The Well-Ordered Universe argues that Cavendish's natural philosophy, social and political philosophy, and medical theory share an underlying concern with order. This reveals interesting connections among Cavendish's natural philosophy and her views on gender, animals and the environment, and human health, and explains her commitment to monarchy and social hierarchy.

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book, which focuses on how citizenship is addressed in the context of education or, more specifically, learning, which is understood as central to the government of individuals and societies in Europe. Educational research has provided numerous critical responses to the citizenship education introduced in the UK and elsewhere. Governance is a form of governing commensurate with the decentralisation associated with neoliberalism, but articulated in terms of transparency, accountability, and social (...) justice in accordance with Third Way thinking. The concern with voice, narrative, and accounting for oneself in the name of democracy and social justice has become central to the discourses and practices of citizenship in the learning society. The active way in which individuals are asked to relate to their European heritage is measured as a form of participation, and therefore contributes evidence of active citizenship. (shrink)

The process of seeking the consent of a patient to a medical procedure is, arguably, one of the most important skills a doctor, or indeed any clinician, should learn. In fact, the very idea that doctors may institute diagnostic or treatment processes of any sort without a patient's consent is utterly counter-intuitive to the modern practice of medicine. It was not always thus, and even now it can be reliably assumed that consent is still not sought and gained appropriately in (...) every clinical encounter. To say that it should be sought and gained in this manner elevates the value of consent to a high level. It can be instructive to ask oneself why such a value might be held to be the case. The answer to this question lies in the philosophical underpinning of clinical consent, which sits within a notion of personal autonomy, and respect for autonomous decision making. (shrink)

Recent European and member state policy shows innovation to be a current guiding logic of government. This article offers an analysis of how innovation, seen partly in terms of learning but more significantly in terms of research, forms part of the discourses and practices of government today. Research is now something that all actors must engage with and so constitutes the individual’s self-understanding. Both the European and UK policies that I discuss speak of a shift away from excessive measurement and (...) control in order to open the way for greater flexibility, mobility, and thus productive innovation. The openness and mobility required by these policies exemplify a shift in governmental rationality that places responsibility on the individual, not only in relation to their own conduct and performance, but also to that of society as a whole. The demand for competitiveness becomes a demand for innovation and specialisation. The notion of the Big Society is discussed as an example of the operation of the logic of innovation. (shrink)

Laspro et al. (2024) present an insightful survey of ethical issues emerging in first-in-human whole eye transplants (WET). Their discussion is applicable to a broad range of first-in-human surgica...

Social scientists have paid insufficient attention to the role of law in constituting the economic institutions of capitalism. Part of this neglect emanates from inadequate conceptions of the nature of law itself. Spontaneous conceptions of law and property rights that downplay the role of the state are criticized here, because they typically assume relatively small numbers of agents and underplay the complexity and uncertainty in developed capitalist systems. In developed capitalist economies, law is sustained through interaction between private agents, courts (...) and the legislative apparatus. Law is also a key institution for overcoming contracting uncertainties. It is furthermore a part of the power structure of society, and a major means by which power is exercised. This argument is illustrated by considering institutions such as property and the firm. Complex systems of law have played a crucial role in capitalist development and are also vital for developing economies. (shrink)

In the social sciences and in everyday speech we often talk about groups as if they behaved in the same way as individuals, thinking and acting as a singular being. We say for example that "Google intends to develop an automated car", "the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people", or that "the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners". We also often ascribe legal and moral responsibility to groups. But could groups literally (...) intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible? Such questions are of vital importance to our understanding of the social world. In this lively, engaging introduction Deborah Tollefsen offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers? answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable. Tollefsen explores the nature of belief, action and intention, and shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability. _Groups as Agents_ will be a vital resource for scholars as well as for students of philosophy and the social sciences encountering the topic for the first time. (shrink)

Decades before the environmental movement emerged in the 1960s, Adorno condemned our destructive and self-destructive relationship to the natural world, warning of the catastrophe that may result if we continue to treat nature as an object that exists exclusively for our own benefit. "Adorno on Nature" presents the first detailed examination of the pivotal role of the idea of natural history in Adorno's work. A comparison of Adorno's concerns with those of key ecological theorists - social ecologist Murray Bookchin, ecofeminist (...) Carolyn Merchant, and deep ecologist Arne Naess - reveals how Adorno speaks directly to many of today's most pressing environmental issues. Ending with a discussion of the philosophical conundrum of unity in diversity, "Adorno on Nature" also explores how social solidarity can be promoted as a necessary means of confronting environmental problems. (shrink)

The seventeenth century was a period of extraordinary invention, discovery and revolutions in scientific, social and political orders. It was a time of expansive automation, biological discovery, rapid advances in medical knowledge, of animal trials and a questioning of the boundaries between species, human and non-human, between social classes, and of the assumed naturalness of political inequality. This book gives a tour through those objects, ordinary and extraordinary, which captivated the philosophical imagination of the single most important French philosopher of (...) this period, Rene Descartes. Deborah J. Brown and Calvin G. Normore document Descartes' attempt to make sense of the complex, composite objects of human and divine invention, consistent with the fundamental tenets of his metaphysical system. Their central argument is that, far from reducing all the categories of ordinary experience to the two basic categories of substance, mind and body, Descartes' philosophy recognises irreducible composites that resist reduction, and require their own distinctive modes of explanation. (shrink)

This article investigates whether or not theories of justice from political philosophy, first, support the position that health research should contribute to justice in global health, and second, provide guidance about what is owed by international clinical research (ICR) actors to parties in low- and middle-income countries. Four theories—John Rawls's theory of justice, the rights-based cosmopolitan theories of Thomas Pogge and Henry Shue, and Jennifer Ruger's health capability paradigm—are evaluated. The article shows that three of the four theories require the (...) conduct of health research for justice in global health. The theories help identify the ends of justice to which ICR is to contribute, but they cannot tell us how to organize ICR to promote these ends. Aside from Ruger's health capability paradigm, the theories also lack an allocative principle for assigning specific duties to specific actors. This creates difficulties for establishing obligations for certain types of ICR actors. (shrink)

Has the diversity of corporate boards of directors improved? Should it? What role does diversity play in reducing corporate wrongdoing? Will diversity result in a more focused board of directors or more board autonomy? Examining the state of Tennessee as a case study, the authors collected data on the board composition of publicly traded corporations and compared those data to an original study conducted in 1995. Data indicate only a modest improvement in board diversity. This article discusses reasons for the (...) scarcity of women on boards and concludes that, to enhance strategic decisions, board membership should reflect the corporation''s consumer population. Thus, women are a critical but overlooked resource. Areas for future research are also considered. (shrink)

Descartes is often accused of having fragmented the human being into two independent substances, mind and body, with no clear strategy for explaining the apparent unity of human experience. Deborah Brown argues that, contrary to this view, Descartes did in fact have a conception of a single, integrated human being, and that in his view this conception is crucial to the success of human beings as rational and moral agents and as practitioners of science. The passions are pivotal in (...) this, and in a rich and wide-ranging discussion she examines Descartes' place in the tradition of thought about the passions, the metaphysics of actions and passions, sensory representation, and Descartes' account of self-mastery and virtue. Her study is an important and original reading not only of Descartes' account of mind-body unity but also of his theory of mind. (shrink)

Numerous philosophical theories of joint agency and its intentional structure have been developed in the past few decades. These theories have offered accounts of joint agency that appeal to higher-level states that are?shared? in some way. These accounts have enhanced our understanding of joint agency, yet there are a number of lower-level cognitive phenomena involved in joint action that philosophers rarely acknowledge. In particular, empirical research in cognitive science has revealed that when individuals engage in a joint activity such as (...) conversation or joint problem solving, they become aligned at multiple levels. We argue that this phenomenon of alignment is crucial to understanding joint actions and should be integrated with philosophical approaches. In this paper, we sketch a possible integration, and draw out its implications for understanding of joint agency and collective intentionality. The result is a process-based, dynamic account of joint action that integrates both low-level and high-level states, and seeks to capture the separate processes of how a joint action is initiated and sustained. (shrink)

Autism is one of the most compelling, controversial, and heartbreaking cognitive disorders. It presents unique philosophical challenges as well, raising intriguing questions in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and philosophy of language that need to be explored if the autistic population is to be responsibly served. Starting from the "theory of mind" thesis that a fundamental deficit in autism is the inability to recognize that other persons have minds, Deborah R. Barnbaum considers its implications for the nature of consciousness, (...) our understanding of the consciousness of others, meaning theories in philosophy of language, and the modality of mind. This discussion lays the groundwork for consideration of the value of an autistic life, as well as the moral theories available to persons with autism. The book also explores questions about genetic decision making, research into the nature of autism, and the controversial quest for a cure. This is a timely and wide-ranging book on a disorder that commends itself to serious ethical examination. (shrink)

Bakhtin and the Visual Arts is the first book to assess the relevance of Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas as they relate to painting and sculpture. First published in the 1960s, Bakhtin's writings introduced the concepts of carnival and dialogue or dialogism, which have had significant impact in such diverse fields as literature and literary theory, philosophy, theology, biology, and psychology. In his four early aesthetic essays, written between 1919 and 1926, and before he began to focus on linguistic and literary categories, (...) Bakhtin worked on a larger philosophy of creativity, which was never completed. Deborah Haynes's in-depth study of his aesthetics, especially his theory of creativity, analyses its applicability to contemporary art theory and criticism. The author argues that Bakhtin, with such categories as answerability, outsideness and unfinalisability, offers a conceptual basis for interpreting the moral dimensions of creative activity. (shrink)

Argues that the central cognitive component of ethical virtue for Aristotle is awareness of the value of particulars.

O êxodo rural brasileiro compreendeu um processo de grande magnitude desde o seu início, onde, em comparativo, poucos países experimentaram fluxo migratório tão intenso, tendo em vista a quantidade absoluta da população atingida. Uma das características encontradas nos movimentos migratórios brasileiros se estabelece na diferenciação por sexo. Estudos apontam que as mulheres migram mais do que os homens, além do fluxo migratório se caracterizar cada vez mais pela saída de jovens do campo. Nesse sentido, o presente artigo se propõe a (...) analisar a categoria rural, abordando a situação das mulheres migrantes no contexto do Norte de Minas. Para tanto, utilizará do levantamento bibliográfico na construção de uma revisão acerca das práticas migratórias do campo realizadas por jovens, de modo a entender e problematizar a questão do gênero no processo migratório. Como resultado parcial tem-se que as mulheres continuam migrando, sendo tal deslocamento realizado com propósitos variados e, muitas vezes, devido à ausência de políticas públicas regionais, que resultam em pouca perspectiva de valorização do campo/gênero. Sendo assim, o processo migratório, principalmente no que diz respeito à questão de gênero, não se encerra nas discussões apresentadas, sendo necessários estudos que acompanhem as distintas dimensões que o migrar implica. (shrink)

For centuries, westerners have referred to China's numerous traditions of spiritual expression as "religious"--a word born of western thought that cannot completely characterize the passionate writing that fills the pages of this pathbreaking anthology. The first of its kind in well over thirty years, this text offers the student of Chinese ritual and cosmology the broadest range of primary sources from antiquity to the modern era. Readings are arranged chronologically and cover such concepts as Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and even communism. (...) A large number of the selections concern the role of the female in Chinese religion, and are either by or about women. Through invocations, poetry, drama, philosophical texts, religious treatises, and modern fiction, students hear the voices of numerous Chinese masters expounding on the movements and traditions that inspired them: the mysterious Tao-te ching of Lao Tzu, cloaked in the mists of deepest antiquity; the Analects of stately, reverent Confucius; "Nailing a Stick into Empty Space," from The Recorded Conversations of Ch'an Master I-hsuan, and many others, including the work of Mencius, Pan Chao, Han Shan, Chang Tsai, Wang Yang-ming, Lu Hsun, and Mao Tse-tung. Fully one third of the translations are new, and each reading is preceded by an introduction that explains its importance and salient features. Complete with a helpful chronology of dynasties and list of possible video sources, this remarkable volume collects under one cover the most significant and influential works of China's dynamic spiritual tradition, making a fundamental contribution to courses in Chinese religion, literature, and history. (shrink)

Idiosyncrasies of Hobbes's composition process, together with a paucity of reliable autobiographical materials and the norms of seventeenth-century manuscript production, render interpretation of his political theory particularly difficult and contentious. These difficulties are surveyed here under three headings: the process of "serial" composition, which was common in the period; the relationship between Hobbes's three political-theory texts-- the "Elements of Law, De Cive ", and "Leviathan", which is basic to defining the textual embodiment of his theory, and controversial; and his method (...) of writing. I argue that Hobbes's composition process undercut his intention to produce a deductive, logical theory of politics and opened the door to inconsistency and muddle in his arguments. (shrink)

Community engagement to protect and empower participating individuals and communities is an ethical requirement in research. There is however limited evidence on effectiveness or relevance of some of the approaches used to improve ethical practice. We conducted a study to understand the rationale, relevance and benefits of community engagement in health research. This paper draws from this wider study and focuses on factors that shaped Community Advisory Group members’ selection processes and functions in Malawi. A qualitative research design was used; (...) two participatory workshops were conducted with CAG members to understand their roles in research. Workshop findings were triangulated with insights from ethnographic field notes, key informant interviews with stakeholders, focus group discussions with community members and document reviews. Data were coded manually and thematic content analysis was used to identify main issues. Results have shown that democratic selection of CAG members presented challenges in both urban and rural settings. We also noted that CAG members perceived their role as a form of employment which potentially led to ineffective representation of community interests. We conclude that democratic voting is not enough to ensure effective representation of community's interests of ethical relevance. CAG members’ abilities to understand research ethics, identify potential harms to community and communicate feedback to researchers is critical to optimise engagement of lay community and avoid tokenistic engagement. (shrink)

This paper introduces a conjecture that laws of nature may be of different kinds, in particular that there may, in addition to laws which constrain outcomes, be laws which empower systems to direct or select outcomes and laws which guide systems in such selections. The paper defends this conjecture by suggesting that it is not excluded by anything we know, is plausible, and is potentially of great explanatory power.

Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas both champion the goal of a rational society. However, they differ significantly about what this society should look like and how best to achieve it. Exploring the premises shared by both critical theorists, along with their profound disagreements about social conditions today, this book defends Adorno against Habermas' influential criticisms of his account of Western society and prospects for achieving reasonable conditions of human life. The book begins with an overview of these critical theories (...) of Western society. Both Adorno and Habermas follow Georg Lukács when they argue that domination consists in the reifying extension of a calculating, rationalizing form of thought to all areas of human life. Their views about reification are discussed in the second chapter. In chapter three the author explores their conflicting accounts of the historical emergence and development of the type of rationality now prevalent in the West. Since Adorno and Habermas claim to have a critical purchase on reified social life, the critical leverage of their theories is assessed in chapter four. The final chapter deals with their opposing views about what a rational society would look like, as well as their claims about the prospects for establishing such a society. Adorno, Habermas and the Search for a Rational Society will be essential reading for students and researchers of critical theory, political theory and the work of Adorno and Habermas. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and their interpretation by Stanley Cavell. Cavell's philosophy has sought to reclaim the work of Emerson and Thoreau for and as philosophy, and particularly as American philosophy. In Cavell's Emersonian moral perfectionism, perfectionism is understood as ateleological, and not in terms of perfectibility. Cavell therefore seeks to distinguish this American expression of perfectionism from what he identifies as a dimension or tradition of the moral life that (...) spans the course of Western thought, found in teleological form in, for example, Plato and Aristotle. Emerson's essay expresses a disappointment in America's passive acceptance of its European inheritance and in the implications of this for citizenship and democracy. America, or American man, must undertake its own labour to produce its own knowledge of itself and the world. (shrink)

This chapter begins by providing some historical background to European integration. It draws attention to the way that history has been used to promote a European identity since the European Union and, with it, European citizenship were created in 1992. The framing of the relationship between globalisation and its socioeconomic challenges has made the need to attend to questions of citizenship, particularly through education, self‐evident. The shift in the mode of governance has not only entailed using education as a means (...) of educating citizens about Europe: in the current context, education, or specifically, learning, has become a central aspect of how citizenship is understood. Examples of recent educational and cultural policy highlight terms that are central to producing a particular mode of governance. These examples illustrate the practices of accountability that have emerged in recent years that require governments, institutions, organisations, and individuals to speak about themselves in particular ways. (shrink)

Educational research tends to conduct its analysis according to fixed identity categories and concepts, and in its concern for voice, empowerment, and inclusion, offers ways in which researchers can articulate an account of themselves and their practice. The researcher herself then can be seen as being constituted as a particular subject in the current context of the entrepreneurial lifelong learning citizen, whose virtues are evidenced through the continual accumulation of skills and competencies. The concern with social justice, representation, and ethics (...) found in methodological discussion effects a shoring up of identity and a process of risk management in the sense of a thorough audit of who the researcher is. Considerations of citizenship and of educational research then begin to become inseparable because the understanding of both citizenship and research is seen to entail a particular relationship to the self. (shrink)

This chapter provides examples of European and local programmes and policies deriving from the education and cultural policies, and focuses on the ecological subject. These examples further illustrate not only the way in which the citizen is addressed, but also the construction of citizenship in a particular relationship to space and time. To begin the analysis of space in the construction of European citizenship, the chapter focuses on Foucault's account of governmentality, which shows the historical shift in the object of (...) government from territory to population, and thus the emergence of liberalism. More recent accounts draw attention to the subsequent shift to environments. In light of the environmental self‐understanding of the active learning citizen, the chapter considers the relationship to history seen in the promotion of heritage in European cultural policy. This entails placing the citizen in a particular spatial and temporal relationship to Europe. (shrink)

In 1933, the year that Hitler took power in Germany, Martin Heidegger accepted the Rectorship of the University of Freiburg. Rectoral Address is selected for its pertinence to this period of European history, which remains so central to the understanding of what constitutes Europe's heritage. This chapter explores the relationship between the sociopolitical events that took place in Germany in 1933 and philosophical texts relating to them. It provides some contextualisation of the post‐war events that ensued from Heidegger's Address and (...) political decisions in terms of the re‐reading of his philosophy and the Heidegger affair. Karl Liowith's account gives a positive interpretation of Heidegger's work, in the sense of situating him within a lineage of European philosophers who responded to the decline of Europe, diagnosing and responding to its nihilism, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is followed by an introduction to Heidegger's Being and Time and subjectivity. (shrink)

Plato's texts have been subject to re‐reading in recent years, reflecting new ways in which philosophy has sought to understand the relationship between the author, the reader, and the text. This chapter begins by restating the allegory of the Stanley Cavell in The Republic, before turning to Cavell's reading of this in relation to the opening of the text. It further illustrates the idea of education as a finding of voice, which Cavell articulates through Emersonian moral perfectionism with reference to (...) his work on philosophy as autobiography. The educative relationship to the self and to the other, and the responsibility one takes for one's voice, is then illustrated further by way of Michel Foucault's account of Socratic parrhesia, a practice evident in The Republic and in other texts of Plato to which Foucault refers. Cavell ventures the term sublimation in relation to his questioning of the allegory of the Cave. (shrink)

This chapter illustrates how the language of research, citizenship, and education operates in two particular ways. First, by highlighting the way in which the discourses identified in policy and practice are taken up in educational research, and then by indicating how the particular mode of subjectivation detailed thus far is evident in certain forms of educational research. Both have implications for the critique educational research might provide. As a first example, the way in which educational research has responded to the (...) introduction of citizenship education in England is illustrated in the chapter by a review of research, policy, and practice covering the period 1995‐2005, commissioned by the British Educational Research Association. The review is taken to exemplify the field of education policy sociology. This is followed by discussion, in a second example, of what might be termed a genre of educational research concerned with voice and social justice. (shrink)