Rompant avec la conception traditionnelle du corps comme pure et simple res extensa en interaction avec une âme seule à même de sentir et de vouloir, laphénoménologie (E. Husserl, M. Merleau-Ponty, J. Patoèka, M. Henry, R. Barbaras,...) en déploie une approche vécue, faisant de la chair (Leib, en allemand) le site même de notre rapport sensible et pratique aux étants. Une telle perspective court cependant le risque de ne voir en l'incarnation qu'une condition de possibilité de la manifestation du monde (...) - et donc de passer sous silence la phénoménalké de cette chair vivante elle-même. C'est dans ce contexte qu'une phénoménologie du corps en émoi s'avère indispensable : au contraire du corps percevant et du corps agissant, simples mediums transparents d'une conscience tout entière auprès des choses, le corps ému, en vertu des bouleversements mêmes qui le caractérisent (larmes, rougissements, sudation,...), recouvre une prégnance certaine, et s'impose comme instance propre. En bref : seule l'émotion est somatophanie, c'est-à-dire manifestation du corps en tant que corps. Le présent volume se donne pour dessein d'étudier les différents versants de cette manifestation. La première partie, comprenant les contributions de Thomas Fuchs, Natalie Depraz, et Gabriel Mahéo, développe une réinterprétation incarnée des émotions intersubjectives - et en particulier de leur dimension politique. Au cours de la seconde partie, Charles Bobant, Grégori Jean, et Gilles A. Tiberghien s'interrogent sur la fonction-du corps ému au sein des multiples artistiques et de leurs réceptions esthétiques. Enfin, la troisième partie, composée des travaux d'Alexis Delamare, d'Aurélien Deudon, et de Daniel Vespermann, propose une série d'explorations phénoménologiques particulières - étude de la joie et de la tristesse, de lajouimance amoureuse, et des affects atmosphériques"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

A playful, personal, and profound interview with Gilles Deleuze, covering topics from “Animal” to “Zigzag.” Although Gilles Deleuze never wanted a film to be made about him, he agreed to Claire Parnet's proposal to film a series of conversations in which each letter of the alphabet would evoke a word: From A to Z. These DVDs, elegantly transtlated and subtitled in English, make these conversations available for English-speaking audiences? for the first time. In dialogue with Parnet, the philosopher (...) exhibited the modest and thrilling transparency that his seminal works reveal. The sessions were taped when Deleuze was already terminally ill; he and Parnet agreed that the film would not be shown publicly until after his death. The awareness of mortality floats through the dialogues, making them not just intellectually stimulating but also emotionally engaging. Because Parnet knew Deleuze so well, she was able to draw him out—as no one else had—to what might be the 1001st plateau: a place of brilliance, rigor, and charm. In “A as in Animal,” for example, Deleuze vents his hatred of pets: “A bark,” he declares, “really seems to me the stupidest cry.” Instead, he praises the tick: “... in a nature teeming with life, [the tick] extracts three things”: light, smell, and touch. This, he claims, in a sense is philosophy. “And that is your life's dream?” Parnet wryly asks. “That's what constitutes a world,” he replies. For Deleuze, doing philosophy meant not just creating concepts but living a life in philosophy. Gilles Deleuze from A to Z presents the mind of a great philosopher at work. (shrink)

In this follow-up to the highly successful _Ethnography Unbound,_ Michael Burawoy and nine colleagues break the bounds of conventional sociology, to explore the mutual shaping of local struggles and global forces. In contrast to the lofty debates between radical theorists, these nine studies excavate the dynamics and histories of globalization by extending out from the concrete, everyday world. The authors were participant observers in diverse struggles over extending citizenship, medicalizing breast cancer, dumping toxic waste, privatizing nursing homes, the degradation of (...) work, the withdrawal of welfare rights, and the elaboration of body politics. From their insider vantage points, they show how groups negotiate, circumvent, challenge, and even re-create the complex global web that entangles them. Traversing continents and extending over three years, this collaborative research developed its own distinctive method of "grounded globalization" to grasp the evaporation of traditional workplaces, the dissolution of enclaved communities, and the fluidity of identities. Forged between the local and global, these compelling essays make a powerful case for ethnography's insight into global dynamics. (shrink)

Confronted with problems or situations that do not yield toknown theories and world views, scientists and students are alike. Theyare rarely able to directly build a model or a theory thereof. Rather,they must find ways to make sense of the circumstances using theircurrent knowledge and adjusting what is recognized in the process. Thisway of thinking, using past ways of perceiving the physical world tobuild new ones does not follow a logical path and cannot be described astheory revision. Likewise, in many (...) situations it is awkward, indeedoften impossible, to resort to analogical reasoning to account for it.This paper presents a new mechanism, called `tunnel effect', that mayexplain, in part, how scientists and students reason while constructinga new conceptual domain. `Tunnel effect' is also contrasted withanalogical reasoning. (shrink)

Suggests an open system of psychological exploration to cut through accepted norms of morality, language, and politics.

The essays in this book present a complex theme at the heart of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, what in his last writing he called simply "a life." They capture a problem that runs throughout his work--his long search for a new and superior empiricism. Announced in his first book, on David Hume, then taking off with his early studies of Nietzsche and Bergson, the problem of an "empiricist conversion" became central to Deleuze's work, in particular to his aesthetics (...) and his conception of the art of cinema. In the new regime of communication and information-machines with which he thought we are confronted today, he came to believe that such a conversion, such an empiricism, such a new art and will-to-art, was what we need most. The last, seemingly minor question of "a life" is thus inseparable from Deleuze's striking image of philosophy not as a wisdom we already possess, but as a pure immanence of what is yet to come. Perhaps the full exploitation of that image, from one of the most original trajectories in contemporary philosophy, is also yet to come. (shrink)

A common view in face recognition research holds that there is a stored representation specific to each known face. It is also posited that semantic or memory-based information cannot influence low-level face processing. The two experiments reported in this article investigate the nature of this representation and the flow of face information processing. Participants had to search for a particular primed face among other faces. In Experiment 1, the search was done in a context where distractors had either a different (...) degree of fame or the same degree of fame. In Experiment 2, the target face was primed either with semantic information or without any information. Both experiments demonstrated that increasing the display set size lengthened face detection time. However, the lengthening was a function of face fame. The search context also had an effect on the slope of the famous face detection. The results are explained in terms of the idea that face representations are reconstructed and that high- and low-level information are integrated into the processing. The integration process is not a conscious one. (shrink)

Product differentiation has emerged as a central dynamic in contemporary agrofood systems. Departure from the mode of standardization emblematic of agrofood modernization raises questions about future technical trajectories and the ways in which learning will be sustained. This article examines two innovation trajectories: the rapid coupling of biotechnologies and information technologies to yield products differentiated by constituent components—a model based on a cognitive logic of decomposition/ recomposition—and the proliferation of product networks that mobilize distinctive, localized resources to create complete identities—a (...) model based on a cognitive logic of identity. The article analyzes the information structures—institutional mechanisms that support information exchange and learning—in each of these opposed development paradigms. We find that knowledge creation under each of the logics occurs through mechanisms not recognized within the respective paradigms. On this basis, we derive institutional hybridity as a fundamental resource in systems of innovation. (shrink)

Is the mathematical description of the Universe quantum, classical, both or neither? The mandated assumption of rationalism is that if an argument is inconsistent, it is flawed for a conclusion. However, suppose the structural basis of the Universe is fundamentally inconsistent. In that case, paradoxes in the frameworks of logic and mathematics would not be anomalies. A geometric model with a counter-rational framework of inconsistent relationships is applied to analyze Hardy’s paradox, the fine structure constant, and the general relationship between (...) the correlated quantum and classical EPR-type structures. The model conjectures that the well-studied paradoxes found in theoretical arguments and empirically in EPR phenomena are not anomalies and instead point to a new framework for modelling universal structures that incorporates inconsistency. (shrink)

The volume presents essays on the philosophical explanation of the relationship between body and soul in antiquity from the Presocratics to Galen. The title of the volume alludes to a phrase found in Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, referring to aspects of living behaviour involving both body and soul, and is a commonplace in ancient philosophy, dealt with in very different ways by different authors.

We are living in an era of multiple crises, multiple social resistances, and multiple cosmopolitanisms. The post-Cold War context has generated a plethora of movements, but no single unifying ideology or global political program has yet materialized. The historical confrontation between capital and its alternatives, however, continues to pose new possibilities for social and systemic transformations. Critical analysis of ideological divisions among today’s diverse emancipatory and transformative movements is important in order to understand past and present shortcomings, and many continuing (...) difficulties in imagining crisis-free alternative futures. Inspired by a multiplicity of responses from the Global South and the Global North, and by furthering Delanty’s critical cosmopolitanist approach, this article aims to create a new framework for interpreting ‘transformative visions’ that challenge systems of domination embedded in capitalist social relations. The framework is designed to enable the evaluative analysis of such visions, as well as the exploration of embedded ideological obstacles to dialogue and collaboration among them. (shrink)

A fascinating anthology of texts and interviews written over 20 years by renowned French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. "One day, perhaps, this century will be Deleuzian," Michel Foucault once wrote. This book anthologizes 40 texts and interviews written over 20 years by renowned French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who died in 1995. The early texts, from 1953-1966, belong to literary criticism and announce Deleuze's last book, Critique and Clinic. But philosophy clearly predominates in the rest of the book, with sharp (...) appraisals of the thinkers he always felt indebted to: Spinoza, Bergson. More surprising is his acknowledgement of Jean-Paul Sartre as his master. "The new themes, a certain new style, a new aggressive and polemical way of raising questions," he wrote, "come from Sartre." But the figure of Nietzsche remains by far the most seminal, and the presence throughout of his friends and close collaborators, Felix Guattari and Michel Foucault. The book stops shortly after the publication of Anti-Oedipus, and presents a kind of genealogy of Deleuze's thought as well as his attempt to leave philosophy and connect it to the outside—but, he cautions, as a philosopher. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

This article presents a formal ontology which accounts for the general nature of artefacts. The objective is to help structure application ontologies in areas where specific artefacts are present - in other words, virtually any area of activity. The conceptualization relies on recent philosophical and psychological research on artefacts, having resulted in a largely consensual theoretical basis. Furthermore, this ontology of artefacts extends the foundational DOLCE ontology and supplements its axiomatization. The conceptual primitives are as follows: artificial entity, intentional production (...) of entities, (state of) capacity, capacity to play a role in actions of a given type, function and functional object. These primitives enable artefacts in general to be characterized as intentionally and successfully produced entities, and isolate an important subclass of “technical” artefacts to which a function is ascribed. Lastly, we emphasize the novelty of this ontology by comparing it with other works with similar objectives. (shrink)

Most models of response time (RT) in elementary cognitive tasks implicitly assume that the speed-accuracy trade-off is continuous: When payoffs or instructions gradually increase the level of speed stress, people are assumed to gradually sacrifice response accuracy in exchange for gradual increases in response speed. This trade-off presumably operates over the entire range from accurate but slow responding to fast but chance-level responding (i.e., guessing). In this article, we challenge the assumption of continuity and propose a phase transition model for (...) RTs and accuracy. Analogous to the fast guess model (Ollman, 1966), our model postulates two modes of processing: a guess mode and a stimulus-controlled mode. From catastrophe theory, we derive two important predictions that allow us to test our model against the fast guess model and against the popular class of sequential sampling models. The first prediction—hysteresis in the transitions between guessing and stimulus-controlled behavior—was confirmed in an experiment that gradually changed the reward for speed versus accuracy. The second prediction—bimodal RT distributions—was confirmed in an experiment that required participants to respond in a way that is intermediate between guessing and accurate responding. (shrink)

‘A rare and remarkable book.’ Times Literary SupplementGilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII. He is a key figure in poststructuralism, and one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.F\’elix Guattari (1930-1992) was a psychoanalyst at the la Borde Clinic, as well as being a major social theorist and radical activist. A Thousand Plateaus is part of Deleuze and Guattari’s landmark philosophical project, Capitalism and Schizophrenia - a project that still sets the (...) terms of contemporary philosophical debate. A Thousand Plateaus provides a compelling analysis of social phenomena and offers fresh alternatives for thinking about philosophy and culture. Its radical perspective provides a toolbox for ‘nomadic thought’ and has had a galvanizing influence on today’s anti-capitalist movement.Translated by Brian Massumi>. (shrink)

The Gendered Cyborg brings together material from a variety of disciplines that analyze the relationship between gender and technoscience, and the way that this relationship is represented through ideas, language and visual imagery. The book opens with key feminist articles from the history and philosophy of science. They look at the ways that modern scientific thinking has constructed oppositional dualities such as objectivity/subjectivity, human/machine, nature/science, and male/female, and how these have constrained who can engage in science/technology and how they have (...) limited our ideas of the possibilities for both humanity and science. Later sections contain readings that present key feminist theories about representation to examine how gender and technoscience are represented in areas of particular contemporary interest: the new human reproductive technologies, science fiction, film and the Internet. The readings constantly ask "Is this for women, for human beings?" Contributors: Alison Adam, Anne Balsamo, Lynda K. Bundtzen, Barbara Creed, Mary Ann Doane, Dion Farquhar, Jennifer González, Evelynn M. Hammonds, Donna Haraway, Fiona Hovenden, Luce Irigaray, Linda Janes, Gill Kirkup, Nina Lykke, Sadie Plant, Rosalind Pollack Perchesky, Londa Schiebinger, Vivian Sobchack, Deborah Lynn Steinberg, Nancy Leys Stepan, Nina Wakeford, Kathryn Woodward. (shrink)

Reasoning about religion would seem to involve both explicit and tacit factors. These latter are what Pascal had in mind when he spoke of the ‘reasons of the heart which the reason knows not of’. Moreover, these reasons of the heart are the more interesting by virtue of being at least the more difficult and perhaps the more crucial. In these pages I want to examine the notion of reasons of the heart from the angle provided by the insights of (...) Michael Polanyi. Space will not permit a review of the major features of Polanyi's crucial concept of tacit knowledge. 1 I shall simply introduce and explore certain of these features as they seem relevant to the main concern of the paper. I trust this can be done in such a way as to be both meaningful to the reader and fair to Polanyi. (shrink)

In this article, we advocate the use of “epistemic” ontologies, i.e., systems of categories representing our knowledge of the world, rather than the world directly. We first expose a metaphysical framework based on a dual mental and physical realism, which underpins the development of these epistemic ontologies. To this end, we refer to the theories of intentionality and representation established within the school of Franz Brentano at the turn of the 20th century and choose to rehabilitate the notion of a (...) ‘representation object’, as theorized by Kasimir Twardowski. We therefore propose that the categories of epistemic ontologies correspond to ‘general representation objects’. Secondly, we apply these proposals to the treatment of technical artefacts, material qualities of objects and events (notably as a continuation of our previous work on events). This leads us to sketch out a foundational epistemic ontology. (shrink)

Praised for its rare combination of scholarly rigor and imaginative interpretation, _Nietzsche and Philosophy_ has long been recognized as one of the most important analyses of Nietzsche. It is also one of the best introductions to Deleuze's thought, establishing many of his central philosophical positions. In _Nietzsche and Philosophy_, Deleuze identifies and explores three crucial concepts in Nietzschean thought-multiplicity, becoming, and affirmation-and clarifies Nietzsche's views regarding the will to power, eternal return, nihilism, and difference. For Deleuze, Nietzsche challenged conventional philosophical (...) ideas and provided a means of escape from Hegel's dialectical thinking, which had come to dominate French philosophy. He also offered a path toward a politics of difference. In this new edition, Michael Hardt's foreword examines the profound influence of Deleuze's provocative interpretations on the study of Nietzsche, which opened a whole new avenue in postwar thought. (shrink)

Cet article propose une analyse du livre sur Beethoven auquel, sans avoir eu le temps de l’achever, Adorno a travaillé durant plus de 30 ans. Longtemps attendue, la traduction française permet aujourd’hui de prendre pleinement la mesure de l’importance de ce volume, tour à tour atelier ou chambre d’écho de l’œuvre entière d’Adorno. Ligne de force de l’ouvrage, le rapprochement entre Beethoven et Hegel porte ainsi l’enjeu d’un rapport entre l’identité et la différence tel que l’altérité ne se laisse pas (...) absorber dans l’économie de la pensée spéculative. À cet égard, on a d’abord été attentif au fait que, pour Adorno, c’est dans la mesure même où la forme beethovénienne vise la constitution d’une « totalité intensive », qu’elle conduit à mettre au jour – au sein de l’apparence esthétique et par elle – le caractère arbitraire d’un tel primat accordé au tout. Si telle est la « teneur de vérité » de cette musique, on peut alors considérer que le « style tardif » de Beethoven (motif présent du premier au dernier des textes qu’Adorno a consacrés au compositeur) en constitue le plein déploiement, en tant que critique, immanente au matériau musical, de l’illusion du réconcilié. S’il est connu que, notamment, les derniers quatuors ou les dernières sonates sont exemplaires d’un tel geste, on a voulu montrer que celui-ci se trouvait à la fois dédoublé et altéré dans la composition de la Missa solemnis, qu’Adorno dit ne pas parvenir à comprendre. On soutient alors l’hypothèse suivante : exprimant de façon éminente une intempestivité qui traverse l’ensemble de l’œuvre beethovénienne, cette tension entre deux formes de distanciation, ou d’« estrangement » (Verfremdung), cristallise du même coup les exigences théoriques fondamentales de cette réforme de la dialectique qu’Adorno appelle dialectique négative et, indissociablement, celles de la conception d’une temporalité historique non linéaire et non téléologique. (shrink)

"Mille Plateaux (Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1980) est le second des deux volumes ayant pour sous-titre Capitalisme et schizophrénie issu de la collaboration entre le philosophe Gilles Deleuze et le philosophe et psychanalyste Félix Guattari. Cet ouvrage continue à explorer par des voies inédites - en s'attaquant notamment à une série d'erreurs afférentes selon les auteurs à l'arborescence, à l'État, au langage... - la question déjà avancée dans L'Anti-Œdipe (premier volume) d'une ontologie révolutionnaire des devenirs ("presque imperceptibles") qui ne (...) cessent de défaire l'histoire des identités ("primauté des lignes de fuite") et de produire des "coups" imprévisibles au sociologue et au militant. Sans doute le livre politique de Deleuze et Guattari le plus important, grâce à sa conception originale du pluralisme (l'individu n'y est pas conçu comme fondement de l'organisation sociale : les subjectivités sociales sont toujours au-dessus ou en dessous du niveau de l'individu, composant et décomposant des collectivités de toutes sortes)"--Wikipedia = Mille Plateaux (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980) is the second of two volumes which comes in the series of Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a result of collaboration between the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, philosopher and psychoanalyst. This book continues to explore new paths - including addressing a series of errors by the authors related to the tree, the state, the language... - that are already dealt with in Anti-Oedipus (first volume) of an ontology of revolutionary futures; the latter continues to unravel the history of identities ("primacy of lines of flight") and produce "coups" unforeseeable to the sociologist and activist. No doubt the political book of Deleuze and Guattari's is the most important, with its original conception of pluralism (the individual is not conceived as the foundation of social organization: social subjectivities are always above or below of the individual level, composing and decomposing communities of all kinds).". (shrink)

Deleuze and Guattari differentiate between philosophy, science, and the arts - seeing each as a means of confronting chaos - and challenge the common view that philosophy is an extension of logic. The authors also discuss the similarities and distinctions between creative and philosophical writing. Fresh anecdotes from the history of philosophy illuminate this book, along with engaging discussions of composers, painters, writers, and architects.

In this unconventional article, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg conduct a three-way ‘conversation’ in which they all take turns outlining how they understand the relationship among postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism. It begins with a short introduction, and then Ros, Sarah and Catherine each define the term they have become associated with. This is followed by another round in which they discuss the overlaps, similarities and disjunctures among the terms, and the article ends with how each one (...) understands the current mediated feminist landscape. (shrink)

The objectives of this study were to develop a high-density chromosome bin map of homoeologous group 7 in hexaploid wheat, to identify gene distribution in these chromosomes, and to perform comparative studies of wheat with rice and barley. We mapped 2148 loci from 919 EST clones onto group 7 chromosomes of wheat. In the majority of cases the numbers of loci were significantly lower in the centromeric regions and tended to increase in the distal regions. The level of duplicated loci (...) in this group was 24% with most of these loci being localized toward the distal regions. One hundred nineteen EST probes that hybridized to three fragments and mapped to the three group 7 chromosomes were designated landmark probes and were used to construct a consensus homoeologous group 7 map. An additional 49 probes that mapped to 7AS, 7DS, and the ancestral translocated segment involving 7BS also were designated landmarks. Landmark probe orders and comparative maps of wheat, rice, and barley were produced on the basis of corresponding rice BAC/PAC and genetic markers that mapped on chromosomes 6 and 8 of rice. Identification of landmark ESTs and development of consensus maps may provide a framework of conserved coding regions predating the evolution of wheat genomes. (shrink)

Gilles Routhier | Résumé : L’enseignement de Vatican II sur le magistère a été plusieurs fois commenté et analysé. Trop souvent cependant on oublie que c’est dans l’exercice même de la fonction magistérielle que le pape et les évêques réunis en Concile ont donné l’enseignement le plus éloquent sur le magistère lors du concile Vatican II. C’est en adoptant une posture , à travers une forme et un style que les Pères conciliaires définissent un nouveau mode d’exercice du magistère. (...) C’est enfin à travers les silences du texte que se précise une vision de l’exercice du magistère dans l’Église. |: The Vatican II teaching on the Magisterium has been commented on and analysed several times. Yet too often we forget that it is in the very exercise of the magisterial function that the Pope and the bishops assembled in the Council have given the most eloquent teaching on the Magisterium during the Second Vatican Council. It is by adopting a stance , through a form and a style that the Conciliar Fathers define a new mode of exercising the magisterium. It is ultimately through the silences of the text that a vision of the exercise of the magisterium of the Church makes itself clear. (shrink)

This chapter identifies, as a key innovative feature of Hellenistic thought about personality, the idea of the person as a psychophysical unit or whole in Stoicism and Epicureanism. It contrasts this idea with the core-centred or part-based view of the personality sometimes found in Plato and Aristotle, while highlighting certain strands in Platonic or Aristotelian thought that may have helped to shape Stoic and Epicurean thought about personality. Psychophysical holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism is illustrated by reference to their views (...) about the physical nature of the psyche and the development of human beings as embodied psychological wholes. Connections are also traced with some puzzles about identity in Stoic and Epicurean thought. (shrink)

Is the vision of global peace utopian, given that a record 22 wars killed an estimated 244 000 people in 1987 alone? This important issue is addressed from the perspective of a physician and medical educator. The paper focuses on the destructive powers of nuclear war and the biological, genetic and environmental consequences of ionizing radiation and the futility of the nuclear arms race. Priority is given to nuclear disarmament and the prevention of nuclear war. The effects of nuclear fallout, (...) as well as concerns about nuclear energy, leaks and wastage are considered, and a global prescription for change is advocated. (shrink)

An engaging account of how Shaftesbury revolutionized Western philosophy At the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, developed the first comprehensive philosophy of beauty to be written in English. It revolutionized Western philosophy. In A Philosophy of Beauty, Michael Gill presents an engaging account of how Shaftesbury’s thought profoundly shaped modern ideas of nature, religion, morality, and art—and why, despite its long neglect, it remains compelling today. Before Shaftesbury’s magnum opus, Charactersticks of Men, (...) Manners, Opinions, Times, it was common to see wilderness as ugly, to associate religion with fear and morality with unpleasant restriction, and to dismiss art as trivial or even corrupting. But Shaftesbury argued that nature, religion, virtue, and art can all be truly beautiful, and that cherishing and cultivating beauty is what makes life worth living. And, as Gill shows, this view had a huge impact on the development of natural religion, moral sense theory, aesthetics, and environmentalism. Combining captivating historical details and flashes of humor, A Philosophy of Beauty not only rediscovers and illuminates a fascinating philosopher but also offers an inspiring reflection about the role beauty can play in our lives. (shrink)