The theologies of the saints of Hans Urs Von Balthasar and Karl Rahner are grounded in the theologians' distinct articulations of the relationship between nature and grace, Rahner's shaped by his response to the Nouvelle Théologie and Von Balthasar's influenced by his engagement with Henri De Lubac and Karl Barth. It is a generalization, but one useful for drawing contrasts, that for Rahner the saints are mediators of the Mediator and that for Von Balthasar they are revealers of the Revealer. (...) While the theologies can be reconciled, a richer understanding of the function of saints can emerge by maintaining the contrasts. The symbolic capacity of saints in Rahner's thought and the saints' exemplary abandonment to personal mission in Von Balthasar's thought are each an emphasis valuable in communicating saints' instructional and efficacious presence for others in the ecclesial Body. (shrink)

i am honored to have the opportunity to think with Patricia Hill Collins about community as a political construct. Collins has argued that, like concepts of family and love, community often has been considered to be part of a nonpolitical sphere, something personal and private even as it is not individualistic. As feminists have shown, however, the personal is political, and as Collins urges, an intersectional understanding of the political can and also should apply to the concept of community. (...) In Collins's words, "instead of being a natural, apolitical space, or even an empty category that can be used for political purposes, the construct of community may lie at the heart of politics itself". The concept of... (shrink)

Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies is one of the most important and neglected works advocating the establishment of women's academies. Its reception was so controversial that Astell responded with a lengthy sequel, also in this volume. The cause of great notoriety, Astell's Proposal was imitated by Defoe in his "An Academy for Women," parodied in the Tatler, satirized on the stage, plagiarized by Bishop Berkeley, and later mocked by Gilbert and Sullivan in Princess Ida.

Abstract:This essay suggests that the word decolonial offers analytic power for feminist historians of women. As a category, it creates interpretive space for female experience beyond the elite/subaltern binary, where arguably most women live and work in the modern period. As a reading practice, the decolonial fosters intellectual awareness of social and intellectual practices that neither address the state, as in “anti-imperialism,” nor proffer counter nationalism or counter racialization as responses to coloniality. Offering examples from the archive, the media, and (...) teaching, this essay describes the decolonial as a productive site of women's agency in domains all too easily overlooked when historians focus on the conventional categories of state and nation. (shrink)

A comprehensive look at fictive letters in Greek literature from Homer to Philostratus, first published in 2001. It includes both embedded epistolary narratives in a variety of genres, and works consisting solely of letters, such as the pseudonymous letter collections and the invented letters of the Second Sophistic. The book challenges the notion that Ovid 'invented' the fictional letter form in his Heroides and considers a wealth of Greek antecedents for the later European epistolary novel tradition. Epistolary technique always problematizes (...) the boundaries between fictionality and reality. Based on a process of selection and self-censorship, the letter is a construction, not a reflection, of reality. The author bypasses the question of sincerity for a close look at epistolary self-representation, the function of the letter form and the nature of the relationship between writer and reader in a wide range of ancient Greek texts. (shrink)

A medical information commons is a networked data environment utilized for research and clinical applications. At three deliberations across the U.S., we engaged 75 adults in two-day facilitated discussions on the ethical and social issues inherent to sharing data with an MIC. Deliberants made recommendations regarding opt-in consent, transparent data policies, public representation on MIC governing boards, and strict data security and privacy protection. Community engagement is critical to earning the public's trust.

Studies on informed consent to medical research conducted in low or middle-income settings have increased, including empirical investigations of consent to genetic research. We investigated voluntary participation and comprehension of informed consent among women involved in a genetic epidemiological study on breast cancer in an urban setting of Nigeria comparing women in the case and control groups.

The notion of “cultural competency” in healthcare has gained currency in recent years. Health professionals are expected to be sensitive to the cultural backgrounds and language of their patients. Courses on cultural competency are now routinely offered to physicians, nurses, and others working in health fields. Although the rhetoric of cultural competency has been applied to clinical contexts, little attention has been given to its applicability in health research generally or, more specifically, in international health research. In this paper, I (...) briefly explore the relevance and limitations of cultural competency for informed consent to international health research, particularly in the context of low-resource settings. (shrink)

The severe shortage of organs for transplantation and the continual reluctance of the public to voluntarily donate has prompted consideration of alternative strategies for organ procurement. This paper explores the development of market approaches for procuring human organs for transplantation and considers the social and moral implications of organ donation as both a gift of life and a commodity exchange. The problematic and paradoxical articulation of individual autonomy in relation to property rights and marketing human body parts is addressed. We (...) argue that beliefs about proprietorship over human body parts and the capacity to provide consent for organ donation are culturally constructed. We contend that the political and economic framework of biomedicine, in western and non-western nations, influences access to transplantation technology and shapes the form and development of specific market approaches. Finally, we suggest that marketing approaches for organ procurement are and will be negotiated within cultural parameters constrained by several factors: beliefs about the physical body and personhood, religious traditions, economic conditions, and the availability of technological resources. (shrink)

Human Specialization in Design and Technology explores emerging trends in learning and training-standardization, customization, personalization-with a unique focus on human needs and conditions. Analyzing evidence from current academic research as well as the popular press, this concise volume defines and examines the trajectory of instructional design and technologies toward more human-centered and specialized products, services, processes, environments, and systems. Examples from education, healthcare, business, and other sectors offer real-world demonstrations for scholars and graduate students of educational technology, instructional design, ICT, (...) and business development. (shrink)

Callimachus' Victoria Berenices has received a good deal of scholarly attention since its first publication in 1976, both from textual critics, attempting to clarify uncertain readings, and from specialists in Latin poetry, eager to trace allusions to Callimachus in Vergil, Statius, or Ovid. While the search for Callimachean influence on the later texts has proved quite fruitful, it opens up the possibility of reading certain issues inappropriately backwards into the Hellenistic material. The discovery of parallels may lead to an assumption (...) of complete agreement that misrepresents the earlier, more fragmentary text. I would like to consider one particular incident in the Victoria Berenices that has fallen prey to this fate, namely the reception of Heracles by the farmer Molorcus. (shrink)

Richard C. Atkinson’s eight-year tenure as president of the University of California reflected the major issues facing California itself: the state’s emergence as the world’s leading knowledge-based economy and the rapidly expanding size and diversity of its population. As this selection of President Atkinson’s speeches and papers reveals, his administration was marked by innovative approaches that deliberately shaped U.C.’s role in this changing California. These writings tell the story of the national controversy over the SAT and Atkinson’s successful challenge to (...) the dominance of the seventy-five-year-old college entrance examination. They also highlight other issues with national significance: U.C.’s experiments with race-neutral admissions programs; the challenges facing academic libraries and the University’s pioneering activities with the California Digital Library; and the University’s involvement in new paradigms of industry-university research. Together, these speeches and papers open a window on an eventful period in the history of the nation’s leading public research university and the history of American higher education. (shrink)

Callimachus' Victoria Berenices has received a good deal of scholarly attention since its first publication in 1976, both from textual critics, attempting to clarify uncertain readings, and from specialists in Latin poetry, eager to trace allusions to Callimachus in Vergil, Statius, or Ovid. While the search for Callimachean influence on the later texts has proved quite fruitful, it opens up the possibility of reading certain issues inappropriately backwards into the Hellenistic material. The discovery of parallels may lead to an assumption (...) of complete agreement that misrepresents the earlier, more fragmentary text. I would like to consider one particular incident in the Victoria Berenices that has fallen prey to this fate, namely the reception of Heracles by the farmer Molorcus. (shrink)

This thesis is an examination of Frege's logicism, and of a number of objections which are widely viewed as refutations of the logicist thesis. In the view offered here, logicism is designed to provide answers to two questions: that of the nature of arithmetical truth, and that of the source of arithmetical knowledge. ;The first objection dealt with here is the view that logicism is not an epistemologically significant thesis, due to the fact that the epistemological status of logic itself (...) is not well understood. I argue to the contrary that on Frege's conception of logic, logicism is of clear epistemological importance. ;The second objection examined is the claim that Godel's first incompleteness theorem falsifies logicism. I argue that the incompleteness theorem has no impact on logicism unless the logicist is compelled to hold that logic is recursively enumerable. I argue, further, that there is no reason to impose this requirement on logicism. ;The third objection concerns Russell's paradox. I argue that the paradox is devastating to Frege's conception of numbers, but not to his logicist project. I suggest that the appropriate course for a post-Fregean logicist to follow is one which divorces itself from Frege's platonism. ;The conclusion of this thesis is that logicism has of late been too easily dismissed. Though several critical aspects of Frege's logicism must be altered in light of recent results, the central Fregean thesis is still an important and promising view about the nature of arithmetic and arithmetical knowledge. (shrink)

Faculty in a large, urban school of engineering designed a longitudinal study to assess the critical thinking skills of undergraduate students as they progressed through the engineering program. The Paul-Elder critical thinking framework was used to design course assignments and develop a holistic assessment rubric. This paper presents the analysis of the freshman course artifacts and associated faculty scoring sessions for all three cohorts. A total of 649 first semester freshman students at least 18 years old agreed to participate in (...) the study. The majority were white males with a mean high school grade point average of 3.73, ACT composite score of 28.33, and final freshman engineering course grade of 3.57. There was a statistically significant positive relationship between the freshman course artifacts and the faculty scores. Data from the study are being used to enhance the critical thinking experiences for undergraduate engineering students. (shrink)

This paper considers the ethical implications of applying three major ethical theories to the memory structure of an artificial companion that might have different embodiments such as a physical robot or a graphical character on a hand-held device. We start by proposing an ethical memory model and then make use of an action-centric framework to evaluate its ethical implications. The case that we discuss is that of digital artefacts that autonomously record and store user data, where this data are used (...) as a resource for future interaction with users. (shrink)

Dunayevskaya is a unique thinker for the twentieth century. She combines an involvement in freedom struggles with a very deep commitment to philosophical ideas and exploration. She served as secretary to Leon Trotsky in 1937–38, but then broke with him in 1939 during the Hitler-Stalin pact and developed a very sophisticated analysis of state capitalism. “She argued that Roosevelt’s New Deal, Hitler’s Germany, and especially Stalin’s Russia represented varieties of a new stage of global capitalism”. This volume presents her life-long (...) thinking, showing how influential her reading of Hegel was for her interpretation of how humanity works to make itself free. She used Marx and Hegel to think through how the movement of negation promotes human freedom. She explored “the positive within the negative, to express philosophically the yearning of women, children, and men to be whole human beings. (shrink)

While sympathetic to Tilley’s call for a practical philosophy of religion, I raise three questions: Does Tilley think that one can do philosophy of religion from a position other than that of a committed believer? Does Tilley’s description of the ordinary believer disburden most people from doubt and answerability? Does Tilley’s description of the role of the theologian place too much trust in the theologian? I suggest that some insights from contemporary phenomenology and hermeneutics would lead to a clearer understanding (...) of the role that philosophy of religion can play in the development of a practical philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege famously rejects the methodology for consistency and independence proofs offered by David Hilbert in the latter's Foundations of Geometry. The present essay defends against recent criticism the view that this rejection turns on Frege's understanding of logical entailment, on which the entailment relation is sensitive to the contents of non-logical terminology. The goals are (a) to clarify further Frege's understanding of logic and of the role of conceptual analysis in logical investigation, and (b) to point out the extent (...) to which his understanding of logic differs importantly from that of the model-theoretic tradition that grows out of Hilbert's work. (shrink)

This paper attempts to determine what the.Characteristics of post-modernity, found within the work process, are, based on reflections on Latin America. In order to do this we look at post-modernity not as a context in and of itself, but as characteristics superimposed on these new forms of l..