Lewis was not, and is not, very popular in the academy. I think there are three reasons.First, he did not stick to his subject, which was medieval and Renaissance literature. He wrote highly successful children's books, theological works, and articles accessible to nonspecialists, and was an acclaimed broadcaster. All this allowed his critics to suggest that he was not a proper academic, because proper academics do not throw their nets so wide.Second, he was good at everything he did (except perhaps (...) some areas of philosophy: he was famously bested by Elizabeth Anscombe when he ventured onto her home ground). This was perhaps the most infuriating thing about him. The justification for academic superspecialization is that one cannot do more than one thing really well. But Lewis did. He was a better Renaissance scholar than those who criticized him, moaned about him in the Oxford cloisters, and blackballed him for appointments. He is relentlessly readable; therefore (said his detractors) his scholarship must be shoddy.Lewis infuriates me too. Often, when I think I have had an original thought in some domain a million miles from Renaissance literature, I discover not only that Lewis had had that thought already, but had explicated it, seeing angles I never noticed, and more often than not he had exploded it, using a tenth of the words I used, and all in devastatingly simple prose that would entertain and illuminate the most uninterested plumber.And third, of course, he was a Christian, which was then becoming an unforgivable sin, as it remains now in the humanities (though not the physical sciences or mathematics). The usual (stated) objection to academic Christians is that their theological commitment precludes objectivity, but Lewis's academic writing (notably his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama [1954]) was so good that that indictment could not stick, and his opponents descended into incoherent fulmination about superannuated paradigms.These reasons help to explain the chilly reception (or, more often, nonreception) by self-billed “serious thinkers” of Lewis's “space trilogy”: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength (hereafter THS). In relation to THS there is another reason: the novel is about them. No, about us. Lewis's view of us is just too keen, his diagnosis too alarming.The main concerns of THS are dehumanization, the role of institutions in that dehumanization, and the desire of individuals to be part of an esoteric circle. More broadly, it concerns the nature of evil. Its debt to the Divine Comedy and to Charles Williams, Lewis's fellow Inkling, are clear.The central character is a young academic, Mark Studdock. We all know him. His education had been “neither scientific nor classical—merely ‘Modern.’ That left him pathetically manipulable. The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour.” Studdock was “a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge.” He stood for nothing; he weighed nothing.Humans are not supposed to be weightless. We will do anything to convince ourselves that we have mass. Many of our strategies are counterproductive. Some are disastrous and lead to dissolution. Studdock's strategy is one of the commonest and most catastrophic: he tries to get to the center of things—to the “Inner Ring” whose geography is described by Lewis in his 1944 lecture (and later essay) of that name. At some level, at least occasionally, Studdock knows the stupidity of this ambition, but he closes his eyes and his mind. And he begins to be used by forces far greater than any he had dreamed of.The book opens with a merciless (and horribly entertaining) account of academic politics. Read it and cringe in recognition: the mechanics of toadyism; the devices for getting your own way with a committee (put the real business in coded form at the end of an agenda, to be dealt with on a hot day after lunch); infuse everything with an appeal to self-interest, but never put it quite like that, for fear of awakening long-dormant altruism. Obfuscate: do not call the sale of an ancient woodland in which Merlin's body lies “the sale of Bragdon Wood” but the sale of “the area coloured pink on the plan.” Learn to talk like the bursar of Studdock's college, for each of his sentences was “a model of lucidity: and if his hearers found the gist of his whole statement less clear than the parts, that may have been their fault.” As a manual for getting your own way in institutions, The Prince is artless and benign beside THS.Studdock becomes a pawn in a big and diabolical game. A vast organization, the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments, known, of course, as “NICE” (never underestimate the importance of an acronym), which turns out to be the instrument of dark supernatural forces, is becoming a state within a state. It is unaccountable. That is its tagline, indeed: it will be free of the red tape that inhibits the research of more conventional institutions. And who can define with sufficient exactitude the difference in principle between tedious administrative red tape and moral stricture? If you are in with the NICE, anything goes.The NICE's project is the unmaking of everything that is quintessentially human and, eventually, everything that is biological. Life itself is just too unhygienic. Beauty is a joke. Sentiment a delusion. Love merely a result of chemical interactions in the brain. Nothing signifies.The NICE has a handful of opponents—a raggedy bunch (including a bear) under the direction of Ransom, who has traveled outside planet Earth in the previous two books in the trilogy. The company, it turns out, is the remnant of the old Arthurian kingdom of Logres, which has always been in tension, if not war, with the modern kingdom of Britain: “Haven't you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell: a nation of poets, a nation of shopkeepers: the home of Sidney—and of Cecil Rhodes.” They recruit Studdock's wife, Jane, who can spy clairvoyantly on the NICE, and then a revived Merlin comes from his tomb to their aid.THS is strong meat. Many will balk at its supernaturalism, and perhaps in particular its complementarian view of the relationship between the sexes. But hear Lewis out: you might not agree with him, but he is always interesting. When I read THS thirty years ago, I thought it a ripping yarn. It still is. But now I see it as prescient, prophetic, and profoundly important. It should be on every university reading list, for every subject, and no one should be allowed to hold any kind of public office until they have shown that they have assimilated its lessons. (shrink)

Le nom du devin gallois Myrddin a reçu plusieurs étymologies qui satisfont plus ou moins : Myrddin viendrait de *moridunon « Forteresse de la mer », de *mŏrĭi̯īn- « celui de la Mer » ou mirzin / milzin « délicat ». Par ailleurs, le nom roman de Merlin serait celui d’un oiseau, français « merle » ou « Faucon ». Cette étude phonétique, lexicale et mythologique tente de montrer comment Myrddin et Merlin dérivent de la thématisation, bien attestée, (...) du vieux celtique *mero « fou » et que cette appellation a dû signifier « le Maître de la folie », c’est-à-dire « l’Inspiré ». The name of the welsh seer Myrddin has received many etymologies which are more or less satisfactory: Myrddin would come from *moridunon “Fortress of the sea”, from *mŏrĭi̯īn “One of the Sea” or from mirzin / milzin “delicate”. Moreover, Merlin’s roman name would be that of a bird, “Blackbird” or “Falcon”. This phonetical, lexical and mythological analysis try to show how Myrddin and Merlin are connected with the well attested old Celtic stem *mero “mad” and that this designation would have been “The Master of the madness”, which means “The Inspired”. (shrink)

Delivery riders became frontline workers who assisted everyone in getting their daily supplies. They transported them to their destinations when the pandemic started, and everyone had to stay home to stop the COVID-19 virus from spreading. Thus, this study explores the experiences, challenges, and coping mechanisms of 15 Female Delivery Riders in Bulacan, Philippines. The study employed Heideggerian Phenomenology and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Further, the following themes arise: (1) The Realist, (2) The Accommodated, (3) The Vulnerable, and (4) The (...) Determined. These themes highlighted the experiences and challenges faced by the participants. Moreover, it is highly suggested that female employees should be given preferential assistance given their physical capabilities and role in the family. Thus, local government units should provide an alternative source of income that will allow them to have quality time with their family, especially their children. (shrink)

This paper seeks to resolve a fairly simple question in ethics: Why do seemingly reasonable people disagree about ethical problems? My paper seeks both to analyze this question and attempts to find a solution. My premise is that disagreement happens because of differences in hierarchical value ranking, or quite simply because some problems are more important to some people than others. Theories of choice, however, influenced by concepts such as "freedom of choice," conceal the hierarchical nature of our choices, leading (...) to confusion over the nature and degree of our ethical disagreements. I propose then that ethical disagreements can be reduced when we understand hierarchy as an essential element in moral choice theory. (shrink)

Este estudo busca elucidar de maneira geral o conceito de interseccionalidade e examinar como o paradigma discursivo de Jürgen Habermas desenvolvido em obras como Teoria da ação comunicativa e Facticidade e validade enfrenta a questão das demandas interseccionais por igualdade de tratamento nas sociedades democráticas contemporâneas. O conceito de interseccionalidade chama a atenção para as interrelações e os efeitos colaterais da pertença à diferentes tipos de discriminação social como sexo, raça, gênero, classe social, etnia,entre outros. Habermas reconhece a dimensão interseccional (...) das discriminações em Facticidade e validade, por causa disso, parece fazer todo sentido a questão se o paradigma discursivo possui recursos para enfrentar os obstáculos ao exercício da igualdade social resultantes das desvantagens interseccionais. Há até mesmo quem defenda, como Nancy Fraser, que o conceito de esfera pública burguesa habermasiano, embora ainda bastante promissor, precisa sofrer algumas reformulações para incluir públicos alternativos e prestar contas às demandas sociais geralmente ignoradas pelo público oficial baseado apenas em interesses generalizáveis e considerar os obstáculos enfrentados para uma participação significativa na esfera pública e pela concepção de democracia deliberativa de Habermas. (shrink)

We draw insights from Activity Theory within the field of human-computer interaction to quantitatively measure a mobile in-store experience (MIX), which includes the suite of shopping activities and retail services that a consumer can engage in when using their mobile device in brick-and-mortar stores. We developed and validated a nine-item, formative MIX index using survey data collected from fashion consumers in the United States (n= 1,267), United Kingdom (n= 370), Germany (n= 362), and France (n= 219). As survey measures of (...) consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing using a mobile device, the index items with stronger factor loadings described in-store shopping activities whereas those with weaker factor loadings described activities related to behavioral targeting and social networking. These results suggest that retailers should give consumers the autonomy to independently find, evaluate and purchase merchandise in brick-and-mortar stores, thereby enabling them to co-create personalized shopping experiences as active participants within an omnichannel retail servicescape. Our findings also suggest that retailers should provide consumers with more authentic ways to build community and brand affiliations than mobile marketing and social media promotions. In-store activities should not simply be a migration of pre-existing e-commerce capabilities onto mobile devices. An engaging mobile in-store experience should be an amalgam of physical and digital activities that produce a seamless shopping journey and leverage the unique properties of mobile devices – ultra-portability, location sensitivity, untetheredness, and personalization. Retail executives can use the validated MIX index to prepare strategic investments in mobile technology applications and capabilities for retail stores within their omnichannel operations. The nine-item MIX index is also well-suited for consumer surveys, which also makes it an attractive measure of consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing for future academic research. (shrink)

This book is an assault on the notion that it is empirically accurate and legally and philosophically satisfactory to see humans as atomistic entities. It contends that our welfare is inextricably entangled with that of others, and accordingly law and ethics, in determining our best interests, should recognise the central importance of relationality, the performance of obligations, and (even apparently injurious) altruism.

In the cognitivist paradigm, metaphor's conceptual nature is investigated almost exclusively in its verbal manifestations. Research on nonverbal expressions of conceptual metaphors is still surprisingly scarce. Although some pioneering work has been done in the area of pictorial metaphor, the work has hitherto focused on specific instances of isolated metaphors. For better insight into the nature of conceptual metaphors, it is necessary to examine if they can be rendered pictorially and mixed-medially, and if so, what forms they could take. In (...) this case study, a structural metaphor from Ian McEwan's novel The Comfort of Strangers is analyzed and compared to its counterpart in the film that Paul Schrader based on the book. The article ends with suggestions for generalizations across different media, including a distinction between explicitly and implicitly signaled metaphors. (shrink)

This research seeks to better understand how an organization-related employee perception and job attitude may influence organizational members to ethically create customer value. Specifically, it is proposed that high person–organization fit perception, more precisely ethical values person–organization fit perception, can influence business-to-business salesperson commitment to providing superior customer value both directly and indirectly through trust in sales manager, while encouraging ethical salesforce behavior, an important aspect of communicating and delivering customer value. Results from a study of 408 business-to-business salespeople find (...) that ethical values person–organization fit positively influences salesperson commitment to providing superior customer value, as well as trust in manager. Trust in manager directly affects commitment to customer value and mediates the relationship between ethical values person–organization fit and unethical intent. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided, as well as directions for future research. (shrink)

What makes a veil of perception? Is it merely would-be objects of perceptual awareness, extraneous to the ‘environmental realities’ of which we judge? Or is it merely the presence of something extraneous along the route from perceptual awareness to awareness that our environment is thus and so? In his Mark Sacks lecture John McDowell seems to suppose something like the first answer. This essay argues for the second, thus that he himself imposes such a veil.

This is a book about hope in the midst of a polarized culture. Camosy begins with a hopeful starting point in the midst of a crumbling US political culture: two of every three Americans constitute an exhausted majority who reject right/left polarization and are open to alternative viewpoints. Especially at this time of realignment, we have been given a unique moment to put aside the frothy, angsty political debates and think harder about our deepest values. A Consistent Life Ethic, especially (...) one which embraces Pope Francis' challenge to resist throwaway culture, has the capacity to unite people who for the last several decades imagined themselves in a polarized culture war. On issues ranging from hook-up culture, reproductive technology, abortion, euthanasia, poverty, immigration, treatment of animals, and mass incarceration, this book articulates a new moral vision in which a culture of encounter and hospitality replaces a consumer culture in which the most vulnerable get used and discarded as so much trash. At bottom, Camosy offers readers a golden opportunity to dialogue about what kinds of values should serve as the foundation for a new political culture. (shrink)

An understanding of the nature of advanced industrial economies is derived from this extensive investigation of the ways in which the boundaries of the political have changed in Europe since the 1960s.

Mark Johnson's new monograph pursues the research line of the earlier books he published, together with George Lakoff and on his own (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999; Johnson, 1987, 1993), but breaks...

Film viewers make sense of films first of all at a precognitive level, triggered by their bodi­ly responses. The key notion here is movement: the movements of screen characters, the movements simulated by the viewers who perceive these characters, and the camera move­ments that mediate between the two. This review essay evaluates two monographs: Maarten Coëgnarts’ Embodied Cinema, which expands conceptual metaphor theo­ry to account for film’s unique affordances to communicate embodied meaning; and Vit­torio Gallese's and Michele Guerra’s The Empathic (...) Screen, which buttresses embod­ied simulation by film viewers experimentally by demonstrating the workings of “mirror neurons.” The review ends by discussing how these two books tie in with other develop­ments in the study of gene-culture coevolution. (shrink)

A radically immersive exploration of three pivotal moments in the evolution of human consciousness, asking what kinds of creatures humans were, are, and might yet be.

This book is an examination of how the law understands human identity and the whole notion of 'human being'. On these two notions the law, usually unconsciously, builds the superstructure of 'human rights'. It explores how the law understands the concept of a human being, and hence a person who is entitled to human rights. This involves a discussion of the legal treatment of those of so-called "marginal personhood" (e.g. high functioning non-human animals; humans of limited intellectual capacity, and fetuses). (...) It also considers how we understand our identity as people, and hence how we fall into different legal categories: such as gender, religion and so on. The law makes a number of huge assumptions about some fundamental issues of human identity and authenticity - for instance that we can talk meaningfully about the entity that we call 'our self'. Until now it has rarely, if ever, identified those assumptions, let alone interrogated them. This failure has led to the law being philosophically dubious and sometimes demonstrably unfit for purpose. Its failure is increasingly hard to cover up. What should happen legally, for instance, when a disease such as dementia eliminates or radically transforms all the characteristics that most people regard as foundational to the 'self'? This book seeks to plug these gaps in the literature. (shrink)

Dementia is a topic of enormous human, medical, economic, legal and ethical importance. Its importance grows as more of us live longer. The legal and ethical problems it raises are complex, intertwined and under-discussed. This book brings together contributions from clinicians, lawyers and ethicists – all of them world leaders in the field of dementia – and is a comprehensive, scholarly yet accessible library of all the main (and many of the fringe) perspectives. It begins with the medical facts: what (...) is dementia? Who gets it? What are the current and future therapeutic and palliative options? What are the main challenges for medical and nursing care? The story is then taken up by the ethicists, who grapple with questions such as: is it legitimate to lie to dementia patients if that is a kind thing to do? Who is the person whose memory, preferences and personality have all been transformed by their disease? Should any constraints be placed on the sexual activity of patients? Are GPS tracking devices an unpardonable interference with the patient's freedom? These issues, and many more, are then examined through legal lenses. The book closes with accounts from dementia sufferers and their carers. It is the first and only book of its kind, and the authoritative text. (shrink)

Molly Anderson’s 2020 Presidential Address for the Agriculture and Human Values Society, is a bold call to action that considers the scope and depth of the challenges facing global food systems. This call has particular relevance to scholars who are closely aligned with struggles for food justice and food sovereignty. In this discussion piece, I suggest additional nuance that builds and expands on Anderson’s three opportunities for “pushing beyond the boundaries”. First, collaborations for social and ecological change must be willing (...) to expand predominant ideas to the varied ways that people engage with food systems. Second, interactions with global social movements demands grounding our work in the hearts and minds of individuals and communities while also addressing structural concerns at the levels of governance that enable and constrain food system functions. Third, food systems thinking and action must begin with our relationships to the land and its original inhabitants. The settler colonial project is integrally connected to the dominant food system that is premised on exploitation and control of land, water and people. As scholar allies, “pushing the boundaries” demands acknowledging ways that we are complicit in unjust systems and ways that we benefit from them; doing the personal work required for unlearning and relearning; being prepared to take actions that move towards more equitable and sustainable food systems; and, accepting the potential risks and material consequences that equity demands. (shrink)

There are deep and pervasive disagreements today in universities and colleges, and popular culture in general, over the credibility and value of belief in God. This has given rise to an urgent need for a balanced, comprehensive, accessible resource book that can inform the public and scholarly debate over theism. While scholars with as diverse interests as Daniel Dennett, Terry Eagleton, Richard Dawkins, Jürgen Habermas, and Rowan Williams have recently contributed books to this debate, "theism" as a concept remains poorly (...) understood and requires a more thorough and systematic analysis than it has so far received in any single volume. _The Routledge Companion to Theism_ addresses this need by investigating theism's history as well as its relationship to inquiry in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and to its wider cultural contexts. The contents are not confined within the philosophy of religion or even within the more expansive borders of philosophy. Rather, _The Routledge Companion to Theism_ investigates its subject through the lens of a wide variety of disciplines and explores the ramifications of theism considered as a way of life as well as an intellectual conviction. The five parts of the volume indicate its inclusive scope: I. What is Theism?; II. Theism and Inquiry; III. Theism and the Socio-Political Realm; IV. Theism and Culture; V. Theism as a Way of Life. The result is a well ordered and thorough collection that should provide a wide spectrum of readers with a better understanding of a subject that's much discussed, but frequently misunderstood. As the editors note in their Introduction, while stimulating and informing the contemporary debate, a key aim of the volume is to open new avenues of inquiry into theism and thereby to encourage further research into this vital topic. Comprised of 54 essays by leading scholars in philosophy, history, theology, religious studies, political science, education and sociology, _The Routledge Companion to Theism_ promises to be the most useful, comprehensive resource on an emerging subject of interest for students and scholars. (shrink)

The assault on democratic values is not new—nor is the effort to promote the critical literacy skills necessary to understand the cultural, economic, moral, and social issues that underline these social concerns. Unfortunately, in modern society we have conflated an associated way of living with government, and government with politics, and politics with partisanship. Noticeably, this confusion has concealed our willingness or perhaps even our ability to envision the meaning of community. In this essay, I adopt a Deweyan perspective to (...) examine how school leaders might integrate political literacy to counter obstacles to democratic education. (shrink)

Natural law theories affirm that it belongs to the nature of law to be apt to promote the common good or do something similar. I defend a weak version of this thesis according to which part of what constitutes something as a nondefective central case of a posited law is that it is apt to promote the common good. Just as the rules of Pictionary require the drawing player to design her drawing to reveal the word in play, the rules (...) of a central case of a legal system require lawmakers to design laws to promote the common good. Therefore, just as a Pictionary drawing that is inapt to reveal the word in play is defective, a central case of a posited law that is inapt to promote the common good is defective. (shrink)

No one is born with Wisdom - the ability to think and act with understanding and insight. Wisdom grows only in a soil rich with knowledge and experience, but knowledge and experience provide only the nutrients. Wisdom must be nurtured by curiosity and a desire for understanding. Growing wisdom takes time and effort. Great minds have graced us with records of their struggles towards wisdom. This volume enables us to stand on the shoulders of some of these giants and thereby (...) grow our own wisdom farther -- and faster!" -- Back cover. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V.

Este estudo pretende reconstruir alguns traços gerais da concepção de feminismo decolonial de Françoise Vergès na obra Feminismo decolonial e na obra Uma teoria feminista da violência buscando enfatizar de que maneira a teoria discursiva de Jurgen Habermas em sua obra Facticidade e validade enfrenta a questão das demandas sociais por igualdade entre homens e mulheres ao tratar da dialética entre igualdade de direito e igualdade fato no mercado de trabalho. Vergès sustenta que é necessário um tipo de reconstrução da (...) história do feminismo em que o protagonismo das mulheres racializadas seja levado em consideração e que se preste atenção à maneira como o feminismo decolonial e o que ela chama de feminismo civilizatório conceituam a emancipação da mulher. Embora seja importante reconhecer que a inclusão das mulheres racializadas na arena pública ou na esfera pública possa ser ainda insuficiente como uma estratégia para garantir a igualdade das mulheres, a invisibilização das mulheres racializadas pode até mesmo distorcer o ponto do debate da emancipação feminina e Vergès analisa alguns casos para ilustrar seu ponto de vista, como o que se costuma chamar de a polêmica do biquíni na França. Além disso, o próprio conceito de violência numa perspectiva diferenciada do termo, que inclui não apenas a agressão física, mas também a distribuição desigual de tarefas (atividades relacionadas com a manutenção do capital e atividades executivas de empresas) entre mulheres racializadas e mulheres brancas, a distribuição entre as pessoas que podem ser mortas de maneira arbitrária e as que não podem, todos estes aspectos podem ser considerados como um avanço importante na discussão das questões relacionadas com a igualdade na sociedade contemporânea. (shrink)

We point out how some Christian-Muslim comparative philosophies of religion may be enhanced with certain translations or interpretations of Christianity: a modalist view of the trinity and a high Christology. While perhaps of only limited significance, we argue in more detail that a comparison of two leading philosophers, one Islamic, the other Christian, can bring to light a shared philosophy of innate ideas or nativism, grounding moral and theological views of goodness and the divine.

J. Baird Callicott et al. have argued that Aldo Leopold developed a descriptive technique that has something in common with phenomenology and that it would not be farfetched to explore A Sand County Almanac as a kind of Heideggerian clearing in which usually unnoticed beings come to light. They further suggest that Leopold describes animal others as fellow subjects who co-constitute the world and that through his method of observation, description, and reflection Leopold reveals a “multi-perspective experience of a common (...) environment” that discloses an inter-species intersubjectivity comparable to Husserl’s more formal descriptions of intersubjectivity. I shall argue that the similarities between Husserl and Leopold are stronger and deeper than Callicott et al. suggest. Husserl’s method is designed to expose what has been hidden by “ideological positivism,” while Leopold’s method is designed to reveal what has been concealed by what he labels “conventional physics. Both agree that what we might today call a “scientistic worldview” denies, devalues, and dismisses subjectivity, meaning, and value from rational discourse. In Husserl’s view this leads to cultural crisis and barbarism, while in Leopold’s view it leads to ecological catastrophe. For Husserl the only alternative is a cultural renewal rooted in a rethinking of the dominant scientistic worldview while for Leopold the alternative lies in the construction of a new ethical system. These two alternatives are deeply compatible. Finally, I will discuss the ways in which Husserl’s understanding of the intentionality of our subjective experiences and Leopold’s integration of the evolutionary and ecological kinship of humans and non-humans with the social sciences have important implications for the possibility of intercultural understanding and dialogue and thereby allow us to overcome the thesis of incommensurability that denies the possibility of meaningful intercultural understanding and dialogue. (shrink)