Originally published in 1937 as part of the 'Yesterday and Today in Germany' series for Cambridge Contact Readers, this German text describes a fantasy tour around Germany taken by David Hanes, a fictional English schoolchild, and his guardian Mr Wilson. During his trip, David interacts with German locals, visits key attractions and travels around the country by zeppelin. The text is illustrated with photographs of inter-war German life, as well as maps, charts and sheet music. This book will be of (...) value to anyone with an interest in Germany and the history of German teaching in Britain. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the place of Marx's thought within Adorno's writings from his 1931 inaugural lecture to his famous 1962 seminar on Marx. It focuses on three areas: the critique and transformation of philosophy; the sociology of the commodification of art; and the social ontology of the objectivity of illusions, derived from the critique of political economy. Adorno, it argues, ended his academic life significantly more of a Marxist than he had entered it, leaving a legacy that was distinctive both (...) for its dialectical appropriation of Marx's critique – and suspended supersession – of philosophy and for its philosophical interpretation of Marx's critique of political economy. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas produced a voluminous body of work on moral theory, and much of that work is on virtue, particularly the status and value of the virtues as principles of virtuous acts, and the way in which a moral life can be organized around them schematically. Thomas Osborne presents Aquinas's account of virtue in its historical, philosophical and theological contexts, to show the reader what Aquinas himself wished to teach about virtue. His discussion makes the complexities of Aquinas's moral thought (...) accessible to readers despite the differences between Thomas's texts themselves, and the distance between our background assumptions and his. The book will be valuable for scholars and students in ethics, medieval philosophy, and theology. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Communities and Persons A Phenomenological Distinction between Community and Society Community Society The Self and its Social Roles Dispositional Vectors and the Shaping of Personality The Personality The Sociopathic Personality Type Conclusion.

Aquinas thinks that practical reason is distinct but not entirely insulated from speculative reason. Although his description of practical reasoning applies to a variety of human activities, his greatest focus is on that practical reasoning which is involved in human action. Although practical reasoning resembles the speculative in its use of a kind of syllogism, its connection with particular affairs precisely as contingent gives it a special character.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s criticism of contemporary politics rests in large part on the way in which the political communities of advanced modernity do not recognize common goals and practices. I shall argue that although MacIntyre explicitly recognizes the influence of Jacques Maritain on his own thought, MacIntyre’s own views are incompatible not only with Maritain’s attempt to develop a Thomistic theory which is compatible with liberal democracy, but also relies on a view of the individual as a part which is related (...) to the whole in a way that is incompatible with Maritain’s understanding of the spiritual individual or person. (shrink)

Opera, maintains the author of this comprehensive and provocative volume, finds itself in an artistic predicament that goes beyond previous generational disruptions and "is our own, and special." Arguing that we cannot solve the problem unless we recognize and define it, and that we cannot hope to envision the artform's future unless we first come to terms with its past, he examines all elements of recent operatic practice as revealed in performance--"Performance," he declares, "is our text." He asserts that with (...) renewal of the repertory long at a virtual standstill, we have tried to substitute auteurial production methods and cultural revisionism in its place, with disastrous results. Accordingly, Opera as Opera draws on performances encountered over an eighteen-year period to first analyze styles and techniques of production (direction and design), and then to trace, in copious detail, the developments in the performing disciplines of conducting, singing, and acting that have loosened our connection to the canon. "The masterworks," it flatly states, "are not before us." In a central section, it also surveys the more general cultural background of this situation, in particular the influence of modern and postmodern philosophy and literary criticism, and the turn away from the master narrative which in the author's view was the principal generating force behind opera's greatest era. Whether the reader's primary interest is musical or theatrical, whether it lies with intellectual and aesthetic matters or with into-the-weeds discussion of the work of the performers who bring opera to life, he or she will find much that will stimulate and challenge in this deeply informed, incisively written book."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Although Elizabeth Anscombe’s work on causation is frequently cited and anthologized, her main arguments have been ignored or misunderstood as havingtheir basis in quantum mechanics or a particular theory of perception. I examine her main arguments and show that they not only work against the Humean causaltheories of her time, but also against contemporary attempts to analyze causation in terms of laws and causal properties. She shows that our ordinary usage does not connect causation with laws, and suggests that philosophers (...) emphasize laws for mostly historical reasons. Moreover, she argues that the core of causation is derivativeness, which is as neglected now as when she wrote. Her focus on derivativeness indicates to us how we can both avoid the position that the causal “because” is truth-functional and yet still hold that causal statements are really explanatory. (shrink)

Polyhedral functions provide a model for an important class of problems that includes both linear programming and applications in data analysis. General methods for minimizing such functions using the polyhedral geometry explicitly are developed. Such methods approach a minimum by moving from extreme point to extreme point along descending edges and are described generically as simplicial. The best-known member of this class is the simplex method of linear programming, but simplicial methods have found important applications in discrete approximation and statistics. (...) The general approach considered in this text, first published in 2001, has permitted the development of finite algorithms for the rank regression problem. The key ideas are those of developing a general format for specifying the polyhedral function and the application of this to derive multiplier conditions to characterize optimality. Also considered is the application of the general approach to the development of active set algorithms for polyhedral function constrained problems and associated Lagrangian forms. (shrink)

This book is a lucid account of the amazing life of Sai Baba, one of the most revered saints, and one of the most extraordinary of India s holy men. The book discusses the life of this saint, his divine powers, and his teachings which sought to unite people of all creeds and faiths.

When viewed in its historical context, Ockham’s moral psychology is distinctive and novel. First, Ockham thinks that the will is free to will for or against any object, and can choose something that is in some sense not even apparently good. The will is free from the intellect’s dictates and from natural inclinations. Second, he emphasizes the will’s independence not only with respect to passions and habits, but also with respect to knowledge, the effects of original sin, grace, and God. (...) Third, Ockham consequently argues that someone is even able to will to be unhappy, and can will another’s happiness more than or even instead of his own. (shrink)

The book is about three things. First, how Ancient thinkers perceived humans as like or unlike other animals; second about the justification for taking a humane attitude towards natural things; and third about how moral claims count as true, and how they can be discovered or acquired. Was Aristotle was right to see continuity in the psychological functions of animal and human souls? The question cannot be settled without taking a moral stance. As we can either focus on continuity or (...) on discontinuities, how should natural science draw the boundaries? Moral agents act and react in a world that they see under a certain description, and there is no value free science that can settle what is the correct description. This book asks us to think about where moral justification could come from, and suggests that the supposed ‘moral status’ of the object cannot provide the answer. For the moral status of the object is a product of our own imagination, and once we see that, we also see that there remains the question where we ought to have the will to see it. Furthermore, since the perception of moral truth involves the development of imagination and will, the means to attain it will be better served by engagement with poetry and literature than with enquiries that seek to exclude the engagement of the imagination, or any appeal to the beauty of nature or the love of one's fellow creatures. (shrink)

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

"The decisive event in the history of modern aesthetics was Kant's Critique of Judgement. The seminal concepts of this work include the theory of the creative imagination, the 'purposiveness without purpose' of works of art, and the disinterestedness and subjective universality of judgements of taste. These concepts have remained basic in the aesthetic tradition from Kant's day to the present. The Quest for Imagination presents essays on several of the most important twentieth-century representatives of that tradition: George Santayana, Wallace Stevens, (...) Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, Jacques Maritian, Jean-Paul Sartre, Northrop Frye, Edmund Husserl, Stephane Mallarme, Georges Poulet, and Gaston Bachelard. The essays introduce some of the finest thought on literature that this century has produced. Coming at a time when literature is frequently debased to propaganda and political cliche, they affirm the vitality of the aesthetic approach and the importance of the profession of letters in modern life." -- Dust jacket. (shrink)

"The decisive event in the history of modern aesthetics was Kant's Critique of Judgement. The seminal concepts of this work include the theory of the creative imagination, the 'purposiveness without purpose' of works of art, and the disinterestedness and subjective universality of judgements of taste. These concepts have remained basic in the aesthetic tradition from Kant's day to the present. The Quest for Imagination presents essays on several of the most important twentieth-century representatives of that tradition: George Santayana, Wallace Stevens, (...) Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, Jacques Maritian, Jean-Paul Sartre, Northrop Frye, Edmund Husserl, Stephane Mallarme, Georges Poulet, and Gaston Bachelard. The essays introduce some of the finest thought on literature that this century has produced. Coming at a time when literature is frequently debased to propaganda and political cliche, they affirm the vitality of the aesthetic approach and the importance of the profession of letters in modern life." -- Dust jacket. (shrink)

Any attempt to construct a philosophy of Value must presuppose some general understanding of what Value is. And so it might seem natural to begin with a precise definition of the concept we are about to investigate. What, we might ask ourselves, is the characteristic peculiar to all those situations in the description of which we are accustomed to use the word “value” or its cognate terms, and distinguishing them as a class from all those situations to which we do (...) not apply the word? Proceeding empirically in this way, from an inspection of the “field of application” of the word “value” we might reasonably hope to discover a “highest common factor” of all the data, which would be the required definition of the concept “Value.” But we should be met at the outset by radical differences of opinion about the scope of the relevant data. (shrink)

Numerous authors have interpreted the history of anthropological and medical conceptions of race in nineteenth century France as following a path mapped out by phrenology, anthropometry, and Paul Broca's version of physical anthropology. On balance, this has resulted in an historical narrative centered on Parisian intellectual life and one leaving the impression that by the 1890s anthropological theories had moved away from ethnological and cultural explanations toward more biological views of race. This article, by contrast, examines the world beyond Paris (...) and the literatures of naval and army medicine from about 1830 to 1920. It describes the contours of a medical and anthropological pluralism in matters of race and ethnicity and argues that cultural and ethnological perspectives remained important to theorists of race through World War I. (shrink)

By way of a selective comparison of the work of Georges Canguilhem and Henri Bergson on their respective conceptions of ‘problematology’, this article argues that the centrality of the notion of the ‘problem’ in each can be found in their differing conceptions of the philosophy of life and the living being. Canguilhem’s model, however, ultimately moves beyond or away from (legislative) philosophy and epistemology towards the question of ethics in so far as his vitalism is a means of signalling the (...) refusal of the supposition that all of the dimensions of life are or might be in our possession. Michel Foucault’s project, though directed for the most part to very different subject-matter, worked out a similar logic in the historical problematology of the sciences of ‘man’ and mentalities of government and power; and the results were equally ethical in so far as Foucault’s nominalist historical problematology entailed the refusal of any idea that all of the dimensions of our anthropological ‘essence’ are, or could be, likewise, in our possession. (shrink)

Background and methods: Psychiatric research can occasionally present particular ethical dilemmas, but it is not clear what kind of problems local research ethics committees actually experience in this field. We aimed to assess the type of problems that committees encounter with psychiatric research, using a postal survey of 211 LRECs.Results: One hundred and seven of those written to replied within the time limit. Twenty eight experienced few problems with psychiatric applications. Twenty six emphasised the value of a psychiatric expert on (...) the committee. The most common issues raised were informed consent and confidentiality . The use of placebos , the validity of psychiatric questionnaires and overuse of psychiatric “jargon” in psychiatric applications also raised concern.Conclusions: Our results suggest that LRECs have specific concerns regarding methodology, consent, and confidentiality in psychiatric research, and that they find psychiatric input invaluable. (shrink)

This article argues that the notion of the archive is of some value for those interested in the history of the human sciences. Above all, the archive is a means of generating ethical and epistemological credibility. The article goes on to suggest that there are three aspects to modern archival reason: a principle of publicity whereby archival information is made available to some or other kind of public; a principle of singularity according to which archival reason focuses upon questions of (...) detail; and a principle of mundanity, whereby the privileged focus of archival reason is said to be the commonplace dimension of everyday life. (shrink)

The clinical ethics propounded by Richard Zaner is unique. Partly because of his phenomenological orientation and partly because of his own daily practice as a clinical ethicist in a large university hospital, Zaner focuses on the particular concrete situations in which patients and their families confront illness and injury and struggle toward workable ways for dealing with them. He locates ethical reality in the clinical encounter. This encounter encompasses not only patient and physician but also the patients family and friends (...) and indeed the entire lifeworld in which the patient is still striving to live. In order to illuminate the central moral constituents of such human predicaments, Zaner discusses the often-overlooked features of disruption and crisis, the changed self, the patients dependence and the physicians power, the violation of personal boundaries and their necessary reconfiguring, and the art of listening. (shrink)

Why does philosophy give some people a headache, others a real buzz, and yet others a feeling that it is subversive and dangerous? Why do a lot of people think philosophy is totally irrelevant? What is philosophy anyway? The ABCs of philosophy??—easy to understand but never simplistic. Beginning with basic questions posed by the ancient Greeks - What is knowledge? What is good and evil? Philosophy For Beginners traces the answers given by western philosophy over the last 2,500 years.

We sometimes experience more than we can say, and often it is the "questions" posed by such nondiscursive reality to which feminist writings speak most profoundly. Feminists should therefore decline Richard Rorty's neopragmatist exhortation to forgo all appeals to "women's experience." Invoking an alternative account of pragmatism's import for feminism, I explore the problematic relationship between the experience of being pregnant and the language we use in talking about it.