Hogan argues that the basis of interpretive method is ordinary inferential reasoning - that there is no general methodological difference between interpretation in the humanities and theory construction in the physical sciences. Further, the nature of interpretation does not entail cultural, historical, or other forms of relativism, as is commonly thought. However, this does not imply that there is only one way of approaching interpretation or that there is one true meaning of any particular work. Rather, there are many (...) kinds of interpretation and many kinds of meaning and the interpreter is free to stipulate one of these in the context of a particular enquiry. More exactly, discussing the constraints upon stipulation, Hogan says that, although there are a large number and variety of intents (those of authors and readers, conscious and unconscious), there are no nonintentional meanings - Platonic, social, essential, or otherwise. (shrink)

Develops a theory of culture based on a metaphysics that elaborates on the Platonic and Confucian traditions. In Metaphysics of Goodness, Robert Cummings Neville extends Alfred North Whitehead’s project of cultural studies, which was based on a new metaphysics that Whitehead developed in Adventures of Ideas. Neville’s focus is value or goodness in many modes. The metaphysics treated in this book derive from the Platonic and Confucian traditions, with significant modifications of Whitehead, Peirce, Dewey, Confucius, Xunzi, and Zhou (...) Dunyi. Part one develops a theory of form based on a metaphysics of harmony. Part two elaborates a theory of art based on a metaphysics of beauty. Part three sketches a theory of personhood based on a metaphysics of obligation. Part four discusses civilization in a systematic way based on a metaphysics of flourishing. Throughout the book, Neville elaborates a theory of interpretation that is inspired by Peirce, Dewey, and Xunzi but is not limited to their ideas. While the reasoning of the book is concise, it employs methodologies from many kinds of philosophy, art criticism, ethics, and cultural studies, and sees philosophy as needing to learn from all these disciplines. “Neville’s work is informed by a lifelong engagement with the most important philosophers in history, including Plato, Aristotle, Whitehead, and Dewey. Here, he offers an important argument that there is beauty not only in how people see the world, but also in the world itself.” — Kevin Schilbrack, Appalachian State University. (shrink)

This book shows how Plato's "Statesman" and Thucydides' presentation of the moral collapse in Athenian political discourse reveal many points of agreement between Plato and Thucydides. Discussions of other dialogues including "Meno," "Laches," "Charmides," "Symposium," "Phaedo," "Sophist," and "Laws" confirm this agreement. Please see thucydides(dot)org for some editorial errata and corrections. The book was released in paperback in December 2021.

This book offers a discussion of issues involved in evaluating welfare reforms, and applies those principles to the evaluation of reform in Wisconsin. It opens with an overview of the different types of program evaluation and summarizes the basic issues that are involved in their conduct. A discussion of general evaluation strategies for the reforms, such as the selection and use of counterfactuals, is followed by consideration of both implementation and impact evaluations of the Wisconsin program. The final section considers (...) the specific impacts of the Wisconsin program. Barnow is interim associate director for research at the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Moffitt is a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Examines indirect learning, suggestion, trance, psychodrama, relaxation, autogenics, bio-feedback, visualization, intuition, mind-control and meditation as approaches and techniques which can contribute to teaching and learning.

Psychoanalysis, with Freud as its founder, has vehemently denied the value of religious belief. In this radical book, Neville Symington makes the case that both traditional religion and psychoanalysis are failing because they exist apart and do not incorporate each other's value. Religion needs psychoanalysis so that it can become relevant to people's emotional lives and their most intimate relationships. Psychoanalysis needs religion so that it can contain those core spiritual values which give life meaning. But for a fertile (...) relationship both will need to relinquish excess baggage in the form of creeds, dogma and rituals which only serve to obscure the deeper values which both are attempting to express. The controversial conclusion of this fascinating study is that psychoanalysis is a spirituality-in-the-world, or a mature religion, and inseparable from acts of virtue. (shrink)

Untimely knowledge -- The great transformation : ancient and modern economics -- Before alienation : the classical critique of modern society -- An aesthetic education : the failings of modern culture -- History as nightmare : conceptions of progress and decline -- Allusion and appropriation : the rhetorical uses of antiquity.

The second volume in a trilogy advancing a systematic philosophical theology, this book explores the realities of human existence articulated by religion. Religion, writes Robert Cummings Neville, articulates existential predicaments and provides venues for ecstatic fulfillment. Like its companion volumes treating ultimacy and religion, Existence advances a systematic philosophical theology to address first-order questions found in the array of Axial Age religions. Issues arising in the major religious traditions are explored through a complex array of philosophical approaches. This second (...) volume shows religion to be the engagement of ultimate realities common to all human beings. Neville finds five problematics relative to ultimate boundary conditions of the human world: the contingency of existence, living under obligation, the quest for wholeness, engagement with others, and the meaning or value in life. Common to all human beings and hence “religion,” the engagement with realities is also historically and culturally bound, becoming simultaneously socially constructed “religions.” Readers will find Neville’s philosophical theology both bold and enlightening, running counter to dominant intellectual trends while richly informed by a long and fruitful engagement with theology, philosophy, and religion, East and West. Robert Cummings Neville is Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology and Dean Emeritus of the School of Theology at Boston University. He is the author of many books, including Realism in Religion: A Pragmatist’s Perspective; Ritual and Deference: Extending Chinese Philosophy in a Comparative Context; and Ultimates: Philosophical Theology, Volume One, all published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

Eric Voegelin's _Israel and Revelation_ is the opening volume of his monumental _Order and History,_ which traces the history of order in human society. This volume examines the ancient near eastern civilizations as a backdrop to a discussion of the historical locus of order in Israel. The drama of Israel mirrors the problems associated with the tension of existence as Israel attempted to reconcile the claims of transcendent order with those of pragmatic existence and so becomes paradigmatic. According to Voegelin, (...) what happened in Israel was a decisive step, not only in the history of Israel, but also in the human attempt to achieve order in society. The uniqueness of Israel is the fact that it was the first to create history as a form of existence, that is, the recognition by human beings of their existence under a world-transcendent God, and the evaluation of their actions as conforming to or defecting from the divine will. In the course of its history, Israel learned that redemption comes from a source beyond itself. Voegelin develops rich insights into the Old Testament by reading the text as part of the universal drama of being. His philosophy of symbolic forms has immense implications for the treatment of the biblical narrative as a symbolism that articulates the experiences of a people's order. The author initiates us into attunement with _all_ the partners in the community of being: God and humans, world and society. This may well be his most significant contribution to political thought: "the experience of divine being as world transcendent is inseparable from an understanding of man as human.". (shrink)

James Bohman’s Democracy across borders: from demos to demoi is a rich and deep text. It is also deceptively short in length in comparison to those authors he engages and compactly reconstructs. Bohman puts forward strong normative arguments for a ‘reconstructed’ ideal of transnational democracy and provides models for realizing these ideals that also aim to meet standards of practicability. Bohman articulates the minimum necessary conditions for any democratic ideal in terms of freedom from domination and freedom to initiate and (...) engage in efficacious democratic deliberation across the borders of currently existing political communities. The argument charts a novel democratic ideal in terms of the global deliberative situation that is fundamentally different from the authors he discusses in light of existing facts about globalization, institutions, and the pluralism of demoi. In these comments I will focus on two main areas. (shrink)

Margaret Monahan Hogan; Catholic Health Care Institutions: Dinosaurs Awaiting Extinction or Safe Refuge in a Culture of Death, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenic.

The papers in this book have been written over a period of fifteen years and tackle various subjects within psychoanalysis.

That Claudian imitates Virgil's Georgics in the De raptu Proserpinae is well known. Most of his allusions are restricted to Golden Age or Underworld imagery, largely from Books 1, 2, and 4. However, one imitation of the third Georgic that appears not to have been noted previously occurs at De raptu Proserpinae 1.82. The context is Claudian's famous description of Pluto enthroned: ipse rudi fultus solio nigraque uerendusmaiestate sedet: squalent inmania foedosceptra situ; sublime caput maestissima nubesasperat et dirae riget inclementia (...) formae;terrorem dolor augebat. I argue that this recalls the following passage in Virgil: optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aeuiprima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectuset labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis. Inclementia occurs some twenty times in extant classical and late antique Latin verse. Claudian himself uses it three other times. None the less, the construction of Claudian's line makes it clear that the line from the Georgics is being imitated here: the lines are metrically equivalent, and the sound-pattern and identical grammatical structure make the imitation unmistakable. (shrink)

translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul KnightThe Principle of Hope is one of the great works of the human spirit. It is a critical history of the utopian vision and a profound exploration of the possible reality of utopia. Even as the world has rejected the doctrine on which Bloch sought to base his utopia, his work still challenges us to think more insightfully about our own visions of a better world.The Principle of Hope is published in (...) three volumes: Volume 1 lays the foundations of the philosophy of process and introduces the idea of the Not-Yet-Conscious - the anticipatory element that Bloch sees as central to human thought. It also contains a remarkable account of the aesthetic interpretations of utopian "wishful images" in fairy tales, popular fiction, travel, theater, dance, and the cinema.Volume 2 presents "the outlines of a better world." It examines the utopian systems that progressive thinkers have developed in the fields of medicine, painting, opera, poetry, and ultimately, philosophy. It is nothing less than an encyclopedic account of utopian thought from the Greeks to the present.Volume 3 offers a prescription for ways in which humans can reach their proper "homeland," where social justice is coupled with an openness to change and to the future. (shrink)

Increasingly, stories are emerging about businesses that engage in ethical behaviors above and beyond mere compliance with regulations. These positive deviations along the ethical continuum provide an opportunity to explore how some companies’ business philosophy leads them to pursue an array of outcomes beyond the bottom line. This paper presents a case study of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the leading ethical company in the United States as rated by Forbes magazine, exploring the company culture and operating philosophy from a perspective (...) of conscientious capitalism. The three underlying assumptions of conscientious capitalism are: (1) interconnectedness between individuals, businesses, and global society; (2) wealth as a holistically understood state rather than solely a financial status; and (3) relevant time spanning multiple generations. Implications are offered for commerce, business practitioners, and educators. (shrink)

Despite their ethical intentions, ethically minded consumers rarely purchase ethical products (Auger and Devinney: 2007, Journal of Business Ethics76, 361–383). This intentions–behaviour gap is important to researchers and industry, yet poorly understood (Belk et al.: 2005, Consumption, Markets and Culture8(3), 275–289). In order to push the understanding of ethical consumption forward, we draw on what is known about the intention–behaviour gap from the social psychology and consumer behaviour literatures and apply these insights to ethical consumerism. We bring together three separate (...) insights – implementation intentions (Gollwitzer: 1999, American Psychologist54(7), 493–503), actual behavioural control (ABC) (Ajzen and Madden: 1986, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology22, 453–474; Sheeran et al.: 2003, Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 393–410) and situational context (SC) (Belk: 1975, Journal of Consumer Research2, 157–164) – to construct an integrated, holistic conceptual model of the intention–behaviour gap of ethically minded consumers. This holistic conceptual model addresses significant limitations within the ethical consumerism literature, and moves the understanding of ethical consumer behaviour forward. Further, the operationalisation of this model offers insight and strategic direction for marketing managers attempting to bridge the intention–behaviour gap of the ethically minded consumer. (shrink)

Written by an experienced author with a strong background in both History and Earth Sciences, this text explores the philosophic implications of the dramatic ...

First published in Switzerland in 1935 and now available for the first time in English translation, _Heritage of Our Times_ is a bold work of cultural criticism by a major twentieth-century German philosopher. Recalling work by Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School, Ernst Bloch's study of everyday life and politics during the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is a brilliant historical analysis of the cultural conditions leading to German fascism. A half-century later, Bloch's prescient meditations on culture and politics still (...) retain their explosive power and are certain to provoke controversy and discussion among cultural critics, philosophers, social theorists, and historians. In their Introduction, the translators contextualize the book within the political and intellectual tendencies of the period and Bloch's other work. (shrink)

Interviews originally broadcast on the radio program, Directions, with additional material "which could not be broadcast because of time restraints on radio"--Back cover.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gothicism and Early Modern Historical EthnographyKristoffer NevilleGothicism: Problems and PossibilitiesEarly-modern Gothicism, or self-identification with the Gothic peoples described by classical authors, has usually been considered a Scandinavian, and particularly Swedish, affair. Particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Swedish court and universities insisted militantly that the kingdom was the Gothic homeland, and this has fostered an assumption that Gothicism represents a kind of embryonic nationalism. This interpretation was (...) almost inevitable given the circumstances of modern interest in the phenomenon. Scandinavian scholars were the first to pick up the Gothic thread in the earlier twentieth century, and Swedes in particular have dominated the literature on Gothicism. At least in the early years, this may be [End Page 213] related to a general trend to interpret the past in terms of a relatively inflexible, modern concept of nation. These earlier studies accordingly relied largely on the same, mostly Swedish, sources. Later work has generally not expanded the framework of the discourse, however.1 A number of important early modern texts that show the much broader appeal of Gothicism are not accounted for in the standard narrative of the rise of the phenomenon in the early modern period. I will show that the Scandinavian interpretation has been allowed to overshadow a much broader Gothic tradition that encompassed a broad part of Europe, including the German lands and Spain. Gothicism has thus been reduced to just one aspect of its original scope, and the scholarly nuances and historical jockeying that shaped the narrative have largely been lost. This reduction has had consequences not only for the familiar version of the story, largely derived from Swedish texts, but also for our understanding of history writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.The Gothicism debate may be unique in its breadth and in the intensity of interest that it elicited. It is also remarkable for the variety of approaches to historical writing that scholars applied as each tried to develop a more impregnable argument than the last. Linguistic, geographical, archaeological, antiquarian, and textual methods intersected freely, inviting shifting and overlapping versions of the Gothic narrative that sometimes trace the linguistic legacy of the tribe, sometimes the ethnic legacy, and sometimes bind the two together. All of these narratives were basically concerned with the antiquity of the Goths and their legacy in early modern Europe. The implications of this were different for various regions and rulers, but most wanted to claim for themselves the strength, prestige, and antiquity of the tribe that toppled the Roman Empire, thus enhancing their own often dubious historical legitimacy. [End Page 214]This debate often took a polemical character, particularly in the political sphere, where there were fierce disputes over which region was the true homeland of the tribe, and thus which area (or people or ruling dynasty) could claim the greatest honor from their exploits and claim to be their most direct descendants. But there was also a very clear corollary to this contentious discourse. As scholars from across a wide area produced mountains of evidence pointing to the Gothic origins of their own regions, it became possible to think of Gothic origins not only in terms of difference—which kingdom, dynasty, or geographic region could claim the greatest antiquity and eminence—but also in terms of shared history and common identity across political, geographical, and linguistic boundaries. In general, the polemic was restricted to the origins of the Goths. Many writers seem to have accepted that the Gothic lands cumulatively formed a sort of historical unity that was lost through later political divisions, but which could still be traced through other means. Particularly in the Holy Roman Empire—a largely political boundary encompassing many smaller states ruled by famously fractious princes of different confessions and languages—the more conceptual notion of deep-seated Gothic origins opened the way for a different alignment of identity both within and without the boundaries of the Empire, and especially with Scandinavia, which contributed such rich arguments to the debate.There are several significant problems in a study of the early-modern view of the Goths beyond the historiographical ones outlined above. They were widely associated with other tribes... (shrink)

The advent of integration as a feature of contemporary medical curricula can be seen as an advantage for the medical humanities in that it provides a clear implementation strategy for the inclusion of medical humanities content and/or perspectives, while also making its relevance to medical education more apparent. This paper discusses an example of integration of humanities content into a graduate medical course, raises questions about the desirability of an exclusively integrated approach, and argues for the value of retaining a (...) discrete and coherent disciplinary presence for the medical humanities in medical curricula. (shrink)

This article introduces the Chinese conception of wisdom by a focus mainly on the famous discussion in Mencius. It emphasizes that everything is a change, that changes toward wisdom are natural (or in the case of Xunzi, humane), and that people are always changing toward or away from what is wise. In contrast to much Western thought, wisdom is a response to external things, not to an internal marker. Moreover, it is nearly always a commentary on conjoint actions as in (...) a game, or ritual. The essay continues some strands of Chinese thinking about wisdom through Xunzi and up to Zhu Xi. My position as a Westerner is commented on at the end. (shrink)