The work of Northrop Frye, evenly divided as it is between those earlier and later literatures and equally influential in both fields, will serve to illustrate the literary-historical myth I have begun to describe. "Romanticism," he writes, "is a 'sentimental' form of romance, and the fairy tale, for the most part, a 'sentimental' form of folk tale."1 Frye's terms are directly adopted from Schiller's famous essay, "Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung," though "naive" for Frye means simply "primitive" or "popular" and (...) is not historically identified, as it is in Schiller, with "classical," while "sentimental," as in Schiller, means "later" or "sophisticated." In adopting Schiller's terms, however, Frye has also adopted, though less obviously, Schiller's historical scheme. In the theory of modes that opens the Anatomy, Frye's division of Western literature into a descending scale from "myth" through "romance," "high mimetic," and "low mimetic" to "irony" is correlated to the historical periods in which each mode successively dominates: classical, medieval, Renaissance, eighteenth century, nineteenth century, and modern. Like Schiller's starker contrast of the "naive" or classical poet in touch with the natural world and the "sentimental" or Romantic poet alienated from it by modern civilization, Frye's logical and chronological scheme conceives literary history as a process of disintegration or displacement away from the natural integrity and univocality of myth and toward the self-conscious distancing and discontinuities of irony. The history of literature moves, following hard upon an Enlightenment conception of cultural history that derives as much from Rousseau as from Schiller and Friedrich von Schlegel, from the anonymous universality of myth to the individuality or eccentricity of modern fiction. Frye systematically avoids valorizing this "progress of poetry" in any of the ways it has been successively valorized by various schools of ancients and moderns, classics and Romantics, over the past three centuries. Yet he nonetheless repeats the historical scheme that underlies and generates these schools and their quarrels in the first place. It may turn out that the weakness of Frye's rehabilitation of romance is not his avoidance of history, as is commonly charged, but his inability to do without a version of it. · 1. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism , p. 35. Howard Felperin is the author of Shakespearean Romance and Shakespearean Representation. He has taught at Harvard, the University of California, and Yale and is currently Robert Wallace Professor of English at the University of Melbourne, Australia. (shrink)

BEYOND DECONSTRUCTION: THE USES AND ABUSES OF LITERARY THEORY by Howard Felperin New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. 226 pp., $13.95 (paper).

Interviews focusing on the last century take a look at history from the standpoint of the ordinary people of the country.

There seem to be two kinds of pain: fundamental pain, the intensity of which is a direct function of the intensity of various pain stimuli, and pain, the intensity of which is highly modifiable by such factors as hypnotism, placebos, and the sociocultural setting in which the stimulus occurs.

This book is collection of published and unpublished essays on the philosophy of religion by Howard Wettstein.

The paper begins with consideration of Plato and Aristotle, but the question addressed in this essay is the following: What has been meant--and what role has been played--in the succession of doctrines of physics we have had since the seventeenth century, by notions of “power” and of “cause”? The essay concludes with consideration of field theories set in relativistic space-time.

This entry concerns dualism in the philosophy of mind. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil — or God and the Devil — are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, which is (...) the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical — or mind and body or mind and brain — are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world. (shrink)

Physicalism has, over the past twenty years, become almost an orthodoxy, especially in the philosophy of mind. Many philosophers, however, feel uneasy about this development, and this volume is intended as a collective response to it. Together these papers, written by philosophers from Britain, the United States, and Australasia, show that physicalism faces enormous problems in every area in which it is discussed. The contributors not only investigate the well-known difficulties that physicalism has in accommodating sensory consciousness, but also bring (...) out its inadequacies in dealing with thought, intentionality, abstract objects, , and principles of both theoretical and practical reason; even its ability to cope with the physical world itself is called into question. Both strong "reductionist" versions and weaker "supervenience" theories are discussed and found to face different but equally formidable obstacles. Contributors include George Bealer, Peter Forrest, John Foster, Grant Gillett, Bob Hale, Michael Lockwood, George Myro, Nicholas Nathan, David Smith, Steven Wagner, Ralph Walker, and Richard Warner. (shrink)

This study looks at the relationship between the two thinkers and demonstrates the viable alternative to Hobbes' orthodoxy that can be found in Kant's political writings. It also shows how Kant anticipated the development of a world-wide political order.

Philosophers of science have recently been urged by Arthur Fine to collaborate with physicists and with other scientists in constructing scientific theories.2 What I am proposing is a collaboration at the other pole of scientific activity; the pole of experiment.I consider this effort to be part of a tendency within philosophy to naturalize epistemology. The banner of naturalistic epistemology has attracted such men as Quine and Goldman. I consider the effort as one small part of that program which involves not (...) only theoretical integration of at least portions of the two corpuses of knowledge, but the employment of methodologies which are common to them both.The theory of inductive logic today is in stasis. A number of highly ingenious and very sophisticated theories of inference vie for primacy. As in the case of many philosophical theses, no closure seems in sight. (shrink)

Ab quibusdam naævibus, not ab omni naæro: Warts and all is a good rule and Newton did have blemishes--but not by any means all those that have been ascribed to him; and of those in some sense properly attributed, not all have been rightly diagnosed. The present paper is concerned, then, not to argue that Newton's work is without fault but to attempt to rectify some faults of his critics.

It was with some trepidation that I agreed to speak today, because of a strong doubt that I could say anything substantial not already to be found in the literature of the subject. I cannot say that this trepidation has been subsequently relieved: all I can claim to offer in this paper is a review of certain basic characteristics or themes in the quantum-mechanical situation (which by now should, I think, be thoroughly understood by everyone engaged with the matter), supplemented (...) by some rather general reflections on our philosophical predicament. In aid of these more general reflections, I shall indulge a proclivity for calling on historical matters—some fairly recent, some older, some ancient—which I hope may serve to place current issues in a useful perspective; and I ask your forgiveness for allowing myself to quote certain previous, but hitherto unpublished, remarks of my own. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The human brain appears to be the most complex structure for its size in the known universe. Consequently, studies of the brain have required many models and theories at many levels that involve disciplines from basic physics, to neurosciences, psychology and philosophy. For over 2000 years the two most controversial and unresolved models of brain phenomena involve what we call _free will_ and _consciousness_. I argue that adequate models at all levels (...) require epistemic _complementarity_ – distinct necessary models that are not derivable or reducible to each other. The primitive irreducible complementarity at all levels is the _subject-object_ distinction required by an _epistemic cut_. This complementarity first arises with self-replication where a _self_, the _subject_, must be distinguished from the _non-self_, the _object_. (shrink)

At first glance, "practical utopias" might appear to be a contradiction in terms. If, to be sure, most utopian proponents would love to see their schemes realized, painfully few offer the practical skills and detailed blueprints to come close to that goal or to obtain a sufficient following to achieve long-term successes, whether sustainable utopian communities or substantial political and economic transformations or even lasting takeaways from temporary world's fairs. Yet "practical utopias" can legitimately be applied to the "techno-fixes" discussed (...) here without contradiction."Techno-fixes" are avowedly practical. They are quick shortcuts to try to solve long-standing and deeply rooted economic, social... (shrink)

Discussion at the symposium, and subsequent correspondence with participants, have raised a series of critical questions that seem to me to merit discussion. The issues raised have also led me to consider further some of the literature commenting on Newton’s work and on related matters in the history of optics. What was initially intended as a brief supplement to the foregoing paper [On Metaphysics and Method in Newton, item 10631] has thus evolved into a new article of considerable length.

In this explosive book, Howard Wainer uses statistical evidence to show why some of the most widely held beliefs in education today--and the policies that have resulted--are wrong.

Karl Vorlaender made an excellent scholarly contribution to the detailed and accurate academic appreciation of Kant’s work. Over several decades from the early 1890s to the late 1920s he researched and presented Kant’s ideas in their German and European philosophical context in a manner which contributed to their accessibility and their reach into the culture and population at large. Vorlaender performed an important role in the transmission of Kant’s ideas and the ideas of the neo-Kantian school in general to a (...) younger generation of scholars and the German public as a whole. Vorlaender is by far the most focussed upon social and political issues amongst the neo-Kantians. Others may have completed deeper individual investigations of the import of Kant’s work, particularly in epistemology and ethics, but none rise to Vorlaender’s level in their analysis and discussion of the political significance of Kant’s work. Much of this significance is attained by concentrating primarily upon Kant. (shrink)

We generalize two concepts from special cases of Polish group actions to the general case. The two concepts are elementary embeddability, from model theory, and analytic sets, from the usual descriptive set theory.

Both Hobbes and Kant tackle the issue of natural right in a radical and controversial way. They both present systematic, secular theories of natural law in a highly religious age. Whereas Hobbes transforms natural right by placing the rational individual bent on self-preservation at the centre of political philosophy, Kant transforms natural right by putting the metaphysical presuppositions of his critical philosophy at the heart of his reasoning on politics. Neither attempts to provide an orthodox view of natural right as (...) directly or indirectly derived from God's commands, although subsequent to their philosophical deduction as natural rights or laws both do not entirely repudiate the idea that these rights or laws can be portrayed as having divine support. (shrink)

This paper provides an outline of Kant's ideas on international right showing how they derive from his general view of law and showing how they relate to his cosmopolitan ideal of hospitality, his views on colonialism and the vexed issue of intervention in the internal politics of other states. It can be shown – based on his ideal of hospitality and good state practice – that Kant is reluctant to recommend intervention by advanced states in the affairs of other states (...) and societies even where those societies have not attained a settled, civil status. This is not to imply that we should be indifferent to the situation of other peoples, but rather that we should encourage them to find their own way to a more advanced condition. We can best encourage them by setting and abiding by rigorous standards of law both domestically and internationally that create the possibility of a wholly legally regulated international system.War should be regarded as neither a desirable nor, ultimately, a legitimate means of pursuing foreign policy. (shrink)

In his entertaining and informative book Graphic Discovery, Howard Wainer unlocked the power of graphical display to make complex problems clear. Now he's back with Picturing the Uncertain World, a book that explores how graphs can serve as maps to guide us when the information we have is ambiguous or incomplete. Using a visually diverse sampling of graphical display, from heartrending autobiographical displays of genocide in the Kovno ghetto to the "Pie Chart of Mystery" in a New Yorker cartoon, (...) Wainer illustrates the many ways graphs can be used--and misused--as we try to make sense of an uncertain world. Picturing the Uncertain World takes readers on an extraordinary graphical adventure, revealing how the visual communication of data offers answers to vexing questions yet also highlights the measure of uncertainty in almost everything we do. Are cancer rates higher or lower in rural communities? How can you know how much money to sock away for retirement when you don't know when you'll die? And where exactly did nineteenth-century novelists get their ideas? These are some of the fascinating questions Wainer invites readers to consider. Along the way he traces the origins and development of graphical display, from William Playfair, who pioneered the use of graphs in the eighteenth century, to instances today where the public has been misled through poorly designed graphs. We live in a world full of uncertainty, yet it is within our grasp to take its measure. Read Picturing the Uncertain World and learn how. (shrink)