This book explores the development of practical wisdom, or phronesis, within the stories of four mature students studying for degrees in art and design. Through an analysis informed by the ideas of Basil Bernstein and Aristotle, the authors propose that phronesis – or the ability to deliberate well – should be an intrinsic part of a democratic education. As a number of vocational and academic disciplines require deliberation and the ability to draw on knowledge, character and experience, it is essential (...) that no student feels their experience puts them at a disadvantage. The authors argue that democratic education should allow each participant to feel enhanced, included and able to participate in order to create a constructive and reciprocal dialogue. This work will be of value to students and scholars interested in democratic education, the experiences of non-traditional students, and the sociology of education. (shrink)

The everyday concept of a social group is approached by examining the concept of going for a walk together, an example of doing something together, or "shared action". Two analyses requiring shared personal goals are rejected, since they fail to explain how people walking together have obligations and rights to appropriate behavior, and corresponding rights of rebuke. An alternative account is proposed: those who walk together must constitute the "plural subject" of a goal. The nature of plural subjecthood, the thesis (...) that social groups are plural subjects, and the relation of these ideas to Rousseau's and Hobbes 's, are briefly explored. (shrink)

Seneca stands apart from other philosophers of Greece and Rome not only for his interest in practical ethics, but also for the beauty and liveliness of his writing. These twelve in-depth essays take up a series of interrelated topics in his works, from his relation to Stoicism, Epicureanism, and other schools of thought; to the psychology of emotion and action and the management of anger and grief; to letter-writing, gift-giving, friendship, and kindness; to Seneca's innovative use of genre, style, and (...) humor. Recalling Socrates's critique of philosophical writing in Plato's Phaedrus, this volume gives particular attention to Seneca's ideas about the techniques of reading, writing, and study that make philosophy beneficial to the individual and to society. Clear explanations and careful translations make the volume accessible to a wide range of readers. (shrink)

Addressing central questions in the debate about Foucault's usefulness for politics, including his rejection of universal norms, his conception of power and power-knowledge, his seemingly contradictory position on subjectivity and his ...

Drawing on earlier work of the author that is both clarified and amplified here, this article explores the question: what is it for two or more people to intend to do something in the future? In short, what is it for people to share an intention? It argues for three criteria of adequacy for an account of shared intention (the disjunction, concurrence, and obligation criteria) and offers an account that satisfies them. According to this account, in technical terms explained in (...) the paper, people share an intention when and only when they are jointly committed to intend as a body to do such-and-such in the future. This account is compared and contrasted with the common approach that treats shared intention as a matter of the correlative personal intentions, with particular reference to the work of Michael Bratman. (shrink)

Proceedings of SPIE present the original research papers presented at SPIE conferences and other high-quality conferences in the broad-ranging fields of optics and photonics. These books provide prompt access to the latest innovations in research and technology in their respective fields. Proceedings of SPIE are among the most cited references in patent literature.

How to embed reflexivity in public participation in techno-science and to open it up to the agency of publics are key concerns in current debates. There is a risk that engagements become limited to “laboratory experiments,” highly controlled and foreclosed by participation experts, particularly in upstream techno-sciences. In this paper, we propose a way to open up the “participation laboratory” by engaging localized, self-assembling publics in ways that respect and mobilize their ecologies of participation. Our innovative reflexive methodology introduced participatory (...) methods to public engagement with upstream techno-science, with the public contributing to both the content and format of the project. Reflecting on the project, we draw attention to the largely overlooked issue of temporalities of participation, and the co-production of futures and publics in participation methodologies. We argue that many public participation methodologies are underpinned by the open futures model, which imagines the future as a space of unrestrained creativity. We contrast that model with the lived futures model typical of localized publics, which respects latency of materials and processes but imposes limits on creativity. We argue that to continue being societally relevant and scientifically important, public participation methods should reconcile the open future of research with the lived futures of localized publics. (shrink)

This book presents a critique of dominant governance theories grounded in an understanding of existence as a static, discrete, mechanistic process, while also identifying the failures of theories that assume dynamic alternatives of either a radically collectivist or individualist nature. Relationships between ontology and governance practices are established, drawing upon a wide range of social, political, and administrative theory. Employing the ideal-type method and dialectical analysis to establish meanings, the authors develop a typology of four dominant approaches to governance. The (...) authors then provide a systematic analysis of each governance approach, thoroughly unpacking and critiquing each one and exploring the relationships and movements among them that engender reform and revolution as well as retrenchment and obfuscation of power dynamics. After demonstrating that each governance approach has fatal flaws within a diverse global context, the authors propose an alternative they call Integrative Governance. As a synthesis of the ideal-types, Integrative Governance is neither individualist nor collectivist, while still maintaining the dynamic character required to accommodate responsiveness to cultural contexts. (shrink)

Through the use of particular pedagogies and the adoption of new modes of thinking, physical literacy promises more realistic models of physical competence and ...

The essays collected in this issue offer complementary critical perspectives on the mature lyric work of Derek Walcott, the acclaimed Nobel laureate from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. The centerpiece of the ensemble is a previously unpublished essay in which Walcott’s reflections on poetics illuminate his project in the masterpiece, _Omeros._ Other contributions by literary scholars in North America and the Caribbean focus on fundamental dimensions of Walcott’s craft and on such thematic preoccupations as the intersection of pictorial and (...) verbal modes of representation, the deployment of nuanced intertextual strategies, the invention of a viable artistic identity in a postcolonial intercultural milieu, and the psychosocial modeling of the process of literary apprenticeship. _Contributors. _Edward Baugh, Peter Burian, Gregson Davis, Carol Dougherty, Joseph Farrell, Judith Harris, Timothy Hofmeister, Derek Walcott. (shrink)

Permissivism is the thesis that, for some body of evidence and a proposition p, there is more than one rational doxastic attitude any agent with that evidence can take toward p. Proponents of uniqueness deny permissivism, maintaining that every body of evidence always determines a single rational doxastic attitude. In this paper, we explore the debate between permissivism and uniqueness about evidence, outlining some of the major arguments on each side. We then consider how permissivism can be understood as an (...) underdetermination thesis, and show how this moves the debate forward in fruitful ways: in distinguishing between different types of permissivism, in dispelling classic objections to permissivism, and in shedding light on the relationship between permissivism and evidentialism. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir’s early enthusiasm for the philosophy of Henri Bergson (1859-1941)—denied in her 1958 autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter—is a surprising discovery in her 1927 handwritten student diary, as I reported in 1999 and explored at more length in 2003 (Simons 1999; Simons 2003). Discovered by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir after Beauvoir’s death in 1986 and now housed in the Bibliothèque nationale, Beauvoir’s student diary first appeared in print in the 2006 volume, Diary of a Philosophy Student: (...) 1926-27, followed in 2008 by the French publication, Cahiers de jeunesse: 1926-1930. Since my 1999 analysis of the 1927 diary, the publication of the 1926 diary and other posthumously discovered texts has deepened and complicated the evidence of Bergson’s influence.1 In this chapter, I propose to take up and expand upon my earlier analyses in the light of this new evidence, arguing that Beauvoir’s methodological turn to the description of immediate experience, especially her method of writing philosophy in literature and her lifelong interest in describing the subjective experience of time, drew upon Bergson’s philosophy before her first encounter with Husserl’s phenomenology which may have come as early as 1927; that her concept of bad faith and interest in exposing distortions in perception and thinking, as in the chapters in The Second Sex on myths about women, drew upon Bergson’s philosophy long before she had read Marx; and that her earliest formulation of the problem of the Other drew upon Bergson’s distinction between the “social self and the deep self,” two years before she met Jean-Paul Sartre and two decades before she first read Hegel’s Phenomenology. (shrink)

This book discusses Alasdair MacIntyre’s engagement with Marxism from the early 1950s to the present. It begins with his early writings on Marxism and Christianity, moving through his period in the New Left and the Socialist Labour League and International Socialism in the late 1950s and 1960s. It then discusses MacIntyre’s break with Marxism by developing the brief but telling five-point critique he gives of Marxism in his 1981 volume After Virtue. Marxism, Ethics and Politics highlights MacIntyre’s continuing admiration for (...) much in Marx’s thought, noting that his contemporary project is developed in response to what he now sees as the inadequacies of Marxism, particularly Marxist politics. It concludes by examining the place of Marxism in the contemporary MacIntyrean debate and by pointing out the contested nature of the claims about Marxism that MacIntyre makes. (shrink)

[1] Das Werten.--[2] Das Erkennen.--[3] Das Handeln.

In recent years, the free market position has been gaining strength. In this book, Radin provides a nuanced response to its sweeping generalization.

That character virtue is produced, according to Aristotle, through a process of moral habituation is a familiar feature of his ethics. And yet our feeling of familiarity with the notions of habit and habituation can engender a like feeling of familiarity with the process Aristotle describes, and encourage us to conceive of this process in an overly narrow way. In this chapter, I examine Aristotle’s notion of ethos and ethismos (habit, habituation) in the Nicomachean Ethics to better understand what Aristotle (...) means to convey when he claims that character virtue ‘arises from habit’. I argue that to characterise habituation as ‘non-rational’ is misleading, particularly when this characterisation forecloses questions about what kinds of activity may be involved in the process of habituation, and what kind of states can be produced as a result. Habituation, I argue, is not characterised as a non-rational process, but a process that involves action and activity. This allows that the process of habituation may be understood in a relatively broad way and as potentially involving a range of activities which engage and develop a variety of psychological capacities. It also raises interesting questions about what a learner’s activity affords and how this contributes to her successful habituation. (shrink)

This book explains why universities, and academics within them, must engage with the diversity of knowledges and knowers that exist in the world. Through philosophical perspectives, theoretical frameworks and practical examples from around the world, the book searches for opportunities for renewal and inclusion in universities. It explains how higher education can better serve the purposes of social justice by re-evaluating the types of knowledge it promotes. Going beyond the identification and analysis of injustices in ways of knowing in academia, (...) the book offers insights and examples of practices in teaching, research and work with the community which aim to move towards justice on an epistemic level. It argues that inclusion in the domain of knowledge can lead to the generation of knowledges and understandings that are more robust and better equipped to address the pressing needs of the plural worlds outside the university. Contributions are included from authors working in varied disciplinary and cultural contexts in universities, who describe and explicate their work towards identifying epistemic injustice and finding spaces to advance knowledge justice in theory and in practice. The book will be beneficial to academics and those with an interest in the role of universities in serving the public good. (shrink)

This title explores how human commitments, rooted in the story of God's love, are acts of free choice and love. Farley reflects on the concrete experiences of people who strive to be faithful to what they have claimed to love: 'My concern is to name something that I think is, after all, common to all of our lives - an experience, a reality, perhaps a problem, a challenge, something that is sometimes a source of joy, sometimes a cause of tragedy'. (...) Farley explores the nature nad meaning of commitment as it is played out in our lives, addressing love, fidelity, a sense of obligation, and covenant. (shrink)

The role of Greek thought in the final days of the Roman republic is a topic that has garnered much attention in recent years. This volume of essays, commissioned specially from a distinguished international group of scholars, explores the role and influence of Greek philosophy, specifically Epicureanism, in the late republic. It focuses primarily on the works and views of Cicero, premier politician and Roman philosopher of the day, and Lucretius, foremost among the representatives and supporters of Epicureanism at the (...) time. Throughout the volume, the impact of such disparate reception on the part of these leading authors is explored in a way that illuminates the popularity as well as the controversy attached to the followers of Epicurus in Italy, ranging from ethical and political concerns to the understanding of scientific and celestial phenomena. (shrink)

The role of Greek thought in the final days of the Roman republic is a topic that has garnered much attention in recent years. This volume of essays, commissioned specially from a distinguished international group of scholars, explores the role and influence of Greek philosophy, specifically Epicureanism, in the late republic. It focuses primarily (although not exclusively) on the works and views of Cicero, premier politician and Roman philosopher of the day, and Lucretius, foremost among the representatives and supporters of (...) Epicureanism at the time. Throughout the volume, the impact of such disparate reception on the part of these leading authors is explored in a way that illuminates the popularity as well as the controversy attached to the followers of Epicurus in Italy, ranging from ethical and political concerns to the understanding of scientific and celestial phenomena. (shrink)

This book re-imagines law as ecolaw. The key insight of ecological thinking, that everything is connected to everything else - at least on the earth, and possibly in the cosmos - has become a truism of contemporary theory. Taking this insight as a starting point for understanding law involves suspending theoretical certainties and boundaries. It involves suspending theory itself as a conceptual project and practicing it as an embodied and material project. Although an ecological imagining of law can be metaphorical, (...) and can be highly imaginative and suggestive, this book shows that it is also literal. Law is part of the material 'everything' that is connected to everything else. This means that once the previous certainties of legal thinking have been dismantled, it is after all possible to think of law as 'natural' - as embedded in and emergent from a normative biophysical nature. The book proposes that there exists a natural nomos: animals, plants, and Earth systems that produce their own values and norms from which human norms and laws emerge. This book, then, proposes a new way to understand law, and pursues specific arguments to demonstrate the feasibility of law as ecolaw. Drawing inspiration from current trends in the posthumanities, socio-ecological thought, and developments across the natural sciences in their specific intersections with humanities and social science disciplines, this book will appeal both to legal theorists and to others with interests in these areas. (shrink)

Explores the ways in which history has been used to influence people and government, focusing on how reportage of past events has been manipulated to justify religious movements and political campaigns.