Machiavelli's continuing fascination arises not just from his hard‐headed maxims but at a deeper level from his willingness to face up to agonising moral choices. The author is a former editor of The Director, a Renaissance scholar, and currently edits International Minds.

Machiavelli's continuing fascination arises not just from his hard‐headed maxims but at a deeper level from his willingness to face up to agonising moral choices. The author is a former editor of The Director, a Renaissance scholar, and currently edits International Minds.

Treatise on political power, statecraft, and the qualities of the ideal ruler.

This book, formed as a series of essays in honour of Professor Carl Baudenbacher, addresses the very art of judicial reasoning, and features contributions from many of the foremost current or former national, supranational, or international judges. This unique volume is intended first and foremost for legal scholars, but its approachable style makes it readily accessible for students and for those with a general interest in the application of the law and justice in today's multi-layered world. The collection of essays (...) is rather more philosophical and reflective as opposed to doctrinal. Each contribution focuses on the nature and operation of justice, the independence of the judiciary, and on judicial style primarily from the perspective of the judges themselves. The book provides perspectives on what it means to be accountable and independent as a judge, the role of language and languages in the quest for justice, while other contributions acquaint readers with the some of the structures of courts themselves, or indeed question for whom judgments are written. Each chapter has been written by a presiding judge, or head of an institution and the book is divided into three parts: - Part I Art and Method - Part II Justice and the Judiciary - Part III Reasoning and Language(s). (shrink)

When a series of corporate scandals erupted soon after the collapse of the 1990s bull market in equities, policy makers and reformers chiefly responded by augmenting and refining the checks and balances surrounding publicly traded corporations. Through measures such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, securities regulations were intensified and corporate governance was tightened. In essence, reformers followed the tradition of modern political philosophy, developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, in its insistence that pro-social outcomes are best produced (...) through institutional mechanisms that harness self-interest. The empirical evidence, however, suggests the institutional approach will do little to prevent future ethical breakdowns. To corroborate this finding, we survey the literature on board composition, auditor consulting practices, shareholder activism, and executive compensation. Consequently, we look to another stream of political philosophy, the ancient tradition comprising Plato and Aristotle, which argues that social groupings, such as corporations, work best when led by individuals of good character. Applying the ancient view to modern commercial realities, the paper concludes that Benjamin Franklin's attempt to connect virtuous character with enlightened self-interest offers a compelling ethic for corporate leaders. (shrink)

The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In (...) this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language. (shrink)

Reexamines the Western philosophical tradition, looking at the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self.

"Its publication should be a major event for cognitive linguistics and should pose a major challenge for cognitive science. In addition, it should have repercussions in a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology and psychology to epistemology and the philosophy of science.... Lakoff asks: What do categories of language and thought reveal about the human mind? Offering both general theory and minute details, Lakoff shows that categories reveal a great deal."—David E. Leary, American Scientist.

In this now-classic work, he clearly and systematically formulates what others thought impossible_a principle of fairness that specifies a set of conditions which grounds existing political obligations and bridges the gap between the abstract accounts of political principles and the actual beliefs of political actors. Brought up-to-date with a new introduction, this new edition will be of great interest to all interested in political thought.

Current scholars generally view political obligations as "content independent." Citizens have moral reasons to obey the law because it is the law, rather than because of the content of different laws. However, this position is subject to criticism on both theoretical and practical grounds. The main consideration in favor of content independence, the so-called "self-image of the state," does not actually support it. Properly understood, the state's self-image is to comply with laws because of the underlying moral reasons that justify (...) them, rather than because they are laws. Because content independence has played a central role in the widespread belief that a suitable theory of political obligation is not possible, rejecting it allows the possibility of a theory that establishes moral requirements for virtually all citizens to behave in accordance with virtually all laws, although these requirements are particular to different laws, and subjects are not required to obey them because they are laws. (shrink)

Here, in the middle of the well-known simile that depicts Aeneas and Turnus as bulls fighting for territory and a herd , Vergil registers the reactions of the onlookers. Commentators and lexicographers disagree about what the heifers are doing, interpreting ‘mussant’ in different ways. Servius glosses the verb as ‘dubitant’. By contrast, Heyne offers the paraphrase ‘anxii expectant’, responding to the theme of fear in the two preceding cola: cf. ‘pavidi’ and ‘metu’. Forbiger's explanatory ‘tacite expectant’ stresses rather the note (...) of silence introduced by ‘stat pecus omne metu mutum’. Lewis and Short and Georges concur with Forbiger when they translate ‘mussant’ ‘expect in silence’ and ‘stumm harren’. Other authorities, however, underscore the verb's onomatopoeic sense. Julius Caesar Scaliger, for example, observes of Vergil's usage: ‘sane verbum factitium, neque absonum a bourn voce’. Accordingly, some older commentators interpret ‘mussant’ as a restrained form of ‘mugiunt’. More recently, the OLD and TLL cite Aen. 12.718 under the definitions ‘mutter in indecision’ and ‘mussantem dubitare’. Although there is general agreement that ‘mussant’ connotes uncertainty, there still remains the problem of whether it indicates silence, faint lowing, or muttering. The purpose of this note is to call attention to an unrecognized etymological wordplay in line 718 which helps explain what the heifers are doing and why there are varying interpretations of ‘mussant’. (shrink)

Aesopic fables constitute an important case in folk and popular literature. This genre went through various stages of development; its plasticity, pedagogical dimension, and mainly its ability to convey messages through an indirect and pleasant way prompted many to take interest in it, reading, adapting, or even creating new fables. As a result, fables became a favorite topic in literature and, especially, children's literature through many and various adaptations, translations, and metanarratives. In this paper, considering fables as an early form (...) of utopic/dystopic discourse, we aim to demonstrate some cases of such references through examples taken from the corpus of Aesopic fables. (shrink)

The first part of this paper gives a summary of some philosophical discoveries of Brentano which affected his outlook on the world in which he lived. The other, lesser part, contains reminiscences of how the philosophical thinking of the man affected his behaviour to the world around him.

The first part of this paper gives a summary of some philosophical discoveries of Brentano which affected his outlook on the world in which he lived. The other, lesser part, contains reminiscences of how the philosophical thinking of the man affected his behaviour to the world around him.

Christian Wilhelm Blomstrand, Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy at Lund University from 1862 to 1895, was one of the important chemists of the second half of the nineteenth century. His theoretical ideas and experimental accomplishments contributed to advances in several branches of chemistry. Living in Sweden during a transitional period between the older and newer chemistry and being a scientific as well as a political conservative, Blomstrand sought to reconcile Berzelius's dualistic theory with the unitary and type theories. He was (...) opposed to Kekulé's dogma of constant valency, and he strove to establish a sound and complete theory of variable valency. This article briefly outlines Blomstrand's life and considers his best known book, Die Chemie der Jetztzeit , as well as his work on mineralogy, inorganic chemistry , and his theoretical views on valency, diazo compounds, and metal-ammines. His so-called ‘chain theory’, as developed and modified by his fellow Scandinavian chemist and close friend, Sophus Mads Jørgensen, was for more than three decades the most popular and successful of the numerous attempts to explain the constitution, properties, and reactions of coordination compounds. (shrink)