Sweden features near the top of most gender-equality rankings. The World Economic Forum rates it as having one of the narrowest gender gaps in the world. But Sweden is not only a good place to be a woman: it also appears to be an idyll for new dads. Close to 90% of Swedish fathers take paternity leave. In 2013, some 340,000 dads took a total of 12 million days’ leave, equivalent to about seven weeks each. Women take even more leave (...) days to spend time with their children, but the gap is shrinking. Why do Swedish dads take so much time off work to raise their children? (shrink)

This volume of the Chicago series is an anthology of what might be called religious literary criticism, where 'religious' speaks of a concern for particular motifs not of any didactic intent on the part of the critics, all of whom, as in the other volumes of the series, are either alumni or faculty of Chicago Divinity School. The contributors on the whole seem to be sound secular scholars with an interest in and passion for literature as a window on life's (...) hard questions. Scott's introduction and his lead article on Saul Bellow are erudite, vast, esoteric, and exhausting. The rewards of careful, hard-work reading are high; but the price will turn many back. All the entries except one focus on recent American prose: Malamud, Heller, Pynchon, Salinger, Flannery O'Conor, J. F. Powers, Styron, and Mailer.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Berger goes against the prevailing intellectual currents of our age by asking after the truth of the supernatural. Taking his cue, as he has before, from the sociology of knowledge, which would suggest that the all-pervading anti-supernaturalism of our age is more a function of the social support the idea gets than of its innate worth, Berger offers up a program by which his investigation might take place. After a brief historical account of the gradual liberalizing of Protestant, Catholic, and (...) Jewish religious institutions, and after some suggestions on how to avoid following this trend on to what he calls "a surprise-free future," he predicts the indefinite continuation of some vestige of supernatural religion. He gets into the real business of the book by suggesting a "theological" approach that starts with man. By looking carefully at certain commonplace but important aspects of human experience, one can see some "signals of" transcendence. The "little effort" involves what Berger calls inductive faith. It is this radically empirical thrust that protects Berger from the charge that he is pushing for the restoration of conservative theology. Berger suggests that this book is an elaborative and corrective postscript to his The Sacred Canopy, which he felt "read like a treatise on atheism, at least in parts." As usual: Berger's engaging style.--S. O. H. (shrink)

These papers were delivered at the 1966 Meeting of the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life. They all deal in some way with education and professional training, although, in spite of the subtitle's enticement, there is almost no discussion of strategy for change in higher education. There is much hard analysis of what is going on in higher education and even a little musing about how things might or should be, but (...) the major concern is not really with change. The book opens with three background essays on educating for responsibility, on civic education in the techno-scientific age, and on educating for character in the arts and in the various disciplines. There follows a section on some professional aspects of education and the schools, including an essay by Daniel Bell on education and social change. Next come sections on Law, Business, the Ministry and their slant on education and training. Just before the appendices relating to the Conference there is a section of miscellaneous papers covering everything from police to LSD including language-consciousness and the mass media. Responsibility is a theme that carries through the essays. The three-year delay in publication is unfortunate. What one expects today from a book on change in higher education is much different and much more than these 1966 essays are able to give.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This volume contains a critical edition and annotated translation of three previously unpublished and virtually neglected commentaries of Averroes on Aristotle. The edition is based on the two extant Judaeo-Arabic MSS which were collated with the thirteenth-century Hebrew translation of Jacobben Makhir and the sixteenth-century Latin translation. In addition, there is an introduction that includes a discussion of the teaching of the text and indices of names and titles and technical terms. The latter index also functions as an English-Arabic glossary. (...) This important book is published under the auspices of the Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science. (shrink)

Sleeper is a New Testament scholar, and half of the book is concerned with building the subtitle's "Biblical Foundations for Social Ethics." This part of the project is pursued with care, freshness, and originality. The part of the book dealing with race relations and the Christian is a term-paper type survey of what current thinkers are thinking on race and the Christian conscience. There are a few attempts to integrate these chapters with the biblical scholarship, and, where these attempts occur, (...) they are generally successful--the only threads of unity between the various parts of the book. It is a shame that Sleeper's strengths as a biblical scholar are burried in this primer for white Christians.--S. O. H. (shrink)

With a few exceptions all the essays in this issue of Daedalus are biographies of world intellectual and political leaders. Erik Erikson's "psycho-historical" examination of Gandhi is followed by sketches of Nkrumah, Ataturk, de Gaulle, Bismarck, Andrew Johnson, Newton, James Mill, and William James. There are three exceptions to the biographical motif: 1) an essay on charisma which, although it does not go much beyond Weber, does offer a concise anatomy of the various dimensions of this slippery category which is (...) an underlying theme throughout many of the biographies; 2) a short essay proposing that obstacles to change in underdeveloped countries are connected with obstacles to the perception of change; and 3) an essay which examines the relation of the American intellectual-academic community to government during the first half of this century. Dankwart Rustow's introductory essay consists of "scattered remarks" on various methodologies for the exploration of the anatomy of leadership. His organizing themes are leadership as communication, leadership as learning process, and leadership as sense of timing.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Brand criticizes Husserl’s remarks about motivation by saying that Husserl failed to analyse this phenomenon: "The fundamental nature of this phenomenon is claimed rather than demonstrated and not developed at all." It seems to me that this is the best way to criticize Brand’s own book on the mythological meaning of social processes. The basic character of such meaning is merely claimed rather than demonstrated. This singular lack of critical analysis vitiates whatever positive contributions Gesellschaft und persönliche Geschichte might have (...) made. Brand starts out with a critique of the theoretical attitude and of scientific objectivism and the corresponding objective world against which he poses the personal attitude and the personal-mythological lifeworld. His critique consists mainly in a presentation of some points of Husserl’s analysis and critique of objectivistic science. The correctness of Husserl’s assessment and critique of scientific research is taken for granted. It is presented in annoyingly general and vague terms. Brand gives hardly more than theses and titles. What strikes me most is the absence of attempts to explain, to argue, to demonstrate and to give direct evidence for Husserlian positions. In most cases we are offered mere "Andeutungen" of issues, questions, problems, and promised solutions. The philosophical style of parts one and two would likely appear unbearably dogmatic for British and American readers. Brand simply gives definitions, rather than lead the reader along his path of reasoning. Either you see the truth of a point made or you do not; he hardly attempts to help you to understand. In short, I do not think that parts one and two communicate anything worthwhile. It might still make sense to approach the sciences today the way Husserl did some forty years ago, however, it makes little sense to do it the way Brand does. He often presents for rebuttal positions which have long been overcome in Anglo-Saxon philosophy of science, even in German philosophy of science. This "isolationist" approach will cause readers to put the book aside after the first few pages. Part three is even more dogmatic. Most of the time Brand merely presents, in rather vague terms and generalities, the "results" of the research and analyses of others without even indicating factual evidence or reasonable arguments. His "arguments" usually consist in paraphrases and quotations from others, quotations which give conclusions of investigations, analyses, etc., which, without any indication of their supportive evidence, appear as unwarranted affirmations. Sometimes Brand is even content to give summaries of summaries of books of others. Occasionally Brand admits that all he has given so far is merely an indication or bare outline, and that a thorough analysis will have to provide the required evidence. However, only a chain of unwarranted claims and speculations about generalities follows; for example, Brand introduces a quote from Ricoeur by saying that Ricoeur "indicates" in it such and such, and then, in the next paragraph it turns out that the "thorough analysis" promised on the preceding page consists in nothing but that reference to Ricoeur. Brand’s book is one of those examples of "phenomenology" which discredits the phenomenological movement among serious philosophers and scientists by confusing phenomenology with that type of speculative philosophy against which phenomenology, with its maxim: "To the things themselves!," originally was conceived of as a counter-movement. A cardinal tenant of phenomenology is to avoid description without demonstrating the object. And this is, precisely, what Brand’s book does not avoid. He characterizes the mythological meaning of social processes throughout the book without such demonstration. Consequently, I think that Brand’s book harms rather than helps the phenomenological movement.—H. S. (shrink)

The title accurately reflects the two chief philosophic aims of the book: the construction of a theory of inquiry, and of a theory of reality. The author’s intent, announced at the outset, is "to develop a systematic philosophy with the ultimate goal of disclosing the significance of man in the universe." He calls his approach a "pragmatic synthesis," since, he explains, it is a pragmatic defense of the "warrant" and the integration of ordinary and scientific beliefs with propositions affirming emergence, (...) potentiality, and internal relations drawn variously from "emergentism, Aristotelianism, and absolute idealism." He expresses much indebtedness to Dewey and James; he is also inspired by Lester F. Ward. (shrink)

This is a remarkably crisp and lucid comparison between Bultmann and Jaspers organized around the former's concept of Christian faith and the latter's notion of philosophical faith. Many of the issues arise from an actual dialogue between the two men over a period of years. Long's book develops some of the two men's difficulties with and misunderstandings of each other. The two men display similarities in their rejection of positivism and system-building and in their recognition of risk and commitment in (...) man's coming to know himself and his relation to the transcendent. But they also have important differences, the most significant and representative of which concerns whether or not to accept any one tradition as being central, authoritative, or exclusively helpful in the quest for self-understanding. For Jaspers, who rejects the centrality of Jesus, every tradition, whether authoritative or kerygmatic, is relative and ambiguous with no particular claim on man. In accepting one particular manifestation of truth as definitive, says Jaspers, theology has turned what is by nature incomprehensible into an object of understanding. Long traces these similarities and differences through chapters on revelation, language, science, and reason. Long's thorough grasp of the issues and the clarity and simplicity of his presentation place the usefulness and importance of this book beyond the topic of Bultmann and Jaspers. With a meta-critical perspective, Long opens up the border between Philosophy and Theology on the Existentialist front in perhaps a more promising way than similar attempts to open it up on the front of linguistic analysis.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This is the saga of J. Loewenberg. Although an autobiography, it is written in the third person about one Leo Berg. It follows his life from Russia, through his active retirement, to the present. In between we see the steerage trip from Europe to Harvard, the student days with interesting anecdotes about Royce and other prominent academic figures, early teaching assignments, a return visit to Europe, the move to Berkeley, and various visiting professorships. Building on James's image, the three births (...) are Loewenberg's emergence from the womb, his emergence at Harvard, and his emergence at Berkeley. Although the author insists that the latter two are demarcations of great changes in his life and character, the underlying and perhaps more convincing theme of the book is that of continuity. The book is less a history of the author's intellectual development than a home-movie account of the key events of living and reminiscences on the friendships and associations of learning. The book would be of more interest to Loewenberg's students and friends than to the general philosophical reader.--S. O. H. (shrink)