In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CALL FOR PROPOSALS TRAUMA AND HEALING 12TH EAST-WEST PHILOSOPHER’S CONFERENCE MAY 24-31, 2024 The 12th East-West Philosopher’s Conference will explore the many dimensions of trauma and healing. While trauma can be physical, it can also be psychological, social, political, economic, and cultural—encompassing the immediate effects of global pandemics, the ongoing impacts of ethnic and gender bias, the intergenerational legacies of colonization and geopolitical strife, and the planetary ramifications of (...) anthropogenic climate disruption. Ours is an era in which differences of histories, cultures, and identities are engaged as sources of insight, but also one of retrenchment—a period of relational appreciation, but also one of schism. The global scientific community’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a stunning example of human potential for empathetic collaboration in the face of global personal and public health trauma. Yet, the economic trauma of the pandemic has resulted in crumbling international alliances, deepening trade wars, and an unfortunate collective reinvestment in zero-sum endgame framings of geopolitics against which there is no vaccination and through which the terms of healing have become delinked from the restoration of global wholeness. These traumas do not stop shaping our lives when the immediate danger comes to an end. Traumatic pain remains stored in the memories of peoples and individuals, it populates their imagination and shapes horizons of possibility. Thus a philosophical exploration of trauma and healing is not only diagnostic of current problems but also a form of genealogy. We invite participants to reflect upon the relational complexity of both trauma and healing, critically and historically engaging concrete occurrences of trauma while also drawing out theoretical insights regarding healing that strengthens and empowers and resists the forms of personal and social amnesia that make the repetition of trauma so tragically common. Of special interest are panels and papers that explore the trauma and healing at all scales from the interpersonal, to the relational traumas experienced by nations at war and cultures in conflict, thus addressing the interplay of the private and public spheres, of ethics and economics, of the human and the natural sciences, and among disciplines, classes, genders, and generations. Panel and paper proposals are encouraged that explore trauma and healing during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the trauma of refugees, displaced and colonized peoples, trauma and healing in personal relationships, climate change as a form of trauma to the planet and its people, trauma and healing related to issues of gender and sexuality, and how philosophers of all traditions, ancient and modern, cross-culturally deal with trauma and healing. KEYNOTE PRESENTERS: Jin Y. Park, Chair of Philosophy and Religion at American University, Washington DC, “Translating Violence.” Ato Quayson, Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Stanford University, CA, “The Ethnography of the Private Sphere: Trauma, Domesticity, and Healing in the Work of Toni Morrison.” We invite proposals for individual papers and panels. Please submit a 250-300 word abstract to the Conference organizers via: [email protected]. Submission Timeline: November 1, 2023 Notifications of acceptance for abstracts and panel proposals received by November 1 will be sent out by December 15, 2023. We have established an early submission timeline to facilitate faculty applying to their own institutions for travel funding. Abstracts received after November 1, 2023, will be vetted as received, taking into consideration the late submission. The absolute deadline for abstract submissions is March 15, 2024. After this, we will not be able to accommodate additional proposals. Final Papers Due: April 15, 2024 CONFERENCE REGISTRATION AND LOGISTICS: Hosted in keeping with the Hawaiian Islands’ spirit of aloha, breakfast and lunch will be provided for all registered presenters, as well as an opening reception and final dinner. The Conference does not provide lodging or travel support, but economical lodgings of various kinds are readily available in Honolulu. ABOUT THE EAST-WEST PHILOSOPHER’S CONFERENCE: The East-West Philosophers’ Conference series is the premier forum for convening philosophers from across the academy who are committed to cross-cultural inquiry. The Conference is the oldest continuous international gathering in Hawai‘i and has been a model of productive collaboration between the University of Hawai‘i at... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Veterans Affairs National Center for Clinical EthicsJames L. Bernat (bio)The veterans health administration is the largest health care system in the United States and, indeed, is larger that the health care system of many foreign countries. In February 1991 the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) in Washington, D.C. awarded a contract to the clinical ethics group at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, (...) Vermont to establish the V.A. National Center for Clinical Ethics. In this article I describe the organizational context, mission, operation, and future direction of the Center, which William A. Nelson, Ph.D., and I co-direct.The Veterans Health AdministrationThe Department of Veterans Affairs operates 171 hospitals providing services ranging from primary, secondary, and tertiary medical care to psychiatric hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and nursing homes. The V.A. also provides outpatient services at all hospitals and at dozens of free-standing outpatent clinics. V.A. medical centers employ over 14,000 physicians and serve approximately 4.5 million veteran patients (Hollingsworth and Bondy 1990; Mirvis 1990).The V.A. serves an important educational function, providing training sites for medical students, postgraduate physicians, and trainees in other health-related fields. Approximately 78 percent of V.A. medical centers are affiliated with medical schools. Over one-third of all American medical students and over 40 percent of interns and residents spend a portion of their training in V.A. medical centers. More than 100,000 students in all health-related fields train in V.A. facilities annually (Hollingsworth and Bondy 1990).Research is another mission of the V.A. Many academic physicians and scientists derive their research and salary funding from V.A contracts and awards. The V.A. Research Career Development Program provides the means for many medical school faculty members to achieve successful careers as scientists and clinical investigators. Although research accounts for only slightly more than 1 percent of the V.A. medical budget, two V.A. researchers have been awarded the Nobel Prize (Hollingsworth and Bondy 1990). [End Page 385]In comparison to other medical care settings, the average V.A. patient is likely to be older, poorer, male, less well-educated, more chronically ill, and more expensive to care for. Many patients first patronize the V.A. system after they have been bankrupted by the costs of a major illness. Unlike young, healthy patients ideally favored by health maintenance organizations, these patients immediately require large expenditures for hospitalizations, medications, and other treatments. Additional burdens have been placed on V.A. facilities by a record of chronic federal underfunding over the past decade, despite expanded patient censuses at every facility.Bioethical issues arise in V.A. facilities with great frequency for several reasons. Older and poorer patients are often sicker, have fewer home-support resources, and have completed fewer advance directives for health care. Chronic operational underfunding requires explicit health care rationing systemwide. Academic physicians within the V.A. system have multiple professional duties that have the potential for conflict. Although their primary duty is to their patients, they also must serve the federal government and their medical school academic supervisors. The practice of medical care rationing pits the physician's professional duty to his patient against his duty to the system (Mirvis 1990).The V.A. has responded to these bioethical demands with several initiatives. Hospital ethics advisory committees have been developed in nearly every V.A. medical center. The V.A. National Bioethics Committee has been empaneled to encourage uniform policies across the V.A. system concerning bioethical issues. Most recently, funds were provided for the V.A. National Center for Clinical Ethics.Functions of the National Center for Clinical Ethics (NCCE)The NCCE has a fourfold mission: 1) to enhance the quality of clinical ethics programs at all 171 V.A. medical centers nationwide; 2) to staff the V.A. National Bioethics Committee; 3) to assist administrators and planners in the V.A. Central Office on policy development concerning bioethical issues; and 4) to study, organize, and coordinate clinical, educational, and research bioethics programs throughout the system.Enhancing the quality of clinical ethics programs at V.A. medical centers is largely an... (shrink)

: As the twentieth century closes, marked by triumphal strides in medical advances, the American society has yet to ensure that each person has access to affordable health care. To correct this injustice, this article calls on the nation's political and corporate leaders, providers, and faith-based groups to join all Americans in a new national conversation on systemic health care reform. The Catholic faith tradition is one that compels both a proclamation to ministry values and a commitment to speak (...) out against the challenges or threats to what are essential to the well-being of individuals and society. The Catholic health ministry must therefore be both a voice for the voiceless and an agent of transformation. The nation's goal should be to "reposition" health care from its status as an important, but ultimately optional building block to one that is essential. (shrink)

For much of the twentieth century, plant physiologists considered themselves in an ideal position to study and explain the functions and processes of plants. Much of that authority stemmed from plant physiologists’ long-standing commitment to experimental control and the integration of the physical sciences into biological practice. This article places plant physiology back in the center of the story of the recent life sciences. It shows the development of parallel experimental research programs into environmental as well as genetic (...) effects on growth and development in plant physiology and genetics, and notes that the pursuit of an experimental environment was celebrated as much as a molecular vision of life throughout most of the twentieth century by much of the plant science community. Thus, this article concludes that the history of the recent life sciences needs new complementary narratives of plant physiology with genetics, new concepts with technological tools, and plant-sized scales with the molecular. The history of the ‘Age of Biology,’ as the plant scientists saw it, helps confront the issue first posed by Evelyn Fox Keller, namely that the history of genetics has overshadowed a larger history of experimental life science. My answer here is through a larger narrative of the rise of the complementary experimental sciences of genes and environments in the life sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

The text- and argument-focused histories of philosophy that we have are mainly interested in teasing out the details of the positions taken on philosophical issues by individual philosophers. But this is a long way from having a historical explanation of the larger-scale trajectory of philosophical development. An empirical history of philosophy, however, examines the institutionalized places and venues for philosophical work that provide a rich, shared structure for the promotion of particular sorts of work. Mid-twentieth-century philosophers of science such (...) as Herbert Feigl and Philipp Frank knew what they were doing—they were creating the space to promote certain sorts of work in venues such as the Institute for the Unity of Science and the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science and, ultimately, in publication venues such as Daedalus and the Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science. Here the engine of progress is the institution-building activity of committed philosophers making a space within the institutional structures of philosophy for their own projects and other projects aligned with them and transmitting these as live philosophical projects to the next generation. (shrink)

Contemporary architecture is increasingly grounded in science and mathematics. Architectural discourse has shifted radically from the sometimes disorienting Derridean deconstruction, to engaging scientific terms such as fractals, chaos, complexity, nonlinearity, and evolving systems. That's where the architectural action is -- at least for cutting-edge architects and thinkers -- and every practicing architect and student needs to become conversant with these terms and know what they mean. Unfortunately, the vast majority of architecture faculty are unprepared to explain them to students, not (...) having had a scientific education themselves. Here is an architecture book by an architect/scientist, just in time to help architects in the new millennium. Alexander discusses many of the scientific terms arising in cutting-edge architecture, and explains them to those who don't have scientific training or advanced mathematical knowledge. We find discussions of the evolution of forms; the importance of process in design; iteration; genetic algorithms; sequences of transformations; different levels of scale (i.e. fractals); etc. They are explained here by an architect who is also a scientist, because he wants to change the way architects think and build. Alexander is not merely popularizing other scientists' results and making them accessible to architects: he is in fact presenting new and original scientific work that ties many of these concepts together in a way that will be useful to architects. (shrink)

Ernest Gellner's final book, first published in 1998, is a synoptic interpretation of the thought of Wittgenstein and Malinowski.

With the rise of place-based models of education, credence needs to be given to epistemological traditions that curate individual understandings of and relations to the social world (i.e., places). The epistemological traditions that have been shared across generations of North American settler colonialists are at the center of this article. The dominant epistemology of settler society provides racialized, anthropocentric, and capitalistic understandings of places. Relations to place are cultivated through particular conceptions of nature, private property, and (...) personhood, which remain at the epistemic foundation of Western society. These conceptions are concomitant to modes of domination like white supremacy and settler colonialism, and ultimately constitute an ideal white male settler actor. This article suggests that place-based education carries the potential to offer epistemic resistance to domination, but first needs to engage in a more comprehensive understanding of settler traditions of place. (shrink)

This well crafted volume provides unflinching assessments of the philosophical values that are beginning to unite - and that continue to divide - the cultures of America and Europe. Its contributors offer arguments that are once timely, provocative, and accessible. - Larry A. Hickman, The Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale IL American and European Values is a far richer book than a misreading of its title might suggest: it is truly a both (American)-and (...) (European), not an either-or. The perspectives of its contributors range over time and place, from the anarchic California of Gold Rush days to modern Poland, Russia, and Turkey. Eclectic in the best sense of that word, it combines philosophy, literature, history, and even religion without ever straying far from its central theme. And, somewhat incidentally, it also demonstrates just how multifaceted and complex is the idea of pragmatism. - William McBride, Ph.D. is Arthur G. Hansen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University, Indiana. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume exemplify some of the trends in current approaches to logic, language and computation. Written by authors with varied academic backgrounds, the contributions are intended for an interdisciplinary audience. The first part of this volume addresses issues relevant for multi-agent systems: reasoning with incomplete information, reasoning about knowledge and beliefs, and reasoning about games. Proofs as formal objects form the subject of Part II. Topics covered include: contributions on logical frameworks, linear logic, and different approaches (...) to formalized reasoning. Part III focuses on representations and formal methods in linguistic theory, addressing the areas of comparative and temporal expressions, modal subordination, and compositionality. (shrink)

In 1934 Alonzo Church, Kurt Gödei, S. C. Kleene, and J. B. Rosser were all to be found in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1936 Church founded The Journal of Symbolic Logic. Shortly thereafter Alan Turing arrived for a two year visit. The United States had become a world center for cutting-edge research in mathematical logic. In this brief survey1 we shall examine some of the writings of American logicians during the 1920s, a period of important beginnings and remarkable (...) insights as well as of confused gropings.The publication of Whitehead and Russell's monumental Principia Mathematica [18] during the years 1910-1913 provided the basis for much of the research that was to follow. It also provided the basis for confusion that remained a factor during the period we are discussing. In 1908, Henri Poincaré, a famous skeptic where mathematical logic was concerned, wrote pointedly :It is difficult to admit that the word if acquires, when written ⊃, a virtue it did not possess when written if.Principia provided no very convincing answer to Poincaré. Indeed the fact that the authors of Principia saw fit to place their first two “primitive propositions”*1.1: Anything implied by a true proposition is true.*1.2: ⊢ p ⋁ p ⊃ punder one and the same heading suggest that they had thought of what they were doing as just such a translation as Poincare had derided. (shrink)

Democracy has been a flawed hegemony since the fall of communism. Its flexibility, its commitment to equality of representation, and its recognition of the legitimacy of opposition politics are all positive features for political institutions. But democracy has many deficiencies: it is all too easily held hostage by powerful interests; it often fails to advance social justice; and it does not cope well with a number of features of the political landscape, such as political identities, boundary disputes, and environmental crises. (...) Although democracy is valuable it fits uneasily with other political values and is in many respects less than equal to the demands it confronts. In this volume prominent political theorists and social scientists present original discussions of such central issues. Democracy's Values deals with the nature and value of democracy, particularly the tensions between it and such goods as justice, equality, efficiency, and freedom. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John WitgenGeronimo Barrera de la TorreSeeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America BY MICHAEL JOHN WITGEN Williamsburg, Va., and Chapel Hill, N.C.: Omohundro Institute for the Study of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, (...) 2022The colonial projects of nation-states in the Americas have defined the relationship between states and Indigenous peoples by means of [End Page 138] dispossession, as Anishinaabeg thinker Leanne Betasamosake Simpson asserts.1 Seeing Red delves into the processes through which dispossession of Indigenous land became the ideology and systematic practice behind US expansion as Indigenous communities struggled to reshape their place in the new context. The book carefully details the settler- colonial ideology and logic of elimination that permeated US territorial expansion over the Northwest Territories at the end of the eighteen and the first decades of the nineteenth centuries. Seeing Red thoroughly examines the complex context of dispossession by the US colonial power, centering on Anishinaabeg communities, the “mix- race” population, and the different Indigenous people inhabiting this region. However, the book focuses on what the author names “unthinkable history,” following Michel- Rolph Trouillot’s argument that this region, and the whole continent, was conceived as an unsettled territory instead of belonging to many Indigenous peoples. Thus, the text explores Indigenous and mixed- raced communities’ political imaginaries and imagined futures to retain autonomy and territory.Author Michael John Witgen is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and a professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. His research centers on the complex relations between Indigenous people and settler colonizers in the Great Lakes and the Northwest Territories. Seeing Red expands his previous analysis of race, ethnicity, and citizenship intersections, bringing to the fore Indigenous people’s history to rethink the statemaking process in the United States.This book’s pages show that theft lies at the foundation of wealth transfer from Indigenous territories to the United States government and white citizens. The white settler ideology, based on a “doctrine of discovery,” established a stark division between the civilized and uncivilized to rationalize, among other things, the theft of Indigenous people. This is a central argument of the book that signals how the civili zation project underpinning the territorial expansion of the United States was based on the transformation of commons into private property. Indigenous land became critical in the “political economy of plunder” advanced by the state and the meaning of “native” as a racial categorization of exclusion. Chapter 1 explores this economy of plunder by detailing the advancement of the settler frontier through different [End Page 139] mechanisms, such as the treaty policy— subsequently violated by the state— and territory surveying to make land legible for the state and cheap for settlers. It is worth mentioning that the book contains historical and thematic maps that visually represent the ideology of wilderness behind the colonization project and evidence of the territorial extent of dispossession suffered by Indigenous communities. However, this crusade to dispossess Indigenous peoples from their territory also rested on the national mythology that strengthened the trope of Indigenous vanishing. The author shows how during the years of the study, the Indigenous population was not vanishing but immersed in an intricate social world and transregional trade networks. Chapter 2 explores such context, following the story of an Ojibwe man to evidence the context in which settlers and federal officials relied on Indigenous customs to profit from the fur trade while using ties with communities to further land cessions.Mix- race families played a crucial role in expanding the settler frontier through treaty negotiations but remained marginalized as they identified themselves as both Natives and US citizens. Chapter 3 examines the significance of mixed- raced families, particularly women, in establishing and expanding missions’ schools that relied on their domestic and linguistic labor. Moreover, it shows the intricate landscape of the civilization mission that depended on the complex networks that had created... (shrink)

In some views, philosophy’s glory days in bioethics are over. While philosophers were especially important in the early days of the field, so the argument goes, the majority of the work in bioethics today involves the “simple” application of existing philosophical principles or concepts, as well as empirical work in bioethics. Here, we address this view head on and ask: What is the role of philosophy in bioethics today? This paper has three specific aims: (1) to respond to skeptics and (...) make the case that philosophy and philosophers still have a very important and meaningful role to play in contemporary bioethics, (2) to discuss some of the current challenges to the meaningful integration of philosophy and bioethics, and (3) to make suggestions for what needs to happen in order for the two fields to stay richly connected. We outline how bioethics center directors, funders, and philosopher bioethicists can help. (shrink)

Before the Department of Homeland Security instituted the Migrant Protection Protocols in January 2019, as many as 1,000 Central American refugees passed each day through Catholic Charities’ Humanitarian Respite Center, where they received food, clothing, a shower, toiletries, and sandwiches for the road. Sister Norma Pimentel founded the Humanitarian Respite Center in 2014 to “restore human dignity” to refugees who had been degraded and vilified during their dangerous journeys north, not least by way of their processing by (...) the US government. Sister Norma has inspired countless people, including me, to engage with the community as a form of place-based philosophical activism, that is, of situated and engaged teaching, scholarship, and service. In this essay I read Sister Norma as a feminist pragmatist in the historical and philosophical lineage of Jane Addams, and I aim to provide an example of how a feminist-pragmatist approach can support and encourage philosophical activism in our communities. Feminist scholars can learn from feminist pragmatism the importance of “being-with,” “sympathetic understanding,” and “a larger social impulse.” Feminist pragmatism encourages academics to become place-based philosophical activists who use their teaching, research, and service in order to press for social justice. (shrink)

In Tyranny of the Gene: Personalized Medicine and Its Threat to Public Health (Knopf, 2023), James Tabery traces the ascendance of personalized or precision medicine in America, arguing that America's emphasis on genetics offers more hype than transformational power. In his examination of the power struggles, social relationships, and technological advances that centered the gene in American health policy, Tabery demonstrates how an intensive focus on genetics draws attention away from both the fundamental causes of health disparities and more‐effective (...) changes that could be made to developmental, physical, and social environments. American policy‐makers, health care institutions, funders, and bioethicists should not let the technological shine and attractive politics of personalized medicine continue to replace the hard but necessary work of addressing sociopolitical causes of disease and illness. (shrink)

Aureli advances a fresh, spirited and combative account of the idea of ‘autonomy’, connecting Italian architectural debates from the 1960s with the politics of class-autonomy that was being developed and advanced by workerist theorists such as Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti and Toni Negri. Aureli’s account focuses on Aldo Rossi’s architectural ideas and the project of the No-Stop City proposed by the young avant-garde group Archizoom. The Project of Autonomy is not simply envisaged as an historical exploration of the 1960s; primarily, (...) it is conceived as an intervention in current architectural theory, drawing on the author’s interest in Tronti’s politics to challenge the contemporary popularity of a broadly post-Negrian ‘autonomism’. This review questions aspects of Aureli’s reading of Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri. Furthermore, although Aureli’s discussion of Red Vienna opens up onto vital questions of strategies for social change, which remain pertinent to contemporary arguments over ‘enclaves’ or ‘zones’ of resistance, his antagonism towards Tafuri prevents his argument from either exploring or advancing the debate which he has initiated. (shrink)

"The extensive attention devoted to abortion has led Christians for too long to overlook much of the exploding bioethics agenda. Moreover, to focus only on 'issues' is to fail to address the profound changes taking place in the very nature of the medical profession. This book signals the commitment of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity to help expand the church's bioethical vision and to foster a more substantial Christian contribution to the public debate."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided (...) by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The American Politics of French Theory: Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault in Translation by Jason DemersKenneth SurinDemers, Jason. The American Politics of French Theory: Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault in Translation. University of Toronto Press, 2019. 218pp.This most welcome book gets off on the right foot by eschewing such problematic terms as “post-structuralism” or “French theory” in studying the work of French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and (...) Félix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. These terms are of a strictly Anglo-Atlantic provenance, a convenient but misleading encapsulation that facilitated their journey or translation into the Anglo-Atlantic world. Instead, Demers prefers to view this transmission as an ensemble of relays between “people, groups, places, ideas, and moments in time” (3), as well as codes; metalanguages; markets for symbolic capital, a notion derived from Pierre Bourdieu; and “networks of feeling” (5n), a term the author borrowed from Raymond Williams. Demers observes, for example, that there was a relay or “mutual implication” (5) between Paris and Columbia University, which occurred in the aftermath of the events of May ’68, that recalled a somewhat earlier circuit, also leading to Paris, which involved the mid-1960s Berkeley free speech movement. To approach the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, and Foucault by resorting to terms such as “post-structuralism” or “French theory” severs them from the crucial relays and circuits constituting the complex and highly mobile transpositions of their work to an American intellectual and political milieu, and vice versa, and it is clear that Demers views, quite rightly, that the political and the intellectual are inextricably bound up with each other.Demers acknowledges his debt here to the versions of assemblage theory formulated in Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter, Manuel DeLanda’s Assemblage Theory and A New Philosophy of Society, and Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Buttressing these texts for Demers is the work of catalytic significance undertaken by Deleuze and Guattari on assemblages/ensembles. The supervening context for these processes of transmission between France and the Anglo-American world is the global May ’68.Demers’s first chapter deals with Derrida and the notions of translation and margins in order to delineate and analyze the “contiguous [End Page 127] relationship between campus and community” (12). The difficulty Demers grasps here is that Derrida’s work on the place of philosophy, already premised on the defining notion that there is no “we” in the philosophical domain, is rooted in the French educational system, and so is deracinated, inevitably, by its movement out of France into the Anglo-Atlantic world. After seeking to account for the implications of this uprooting, Demers shows convincingly how the later Derrida moved (somewhat) away from the political evasiveness of his earlier writings. Taking Derrida’s “The Ends of Man” as his focus, Demers understands the essay as an attempt to translate the intellectual and practical work being done on the academic and political margins of the university into a properly philosophical position (“deconstruction”) with regard to the logic of margins and centers extending beyond the university. At this point Demers makes two criticisms of Derrida. First, while Derrida’s philosophy pivots on an ever-expanding democracy-to-come, the richness and intricacies of the margins – the very resources created there to disrupt the established centers – have little place in his reflections. Derrida caters to iconic figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela, who serve as powerful cryptograms for his thinking, but hardly more than that. This stems from a second problem associated with Derrida’s deconstructive positions, namely, that apart from making theoretical moves acclamatory of those positioned on the margins, albeit in relation to a deconstructed and displaced center held in an endless abeyance, it also leaves the Derridean Other in a situation of debilitating indeterminacy – the infinite deferral of Derrida’s différance and the à venir purports to be redemptive, but is ultimately incapacitating. Derrida’s eschatology always trumps his politics. In fact, in his theoretical and practical “spaces,” Derrida’s cat seems to have the same discursive status as Mandela. Demers, and I suspect he may agree with... (shrink)

Judaism is one of the oldest surviving religious traditions in the world. The Jews, who base their history on Abraham and his son Isaac, began to be called religion with Moses. The Jews, who lived their golden age in and around Jerusalem during the David and Solomon periods, also built the Temple, which was at the center of their religious life. The Jews, who rebuilt the Temple during the Babylonian exile and subsequently Ezra's reign, lived in these lands until (...) the destruction of the temple by the Romans in 70 AD. The statelessness that started after the destruction of the temple had an important place in the Jewish identity. The exile life, which continued for two thousand years, caused the Jews to go to different parts of the world and live there. In this period, which is expressed as the period of exile, Jews lived in many regions such as Africa, Anatolia, Europe and America. The arrival of the Jews in the Americas dates back to the Columbus era. Jews were present in South America and subsequently in the British colonies. Currently, most of the Jews in the world live in the USA. Among the Jews who went to the Americas, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews constitute the majority. However, in the Americas, Jews have formed different groups over time. These include groups such as Conservative, Orthodox, Reformist, and Reconstructionist. Jewish groups formed by African-Americans also have a special place among these formations. These African-American Jews in the USA, are discussed within the framework of this article. In the article, firstly, a piece of brief information about Judaism in America was given, and then the relations between Blacks and Jews were discussed. Afterward, the main features of these formations, which are of African origin and consider themselves the descendants of the Israelites, are emphasized. Finally, the Jewish groups established by Black Jews were contacted and if they had different practices and beliefs from the others, they were included. The research was carried out based on the literature review and information was given about the prominent black Jewish groups. (shrink)

Cialdella found himself drawn to the Calumet Region of his youth for a photographic exploration that has lasted more than twenty years, and that has resulted in hundreds of rich and complex works.

The aim of this article is to take the Center for Inquiry’s ((CFI) a highly influential organization in the west), mission statement to task with respect to their critique of supposed extraordinary claims through the application of Carl Sagan’s quote: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Specifically, those which are defensible through rational argumentation (God’s existence) i.e., in order to question whether or not they are actually promoting rigorous critical thought through the utilization of science and reason. A look will (...) be also taken into whether they are actually fostering freedom of inquiry or if they are becoming masterful at insulating themselves from any criticisms against their own respective position. This will be carried forth through the examination of the following: i) emotions and non-belief, ii) the epistemology of Carl Sagan’s quote, iii) philosophy, science and the question of God, iv) the presumption of atheism and its relation to Sagan’s quote, v) proper basicality and Sagan’s quote and vi) Jesus’ resurrection as a test case. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is now in its seventh year. The goals of this National Center for Biomedical Computing are to: create and maintain a repository of biomedical ontologies and terminologies; build tools and web services to enable the use of ontologies and terminologies in clinical and translational research; educate their trainees and the scientific community broadly about biomedical ontology and ontology-based technology and best practices; and collaborate with a variety of groups who develop and use (...) ontologies and terminologies in biomedicine. The centerpiece of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a web-based resource known as BioPortal. BioPortal makes available for research in computationally useful forms more than 270 of the world's biomedical ontologies and terminologies, and supports a wide range of web services that enable investigators to use the ontologies to annotate and retrieve data, to generate value sets and special-purpose lexicons, and to perform advanced analytics on a wide range of biomedical data. (shrink)

“Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results” has long been recognized for the special place that it occupies in the history of American philosophy. In it, American pragmatism enters into a wider, popular consciousness for the first time, acquiring both its name and its lineage. In the course of a brief hour with George Holmes Howison’s Philosophical Union at Berkeley in August of 1898, in a gymnasium before an audience of eight hundred people, pragmatism also acquires its living voice as (...) William James introduces a new uniquely American philosophy based upon the innovative ideas of the then obscure Charles Peirce. After describing a new strategy for arriving at the meaning of an idea, he goes on to illustrate.. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr''s contributions to 20th century biology extend far beyond his defense of certain elements in evolutionary theory. At the center of mid-century efforts in American evolutionary studies to build large research communities, Mayr spearheaded campaigns to create a Society for the Study of Evolution and a dedicated journal,Evolution, in 1946. Begun to offset the prominence ofDrosophila biology and evolutionary genetics, these campaigns changed course repeatedly, as impediments appeared, tactics shifted, and compromises built a growing coalition of support. (...) Preserved, however, were designs to balance the community and journal with careful equation of status and explicit partitioning of responsibilities within the working coalition. Choice terms such as cooperation and unity carried a strong political message. Mayr''s editorship ofEvolution provides a superb example of these balancing efforts. The mid-century infrastructural activities described herein also represented aggressive attempts to leverage control across several layers of community. Leaders of these campaigns sought: (1) to promote evolutionary studies as a modernized research discipline and place it at the center of American biology, (2) to promote evolutionary studies within existing disciplines — e.g. systematics, genetics, and paleontology, (3) to foster certain research styles within evolutionary studies, and (4) to emphasize certain solutions to prominent research questions. Throughout, Mayr interjected his priorities, tactics and energy. (shrink)

Contemporary bioethics has evolved over the past 40 years predominantly as a “Western” construct drawing fundamental inspiration for its conceptual and methodological frameworks from secular, Anglo-American philosophical traditions. American bioethicists can be credited with playing a defining role in the globalization of this new discipline to the developing countries of the world, but in this process, in the words of LaFleur, “Bioethics has become international without becoming internationalized.” Among the criticisms leveled against the dominant American model of (...) bioethics is that in its focus on universalism it ignores local cultural and religious influences that are vital to the comprehension of the moral life in many societies. Medical sociologist Renée C. Fox and historian Judith P. Swazey have termed this as a form of “cultural myopia.”. (shrink)

Part memoir, part rumination on the declining moral compass of America's political class, this is the first book to place restoring political ethics at the center of the renewal of American democracy. The Unraveling will be essential reading for anyone interested in American politics of the last 50 years--and the next.

The focus of my article is a unique place, the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, which connects Yiddish culture with the American one, the experience of the Holocaust with the descendants of the survivors, and a modern idea of Jewishness with the context of American postmodernity. Created in the 1980s, in the mind of a young and enthusiastic student Aaron Lansky, the Yiddish Book Center throughout the years has become a unique place on the (...) class='Hi'>American cultural map. Traversing the continents and crossing borders, Lansky and his co-workers for over thirty years have been saving Yiddish language books from extinction. The Center, however, has long stopped to be merely a storage house for the collection, but instead has grown into a vibrant hub of Yiddishkeit in the United States. Its employees do not only collect, distribute, digitalize and post online the forgotten volumes, but also engage in diverse activities, scholarly and cultural, that promote the survival of the tradition connected with Yiddish culture. They educate, offering internships and fellowships to students interested in learning Yiddish from across the world, translate, publish, and exhibit Yiddish language materials, in this way finding new users for the language whose speakers were virtually annihilated by the Holocaust. To honour their legacy, a separate project is aimed at conducting video interviews that record life testimonies of the speakers of Yiddish. Aaron Lansky’s 2004 memoir, Outwitting History, provides an interesting insight into the complexities of his arduous life mission. Today, the Center lives its own unique life, serving the world of academia and Yiddishkeit enthusiasts alike. (shrink)

A decade ago, the “new sociology of masculinity” emerged as an exciting new paradigm for understanding gender, emphasizing the study of “hegemonic power relations” among men and women. However, subsequent research has not fully redeemed the promise of the NSM, failing to seriously engage the theoretical implications of studying hegemony. This article addresses the lacunae by presenting a theoretically informed analysis of life history interviews with Chinese American men. Its chief empirical question is how Chinese American men “achieve” (...) masculinity in the face of negative stereotypes. This is accomplished, it is found, through four possible gender strategies: compensation, deflection, denial, or repudiation. The author then fashions a theoretical account of these strategies to show how they can reproduce the social order by striking a hegemonic bargain, which occurs when a Chinese American man's gender strategy involves consciously trading on—or unconsciously taking advantage of—the “privileges” of his race, gender, class, generation, and/or sexuality for the purposes of elevating his masculinity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China. By G.E.R. Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 175. Price not given.The Art of the Han Essay: Wang Fu's Ch'ien-Fu Lun. By Anne Behnke Kinney. Tempe: Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1990. Pp. xi + 154. Paper $10.00.The Autobiography of Jamgön Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colors. By Jamgön Kongtrul (...) Lodrön Thayé and translated by Richard Barron (Chökyi Nyima). Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. xxii + 549. Price not given.Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. By William R. LaFleur. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xiii + 173. Paper $14.95.Becoming the Compassion Buddha: Tantric Mahamudra for Everyday Life. By Lama Thubten Yeshe, edited by Robina Courtin, and foreword by Geshe Lhundub Sopa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xi + 194. Paper $14.95.Between Two Worlds East and West: An Autobiography. By J. N. Mohanty. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 134. Hardcover RS 525.00.The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ. Edited by Roman Malek, S.V.D. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Institut Monumenta Serica and China-Zentrum; and Nettetal, Germany: Steyler Verlag, 2002. Pp. 391. EUR 40.00.Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis. By Volker Scheid. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 407. Hardcover $69.95. Paper $23.95.Confucian Feminist: Memoirs of Zeng Baosun (1893-1978). Translated and adapted by Thomas L. Kennedy. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. Pp. xxi + 170. Price not given.Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. By K. Ramakrishna Rao. Jefferson (North Carolina) and London: McFarland and Company, 2002. Pp. 367. Hardcover $65.00.Constituting Communities: Theravāda Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Edited by John Clifford Holt, Jacob N. Kinnard, and Jonathan S. Walters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 224. Hardcover $65.50. Paper $21.95.Developments in Indian Philosophy from Eighteenth Century Onwards: Classical and Western. By Daya Krishna. Volume X Part 1 of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, edited by D. P. Chattopadhyaya. New [End Page 110] Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 2001. Pp. xxiii + 417. Hardcover RS 1200.East and West: Identità e dialogo interculturale. By Giangiorgio Pasqualotto. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2003. Pp. 210. EUR 16.00.Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. By Edward Slingerland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 352. Price not given.Encountering Kā lī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West. Edited by Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xviii + 321. Hardcover $55.00, £37.95. Paper $21.95, £15.95.Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Antonio S. Cua. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xx + 1020. Hardcover $150.00.Essays on Indian Philosophy. By J. N. Mohanty and edited by Purushottama Bilimoria. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxxvii + 347. Paper RS 525.00.Faith, Humor, and Paradox. By Ignacio L. Götz. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Pp. 136. Hardcover $61.95.Four Illusions: Candrakīrti's Advice for Travelers on the Bodhisattva Path. Translated by Karen C. Lang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 240. Price not given.The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. By David R. Loy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 223. Paper $16.95.The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. By Bryan J. Cuevas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 328. Price not given.Huang Di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text. By Paul U. Unschuld. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 520. Hardcover $75.00, £52.00.In Dewey's Wake: Unfinished Work of Pragmatic Reconstruction. Edited by William J. Gavin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. vi + 249. Hardcover $71.50. Paper $23.95.Knowledge and Freedom in Indian Philosophy. By Tara Chatterjea. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002. Pp. xvi + 159. Hardcover... (shrink)

Recent histories of American jurisprudence tend to ignore the fact that ideas that appeared in the United States often appeared simultaneously in Europe. Even those works that do not ignore the European context are content with tracing the influence or reception of European thought in America. This article suggests that another possible approach is to compare jurisprudential developments in the United States, Europe, and other places in order to reach more general, sociology-of-knowledge-like insights into the reasons why certain (...) ideas appear at certain times and places. One concrete example is discussed: the rise of an interest in the distinction between formal and "living" law in American and European jurisprudence in the first decade of the twentieth century. This distinction was central to the work of Roscoe Pound in the United States and the work of the Austro-Hungarian legal thinker Eugen Ehrlich. Pound and Ehrlich shared similar personal backgrounds. When they began advocating the study of informal law, both Pound and Ehrlich were teaching law in provincial towns situated on the frontiers of empires. Both towns were marginal places where different cultures clashed and where the legal culture of the center of the empire had only a tenuous hold. Scholars working in such an environment, it is argued, would tend to be more aware of the gap between formal state law and the actual norms governing the daily lives of people than scholars working at the center of an empire. The article offers additional support for this argument by looking at the scholarship of Guido Tedeschi, an Italian-Israeli legal scholar who taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 1940s. The article concludes by calling for the study of the history of American jurisprudence from a comparative perspective, taking into account such issues as the interaction between center and periphery and between empire and provinces in more than one national context. (shrink)