A number of philosophers have argued that the key to understanding the semantic paradoxes is to recognize that truth is essentially relative to context. All of these philosophers have been motivated by the idea that once a liar sentence has been uttered we can 'step back' and, from the point of view of a different context, judge that the liar sentence is true. This paper argues that this 'stepping back' idea is a mistake that results from failing to relativize truth (...) to context in the first place. Moreover, context-relative liar sentences, such as 'This sentence is not true in any context' present a paradox even after truth has been relativized to context. Nonetheless, the relativization of truth to context may offer us the means to avoid paradox, if we can justifiably deny that a sentence about a context can be true in the very context it is about. (shrink)

The idea of attention was brought back into mainstream philosophical thinking about ethics by Iris Murdoch, drawing on Simone Weil. While Murdoch’s use of the idea has been reflected on by a number of recent commentators, I think its deepest lessons have largely been missed. Beginning from a recurrent and revealing misreading of Murdoch on attention, a misreading often articulated through reflection on Murdoch’s example of M and D, I want to bring out some of those lessons. It is well-known (...) that Murdoch links attention with just and loving vision. I describe a common, mistaken account of what she means by just and loving vision, and I then turn to other connotations of attention invoked by Murdoch. These other connotations are mentioned in dispatches by some commentators, but not dwelt upon. While Murdoch herself does not explore them extensively either, I argue that they are important for teasing out what matters most in Murdoch’s invocation of attention. As that way of putting suggests, my interest in Murdochian exegesis is eventually superseded by my attempts to elicit what I think to be some of the most fruitful implications of her reflections on attention. (shrink)

One of the most important elements of Hegel’s philosophical anthropology is his moral psychology. In particular, his understanding of the relation between motivations and reason plays a crucial intermediate role in connecting his anthropological meditations on the complete nature of the human being with his political theory of actualized freedom. Whereas recent important work on Hegel’s moral psychology has detected a Kantian distinction between natural desires and the rational perspective, the activity of practical reason actually takes place within motivations themselves (...) on Hegel’s view. The exercise of the free, rational will is best understood in terms of its role in shaping the experience of malleable, indeterminate motivations. Rather than stepping back, the free agent on Hegel’s account delves further into the motivation, acting on it in the dual sense of being guided by and transforming it. This is what it means for Hegel to conceive of agency as self-expression while maintaining the centrality of reason for Free Will. Hegel says that when we go further into the motivations in this way, we should stop speaking of motivation in terms of drives and instead begin speaking of character. (shrink)

Are we witnessing progress or regress in the recent increasing popularity and electoral success of populist politicians and parties in consolidated democratic nations? ... Is the innovative use of popular referendum in Great Britain to settle fundamental constitutional questions a progressive or regressive innovation? ... Similarly, is the increasing use of constituent assemblies to change constitutions across the world evidence of progress in democratic constitutionalism, or, a worryingly regressive change back toward unmediated popular majoritarianism? ... This paper reflects on some (...) of the perils and promise of framing such questions with the conceptual couplet of progress and regress. It considers four compelling critiques of the use of ‘progress’ and its cognates in sociopolitical theory, as well as arguing that such concepts are nevertheless ineliminable for our normative theories. The paper concludes by suggesting that we can avoid the most serious problems by employing only conceptions of political progress and regress that are piecemeal, pragmatic, and processual. (shrink)

In spite of its commercial importance and signs of clear concern in public policy arenas, trade credit has not been subjected to systematic, extended analysis in the business ethics literature, even where suppliers as a stakeholder group have been considered. This paper makes the case for serious consideration of the ethics of trade credit and explores the issues surrounding slow payment of debts. It discusses trade debt as a kind of promise, but—noting that not all promises are good ones—goes on (...) to develop an analysis of the ethics of trade credit grounded in an understanding of its fundamental purpose. Making a distinction between “operating” trade credit and “financial” trade credit, the paper provides an account of the maximum period for which it is appropriate for one company to delay payment to another from which it has purchased goods or services. The concern of commentators and policy makers that companies should not take too long to pay their debts is affirmed, but the understanding of what timely payment means is significantly finessed, with one conclusion being that, if debts have not already been settled according to acceptable standard terms of trade, cash should pass quickly back along the supply chain once the customer in the final product market has paid. The analysis has implications not only for companies that take credit but also for external parties that seek to rate companies or set regulations according to speed of payment—an approach that is shown to be misleadingly simplistic, albeit well intentioned. A corresponding important responsibility for suppliers, not to extend excessive credit, also follows from the analysis developed. Having provided a novel analysis of an important business problem, the paper then discusses some of the related practical issues and makes suggestions for further research. (shrink)

Preface 1. Fighting Terrorism 1:1. A new Discourse on War? 1:2. Richard Rorty and the Ethics of War 2. Etiquettes of Atrocity 2:1. Etiquettes of Atrocity 2:2. Discourses on War 2:3. Keeping the discourse: the United States and Vietnam 2.4. Carl Schmitt and the theory of the Partisan 3. Changing the Discourse 3:1 Germany and the Eastern Front 1941-5 3:2 France and Algeria 1955-8 3:3 Israel and the Intifada 3:4 Conclusion 4. A New Discourse? 4:1. The War on Terror -- (...) Is it a War? 4:2. Excluding Unlawful Combatants 4:3. Network Warfare 4:4. Networked Ethics 5. Grammars of Killing 5:1 Grammars of Killing 5:2 Respecting our enemies 5: 3 Non-Lethal Weapons 6. The Unconditional Imperative 6:1 Jaspers and the Warrior Ethos 6:2 The Micromanagement of the Battlefield 6:3 Corporate Warriors? 6:4 Asimov's Children 7. Back to the Greeks 7:1 Back to the Greeks? 7:2 Simone Weil and The Iliad 7:3 Thucydides and the Melian Dialogue 7:4 What's he to Hecuba? 8 The Heuristics of Fear. (shrink)

Not for the first time, the banks and other financial institutions have got themselves – and the rest of us – into a mess, this time on an unprecedented financial and geographical scale. It is no surprise that opinions about causes, consequences and cures abound with ethical issues, as well as technical and economic concerns, a focus of attention. It is to be hoped that useful lessons for the future will be learned. In this chapter, however, we step back from (...) a direct engagement with the stated ills of the financial system itself, whether actual or perceived, chronic or acute. Our starting point is that crisis in the financial system not only makes us stop and think; but it might also, particularly under conditions of moral panic, prevent us from thinking well. Our contention is that a further impediment to thinking well about financial crises is the lack of a substantial body of academic knowledge that might be termed ‘financial ethics’ – a corpus of well developed conceptual insights and appropriate empirical evidence. We identify some of the reasons for this situation and proffer some suggestions regarding what might be done to remedy it – including the development of knowledge that is as relevant to everyday practices during periods of normality as it is to providing perspectives on crisis. The chapter is structured as follows: the next section provides a perspective on debate during times of crisis; the middle section seeks to explain why academic financial ethics is not a significant constituent element of debate on the financial crisis post-2007; and the final two main sections explore ways in which an academic agenda for financial ethics might be constructed. In a curious way this chapter echoes some of the themes and especially the conclusion of David Bevan’s chapter in this work although the reasoning to the conclusion that finance ethics is an empty set follows a rather different Badiou-inspired path in chapter 18. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

Rapid technological advancements, globalisation, environmental crises, and ongoing conflicts have contributed to an increasingly quickly changing social, cultural, and work environment for current and future generations. In this paper, we argue that the traditional schooling system and approaches to curriculum and pedagogy that are based on nineteenth century industrial age models might reach their limit to prepare students sufficiently for the expectations and challenges of life and work in future. While so-called 21st-century education has seen a nominal change in classroom (...) layouts and increased use of teaching technology, we would argue that not much has changed in terms of the underlying structures of schools and the mostly pre-described curriculum schools and teachers must operate under. While current education systems struggle with many challenges from teacher burnouts to increasing student dis-engagement (e.g. rising truancy in New Zealand), we posit that new challenges lie ahead that will further disrupt, if not implode, current approaches to schooling and curriculum. Drawing on theories such as Biesta’s World-Centred Education and Pinar’s notion of Currere to reconceptualise curriculum, we would argue that schooling needs to move away from the traditional ‘static map’ of curriculum content to a more dynamic approach to schooling that allows teachers and schools to chart new territory, together with their students, for a rapidly changing future. As guiding compass of sorts for dynamically exploring an uncertain future with students, we propose Teschers educational approach to Schmid’s Art of Living as a starting point. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.4 (2001) 292-307 [Access article in PDF] The Rhetoric of the Geometrical Method Spinoza's Double Strategy Christopher P. Long A double strategy may be apprehended in the first definitions, axioms and propositions of Spinoza's Ethics: the one is rhetorical, the other, systematic. Insofar as these opening passages constitute a geometrical argument that leads ultimately to the strict monism that lies at the heart of Spinoza's (...) philosophy, they function systematically as grounding principles. However, insofar as they are designed to uncover errors at the heart of the Cartesian system, they function rhetorically as a critique of Descartes's equivocal theory of substance. The geometrical mode of presentation lends an aura of necessity to the systematic strategy and tends to eclipse the rhetorical strategy that functions as a critique of Cartesian dualism. 1 To this extent, the systematic strategy itself functions rhetorically. On the other hand, to the extent that any seventeenth-century attempt to establish a monistic system would inevitably have had to involve a critique of Cartesian dualism, the rhetorical strategy itself functions systematically. Thus, although two distinct strategies are simultaneously discernible in the opening passages of the Ethics, the two work together, each arguing on a different front, to establish Spinoza's monism. By focusing on the rhetorical side of this double strategy, the underlying nature of Spinoza's critique of Descartes can be clarified and certain gaps in the systematic, geometrical argument for monism can be explained. Descartes's theory of substance The rhetorical strategy Spinoza employs at the outset of the Ethics involves a brilliant use of equivocation and ambiguity designed to draw a reader dedicated to Cartesian dualism into the heart of an argument designed to [End Page 292] undermine this dualism itself. The impetus behind this rhetorical critique is surely Spinoza's dissatisfaction with Descartes's theory of substance. 1. Descartes's equivocation Descartes's theory rests upon a fundamental equivocation: on the one hand, the term "substance" is meant strictly to designate that which is absolutely self-sufficient, namely, God; on the other hand, Descartes allows for a weaker understanding of substance, which pertains to those things (specifically res cogitans and res extensa) that require only the concurrence of God in order to exist (Principles I, 51-52; AT VIIIA24-25). 2 Thus, for Descartes, although God is, strictly speaking, the only substance, there remains a sense in which both res cogitans and res extensa may be understood as substances as well.Ultimately, this equivocal understanding of substance may be traced to a tension internal to Descartes between the Aristotelian notion of substance as underlying subject and the seventeenth-century mutation of that notion, which came to be defined in terms of causal self-sufficiency. 3 Jonathan Bennett traces the source of this mutation back to the view held by Aristotle that the existence of some property depends upon its being instantiated--that is, there can be no courage unless there exists someone courageous. He continues his interesting argument thus: This suggests that there is a relation of dependence running from properties to the things that have them and not conversely. The dependence would be logical: the thesis must be that "existent but uninstantiated property" is conceptually defective, not merely contrary to physics. Thus, one mark of a genuine thing, or substance, is its not being logically dependent for its existence on anything else. (Bennett 1984, 56) The development of this line of thinking leads to the conception of substance we find both in Descartes's Principles and in Spinoza's Ethics, namely, that a substance must not causally depend on anything outside of itself for its existence. 4 However, with Descartes, what emerges out of this tradition is a hybrid understanding of substance in which the term "substance" is not reserved simply for that which is utterly self-sufficient (God), but extends to those things that depend only upon the concurrence of God for their existence (rescogitans and resextensa). This bifurcated understanding of substance seems to stem from the distinction at work in [End Page 293] Aristotle... (shrink)

The Holocaust throws the study of the history of philosophy into crisis. Critiques of Western thinking leveled by such thinkers as Adorno, Levinas and, more recently, postmodern theorists have suggested that Western philosophy is inherently totalizing and that it must be read differently or altogether abandoned after Auschwitz. This article intentionally rereads Aristotle and Hegel through the shattered lens of the Holocaust. Its refracted focus is the question of ontological identity. By investigating the manner in which the totalizing dimensions of (...) Aristotle’s thinking are both eclipsed and implicitly endorsed by Hegel’s appropriation of Aristotle’s conception of God, and further by following the surplus of Hegel’s (mis)interpretation back into the heart of Aristotle’s ontology where we find a more open conception of ontological identity, we come to recognize not only the dangers endemic to certain strands of traditional philosophical thinking, but also the resources this tradition itself brings to bear on the attempt to think ontological identity after Auschwitz. (shrink)

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity and has become an area of growing focus in Business & Society. Looking back and reviewing climate change discussion within this journal highlights the importance of time and space in addressing the climate crisis. Looking forward, we extend existing research by theorizing and politicizing the co-implication of time and space through the concept of “space-time.” To illustrate this, we employ the logical structure of “the trace” to advance business and (...) society scholarship on climate change by shifting the focus to a place-bound emphasis on climate impacts and directing scholarship toward climate change’s temporal markers and material effects. By operationalizing “the trace,” we contribute to Business & Society debates in three ways: reimagining complex stakeholder relations, advancing a performative understanding of climate risk, and foregrounding planetary systems and the physical environment. (shrink)

This book defends the controversial 'absolute view' of lying, which maintains that an assertion contrary to the speaker's mind is always wrong, regardless of the speaker's intentions. Whereas most people believe that a lie told for a good cause, such as protecting Jews from discovery by Nazis, is morally acceptable, Christopher Tollefsen argues that Christians should support the absolute view. He looks back to the writings of Augustine and Aquinas to illustrate that lying violates the basic human goods of (...) integrity and sociality and severely compromises the values of religion and truth. He critiques the comparatively permissive views espoused by Cassian, Bonhoeffer, and Niebuhr and argues that lies often jeopardize the good causes for which they are told. Beyond framing a moral absolute against lying, this book explores the questions of to whom we owe the truth and when, and what steps we may take when we should not give it. (shrink)

The institutional theory of property is that view that property rights are entirely and essentially conventional and are the creatures of states and coercively backed legal systems. In this paper, I argue that, although states and legal systems have a valuable role in defining property rights, the institutional story is not the whole story. Rather, the property rights hat we have reason to recognize as part of justice are partly conventional in character and partly rooted in universal human interests and (...) dispositions. (shrink)

This book defends the controversial 'absolute view' of lying, which maintains that an assertion contrary to the speaker's mind is always wrong, regardless of the speaker's intentions. Whereas most people believe that a lie told for a good cause, such as protecting Jews from discovery by Nazis, is morally acceptable, Christopher Tollefsen argues that Christians should support the absolute view. He looks back to the writings of Augustine and Aquinas to illustrate that lying violates the basic human goods of (...) integrity and sociality and severely compromises the values of religion and truth. He critiques the comparatively permissive views espoused by Cassian, Bonhoeffer, and Niebuhr and argues that lies often jeopardize the good causes for which they are told. Beyond framing a moral absolute against lying, this book explores the questions of to whom we owe the truth and when, and what steps we may take when we should not give it. (shrink)

As a discipline of its own, the philosophy of science can be traced back to the founding of its academic journals, some of which go back to the first half of the twentieth century. While the discipline has been the object of many historical studies, notably focusing on specific schools or major figures of the field, little work has focused on the journals themselves. Here, we investigate contemporary philosophy of science by means of computational text-mining approaches: we apply topic-modeling algorithms (...) to eight major philosophy of science journals, from the 1930s up until 2017. Based on the full-text content of some 15,897 articles, we identified 25 research themes and 8 thematic clusters that show how the research agenda of the philosophy of science has changed in its content over the course of the last eight decades, up to the philosophy of science we now know. We also show how each one of the journals contributed in its own way to this thematic evolution. (shrink)

Medical ethics is normally taught in a combination of three ways: through discussions of normative theories and principles; through for-and-against debating of topics; or through case studies. I want to argue that a fourth approach might be better, and should be used more: teaching medical ethics through medical law. Medical law is already deeply imbued with ethical concepts, principles and reasons, and allows the discussion of ethics through the “back door,” as it were. The two greatest advantages of the law (...) are its familiar authority, especially among the disengaged medical students who have little interest or respect for the subject of ethics; and its focus on the reality of the people and the tragedies discussed. Finally, I argue that medical law, unlike ethics, allows more efficient and more detailed MCQ assessment. (shrink)

John McDowell’s Mind and World is a notable attempt to redirect the interest of analytic philosophers toward certain themes in Kantian and more recent continental thought. Only thus, he believes, can we move beyond the various failed attempts – by Quine, Davidson, Rorty, and others – to achieve a naturalised epistemology that casts off the various residual “dogmas” of old-style logical empiricism. In particular, McDowell suggests that we return to Kant's ideas of “spontaneity” and “receptivity” as the two jointly operative (...) powers of mind which enable thought to transcend the otherwise unbridgeable gulf between sensuous intuitions and concepts of understanding. However, this project miscarries for several reasons. Chief among them is the highly problematical nature of Kant's claims, taken over by McDowell without reference to their later treatment at the hands of subjective and objective idealists. Hence he tends to fall back into different versions of the same mind/world dualism. I then question McDowell's idea that Kant can be “naturalised” by reinterpreting those claims from a more hermeneutic or communitarian standpoint with its sources in Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Gadamer. For the result is to deprive Kant’s philosophy of its distinctively critical dimension not only with regard to epistemological issues but also in relation to matters of ethical and sociopolitical judgement. (shrink)

It is usually assumed that what Lewis says about the given in Mind and the World-Order (MWO) and An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (AKV) is essentially the same, and that both works are defenses of foundationalism. However, this assumption faces two problems: first, it is difficult to bring Lewis's diverse remarks on the given into coherence, especially when those in MWO are compared with those in AKV; and second, though AKV is a defense of foundationalism, there is much in (...) MWO that can be read as a critique of foundationalism. In this paper a different reading of Lewis is proposed, one that avoids these problems. This is developed by going farther back in Lewis, to his Harvard Ph.D. dissertation, The Place of Intuition in Knowledge (PIK). By tracing Lewis's discussion of the given from PIK through MWO up to AKV, it is shown that the phrase 'the given' is used to refer to two different doctrines, and that Lewis's position on foundationalism undergoes a fundamental change, roughly, from indifference to rejection to acceptance. (shrink)

This paper has five theses, which are intended to address the claims in Jerry Fodor's paper. (1) The question arises of the relation between the philosophical theory of concepts and epistemology. Neither is explanatorily prior to the other. Rather, each relies implicitly on distinctions drawn from the other. To explain what makes something knowledge, we need distinctions drawn from the theory of concepts. To explain the attitudes mentioned in a theory of concepts, we need to use the notion of knowledge. (...) (2) Concepts can have a normative dimension without their nature being interpretation‐dependent, and without their nature being mind‐dependent. The normative dimension traces back instead to the role of truth as a constitutive aim of judgement. (3) Conceptual combination is to be explained at the level of reference and semantic value. When we respect this fact, there is no difficulty in explaining compositionality for epistemically‐constrained concepts. (4) Epistemically‐constrained theories of concepts are committed to the applicability of the notion of the a priori. They are not committed to the applicability of the notion of analyticity, where this is construed as truth purely in virtue of meaning or the identity of concepts. (5) Possession of a concept has causal‐explanatory powers, whether given by a possession condition in the form presented in A Study of Concepts, or by possession of an implicit conception. A possession‐condition theory of concepts need not be a form of dispositionalism. (shrink)

In Frogs Aristophanes presents the comic katabasis of Dionysus, whose quest is to bring back the recently deceased Euripides and restore him to the Athenian literary scene. In the prologue Dionysus and his slave, Xanthias, seek out Heracles and ask his advice about the journey below. After some comic play, as they consider various short-cuts, Heracles finally gives Dionysus a serious lesson in Underworld geography . The various items on this itinerary – Charon, terrifying beasts, filth and excrement, sinners, μσται (...) – are all encountered on Dionysus' journey, each transformed for humorous effect. Dionysus crosses the lake on Charon's barque, but is forced to row . At this point we have the introduction of the off-stage chorus that gives the play its name. In what appears to be a kind of false parodos Dionysus engages in a metrical tug-of-war with the frogs that finally spoils his rowing rhythm. After disembarking, he is joined by Xanthias, who was forced to walk around the lake, and they find themselves in the place of σκτος κα βρβορος , where they see the miscreants . In place of εις and θηρα μυρα δειτατα , our heroes are terrified by the figure of Empousa, who is seen by Xanthias alone . When Empousa is gone, there appears the chorus of initiates, whose song constitutes the parodos. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 66.4 (2005) 483-506 [Access article in PDF] Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy C. S. Celenza Johns Hopkins University What is "philosophy"? Who is a "philosopher"? These questions underlay much of Salvatore Camporeale's work, and they are deeper than one might suppose. We can begin with one of Camporeale's favorite figures, Lorenzo Valla, and listen to one of the ways (...) he answered these questions. In the introduction to his work reforming Aristotelian logic, the Repastinatio totius dialectice, Valla situates the debate on wisdom by recalling the case of Pythagoras.1 "What a marvelous praise of modesty it was," Valla wrote, when Pythagoras, asked whether he considered himself wise, replied that he was not "wise," but was rather a "lover of wisdom"—not sophos, but philosophos.2 Valla uses here a humanistic trope, found also in Petrarch's advice to Luigi Marsili, to the effect that Marsili should shape the practice of his life in order to become a "verae sapientiae amator," a "lover of true wisdom."3These citations from Petrarch and Valla alert us to the well-studied fact that, in the view of some humanists, academic "philosophy" had usurped the name "philosophy" and the self-searching meaning behind it. Certain humanists were proposing an alternative notion of what wisdom signified and consequently of what philosophy itself—the "love of wisdom"—represented. It seemed that wisdom needed to be located in a more persuasive way in the world of human beings, history, and language, rather than in one of eternal [End Page 483] suprahuman essences; in short, "philosophy" had to be brought closer to rhetoric and philology.The goal of this paper is to examine this idea in a twofold manner: through the history of terms and concepts as these are refracted by and through the history of institutionalized learning; and through a brief foray into Valla's preface to his great critique of western logic. There has been a lot of challenging and interesting work on this topic in the last few decades. At the same time, there may be cause to wonder whether relatively recent historians have unwittingly become too bogged down in names, failing to see the real conflict. They have tended to assume that the modern, sharp separation of humanistic "disciplines," such as rhetoric and philosophy, existed in the same way and with the same force of conviction in the premodern era. True, there are famous ancient, medieval, and early modern examples of self-defined "philosophers" differentiating themselves from "philologists" and vice versa, most notably Seneca, who—lamenting the professionalization of education in his day—complained in a letter that "what was once philosophy, has become philology" (Ep. 108.23). Yet, the more one investigates this problem, and the more one peers beneath the surface of the seemingly stark divisions between "philosophy" and "philology," the more difficult this strong separation is to maintain.This notion of the possible interpenetrability of "philosophy," and "philology," and "rhetoric" as concepts was probably easier to understand in the Renaissance than it is now. The differences between the Renaissance and our own era lie in institutional context and personal approach, both of which have been, for about six or seven intellectual generations now (but no more than that), supported by a fourfold set of assumptions about what "real" or "professional" philosophy represents: first, that philosophy is primarily about metaphysics and ontology, or rather that there exists a hierarchy in which metaphysics and ontology stand at the top; other things, such as history, language, or rhetoric are "just not philosophy." Second, a retrospectively understood Cartesian split between mind and body is basically true (and that it is legitimate to project that dualistic split back onto thinkers who did not hold the same sort of dualism as axiomatic); and consequently third, that epistemology should be privileged, that is, that knowing and the study of how knowing happens are primarily what philosophy is about. Hence "philosophy" is regulative, a master-discipline that oversees the truth claims of all... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 66.4 (2005) 483-506 [Access article in PDF] Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy C. S. Celenza Johns Hopkins University What is "philosophy"? Who is a "philosopher"? These questions underlay much of Salvatore Camporeale's work, and they are deeper than one might suppose. We can begin with one of Camporeale's favorite figures, Lorenzo Valla, and listen to one of the ways (...) he answered these questions. In the introduction to his work reforming Aristotelian logic, the Repastinatio totius dialectice, Valla situates the debate on wisdom by recalling the case of Pythagoras.1 "What a marvelous praise of modesty it was," Valla wrote, when Pythagoras, asked whether he considered himself wise, replied that he was not "wise," but was rather a "lover of wisdom"—not sophos, but philosophos.2 Valla uses here a humanistic trope, found also in Petrarch's advice to Luigi Marsili, to the effect that Marsili should shape the practice of his life in order to become a "verae sapientiae amator," a "lover of true wisdom."3These citations from Petrarch and Valla alert us to the well-studied fact that, in the view of some humanists, academic "philosophy" had usurped the name "philosophy" and the self-searching meaning behind it. Certain humanists were proposing an alternative notion of what wisdom signified and consequently of what philosophy itself—the "love of wisdom"—represented. It seemed that wisdom needed to be located in a more persuasive way in the world of human beings, history, and language, rather than in one of eternal [End Page 483] suprahuman essences; in short, "philosophy" had to be brought closer to rhetoric and philology.The goal of this paper is to examine this idea in a twofold manner: through the history of terms and concepts as these are refracted by and through the history of institutionalized learning; and through a brief foray into Valla's preface to his great critique of western logic. There has been a lot of challenging and interesting work on this topic in the last few decades. At the same time, there may be cause to wonder whether relatively recent historians have unwittingly become too bogged down in names, failing to see the real conflict. They have tended to assume that the modern, sharp separation of humanistic "disciplines," such as rhetoric and philosophy, existed in the same way and with the same force of conviction in the premodern era. True, there are famous ancient, medieval, and early modern examples of self-defined "philosophers" differentiating themselves from "philologists" and vice versa, most notably Seneca, who—lamenting the professionalization of education in his day—complained in a letter that "what was once philosophy, has become philology" (Ep. 108.23). Yet, the more one investigates this problem, and the more one peers beneath the surface of the seemingly stark divisions between "philosophy" and "philology," the more difficult this strong separation is to maintain.This notion of the possible interpenetrability of "philosophy," and "philology," and "rhetoric" as concepts was probably easier to understand in the Renaissance than it is now. The differences between the Renaissance and our own era lie in institutional context and personal approach, both of which have been, for about six or seven intellectual generations now (but no more than that), supported by a fourfold set of assumptions about what "real" or "professional" philosophy represents: first, that philosophy is primarily about metaphysics and ontology, or rather that there exists a hierarchy in which metaphysics and ontology stand at the top; other things, such as history, language, or rhetoric are "just not philosophy." Second, a retrospectively understood Cartesian split between mind and body is basically true (and that it is legitimate to project that dualistic split back onto thinkers who did not hold the same sort of dualism as axiomatic); and consequently third, that epistemology should be privileged, that is, that knowing and the study of how knowing happens are primarily what philosophy is about. Hence "philosophy" is regulative, a master-discipline that oversees the truth claims of all... (shrink)

This article argues that Laszlo's concept of the Akashic Field (A-field) does not render the concept of reincarnation either redundant or unnecessary, that reincarnation is a fact of nature, something the universe is doing at this stage of its evolution. Not only is Laszlo's theory compatible with the concept of rebirth, it actually strengthens that theory by clarifying some of the processes involved. This article presents a rationale for the belief that through reincarnation the universe is giving birth to a (...) transpersonal individuality that does endure outside space-time and is not dissolved back into the quantum vacuum. (shrink)

On November 4, 2008, during his concession speech to President-Elect Barack Obama, Senator John McCain transformed Obama's victory into his theodicy by claiming that the election "proved" that the country had progressed from its days organizing social life around racial exclusion. McCain's speech exemplifies a paradox of "American" progress: black bodies ascending to social heights previously prevented through a particularly pernicious brand of white American antiblack racism, upon whose backs U.S. global financial and military dominance was built, become evidence for (...) justifying American exceptionalism. One tragic irony of American history is that since at least emancipation, "black... (shrink)

This essay examines the writing of history and historiography in early modern south India as discussed in the book Textures of Time. The book argues that a historical and historiographical awareness was prevalent in south India prior to the arrival of a European field of knowledge under colonial rule. However, this essay maintains that the book unwittingly reproduces some of the very same Eurocentric formulations of the writing of history and modernity that it seeks to refute. A liberal conception of (...) modernity is at the core of how society, history, and politics have been imagined in this book. These attributes of modernity, such as history as a set of causal relations, as presentation of facts, as a realm of the real cannot escape their prior formulation in Europe. The liberal social order also underpins the relationship between writing and the world. In Textures, early historians merely represent reality; they are not authors whose practices are constitutive of politics and identity. The conception of modernity overlooks the constitutive role colonial empires played in the very creation not only of the West and non-West, but also in conceptions of the real, the modern, the universal, and the historical. (shrink)

The dialectic of private desire and public imperative — their conflict and interpenetration and mutual causation — has been the theme of the Troy story through three millennia. When W. B. Yeats wrote a poem about the irruption of sexual passion in the pattern of human events, and its incalculable aftermath in history, he restated powerfully for the twentieth century a perception which nevertheless goes back to Homer.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Bittersweet Score:A Father’s Account of His Family’s 20-Year Journey After a Pediatric Brain Tumor DiagnosisChristopher RileyI hadn’t seen him for 20 years, not since the day he drilled a hole in Peter’s head and left the stainless steel drill and bloody bit on the bedside table. He figured prominently in the story I often told of that day when he, a doctor in training, [End Page 3] informed (...) my wife Kathy and me that, “Wow,” our five-year-old son had “an impressive tumor” in his brain. He announced it with the admiration I reserve for a touchdown pass or stunning sunset. Since that day, he had become a venerable physician. Back then he was the resident who met us in the ER after our pediatrician told us that the MRI of Peter’s brain was “not normal,” that “there might be a growth.” As if there might not be. I imagined that Peter’s brain might simply have an unusual shape, or that the scan revealed some undiscovered fracture and the authorities only wanted to lock me up and all with my son would be well. The thrilled young doctor slew those hopes with an ice pick: “Wow, that’s an impressive tumor.” I said, “That’s the first time anyone has used the word tumor.” The doctor appeared mortified and started over.Now 20 years later we found ourselves at the same party and I felt a compulsion to introduce myself, remind him we’d met that day in 1993, and tell him what had become of Peter and his family in the decades since he’d made that mortifying mistake, one I hoped had become for him a defining moment. To my disappointment, he didn’t seem to remember.Peter was my red-haired boy. Fearless and whip smart, he told a stream of knock-knock jokes and performed dance routines choreographed by his 8-year-old sister Rachel. Six months of headaches, vomiting and clumsy falls led to discovery of the tumor. When I phoned my parents with the news, I couldn’t speak the words, words that felt as if they spelled my boy’s doom. My body refused to pronounce them.The war for Peter’s life began with surgery. I sat with Kathy in the surgical waiting area, fearing every minute that I would see the surgeon approaching with his shoulders slumped in mortal defeat. I learned during those hours that fear of your child’s death is a physical pain, a constriction in the chest, a suffocation. At the end of that wait, the surgeon told us the tumor was out and Peter had survived. The pathology indicated the tumor was a medulloblastoma. Without additional treatment, including radiation, it was certain to come back. Kathy’s knees buckled. Having just endured one life-and-death battle, we were plunged into another. To complicate matters, Peter wasn’t waking from surgery. Even after the anesthesia wore off, Peter remained groggy, unable to move or focus his eyes.Through the following days, Peter failed to rouse or speak. Sores formed at the back of his neck where his unswallowed saliva pooled. Neurologists doubted he knew us. His doctors hoped Peter would recover but it was possible he would remain as he was indefinitely. As I sat holding his useless hand, watching his useless body, I thought I’d never loved him as much as I did now.Peter’s doctors presented two treatment options. The first consisted of relatively high doses of daily radiation, the most effective known method for preventing the return of the cancer. But radiation wasn’t good for young brains. It “shaved IQ points,” they said in wild understatement. So they offered a second, experimental option, one that reduced radiation by a third and added months of chemotherapy. The doctors hoped this new regimen would be as effective as the old but cause less cognitive damage. They asked us to choose. It seemed impossible. We gathered the scant available data. We weighed the risks. We prayed. We took a leap. Without asking him, we made a decision for Peter we knew... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 113-126 [Access article in PDF] Gadamer on Poetic and Everyday Language Christopher Lawn Gadamer's writings since the appearance of his ground-breaking Truth and Method 1 elaborate and defend the diverse claims of his much-contested philosophical hermeneutics. This is taken further in many recently translated essays where we witness the application of basic hermeneutical insights to areas as various as pedagogical theory and modern (...) medical practice. These investigations are important, as they testify to the universality of hermeneutics. Yet more significant in Gadamer's recent work is a pronounced turn towards "the poetic." Despite large claims in Truth and Method about the irreducibility of the linguistic, there is precious little on the poetic in this work, apart from a few asides about the relationship between poetry and the everyday language of conversation. The distinction between poetic language and everyday language of the "life world" makes a token appearance in Truth and Method (TM, pp. 469-70) and increases in significance in more recent works, especially those occasional essays devoted to aesthetics, poetics, and hermeneutically inspired readings of modern German lyric poets. 2A good deal turns on the distinction between "everyday" or "ordinary" language and "poetic" language. Gadamer's increasing appreciation of the poetic leads him into interpretations of contemporary poetry, notably the hermetic lyric of Paul Celan. 3 The different dimensions to language are brought into relief when considered in relation to the notion of play. Like the poetic, "play" and "playfulness" are cursorily mentioned in the First Part of Truth and Method as repressed aspects of the truth of the work of art. When hermeneutically reclaimed, they stand as a buttress against subjectivist, modernist versions of the aesthetic. Yet Gadamer fails to fully thematize "play," as it disappears [End Page 113] from view in Parts Two and Three of Truth and Method, losing itself in the interpretive turn towards those other facets of hermeneutic truthfulness, historicality and language. In the later essays, specifically those reflecting upon the poetic and the aesthetic, "play" becomes wider and assumes a much greater significance. Play, and this is most evident in the language of poetry, reveals itself to be a fundamental characteristic of language itself.Notions of "play" and "language-games" are more obviously associated with the later work of Wittgenstein. Many critics have observed, en passant, an obvious proximity between Wittgenstein and Gadamer, although their closeness has been noted rather than explored 4. Converging around the issue of everyday language, Gadamer and Wittgenstein radically disagree vis-à-vis "poetic language." For all his appreciation of language's specificity and consequent resistance to theory, its endless slipperiness and variety, Wittgenstein, early or late, seldom confronts language at its most opaque and elusive, that is, in the poetic.What does this Wittgensteinian silence about "poetic language" reveal? The movement away from a logic-driven picture theory of meaning (in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) to the more informal, loosely textured, pragmatics of language (in the Philosophical Investigations), represents hostility to philosophical abstraction and an appreciation of the "rough ground" of ordinary, philologically speaking, "living,"language. What should we say of the literary and poetic dimensions to language, themselves significant dimensions to "living" language? The ability of the language-games to change, the capacity of language to transform itself and work in new uncharted regions--about these Wittgenstein is largely silent.Gadamer's concern with the poetic shows how many of these questions might be addressed from within another philosophical tradition. Were Wittgenstein less inscrutable, it would be tempting to regard the ordinary/poetic distinction, and its dependence upon the notion of "play," as a clear advance on the familiar language-game model. This is a temptation I partially resist. Wittgenstein's enigmatic comments, in the closing pages of the Philosophical Investigations, on "aspect-dawning," "seeing-as," gestures, and pictures, not to mention his compressed and aphoristic "poetic" style, force one to draw back from such an easy conclusion. [End Page 114] I In "Philosophy and Poetry" (OTROTB, pp. 131-39) the different aspects of language are likened to types of currency in... (shrink)

Alain Locke, an often neglected classical American Pragmatist, developed a pluralistic value theory as an antidote to the "value absolutism" he considered the root cause of social conflict. Values, for Locke, are not immutable features of a transcendent reality, but rather emerge from human functional attitudes, or what he calls "feeling-modes." However incommensurable the contextualized values of diverse cultures may appear, they can always be traced back to common modes of valuing. Recognizing the common character of our human faculty of (...) valuation allows us to see a basic functional equivalence among superficially conflicting values, thus undermining value absolutism. This paper suggests that one reason the debate over same-sex marriage in the United States has persisted is that the arguments have been advanced primarily in absolute value terms. Re-casting the debate in terms of a Lockean pluralistic value dialogue suggests a path out of the stalemate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 459-460 [Access article in PDF] Reinhard Brandt. Philosophie in Bildern: Von Giorgione bis Magritte. Hamburg: Dumont, 2000. Pp. 470. Paper, NP. Reinhard Brandt, professor for Philosophiegeschichte, offers in his latest book a multi-faceted history of philosophy and art through his detailed interpretations of major paintings in the European tradition, beginning with Giorgione's "The Three Philosophers" and a young Raphael's "The Dream (...) of the Knight,"and stretching to René Magritte's "La condition humaine." In these paintings, as Brandt claims, different philosophical positions are expounded, which he then, in the role of interpreter, attempts to elucidate.In the introduction Brandt explains how this paradoxical phenomenon of philosophizing paintings can even exist. That one can find not only philosophical themes but well-wrought positions in such paintings, and, most importantly, not read these positions into them, is shown in more than thirty short essays, spanning from ancient Greek philosophy and literature, through the Renaissance and on to present-day Italian, French, Spanish, and German literature/philosophy. In almost every interpretation, Brandt critically reviews previous research, exposing and correcting some deeply rooted mistakes and constantly providing new impulses; in light of his philosophical-philological method, some major paintings in the European tradition are interpreted anew.His detailed analysis of Raphael's "The School of Athens" forces a persuasive revision of previous interpretations; the sitting figure in the foreground is not, as previously assumed, Heraclitus, but Democritus. On account of this carefully proven and convincing allotment, an unnoticed field of vision is discovered between the materialist and solid-state physicist Democritus, who with the gestus melancholicus is concentrating on a problem, and Plato, standing perpendicularly over him. Could this problem be the stone cube, on which the philosopher is leaning? From this conjecture we now have a bridge leading to Albrecht Dürer's engraving "Melancholia."Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas" is interpreted anew on account of the surprising solution to the painting's puzzling construction. Brandt shows that the whole picture is viewed from the vantage point of the princess inside the painting, not of an observer outside it. The princess stands before a mirror and Velazquez paints everything exactly as the princess sees it. So the painting, which hangs in the Prado Museum, is the mirror image of a complete reflection of the Self; perhaps it is no coincidence that the painting belongs to the same historical period as Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum dictum. Or Jacques Louis David's "The Death of Socrates": although the painting has been correctly referred back to Plato's Phaidon, until now a Platonic ground position was falsely attributed to the painting. Brandt shows that the painting was conceived with Stoic philosophical positions in mind: death is portrayed as immanently present, coupled with the un-Socratic maxim mortem spernere. The virtuous stance that Socrates still shows on the threshold of death is decisive. And as an added bonus he includes his influential, previously published essay on the title-page emblem of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is Brandt's technical know-how. He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of the European intellectual tradition with a [End Page 459] fluid, easy-to-read style, which not only instructs the reader, but entertains as well. At no time does this book approach mere philosophical pedantry; his treatment of some of the lesser known, albeit important, figures in the history of philosophy, e.g., Justus Lipsius and Diogenes of Sinope, is not a lesson in obscurity. The reader feels himself taken on a journey through a history of Western philosophy, always being provided with thought-provoking material. His style, however, is in no way used to mask the often shaky scholarship that has a tendency to go hand-in-hand with such interdisciplinary studies. In every essay Brandt exhausts all the sources; he works with razor-sharp exactness, proceeding with the meticulousness of an outstanding and seasoned scholar.A problem which always accompanies such books is the question: Cui bono? Are either the philosophers... (shrink)

It is now a year and a half since I started to take over from John Weckert as Editor-in-Chief of this journal. The excellent issues that came out in 2013 were still very much John’s work, and I am deeply indebted both to him and to Springer for giving me the opportunity to learn on the job, while providing help and advice as and when necessary. In consequence, it is fair to say that looking back over the first seven years (...) of NanoEthics means acknowledging what John has accomplished in creating a forum for research and well informed discussion on nanoscience, nanotechnologies, and other fields of new or emerging science and technology.It was truly a great honour and a great pleasure when he invited me to become his successor as Editor-in-Chief because, since its early days, NanoEthics has been the most important journal for my work. Many of the articles published and discussions initiated in the journal have done much to mould my understanding of ethical, societal, epistemological, and .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste SystemChristopher S. QueenDr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste System. By Christophe Jaffrelot. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. xiii + 205 pp.Outside of India, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar remains virtually unknown. Everyone knows that Mahatma Gandhi led the fight for Indian independence and that his nonviolent marches inspired Dr. King and the American civil rights movement. Most educated men (...) and women have heard of Nehru and some of the political and literary figures that India has produced in modern times. But few know of the first Untouchable to attend college, who went on to earn advanced degrees in the social sciences and law at Columbia University, the London School of Economics, and Grays Inn, who returned to India in the 1920s to launch a civil rights movement for Untouchables, [End Page 168] who drafted the constitution for the Republic of India as its first law minister, and who led a mass conversion to Buddhism weeks before this death.Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) is venerated by millions of Buddhist and low-caste followers in India today, and at the same time feared by politicians determined to preserve the Hindu caste system he vowed to destroy. Admirers call him Babasaheb Ambedkar or simply Baba, using a traditional term of respect for a guiding elder, and many use the greeting Jai Bhim (“Victory to Bhimrao”) within the Untouchable communities. Ambedkar is portrayed on ubiquitous wall calendars, public statues, and home altars alongside that of the Buddha, wearing a Western suit and tie, with the horn-rimmed glasses and pocket pens of a scholar and diplomat. Although widely regarded as a bodhisattva or Buddhist saint, he is never pictured in the robes of a holy man or entreated in prayer by his devotees. And while most of his campaigns for Untouchable human rights were driven back by the Hindu nationalists, many of the provisions of his path-breaking legislation were eventually adopted after his death. In the intervening decades, amid deepening polarization over his legacy, the state government of Maharashtra has published eighteen volumes of Ambedkar’s collected works and the government of India has bestowed on him its highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna.Given the dearth of Western scholarship on Ambedkar’s place in the history of modern India and the emergence of socially engaged Buddhism, I welcome Chris-tophe Jaffrelot’s Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste System. As a social scientist and director of the Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internatio-nales (CERI) who has published more than a dozen books on South Asian politics, Jaffrelot is well qualified to assess Ambedkar’s life and thought. Drawing on a wide range of materials on the social reform movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and Ambedkar’s contributions to sociology and politics, the author aims to redress Ambedkar’s neglect by Indian scholars before the 1990s, when the low-caste movement began finally to gain traction. However, he does not address the anomaly of Ambedkar’s neglect by all but a small circle of Western authors.1The strength of Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability is its concise analysis of the geographical, political, and social context of Ambedkar’s career. Jaffrelot shows how British recruitment of the Mahars, members of Ambedkar’s lowly but numerous caste, for service in the colonial army resulted in disproportionate levels of literacy. Ambedkar was the fourteenth child in such a military family, whose father held the rank of major and served as a school master for the barracks. Both parents and all of Bhimrao’s uncles could read and write, compared to less than one percent of Mahars in village life. Moreover, in spite of his brilliance and determination, Ambedkar could not have continued his education without the financial support of Maratha maharajahs who opposed the Brahmins’ monopoly in education. “Ambedkar was the heir to a regional tradition; his struggle harked back to the anti-Brahmin movements which emerged in western Maharashtra from the mid-nineteenth century onward, a precocity that only the Dravidian South—the other key area of anti-Brahmin mobilization—could match.”Jaffrelot presents... (shrink)

Recent events concerning the guerilla journalism group Live Action created controversy over the morality of lying for a good cause. In that controversy, I defended the absolutist view about lying, the view that lying, understood as assertion contrary to one’s belief, is always wrong. In this essay, I step back from the specifics of the Live Action case to look more closely at what St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, had to say in defense of the absolute view. Their approaches, (...) while rather different, are nevertheless, I believe, complementary, and cast light on both practical and principled reasons for thinking that lying is wrong, even for agood cause. In the final section of the paper, I discuss some of the challenges that a further defense of the absolute view would need to meet. (shrink)

In a laboratory on a university campus in Santa Cruz, California, Ben Novak is doing everything he can to bring Ectopistes migratorius back from the dead. Using techniques now available in genome reading and gene synthesis, he and paleogenomicist Beth Shapiro hope that, by 2032, a flock of passenger pigeons ten thousand or more strong will have resumed an ecologically significant role in the mast forests of the Eastern United States. Novak knows—and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (...) affirms—that the challenges involved in making de‐extinction work are far from solely genetic. Novak is doing an ecological risk assessment of passenger pigeon reintroduction to figure out whether flocks of the resurrected species would pose any special hazards to ecosystems. Ecological harm is one of several worries attending the prospect of de‐extinction. Among other concerns are the possible harm that individuals born through this process might suffer and the possible introduction of disease vectors. But I want to step back from these immediate questions and think about some conceptual ones that operate in the background. Technology can be a grand shaper of cultural norms and expectations, and de‐extinction should be looked at in relation to a number of emerging technologies. This paper will examine the degree to which de‐extinction is part of a more widespread restructuring of ethical relationships to the surrounding world that are under way at the hands of emerging technologies. This restructuring is part of an ongoing shift in how to think about conservation in the new epoch of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

first-order HMM, the current tag t0 is predicted based on the previous tag t−1 (and the current word).1 The back- We present a new part-of-speech tagger that ward interaction between t0 and the next tag t+1 shows demonstrates the following ideas: (i) explicit up implicitly later, when t+1 is generated in turn. While unidirectional models are therefore able to capture both use of both preceding and following tag con-.

In non-philosophical discourse, “identity” is often used when the specific character of artefacts is described or evaluated. We argue that this usage of “identity” can be explicated as referring to the symbol properties of artefacts as they are conceptualized in the symbol theory of Goodman and Elgin. This explication is backed by an analysis of various uses of “identity”. The explicandum clearly differs from the concepts of numerical identity, qualitative identity and essence, but it has a range of similarities with (...) the notion of self-concept used in psychology and practical philosophy. The proposed explication is used to analyse claims about identity-pluralism and identity-conflicts. Firstly, the explication allows us to distinguish various ways how the same artefact can have a plurality of identities. Secondly, more or less sharp conflicts within an identity or between identities of an artefact are distinguished. Thirdly, many phenomena called “identity-conflicts” are only apparently identity-conflicts and can be analysed as involving some other form of tension. (shrink)

Jasper Griffin, in his recent book on Homer, has suggested that modern critics would do well to pay more attention to the localized insights and the general critical framework of the ancient Greek commentators. In a previous article, ‘Homeric Pathos and Objectivity’, he claimed to show, by careful study of those passages in which the scholiasts found λεος, οκτος or πάθος, that ‘the ancient scholars were right to regard pathos as one of the most important elements in the Iliad’. also (...) think this is a potentially fruitful and underdeveloped approach to the criticism of Homer and other ancient authors; and that the term pathos, together with ēthos, with which it is often coupled or contrasted, is one of the most suggestive, though also confusing, of ancient critical terms. I want to begin the story further back in time than the scholia, in the treatises on rhetoric and poetics from which the scholiasts’ critical vocabulary was largely derived. I propose to survey the use of ēthos and pathos as contrasted terms in these treatises from Aristotle to Longinus, in the hope that such a survey will not only clarify the various meanings and associations attached to these terms but will also throw a more general light on ancient critical presuppositions. Both Aristotle and Longinus used the ethos/pathos distinction to contrast the Odyssey and theIliad; and a clearer understanding of the significance they gave to these words may help us to appraise the critical usefulness of their comments. (shrink)

Jasper Griffin, in his recent book on Homer, has suggested that modern critics would do well to pay more attention to the localized insights and the general critical framework of the ancient Greek commentators. In a previous article, ‘Homeric Pathos and Objectivity’, he claimed to show, by careful study of those passages in which the scholiasts found λεος, οκτος or πάθος, that ‘the ancient scholars were right to regard pathos as one of the most important elements in the Iliad’. also (...) think this is a potentially fruitful and underdeveloped approach to the criticism of Homer and other ancient authors; and that the term pathos, together with ēthos, with which it is often coupled or contrasted, is one of the most suggestive, though also confusing, of ancient critical terms. I want to begin the story further back in time than the scholia, in the treatises on rhetoric and poetics from which the scholiasts’ critical vocabulary was largely derived. I propose to survey the use of ēthos and pathos as contrasted terms in these treatises from Aristotle to Longinus, in the hope that such a survey will not only clarify the various meanings and associations attached to these terms but will also throw a more general light on ancient critical presuppositions. Both Aristotle and Longinus used the ethos/pathos distinction to contrast the Odyssey and theIliad; and a clearer understanding of the significance they gave to these words may help us to appraise the critical usefulness of their comments. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Nietzsche's thinking on the notions of nobility and the affirmation of life and I subject his reflections on these to criticism. I argue that we can find at least two understandings of these notions in Nietzsche's work which I call a 'worldly' and an 'inward' conception and I explain what I mean by each of these. Drawing on Homer and Dostoyevsky, the work of both of whom was crucial for Nietzsche in developing and exploring his (...) notion of worldly nobility and affirmation, I then go on to argue that Nietzsche provides us with no concrete examples of worldly nobles and that, given his historicism, he cannot. Thus Nietzsche's thinking here is broken-backed. I turn, therefore, to explore the inward notions of nobility and affirmation. Discussing Montaigne and Napoleon in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy, I argue that we can make good sense in Nietzschean terms of someone's affirming his own life in an inward sense. This, however, opens up the difference between someone's affirming his own life and his affirming life überhaupt, and I argue that Nietzsche needs to be able to make sense not just of the former but also of the latter. Referring once again to Dostoyevsky, I suggest that Nietzsche can only do so by accepting the idea that all human beings possess dignity qua human beings. This thought is, however, one that he rejects. Thus Nietzsche's reflections in this area cannot be rendered finally plausible since they depend upon something which can find no room in his philosophy. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger (1899-1976), born in Baden, Germany, is one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. The one-time assistant of Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement, Heidegger established himself as an independent and original thinker with the publication of his major work Being and Time in 1927. This collection of papers is the most comprehensive and international examination of Heidegger's work available. It contains established classic articles, some appearing in English for the first time, and many (...) original pieces provided especially for this collection. The cross-cultural and political aspects of Heidegger's thought are examined, including his relationship to the Nazi party. The purpose of this collection is to provide a critical examination of Heidegger's work which evaluates its limits as well as its strengths, and to assess the prospects for the future development of his thought. Since many of the leading themes of contemporary philosophy such as hermeneutics, phenomenology, existentialism, postmodernism and deconstructivism trace their intellectual heritage back to Heidegger, this collection will be an indispensable guide to the issues which are currently being disputed in the field of philosophy. (shrink)

The British Miners’ Strike of 1984–1985 represents one of the most pivotal periods in British industrial relations. The significance of media stance towards the miners remains a controversial issue today, as attested by recent publications looking back at the strike. Here, authors including miners, journalists and other commentators argue that media coverage of the strike followed a consistently anti-trade union agenda in which the media sought to destabilise the strike. An internal British Broadcasting Corporation report, only recently made public, shows (...) that the BBC themselves had concerns over possible imbalances in their coverage of the so-called ‘Battle of Orgreave’. Despite the weight attached to media coverage in this context, however, surprisingly little research has been conducted from a discourse-analytical perspective to show systematically and empirically how such an agenda may have been manifested across media texts. In this article, drawing on Cognitive Linguistic Critical Discourse Studies, I show how one particular metaphorical framing of the strike, which construed the strike as a war between the State and the National Union of Miners, persisted through the year-long period and consider the potential ideological functions of this framing in media strategies of legitimation. I show how this metaphor featured in linguistic, visual and multimodal forms of media representation. (shrink)

On Exceeding Determination and the Ideal of Reason: Immanuel Kant, William Desmond, and the Noumenological Principle examines the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, as it bears on theological principles. Focusing on the foundational ideas (of self, world, and God) that constitute Kant's metaphysical system, Shaw argues that these ideal projections of the rational structures of the thinking subject only conceal and obfuscate the more robust sense of the real that exists behind all phenomenal appearances. This book aims to critically assess (...) the theological content presented in the philosophy of Kant whilst reconstructing and developing some of Kant's more obscure points on the epistemological limitations of pure reason and the borders of knowledge itself. Shaw draws into dialogue with the writings of the contemporary philosopher William Desmond to demonstrate some of the problems of Kantian thought when it comes to the deeper mysteries of being. Desmondian philosophy proves to be a powerful influence over much of this work, as Shaw advances upon the delicate nexus where philosophy and theology convene. As a bold addition to this work, Shaw lays the groundwork for a new discourse in theology and the philosophy of religion: "Noumenology". Noumenology, which is Shaw's response to the deficiencies in methods concerning many of the modern approaches to phenomenology, is a call for the recalibration of the starting point for eidetic inquiry through the proposal of a non-discursive approach to the sensible, emotional, and intellectual - or perhaps, the all together spiritual. To accomplish this, Shaw reaches back to Kant for a heterodox approach to the language and content surrounding the noumenonal to set forth his theological interpretation of the "Noumenological Principle". (shrink)