In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Authorship Redux:On Some Recent and Not-So-Recent Work in Literary TheoryPaisley LivingstonThe Empty Cage: Inquiry into the Mysterious Disappearance of the Author, by Carla Benedetti, translated by William J. Hartley, 232 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005, $52.50Literature, Theory, and Common Sense, by Antoine Compagnon, translated by Carol Cosman, 224 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, $41.00The Death and Resurrection of the Author?, edited by William Irwin, 237 pp. Westport, (...) Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002, $32.95.Did Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, or other "poststructuralist" theorists writing in the wake of May '68 come up with any good ideas about authorship and related topics in the philosophy of literature? The three volumes under review have a common point of departure in that broad question, but offer a number of contrasting responses to it. In what follows I describe and assess some of the various perspectives on offer in these 700 or so pages. The short answer to my initial question comes at the end.Carla Benedetti's book was first published in 1999 in Milan as L'ombra lunga dell'autore: Indagine su una figura cancellata. Professor of Italian and Theory of Literature at the University of Pisa, and Recurrent Visiting Professor at NYU, she clearly shares some of Foucault's basic assumptions about authorship: "It is the reader or viewer who transforms the artist's selections, which in themselves may even be random or compelled, into subjective choices endowed with intentionality: that intentionality [End Page 191] that is capable of providing meaning and artistic value to what we are viewing or reading" (p. 12). Benedetti contends that such attributions are a necessary part of the literary and artistic discursive formation of modernity, and she persuasively demonstrates that the author has not "disappeared," in spite of what Barthes and others may have thought or wished.According to Benedetti, authorialism, or the thesis that artistic value can only derive from original authorship, is the product of a modern ideology. She contends that a self-reflexive, late modernist train of thought generates a highly problematic relation to authorship and such related notions as genius, novelty, and creativity. More specifically, Benedetti finds a Batesonian double bind or paradoxical injunction in modernity's incessant demand for an extreme form of novelty. As soon as something innovative has been done, yet another innovation is desired. Not only does it become harder and harder to make a radically new move in the game, but the entire pursuit appears to be hopeless. Although Benedetti does not say so, the key thought was neatly captured by Oscar Wilde when he quipped: "Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly." To be old-fashioned is abhorrent, yet to try to obey the injunction to be "absolutely modern" is to risk becoming old-fashioned in a hurry, so failure seems inevitable. One of the constitutive myths of late modernity has it, then, that artistic activity must be recognized as authorless because it is impossible to create some sort of fundamentally novel work of lasting value. For those in the grip of this unsound thought, it seems necessary to conclude that the writer-no-longer-author must be recognized as an essentially uncreative epigone. Benedetti comments rather sweepingly, "All that poststructuralist thought speaks of, in its multifarious elaborations, is merely our supposed irreversible impossibility to create" (p. 202). She links Derrida's rejection of the possibility of decisive epistemological "ruptures" to the same late modernist mythology.Benedetti concludes her book by saying that the late modernist mythology conflates one kind of novelty with the new in general. This distinction sounds promising, but is not developed any further, and this reader was left wondering how the putative crippling error of a vast artistic dispensation could be revealed by means of a distinction between two kinds of newness. I also wonder whether her diagnosis probes deeply enough into the sources and nature of the modish sensibility that leads perversely to the Last Year in Marienbad syndrome. Not everyone is equally interested in trying to be dazzlingly innovative and fashionable; some [End Page 192] who do... (shrink)

1. Introduction. It is an amazing thing that, unlike pebbles, clouds and stars, the smallest building stones of Nature—the electrons, the protons and the neutrons—are all completely uniform. There seems to be a necessity in Nature for systems of a very special form, and one can wonder now what kind of necessity this is. I believe that this can only be a mathematical necessity, that consequently the principle of Nature is a mathematical one. How else could Nature obey the mathematical (...) laws of physics if it were not because of her own principle? It can be argued that these mathematical laws, like Newtonian mechanics, the classical theory of electromagnetism and the quantum theory of the electron are all some form of beginner's luck, and that continued investigation will reveal Nature as more and more mysterious and irrational. If that were true, one might as well give up the pursuit of physics completely! But on one hand modern physics has discovered what we believe to be the elementary particles of the material world, and on the other hand it comes out that at least a part of these elementary forms obey mathematic laws to a very high degree of accuracy. (shrink)

Experiments have suggested that umbilical cord blood stem cells can be used to prevent diseases such as atherosclerosis. This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding such usage such as the uncertainty that individuals at risk of a disease will actually get the disease; issues related to research with children; safety issues; from where these stem cells would be obtained; and whether these usages should be considered as therapies or as physical enhancements.

The Greek polis has been arousing interest as a subject for study for a long time, but recent approaches have shown that it is a subject on which there are still important questions to be asked and worthwhile issues to be explored. This book contains a selection of essays which embody the results of the latest research. Beyond the historical development of the Greek polis , the contributors ask questions about the civic institutions of ancient Greece as a whole and (...) their relationships to each other. Questions of power or the significance of a written code of law are discussed as well as the nature of Greek overseas settlements. Development of the Greek Polis presents up-to-date research and asks up-to-date questions on various aspects of an important topic. (shrink)

He is the darling of naturalism or the bogeyman of scepticism, a friend to virtue or an unwitting party to incipient nihilism. He is politically conservative, or a liberator from old views. He is a fideist, an advocate of faith over reason, or a precursor of Richard Dawkins.

Although Freud makes only occasional, brief references to China and Chinese culture in his works, for almost a hundred years many leading Chinese intellectuals have studied and appropriated various Freudian theories. However, whilst some features of Freud’s views have been warmly embraced from the start and appreciated for their various explanatory and therapeutic values, other aspects have been vigorously criticized as implausible or inapplicable to the Chinese context. This book explores the history, reception, and use of Freud and his theories (...) in China, and makes an original and substantial contribution to our understanding of the Chinese people and their culture as well as to our appreciation of western attempts to understand the people and culture of China. The essays are organised around three key areas of research. First, it examines the historical background concerning the China-Freud connection in the 20thcentury, before going on to use reconstructed Freudian theories in order to provide a modernist critique of Chinese culture. Finally, the book deploys traditional Chinese thought in order to challenge various aspects of the Freudian project. Both Freudianism’s universal appeal and its cultural particularity are in full display throughout the book. At the same time, the allure of Chinese cultural and literary expressions, both in terms of their commonality with other cultures and their distinctive characteristics, are also scrutinized. This collection of essays will be welcomed by those interested in early modern and contemporary China, as well as the work and influence of Freud. It will also be of great interest to students and scholars of psychology, psychoanalysis, literature, philosophy, religion, and cultural studies more generally. (shrink)

On Buddhist metaphsical approach to suffering; a study, with some reference to George Grimm's works.

Between 1787, and the end of his life in 1832, Bentham turned his attention to the development and application of economic ideas and principles within the general structure of his legislative project. For seventeen years this interest was manifested through a number of books and pamphlets, most of which remained in manuscript form, that develop a distinctive approach to economic questions. Although Bentham was influenced by Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he (...) neither adopted a Smithian vocabulary for addressing questions of economic principle and policy, nor did he accept many of the distinctive features of Smith's economic theory. One consequence of this was that Bentham played almost no part in the development of the emerging science of political economy in the early nineteenth century. The standard histories of economics all emphasize how little he contributed to the mainstream of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century debate by concentrating attention on his utilitarianism and the psychology of hedonism on which it is premised. Others have argued that the calculating nature of his theory of practical reason reduced the whole legislative project to a crude attempt to apply economics to all aspects of social and political life. Put at its simplest this argument amounts to the erroneous claim that Bentham's science of legislation is reducible to the science of political economy. A different but equally dangerous error would be to argue that because Bentham's conception of the science of legislation comprehends all the basic forms of social relationships, there can be no science of political economy as there is no autonomous sphere of activity governed by the principles of economics. This approach is no doubt attractive from an historical point of view given that the major premise of this argument is true, and that many of Bentham's ‘economic’ arguments are couched in terms of his theory of legislation. Yet it fails to account for the undoubted importance of political economy within Bentham's writings, not just on finance, economic policy, colonies and preventive police, but also in other aspects of his utilitarian public policy such as prison reform, pauper management, and even constitutional reform. All of these works reflect a conception of political economy in its broadest terms. However, this conception of political economy differs in many respects from that of Bentham's contemporaries, and for this reason Bentham's distinctive approach to problems of economics and political economy has largely been misunderstood. (shrink)

Núñez and colleagues (2019) question whether cognitive science still exists “as a coherent academic field with a well‐defined and cohesive interdisciplinary research program.” This worry may be premature on two grounds. First, we are not convinced that the Lakatosian criterion of coalescence around a core framework is the best standard for judging whether a field is well‐defined and productive. Second, although we acknowledge that cognitive science is not as visible as we would like, we doubt that this low profile accurately (...) reflects the state of actual research and teaching programs based on the cognitive science approach. (shrink)

It is the impression of neurologists who deal with cancer patients that the incidence of neurologic complications of cancer is increasing (Posner 1995). ...

In his paper ‘Has the Ontological Argument Been Refuted?’, 97–110) William F. Vallicella argues that my attempt to show that the Ontological Argument begs the question is unsuccessful. 1 I believe he is wrong about this, but before endeavouring to vindicate my position I must first make clear what precisely is the point at issue between us. The Ontological Argument is not a single argument, but a family of arguments. Newly devised formulations of the argument are frequently put forward by (...) philosophers in an effort to avoid difficulties that have been pointed out in previous versions. As a consequence there is no possibility of a conclusive proof that every form of the argument embodies the same fallacy. Nevertheless, one can, I believe, prove that all the standard versions of the argument embody a certain fallacy and that, given the nature of the argument, it is therefore unlikely that the argument can be formulated in such a way as to avoid this difficulty. What I tried to show in my paper is that the six best-known versions of the argument all beg the question and that they do so at the same point in the argument, namely when it is asserted that it is possible that an absolutely perfect being exists. It is difficult to see how an ontological argument could be formulated without including this claim as one of its premises, since the distinguishing badge of the argument is the inference from the possibility of an absolutely perfect being to its actuality. It must be unlikely then, if my criticism of these six versions is correct, that there is any way of formulating the argument that avoids this fallacy. (shrink)

This new edition offers expanded selections from the works of Kongzi, Mengzi, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi ; two new works, the dialogues _Robber Zhi_ and _White Horse_; a concise general introduction; brief introductions to, and selective bibliographies for, each work; and four appendices that shed light on important figures, periods, texts, and terms in Chinese thought.

Núñez and colleagues (2019) question whether cognitive science still exists “as a coherent academic field with a well‐defined and cohesive interdisciplinary research program.” This worry may be premature on two grounds. First, we are not convinced that the Lakatosian criterion of coalescence around a core framework is the best standard for judging whether a field is well‐defined and productive. Second, although we acknowledge that cognitive science is not as visible as we would like, we doubt that this low profile accurately (...) reflects the state of actual research and teaching programs based on the cognitive science approach. (shrink)