in all these areas are sensitive to ordering in the relevant sense. We then reflect on what goes wrong with the argument. (shrink)

Pioneering researchers claim that telepsychiatry presents the possibility of improving both the quality and quantity of patient care for populations in general as well as for those in rural and remote locations. The prevalence of, and literature on telepsychiatry has increased dramatically in the last decade, covering all aspects of research endeavors. However, little can be found on the topic of ethics in telepsychiatry. Using various clinical scenarios we may provide insight into the moral challenge in telepsychiatry—the lack of (...) in-person contact. The difficulty is to articulate what the significance of in-person contact is and further, its meaning in the therapeutic relationship between the patient and the physician. Using the personalist perspective and related philosophical approaches we may sketch an idea of the patient as person, existentially considered as a relational and bodily human being. By applying Brennan’s model for health technology assessment we may evaluate the morally troubling aspect of telepsychiatry—a lack of in-person contact—on this philosophical sketch of the person. This consideration is crucial when developing policies to guide the use of telepsychiatry in order to maintain the quality of care. (shrink)

This book argues that the negotiation of agency is central not only to the experience of war but also to its representation in cultural expressions, ranging from a notion of disablement, expressed in victimization, immobilization, traumatization, and death, to enablement, expressed in the perpetration of heroic, courageous, skillful, and powerful actions of assertion and dominance. In order to illustrate this thesis, it provides a comprehensive analysis of literary representations of the American War of Independence from 1775, the beginning of (...) the war, up until roughly 1860, when the Civil War marked a decisive historical turning point. As the first national war, it has an unquestionably exemplary status for the development of American conceptions of war. The in-depth study of exemplary texts from a variety of genres and by authors like Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Sedgwick, William Gilmore Simms, and Herman Melville, demonstrates that the overall character of Revolutionary War literature presents the war as a forum in which collective and individual agency is expressed, defended, and cultivated. It uses the military environment in order to teach the values of discipline and self-subordination to a communal good, which are perceived as basic principles of a Republican virtue to guide the actions of the autonomous individual in a popular democracy. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate how philosophy can speak for children and how children can have a voice in philosophy and speak for philosophy. I argue that we should understand children as responsible rational individuals who are involved in their own philosophical inquiries and who can be involved in our own philosophical investigations—not because of their rational abilities, but because we acknowledge them as conversational partners, acknowledge their reasons as reasons, and speak for them as well as let them speak (...) for us and our rational community. In order to argue this I turn, first, to Gareth Matthews' philosophy of childhood and suggest a reconstruction of some of his concepts in line with the philosophy of Stanley Cavell. Second, in order to examine more closely our conceptions of rationality and our pictures of children, I consider the children's books, The Lorax and Where is My Sister? and Henrik Ibsen's play, The Wild Duck. (shrink)

This book explores concepts of rationality drawn from philosophy and the social sciences, in relation to traditions of literary enquiry. The author surveys basic assumptions and questions in philosophical accounts of action, in decision theory, and in the theory of rational choice. He gives examples ranging from Icelandic sagas to Poe and Beckett, and examines some situations and actions drawn from American and European fiction in order to analyze issues raised by contemporary models of agency. Challenging poststructuralism's irrationalist images (...) of science, this innovative study crosses the boundary between literary and philosophical studies in a bold interdisciplinary spirit. (shrink)

Many stanzas of the Ṛgvedasaṃhitā are re-used in the liturgical literature, that is, mainly in the Saṃhitās of the Yajurveda and in the Brāhmaṇas. Most of them are quoted precisely and they are apportioned in each different rite; yet, there are quite a few cases in which some variations have been adopted and the material of the sourcetext has been manipulated. As to the cultural development that resulted in such a use of the hymns, one of the most intriguing (...) question is whether it was a mere redactional enterprise, or if a clear intention guided the choices that the creators of the liturgies have taken, and eventually how deep was the consciousness of the brāhmaṇical redactors as for the poetic elements of the material they were dealing with. In order to approach this question, I decided to focus on a specific aspect that this issue entails, namely the different ways with which the Ṛgvedic verses are integrated in the texts. Thus, the present paper aims at analysing various modalities of re-use and at examining their functions. The final part of the article takes into consideration some instances of quotations’ marks. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss expected and reported effects on care provider-patient relations of the introduction of electronic patient records (EPRs) in consultation settings by reviewing exemplary studies and literature on the subject from the past decade. We argue that in order for such assessments to be meaningful, talk of effects of “the” EPR needs to be replaced by an “unpacking” of EPR systems into their constituent parts and functionalities, the effects of which need to be assessed individually. (...) Following from this principle, the paper discusses EPR systems ranging from simple data entry and retrieval systems to more sophisticated multi-user and multifunctional on-line systems. On a second level, our analysis of the literature is informed by the question which model of ideal patienthood underlies the assessment of effects of EPRs. To this end, we identify three “models of patienthood” implicit in writing about benefits and drawbacks of EPRs for patients: the autonomy, the consumer, and the holistic models, and argue that assumptions concerning these models need to be reflected upon more critically to improve understanding of what exactly EPR use does to the doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a wide variety of American writers proposed the existence of energies connecting human beings to cosmic processes. From varying points of view--scientific, philosophical, religious, and literary--they suggested that such energies would eventually result in the perfection of individual and collective bodies, assuming that assimilation into larger networks of being meant the expansion of humanity's powers and potentialities--a belief that continues to inform much posthumanist theory today. Universes without Us explores a lesser-known countertradition in (...) American literature. As Matthew A. Taylor's incisive readings reveal, the heterodox cosmologies of Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Adams, Charles Chesnutt, and Zora Neale Hurston reject the anthropocentric fantasy that sees the universe as a kind of reservoir of self-realization. For these authors, the world can be made neither "other" nor "mirror." Instead, humans are enmeshed with "alien" processes that are both constitutive and destructive of "us." By envisioning universes no longer our own, these cosmologies picture a form of interconnectedness that denies any human ability to master it. Universes without Us demonstrates how the questions, possibilities, and dangers raised by the posthuman appeared nearly two centuries ago. Taylor finds in these works an untimely engagement with posthumanism, particularly in their imagining of universes in which humans are only one category of heterogeneous thing in a vast array of species, objects, and forces. He shows how posthumanist theory can illuminate American literary texts and how those texts might, in turn, prompt a reassessment of posthumanist theory. By understanding the posthuman as a materialist cosmology rather than a technological innovation, Taylor extends the range of thinkers who can be included in contemporary conversations about the posthuman. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is steadily becoming a tameable, mild communicable disease globally. In the Western countries and some countries in Asia, such as China, for example, this milestone is owed to a high response to vaccination programmes. The same cannot be said of Africa, where the uptake of vaccines has not been encouraging. In Zimbabwe, for example, the government had intended to vaccinate at least 10 million of its estimated 16 million population in order to reach herd immunity. (...) The figures are still very small, indicating vaccine hesitancy. In this article, it is contended that vaccination campaigns must be adapted to local religious culture and engage critically with the elderly women in particular. Indigenous religio-cultural beliefs and practices can either mobilise or immobilise individuals and communities in implementing the COVID-19 containment measures, depending on how they are approached. To this end, any response to the pandemic should never be exclusively unidirectional. This article employs cultural hermeneutics as its lens of analysis. It does not only seek to promote life-giving values associated with elderly women in African religio-cultures but also to interrogate negative practices driven by religio-culture that put their lives at risk in the era of COVID-19. Elderly women are at worst vulnerable to the disease, and at best they are the hub of communities’ health services. Packaging the vaccination campaigns in the religio-cultural and spiritual consciousness of a people has a potential to increase vaccine uptake in line with the spirit of Goal 3 of the United Nations Agenda 2030. This article is both theoretical and empirical. It uses the Ndau of south-eastern Zimbabwe to ascertain the meaning that they create about the elderly women’s interaction with the public health call for vaccination in the context of their religio-culture. The term ‘religio-culture’ has been used because throughout Africa, religion and culture are inseparably tied together. Data are generated through interviews with key informants.Contributions: Elderly women are vulnerable to COVID-19. Despite their vulnerability, Ndau elderly women find themselves compelled by their religio-culture to respond to the crisis in their communities. There is no literature that addresses the paradox and its attendant opportunities and challenges that characterise the circumstances of elderly women in the context of COVID-19 in the efforts to motivate vaccine uptake. The article shows that indigenous religio-cultural beliefs and practices can either mobilise or immobilise individuals and communities in taking the COVID-19 vaccines, depending on how they are approached. (shrink)

The years of the Weimar Republic saw complex cultural change in Germany as well as political turmoil. Writing Weimar draws on the large amount of research done on the period since the 1980s in order to show how literary writers developed critical perspectives on the social and political issuesof the time, and how those perspectives were related to longer-term developments in German culture which run beyond the watershed events of 1918 and 1933. Individual chapters discuss the dominant trends in (...) the poetry, the theatre, and the novel, as well as the literary representation of the city, oftechnology, and of the First World War. The book also sheds new light on one of the abiding mysteries of German culture in the 1920s: precisely what were the implications of the term Neue Sachlichkeit as it came to be applied to the cultural trends of the time? (shrink)

Accumulating evidence for the unique social, behavioral, and physical health benefits of positive emotion and related well-being constructs has led to the development and testing of positive psychological interventions to increase emotional well-being and enhance health promotion and disease prevention. PPIs are specifically aimed at improving emotional well-being and consist of practices such as gratitude, savoring, and acts of kindness. The purpose of this narrative review was to examine the literature on PPIs with a particular focus on positive emotion (...) outcomes. We evaluated the evidence on the effects of PPIs on positive emotion specifically, and discussed the range of evidence regarding the relative responsiveness of emotion measures to PPIs in order to gain a better understanding of the specific emotional pathways through which PPIs influence psychological and physical well-being. We conclude with recommendations for best evaluating effects of PPIs on positive emotion outcomes. (shrink)

In order to determine whether there is a significant difference between the medical literature and the surgical literature in terms of their bioethics content, we conducted a computerized search of the MEDLINE database. The journals searched were selected from the 'Medicine' and 'Surgery' sections of the 'Brandon-Hill List', and the search was limited to 1992 issues of these journals. Three hundred and seven bioethics bibliographic records (out of a total of 11,239 articles indexed) were retrieved from the (...) 15 medical journals searched, while 17 bioethics bibliographic records (out of a total of 2,645 articles indexed) were retrieved from the 12 surgical journals searched. We conclude that there is a statistically significant (p < 0.001) difference between the medical literature and the surgical literature with respect to their quantitative bioethics content. (shrink)

Background:There have been a number of debates in the field of nursing ethics. Researchers have focused on various aspects of nursing ethics, such as professional ethics, professional, nursing and ethical values. Within this research, a variety of literature reviews have been conducted, but to the best of our knowledge, bibliometric mapping has not yet been used.Objective:This article aims to analyse the production of literature within nursing ethics research.Research design:In order to examine publishing patterns, we focused on publishing (...) dynamics, prolific research entities and the most-cited articles. We additionally visualised the content of the literature using a novel mixed-method approach, combining bibliometric analysis and mapping with thematic analysis.Ethical considerations:In our study, ethical review was not required.Findings:A total of 1416 information sources were found in the Scopus database. Overall, literature production has increased; however, in recent years, the quantity of published material has begun to decrease. The most prolific countries are the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, and the most prolific source titles are Nursing Ethics, Journal of Advanced Nursing and Nursing Times. Lately, research in the field of nursing ethics has been focused more on life care (providing for the basic needs of older residents), moral distress and community nursing.Discussion:The dynamics of research literature production showed an exponential rise in the number of published information sources – a rise which started in the period between 1974 and 1998. Since that period, the trend has stabilised, which might indicate that nursing ethics research is starting a transition to a mature phase.Conclusion:The innovative use of bibliometric analysis and mapping, together with thematic analysis, is a useful tool for analysis of research production in the field of nursing ethics. The results presented can be an excellent starting point for literature reviews and more exhaustive data, information and knowledge seeking. (shrink)

A new research area linked to ethics, virtues, and morality is servant leadership. Scholars are currently seeking publication outlets as critics debate whether this new leadership theory is significantly distinct, viable, and valuable for organizational success. The aim of this study was to identify empirical studies that explored servant leadership theory by engaging a sample population in order to assess and synthesize the mechanisms, outcomes, and impacts of servant leadership. Thus, we sought to provide an evidence-informed answer to how (...) does servant leadership work, and how can we apply it? We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR), a methodology adopted from the medical sciences to synthesize research in a systematic, transparent, and reproducible manner. A disciplined screening process resulted in a final sample population of 39 appropriate studies. The synthesis of these empirical studies revealed: (a) there is no consensus on the definition of servant leadership; (b) servant leadership theory is being investigated across a variety of contexts, cultures, and themes; (c) researchers are using multiple measures to explore servant leadership; and (d) servant leadership is a viable leadership theory that helps organizations and improves the well-being of followers. This study contributes to the development of servant leadership theory and practice. In addition, this study contributes to the methodology for conducting SLRs in the field of management, highlighting an effective method for mapping out thematically, and viewing holistically, new research topics. We conclude by offering suggestions for future research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Two Stories in One: Literature as a Hidden Door to the History of Seventeenth-Century FranceChristian Jouhaud (bio)Translated by Cynthia J. Koepp (bio)I would like to take you into the history of seventeenth-century France through a narrow door—a door that is not only narrow but hidden. Why should we struggle to squeeze through this passage? Well, there are at least two reasons. First, it is an attempt to experience (...) a disorienting perspective on a landscape that we believe we already know completely; and second, the narrowness of the path underlines its particularity and in that way elicits a comparison with other paths elsewhere. This narrow passage is a text, perhaps an insignificant one, written by a seventeenth-century author. After making a few observations concerning its mechanics, I will use this text as a model to interpret something else, to understand it as something that stimulates thinking about historiographical hypotheses: as a convenient tool to shake up the political history of seventeenth-century France. In other words, I propose to utilize literature as a hidden door in order to enter the arena of political history, where we usually do not find any door at all.Deux histoires en une, or Two Stories in One, is a brief text by Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, a work of uncertain status, published among dozens of other pieces in a collection known by two titles: Moral Treatises and Conversations. Guez de Balzac, who lived between 1595 and 1654, does not appear on the short list of the most celebrated writers of seventeenth-century France: Molière, Racine, Corneille, La Fontaine, Sévigné, Bossuet. At the time, however, he occupied center stage in French literary life. He was perhaps the first author recognized as a grand écrivain; he was widely admired, celebrated, criticized. At the center of protracted literary debates, Guez de Balzac exercised an immense critical authority in the world of belles lettres.Since I first began working on the question of the birth of literature as a specific social space in seventeenth-century France, I have not stopped reading and rereading Balzac’s Two Stories in One. This text resists interpretation—even comprehension. It gives the reader the feeling—to be honest, an exasperating feeling—of extraordinary richness and also of an extraordinary capacity to steal away from view. The importance of this text for the comprehension of something other than itself, however, has become clear to me. This leapt out at me, by chance, when I was reading it for the nth time—at nearly the same time that I was rereading several pages of Marcel Proust. Not that the author of À la recherche du temps perdu had any connection at all to Guez de Balzac. Rather, it was Proust’s evoking, in his way, two stories in one—or rather one story in two parts—that for me rendered suddenly palpable something of the force of Balzac’s text.At the beginning of À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Proust meditates on the story of Swann before and after his marriage. He emphasizes our incapacity to think of two successive states in the history of our life at the same time: for example, that of a jealous lover and that of an appeased husband. If one succeeds in thinking both things at once, the two moments then cease to appear distinct to us, and are mixed up one in the other. If the [End Page 92] mind wants to distinguish them, it loses the ability to think them both at once. I would like to propose an hypothesis that the import of Balzac’s Two Stories in One, contrary to Proust, is an attempt to open up to speculation an improbable space, a space imperceptible to sensory experience. This space lies at the interstice of “both at once” and “separately.” Thus Balzac attempts to escape the dilemma of superimposition (that is to say, fusion) or of succession (that is, separation). He attempts to subvert the elementary rule of logic that states that “a” is either different from “b” or is the same as “b.”What is striking when one first reads Two Stories in... (shrink)

On a prominent family of views about the justification of legitimate policy-making (_public justification views_), considerations about the rights and well-being of nonhuman animals can only play a derivative role at best. On these views, these considerations matter only if they can figure in the content of the public reasons that citizens can offer each other. This thesis I call the Indirect View. Some authors have argued that this constitutes a reason to reject the ideal of public justification, or at (...) least to qualify it. It is unclear, however, whether public justification theorists will be persuaded by this. In this paper, I argue that they should. In order to do so, I focus on three justifications of the ideal of public justification that have been offered in the literature (justice, our reactive attitudes, and civic friendship), and contend that none of them supports the Indirect View. In some cases, this is because the value in question (e.g. justice) might indeed be extended to animals. In other cases, this is because there is often a trade-off between the values in play and considerations about the rights and well-being of animals in which the former do not always outweigh the latter. (shrink)

The debate concerning the approach of the early Christians to the military can be advanced by paying attention to a genre of literature that scholars have largely ignored: the church orders. These documents-the "Apostolic Tradition, Canons of Hippolytus, Testament of Our Lord", and "Apostolic Constitutions" - are illuminating in that they deal with ethics within com- prehensive treatments of worship, catechesis and pastoral life. They also are useful in that they, as variations upon a common original, are means of (...) monitoring change across the third and fourth centuries. This article uses the church orders to assess four elements of a "new consensus" (David Hunter) on Christians in the military. By and large it confirms these, but at times it alters emphases and adds nuances. It argues that: (1) the church orders viewed killing as the big problem for Christians in the legions, not idolatry; (2) the church orders confirm that the pre-Christendom church was divided on Christian participation in the legions; (3) the church or- ders provide evidence for both discontinuity and continuity on the issue across the centuries, although the deepest continuity, based on John the Baptist's "rule" of Luke 3.14, is between the pre-Constantinian laity and later theologians; (4) the church orders confirm a regional variation in attitude and practice. The church orders' authority in practice is never clear. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Greece and present the challenges that need to be met in order to further promote socially responsible business behaviour in the domestic economy. This is the first attempt to provide a systematic analysis of CSR in Greece and adds to the existing pool of knowledge of CSR embeddedness in countries where CSR awareness is still rather low, a literature field that is still (...) quite limited. Drawing from prior literature, the paper is built around three basic questions in relation to the Greek context: how is CSR perceived by Greek business professionals? How is CSR practised in Greece? And which issues evident in the modern domestic environment act as underlying barriers to the broader dissemination of CSR in Greece? The extant empirical work suggests that, while CSR in Greece appears to be developing, there is still scope for improvement and further diffusion of relevant practices. While some of the patterns shaping CSR in Greece have been analysed, much work still remains to be carried out in extending and deepening our knowledge in this part of Europe. (shrink)

What can literary education contribute to moral education? In this article the inherent practical, moral or political, relevance of literature and literary education is defended, which is opposed to a moralist approach to (children's) literature. A much debated danger in literature and the arts, viz. that it gives rise to a flight into a "promised land" instead of having relevance for real life and the real world, can be overcome by bringing to the fore the active part (...) the reader plays in realizing the "world of the work." The classical idea of mimesis (i.e. of art mirroring reality) then makes room for a historicity of reading with an ongoing interplay of the (real) worlds of readers and the (fictive) world of the text. This idea is elaborated on from the point of view of Ricoeur's hermeneutics and from that of Iser's reception aesthetics, respectively. In realizing the world of the work the world of the reader is transcended and opened up towards the possible. In this reconfiguration lies the practical relevance of literature. Books, therefore, do not have to mirror the actual world in order to be morally or politically relevant. It is in the act of reading that the lasting significance of so-called classics is renewed time and time again. (shrink)

Tianxia--conventionally translated as "all-under-Heaven"--in everyday Chinese parlance simply means "the world." But tianxia is also a geopolitical term found in canonical writings that has a deeper historical and philosophical significance. Although there are many understandings of tianxia in this literature, interpretations within the Chinese process cosmology generally begin with an ecological understanding of intra-national relations that acknowledge the mutuality and interdependence of all economic and political activity. This volume contextualizes the tianxia vision of geopolitical order within a variety (...) of strategies drawn from a broad spectrum of cultures and peoples: Buddhist, Islamic, Indian, African, Confucian, European. The conversation among the contributors is guided by several central questions: Is tianxia the only model of cosmopolitanism? Are there ideas and ideals comparable to tianxia that exist in other cultures? What alternative perspectives of global justice have inspired Western, Indian, Islamic, Buddhist, and African cultural traditions? The fundamental premise here is that in order for a planetary tianxia system to be relevant and significant for the present time and for our vision of the future, it must acknowledge the plurality of moral ideals defining the world's cultures while at the same time seek practical ways to formulate a minimalist morality that can provide the solidarity needed to bring the world's people together. (shrink)

In 'Literature Suspends Death: Sacrifice and Storytelling in Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot' Chris Danta takes Genesis 22 as the starting point for an investigation of the role of literary imagination. His aim is to read the Genesis story from a literary-theoretical perspective in order to show how it can 'illuminate the secular situation of the literary writer.' To do this, Danta stages a fruitful confrontation between Søren Kierkegaard as defender of religion and inwardness and Franz Kafka and Maurice (...) Blanchot as defenders of literature. In this review, three important points in this confrontation are highlighted. 1. The problem of identification. 2. The moment of substitution. 3. The spectrality of the writer. (shrink)

The Romans commanded the largest and most complex empire the world had ever seen, or would see until modern times. The challenges, however, were not just political, economic and military: Rome was also the hub of a vast information network, drawing in worldwide expertise and refashioning it for its own purposes. This fascinating collection of essays considers the dialogue between technical literature and imperial society, drawing on, developing and critiquing a range of modern cultural theories. How was knowledge shaped (...) into textual forms, and how did those forms encode relationships between emperor and subjects, theory and practice, Roman and Greek, centre and periphery? Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire will be required reading for those concerned with the intellectual and cultural history of the Roman Empire, and its lasting legacy in the medieval world and beyond. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze the issue of trauma and literature in the context of the Algerian war, as presented in two novels by Algerian writers who use French in a multicultural way: Un regard blessé [Shattered vision] by Rabah Belamri and La Malédiction by Rachid Mimouni [the Malediction]. It will answer the following question:is it possible to see in the francophone Literature a tendency to de-structure the text in order to make it possible (...) for a new plurality to emerge? Literature re-members culture as it points out the dark side of the Algerian history, it makes the readers understand the current situation and the heritage of the past. (shrink)

Undoubtedly, religion is the most important element in the life of nations. Arab, Persian and Turkish nations have experience dvery important changes and developments in the socialfield with the acceptance of Islam. Inordertomaketheirlives in accordance with the supreme principles of religion, they gradually gave up their ancient traditions, which did not comply with the orders and prohibitions of the religion of Islam, The Change That Took Place in social life was also reflected in the works produced in the field of (...) literature and art. It is possibletoseethatwiththe acceptance of Islam, newliterarygenresemergedaroundthe life of the Prophet and in this context, literary genres such as Hundred Hadith, Forty Hadith, Regâibiyye, Şefaat-nâme, Esmâ-ı Nebî were written. One of these species is the hilyes that deal with the life and physical characteristics of the Prophet and enable him to reach then extgenerations. They contain important information about the external features of the Hz. prophet at a time when the description was not appropriate, and present them in a visual richness for those who did not see the prophet in later periods. According To Sources, the poet's real name is Bedreddin Ömer Vanî, his birthdate is 1074/1664 and his death date is 1126/1714. Although There is noin form ation about his education life in the sources, he was known as a scholar and a virtuous person during his lifetime. As a person who knows enough Arabic, Persian and Turkish to write poem in these languages, it is mentioned in the sources that he has Works belonging to different disciplines outside the field of literature. In This Study, firstly, general information about the literary genre of hilye is given. Thenamesand Poets of the hilye worksortextswritten in verse whichareseparateorincluded in different works in Turkish Literature Mentioned. Information about the life and works of Bedreddin Ömer, the poet of the work, is given. Detailed Information in terms of form andcontentaboutthis hilye-typeworkwrittenbythepoet is given. Inthelastpart, the hilye text in Arabic wastranscribedan translated into Turkish. (shrink)

The four volumes of this collection bring together some of the major contributions to the literature on Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), one of the most formative influences on the course of philosophy during the last hundred years. The first volume provided general assessments of Frege's work and examined its historical context. The present volume deals with Frege's contributions to logic and the foundations of mathematics. The essays are arranged in order of their first publication, providing insight into the historical (...) evolution of the Frege literature. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

There is no doubt that the use of Internet for purchasing products and services has constituted a crucial change in how people go about buying them. In the era of digital transformation, the possibility of accessing information provided by other users about their personal experiences has taken on more weight in the selection and buying processes. On these lines, traditional word-of-mouth has given way to electronic word-of-mouth, which constitutes a major social change. This behavior is particularly relevant in the services (...) area, where potential users cannot in advance assess what is on offer. There is an abundant literature analyzing the effects of eWOM on different variables of interest in this sector. However, little is known about the factors that determine eWOM. Thus, the main objective of the present paper is to analyze the impact of two variables on eWOM. Both of them are crucial for potential customers in the process of finding hotel accommodations and they can motivate people to make such comments. The results demonstrate that these variables truly have a significant impact on whether or not users make comments on line. Moreover, it proved possible to observe certain differences according to the profile of the tourist involved and the destination where the hotel is located. In the current changing environment, this information is of great use for hotel managers in order to design strategies according to the type of guest they wish to attract. (shrink)

During the European Renaissance, scholars and members of the bourgeoisie showed a stronginterest in practical philosophy, namely ethics and politics. This shift was expressed in works that described ideal societies, also known as utopias. Meanwhile, the Renaissance philosophy of nature, influenced by Late Ancient philosophy and mysticism, imposed a new worldview, according to which nature was seen as a living entity. Renaissance political thinkers attempted to imbue their socio-political visions with a sense of natural philosophy. A principal idea in utopian (...) literature is the strong presence of science, a key factor in the transformation of nature. In its search for the ideal political order, humanity was not content with maximising nature’s benefits but envisioned creating a new nature, one that better served the socio-political ideals of the Renaissance and the early modern era. I would like to argue that the prominent role of technocracy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century utopias led gradually to the disruption and perversion of nature. Despite of the intentions of the utopian thinkers, their views on nature –which range from the unconditional respect to nature to its advancement through science – encouraged finally the mastery of nature, because they connected the socio-political progress with the exploitation of nature and the control of natural forces. In particular, a discussion on the relationship between humanity, nature and science in Renaissance utopian thought can shed some light on how early technocracy progressively led to the ravaging of nature. Departing from the major Renaissance philosophers’ all-encompassing perspective, political philosophers of the time, especially those who contributed to utopian literature, predominantly viewed nature as an instrument at the disposal of humanity and its science – a playground for human inventiveness and resourcefulness. With their works, they provided a new rationale, non-religious this time that defended humanity’s full exploitation of nature. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reconsider the nature and function of the ‘spiritual’ dimension in literary texts and in literary study in the context of the present state of the discipline of literary studies. The present era is often defined as a ‘post-secular’ era, one in which themes of spirituality and mysticism are increasingly noticeable in literary works. The paper argues that to maintain its relevance to contemporary writers and readers, literary criticism has to address these themes in a concrete and (...) effective way. The paper recommends a comparative approach to the discussion of spirituality and mysticism in contemporary literature and literary criticism. In order to carry effective analytical potential, this approach, the paper emphasizes, has to be developed from specific spiritual traditions. The paper first discusses the disciplinary crisis literary studies have always been exposed to since their inception as a discipline of study in academic institutes. It then reviews the current state of the discipline and describes how the discipline came to be dominated by scientific and social approaches. Finally, it suggests the reinstitutionof the ‘spiritual’ element in literary study as a way out from the state of crisis in the discipline of literary studies. The paper thus attempts to strengthen the disciplinary identify of literary studies while exploring interdisciplinary aspects of the study literature. (shrink)

The use of metaphors and analogies was widespread in English political literature during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and for contemporary readers they were more than merely rhetorical artifices – they were used to illustrate and, in some cases, even to provide evidence. In this regard, none was more apt than the most prominent of these analogies: that between the human body and the state. The political thought of the time established an unshakeable connection between the two, building (...) an argument for how their structures and ways of functioning mirrored each other. This paper examines one of the most extensive and thorough examples of corporal analogies in early modern English political literature – that of Edward Forset’s A Comparative Discourse of the Bodies Natural and Politique (1606) – and shows how such corporal analogies were used to construct an absolutist political model wherein the king was depicted as the soul, the head and the heart of the body politic. The paper integrates Forset’s A Comparative Discourse within the context of the ideological struggles from the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, while its place within the larger picture of the medieval and early modern metaphor of the body politic is also examined, in order to assess the lineage and originality of Forset’s ideas and point out how the same kind of analogies could be used to provide significantly different political interpretations. (shrink)