The process by which auditors consider fraud risk in assessing management’s motivation and character remains under-addressed. This is problematic given the rising tide of narcissism, as well as recent research documenting that both self- and other-perceptions of narcissism influence an array of judgments. While a skeptical attitude is fundamental to the auditor’s gatekeeper role, it remains unclear how auditors form and act on perceptions of client narcissism. With a large sample of experienced accountants as participants, we leverage insights from current (...) narcissism and perceiver effects research to predict (and find) that auditor skepticism responds in a divergent manner to both the auditor’s (1) own antagonistic versus agentic narcissism and (2) perceptions of the client’s antagonistic and agentic narcissism. We discuss the observed opposing behavioral externalities related to these distinct forms of grandiose narcissism, particularly in dynamic interactions between clients and auditors. (shrink)

Can it make sense for someone who appreciates the explanatory power of modern science to continue believing in a traditional religious account of the ultimate nature and purpose of our universe?

Christopher Southgate has made important contributions to theodicy and the theory of divine action in light of the contingency in evolution and the suffering of creation. What happens then when one thinks through the implications of contingency for Christology? One can admit that aesthetic and moral judgments are products of a contingent history and yet affirm that they really are valid. Similarly, we argue, one can acknowledge the contingency of Jesus’ existence, actions, and subsequent impact and still maintain that his (...) will was uniquely united with the divine will. Following a critical engagement with the recent work of Keith Ward, we argue that a high Christology is compatible with the actual contingencies of evolutionary and social history, without the necessity of interventionist divine action. (shrink)

We propose a causal model theory to explain asymmetries in judgments of the intentionality of a foreseen side-effect that is either negative or positive (Knobe, 2003). The theory is implemented as a Bayesian network relating types of mental states, actions, and consequences that integrates previous hypotheses. It appeals to two inferential routes to judgment about the intentionality of someone else's action: bottom-up from action to desire and top-down from character and disposition. Support for the theory comes from three experiments that (...) test the prediction that bottom-up inference should occur only when the actor's primary objective is known. The model fits intentionality judgments reasonably well with no free parameters. (shrink)

We highlight one way in which Jones & Love (J&L) misconstrue the Bayesian program: Bayesian models do not represent a rejection of mechanism. This mischaracterization obscures the valid criticisms in their article. We conclude that computational-level Bayesian modeling should not be rejected or discouraged a priori, but should be held to the same empirical standards as other models.

The period 1944-1950 witnessed the successful reconstruction of the Belgian Socialist Party. Despite some modifications of structure and leadership personnel, the party retained many of its pre-war characteristics. There was no significant modernization of doctrine. In particular, its role as a party of government was accentuated. The PSB played amajor role in increasing social welfare programs and restoring the Belgian economy, but made few structural reforms. Despite opposition to a division of the world into blocs, it was eventually forced into (...) the American camp. The PSB's main political accomplishment was preventing the return to the throne of Leopold. By the end of this period, the PSB had largely become a party of the status quo. (shrink)

The inability of reformist socialism to cape with the rise of fascism and the Great Depression led to a significant challenge by neo-socialists.In Belgium, this challenge was led by De Man and Spaak. In 1933, the POB accepted De Man's Plan as its program of action; in 1935 it entered into the Van Zeeland government. Although in many ways, theneos showed greater understanding of the nature of advanced capitalist society than the orthodox reformists, they displayed an alarming tendency to try (...) to preempt fascism by emulating certain fascist positions.De Man and Spaak broke with socialist internationalism and collective security. De Man became convinced of the bankruptcy of democratic institutions and of the democratic states. This attitude ultimately led him from neutralism to collaboration, in the belief that fascism was indeed the wave of the future. (shrink)

Philip Stevens; Political Education and Political Teachers, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 75–83, https://doi.org/10.

BackgroundResponsive neurostimulation has been utilized as a treatment for intractable epilepsy. The RNS System delivers stimulation in response to detected abnormal activity, via leads covering the seizure foci, in response to detections of predefined epileptiform activity with the goal of decreasing seizure frequency and severity. While thalamic leads are often implanted in combination with cortical strip leads, implantation and stimulation with bilateral thalamic leads alone is less common, and the ability to detect electrographic seizures using RNS System thalamic leads is (...) uncertain.ObjectiveThe present study retrospectively evaluated fourteen patients with RNS System depth leads implanted in the thalamus, with or without concomitant implantation of cortical strip leads, to determine the ability to detect electrographic seizures in the thalamus. Detailed patient presentations and lead trajectories were reviewed alongside electroencephalographic analyses.ResultsAnterior nucleus thalamic leads, whether bilateral or unilateral and combined with a cortical strip lead, successfully detected and terminated epileptiform activity, as demonstrated by Cases 2 and 3. Similarly, bilateral centromedian thalamic leads or a combination of one centromedian thalamic alongside a cortical strip lead also demonstrated the ability to detect electrographic seizures as seen in Cases 6 and 9. Bilateral pulvinar leads likewise produced reliable seizure detection in Patient 14. Detections of electrographic seizures in thalamic nuclei did not appear to be affected by whether the patient was pediatric or adult at the time of RNS System implantation. Sole thalamic leads paralleled the combination of thalamic and cortical strip leads in terms of preventing the propagation of electrographic seizures.ConclusionThalamic nuclei present a promising target for detection and stimulation via the RNS System for seizures with multifocal or generalized onsets. These areas provide a modifiable, reversible therapeutic option for patients who are not candidates for surgical resection or ablation. (shrink)

This essay introduces a Common Knowledge symposium on the relationship between texts (for instance, musical scores or dramatic scripts) and performance in the arts by drawing out its implications for the interpretation of publicly consequential texts (such as constitutions, legal statutes, and canon law). Arguing that judges and clerics could learn much from studying the work of Philip Gossett and other practitioners of textual criticism in the arts, the essay suggests that a wider array of choices exists for legal (...) interpretation than the usual alternative between originalism or literalism, on the one hand, and intuitionism, on the other hand. Contributions to the symposium (titled “Between Text and Performance”) emphasize what Roger Moseley calls “improvisatory fluency in historical idioms,” and this introduction recommends that jurists develop for the law the kind of “ear” that musicians must have when a score invites or demands improvisation. (shrink)

The past several decades have exhibited vertiginous change, surprising novelties, and upheaval in an era marked by technological revolution and the global restructuring of capitalism.1 This "great transformation," comparable in scope to the shifts produced by the Industrial Revolution, is moving the world into a postindustrial, infotainment, and biotech mode of global capitalism, organized around new information, communications, and genetic technologies. The scientific-technological-economic revolutions of the era and spread of the global economy are providing new financial opportunities, openings for political (...) amelioration, and a wealth of ingenious products and technologies that might improve the human condition. Yet these developments are accompanied by explosive conflict, crisis, and even catastrophe. The post-September 11 world reveals the contradictory dialectic of globalization in which the wide-reaching circulation of people, technology, media, and ideologies can have destructive as well as beneficial consequences. Hence, the turbulent transmutations of the contemporary situation are highly contradictory and ambiguous, with both hopeful and threatening features being played out on political, economic, social, and cultural fronts. (shrink)

Overview * Part I: Introduction * Philip Appleman, Darwin: On Changing the Mind * Part II: Darwin’s Life * Ernst Mayr, Who Is Darwin? * Part III: Scientific Thought: Just before Darwin * Sir Gavin de Beer, Biology before the Beagle * Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population * William Paley, Natural Theology * Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet Lamarck, Zoological Philisophy * Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology * John Herschell, The Study of Natural (...) Philosophy * William Whewell, Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology * Alfred Russel Wallace, On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type * Part IV: Selections from Darwin’s Work * The Voyage of the Beagle * o Chapter I. St. Jago-Cape de Verd Island o Chapter XVII. Galapagos Archipelago * On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; and On the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection * o I. Extract from an unpublished Work on Species, by C. Darwin, Esq.... o II.of Letter from C. Darwin, Esq., to Prof. Asa Gray, Boston, U.S., dated Down, September 5th, 1857 * An Historical Sketch of the Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species, previously to the : Publication of This Work The Origin of Species * o Introduction o Chapter I. Variation under Domestication o Chapter II. Variation under Nature o Chapter III. Struggle for Existence o Chapter IV. Natural Selection o Chapter VI. Difficulties on Theory o Chapter IX. On the Imperfections of the Geological Record o Chapter XIII. Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology: Rudimentary Organs o Chapter XIV. Recapitulation and Conclusion * The Descent of Man * o Introduction o Chapter I. The Evidence of the Descent of Man from Some Lower Form o Chapter II. On the Manner of Development of Man from Some Lower Form o Chapter III. Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals o Chapter VI. On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man o Chapter VIII. Principles of Sexual Selection o Chapter XIX. Secondary Sexual Characters of Man o Chapter XX. Secondary Sexual Characters of Man-continued o Chapter XXI. General Summary and Conclusion * Part V: Darwin’s Influence on Science * THE VICTORIAN OPPOSITION TO DARWIN * o David L. Hull, Darwin and His Critics o Adam Sedgwick, Objections to Mr. Darwin’s Theory of the Origin of Species o Sir Richard Owen, Darwin on the Origin of Species o Fleeming Jenkin, Review of the Origin of Species * VICTORIAN SUPPORTERS OF DARWIN * o Joseph Dalton Hooker, Flora Tasmaniae o Thomas Henry Huxley, On the Relations of Man to the Lowe Animals o Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology o Alfred Russel Wallace, The Debt of Science to Darwin * DARWIN AND THE SHAPING OF MODERN SCIENCE * o Scientific Method in Evolution o National Academy of Sciences, Evolution and the Nature of Science o Richard Dawkins, Explaining the Very Improbable o Lewis Thomas, On the Uncertainty of Science o Noretta Koetge, Postmodernisms and the Problem of Scientific Literary o Richard Dawkins, Science and Sensibility o The Neo-Darwinian Synthesis o Peter Bowler, The Evolutionary Synthesis o The Human Genealogy o Adam Kuper, The Chosen Primate o Ian Tattersall, Out of Africa Again... and Again? o Stephen Jay Gould, The Human Difference o Punctuated Equilibrium o Stephen Jay Gould, [On Punctuated Equilibrium] o Niles Eldredge, The Great Stasis Debate o Rethinking Taxonomy o Kevin Padian, Darwin’s Views of Classification o David L. Hull, Cladistic Analysis o Kevin Padian and Luis M. Chiappe, Cladistics in Action: The Origin of Birds and Their Flight o Evolution as Observable Fact o James L. Gould and William T. Keeton with Carol Grant Gould, How Natural Selection Operates o Peter r. Grant, Natural Selection and Darwin’s Finches o John A. Endler, Natural Selection in the Wild * Part VI: Darwinian Patterns in Social Thought * COMPETITION AND COOPERATION * o Richard Hofstadter, The Vogue of Spencer o Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth o Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid o Martin A. Nowak, Robert M. May, and Karl Sigmund, The Arithmetics of Mutual Help * NATURE AND NURTURE * o Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis o Stephen Jay Gould, Biological Potentiality vs. Biological Determination o Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh, The New Creationism: Biology under Attack * EVOLUTION AND GENDER * o Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman’s Bible o Nancy Makepeace Tanner, On Becoming Human o Evelleen Richards, Darwin and the Descent of Woman o James Eli Adams, Woman Red in Tooth and Claw * EVOLUTION AND OTHER DISCIPLINES * o Edward O. Wilson, [On Consilience] o Randolph H. Nesse and George C. Williams, Evolution and the Origin of Disease o Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works o Steve Jones, The Set within the Skull * Part VII: Darwinian Influences in Philosophy and Ethics * John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy * Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Natural Selection as an Algorithmic Process * Michael Ruse Darwinian Epistemology * Thomas Henry Huxley, Evolution and Ethics * Julian Huxley, Evolutionary Ethics * Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson, The Evolution of Ethics * Frans de Waal, Good Natured: The Origin of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals * Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue * Part VIII: Evolutionary Theory and Religious Theory * MAINSTREAM RELIGIOUS SUPPORT FOR EVOLUTION * o Pope John Paul II, Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences o Central Conference of American Rabbis, On Creationism in School Textbooks o United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Evolution and Creationsim o The Lutheran World Federation, [Statement on Evolution] o The General Convention of the Episcopal Church, Resolution on Evolutionism and Creationism o Unitariuan Universalist Association, Resolution Opposing "Scientific Creationism" * FUNDAMENTALIST CREATIONISM * o Eugene C. Scott, Antievolution and Creationism in the United States o The Scopes Trial o Thomas McIver, Orthodox Jewish Creationists o Harun Yahya, [Islamic Creationism] o Seami Srila Prabhupada, [A Hare Krishna on Darwinian Evolution] o Institute for Creation Research, Tenets of Creationism o Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism o Thomas J. Wheeler, Review of Morris o Richard D. Sjolund and Betty McCollister, Evolution at the Grass Roots o Richard D. Sjolund, [Creationism versus Biotechnology] o Betty McCollister, [The Politics of Creationism] o Molleen Matsumara, What Do Christians Really Believe about Evolution? o National Center for Science Education, Seven Significant Court Decisions Regarding Evolution/Creation Issues * PERSONAL INCREDULITY AND ANTIEVOLUTIONISM * o Richard Dawkins, [The Argument from Personal Incredulity] o Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial o Eugenie C. Scott, Review of Johnson o Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box o Robert Dorit, Review of Behe o Michael Ruse, Darwin’s New Critics on Trial * SCIENTISTS’ OPPOSITION TO CREATIONISM * o American Association for the Advancement of Science, Forced Teaching of Creationist Beliefs in Public School Science Education o American Institute of Biological Sciences, Resolution Oposing Creationism in Science Courses o National Association of Biology Teachers, Statement on Teaching Evolution o National Academy of Sciences, Frequently Asked Questions about Evolution and the Nature of Science * FUNDAMENTALIST CREATIONISM AND THE VALUE OF SATIRE * o Michael Shermer, Genesis Revisted: A Scientific Creation Story o Philip Appleman, Darwin’s Ark * Part IX: Darwin and the Literary Mind * DARWIN’S LITERARY SENSIBILITY * o Charles Darwin, Autobiography o L. Robert Stevens, Darwin’s Humane Reading o George Levine, Darwin and Pain: Why Science Made Shakespeare Nauseating o Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots * DARWIN’S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE * o Lionel Stevenson, Darwin among the Poets o George Levine, Darwin among the Novelists o Joseph Wood Krutch, The Tragic Fallacy o Herbert J. Muller, Modern Tragedy o Philip Appleman, Darwin-Sightings in Recent Literature. (shrink)

Moral Problems in Higher Education brings together key essays that explore ethical issues in academia. The editor and contributors-all noted philosophers and educators-consider such topics as academic freedom and tenure, free speech on campus, sexual harassment, preferential student admissions, affirmative action in faculty appointments, and the ideal of a politically neutral university. Chapters address possible restrictions on research because of moral concerns, the structure of peer review, telling the truth to colleagues and students, and concerns raised by intercollegiate athletics. Cahn (...) selects two key readings in each area to offer a readable introductory guide to these critical subjects for students studying academic ethics and higher education policy. In addition to the selections and a general introduction, Cahn provides study questions for use in the classroom. Contributors include Scott F. Aikin, Derek Bok, William G. Bowen, Myles Brand, Richard T. DeGeorge, Paul D. Eisenberg, Leslie Pickering Francis, Martin P. Golding, Philip Kitcher, Charles R. Lawrence III, David Lewis, Paul J. Olscamp, Nancy Tuana, David Shatz, George Sher, Robert L. Simon, Robert B. Talisse, Stephan Thernstrom, Abigail Thernstrom, Laurence Thomas, Robert Paul Wolff, and the editor. (shrink)

Technology is a mirror that reflects human nature and intentions: we want certain things done and we want tools to do those things; we are finite, frail, and mortal; we create technology in order to bring alternative worlds into being; we do not know why we create or what values should guide us. Imagination is central to technology. Human nature and human freedom are brought into focus when we reflect on the central role of imagination in technology.

The Nature of Concepts examines a central issue for all the main disciplines in cognitive science: how the human mind creates and passes on to other human minds a concept. An excellent cross-disciplinary collection with contributors including Steven Pinker, Andy Clarke and Henry Plotkin.

The Strategic Studies Institute's XXI Annual Strategy Conference, held at Carlisle Barracks from April 6-8, 2010, addressed the topic of the meaning of war. While it did not seek to produce a definitive answer to questions about the nature and definition of war, it did highlight the crucial questions and their implications, including issues such as whether the cause of war is shifting, whether all forms of organized, politically focused violence constitute war, and the distinction between passive and active war. (...) In the report which follows, Steven Metz and Philip Cuccia of SSI have summarized the presentations and debates at the conference and placed them in their wider intellectual and strategic context. (shrink)

The central irony of the Reformation—the effort to deepen religious experience resulted in a secular and exaggerated egoism—is the origin of the modern attitude towards the past. The purpose of this article is to understand this attitude in historical and sociological contexts, and to develop a concep tual framework that points beyond it. I will begin with a review of Christian social and economic ethics, focusing on the change in moral commitments following the Reformation. This will include a discussion of (...) the rise of the secular individual during the Enlightenment and his/her development into the ruthless competitor characteristic of the nineteenth century, finally culminating in what Philip Rieff has called the 'cultureless' society of the twentieth century.1 The relation between the breakdown of culture in Western society and totalitarianism is considered in this context. Finally, a discussion of the role of culture and tradition in society is presented to suggest ways to re-establish an enduring moral order. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The State by Philip PETTITSteven B. SmithPETTIT, Philip. The State. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2023. 376 pp. Cloth, $39.95The dust-jacket of this book announces a bold claim: “The future of our species depends on the state.” Ever since the Treaty of Westphalia, the state has been regarded as the basic unit of political legitimacy, and yet the state has never ceased to have its critics. (...) From the left, the state has been regarded as failing to realize a normatively appealing ideal of justice that, it is believed, can be achieved only in some form of post-sovereign organization. From the right, the state has been seen as an agent of collectivization that threatens individual liberty and the right to property. Philip Pettit hopes to deflect both of these [End Page 159] complaints in his defense of the state as the indispensable political institution.This is a big and complex book that defies easy summary. Its core attempts to define the nature and limits of the “modern state” even if the term modern and how this differs from other alternative forms of political association is never explored. On Pettit’s realist account, the state will acquire legitimacy, not by holding it to rigorous standards of justice, but if it is able to achieve a rough balance of power between rulers and ruled. This standard does not require equality between the rulers and the ruled or even among the ruled themselves, but it does presuppose the value of stability that is a necessary requisite for any desirable polity. Pettit is, after all, the author of a book on Hobbes, and The State may be seen as an attempt to adapt and update Leviathan.Like Hobbes, Pettit insists that the attainment of political order is a precondition for any possibility of justice. Reversing Rawls’s famous dictum, it is order, not justice, that is the first virtue of social institutions. The author insists that the “functional polity” may fall well short of absolute justice, but this is because the state is related to justice in the way that prudence is related to morality. I wish this point had been more fully developed. It suggests a sphere of political ethics that stands somewhere between Machiavellian power politics and Kantian ideal theory. It suggests that politics requires a degree of prudential flexibility and latitude that cannot be reduced to norms or laws. But how prudence is related to justice, Pettit tantalizingly holds open for another book.The state that Pettit endorses sounds above all like the modern liberal state. The state will serve its ends when it provides for the rule of law that gives each citizen the freedom to act with impunity under legal protection. Sounding like Montesquieu’s famous definition of liberty as “that tranquility of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security,” Pettit suggests that “the fully functional state should give each citizen a reliable, determinate zone of legal security, however limited it may be, within which they can decide on how they want to live their lives.” Isaiah Berlin could not have said it better.The book is divided into two large sections. The first deals with what might be called the metatheory of the state focusing on the rule of law, individual and corporate agency, and a theory of “decentralized” sovereignty. The second part deals with the functions of the state proper. These include the collective power of the people to challenge the sovereign—the best part of the book in my opinion—a defense of individual rights, and the ability of the state to intervene in the economy. Each of these claims, I expect, will give rise to heated debate, but I cannot develop them here.One of the more striking claims of Pettit’s book is the statement that “there has been little work on the theory of the state in the sense in which we pursue it here.” Much may hinge on the meaning of that last phrase, but as for the first part of the sentence, it is literally head scratching. Pettit acknowledges the importance of Bodin, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and [End... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Zen War StoriesSteven HeineZen War Stories. By Brian Daizen Victoria. London and New York: Routledge-Curzon, 2003. Pp. xviii + 268. Hardcover $124.95. Paper $34.95.Brian Daizen Victoria's Zen War Stories, following his highly acclaimed but also highly provocative Zen at War (Weatherhill, 1997), continues his withering attack on the embracing of wartime ideology by leading Zen masters and practitioners in Japan. Victoria seeks to show that the attitude characteristic (...) of numerous examples of prominent Zen monks and scholars was not simply a matter of benignly resisting, or even passively accepting, the rhetoric of Imperial Way Buddhism by clergy who were under pressure and powerless to stand up to the authorities. Nor was it an example of innocently recognizing historical and ideological affinities between Zen monastic discipline and military training.On the contrary, the Zen masters discussed here eagerly and enthusiastically endorsed some of the most excessive and reprehensible aspects of imperial ideology in the name of a corrupted vision of spiritual realization as a tool to spread the doctrine of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. They also used Zen wedded to hyper-nationalism and imperialism as a tool to misread the historical records of their own tradition and to help transport Japanese supremacy to China and Korea, while refusing to acknowledge or repent for their actions with the defeat of Japan. This outlook also infected numerous politicians and military figures, who turned to Buddhism as a way of explaining away or masking their roles leading up to, as well as during and after, World War II.In part 1 of Zen War Stories Victoria documents several masters who have become icons in the West for their apparent adherence to a Zen tradition linked with an ability to address contemporary culture. After showing in chapter 4 that Ōmori [End Page 345] Sōgen, praised for his prowess in swordsmanship and other arts, had a fascistic, "Mr. Hyde" side as manifested in the founding in 1932 of the Kinnō Ishin Dōmei (League for Loyalty to the Emperor and the Restoration), Victoria turns to the case of Yasutani Haku'un. In chapter 5, "Zen Master Dōgen Goes to War," we find that Yasutani, known as the teacher of Philip Kapleau and the inspiration for The Three Pillars of Zen, wanted to smash all universities for being traitors. He was a fanatical militarist who "transformed the life and thought of Zen Master Dōgen (1200-1253), the thirteenth-century founder of the Sōtō Zen sect in Japan, into a propaganda tool for Japanese militarism" (p. 68).In particular, Yasutani tried to argue that Dōgen's famed pilgrimage to Song China in 1223 was triggered not by a longing for the Buddhist Dharma but by a disgust with the new shogunate and an infatuation with preserving the Imperial House. According to Victoria, Yasutani's corrupted spirituality did not end with a support for militarism. He was also even more "ethnic chauvinist, sexist, and anti-Semitic" (p. 68) than his teacher Harada Daiun Sōgaku, whose "most memorable wartime quote is: '[If ordered to] march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of enlightenment]"' (pp. 66-67).After discussing in chapter 7, "Zen 'Selflessness' in Japanese Militarism," how Zen's historical relation to the samurai was misinterpreted to support the imperial ideology concerning the acceptance of death by D. T. Suzuki and other prominent representatives of Zen, including former Eiheiji temple abbot Kumazawa Taizen, part 2 takes up examples of the involvement with Buddhist thought by military and political leaders. While this section is less devastating as a critique of Zen than of Japanese Buddhism and society in general, Victoria explains in chapter 10, "Buddhism-The Last Refuge of War Criminals," how easily the moral basis of religion can be distorted and subverted. For example, as recollected by Buddhist studies scholar Hanayama Shinshō, seven Class A war criminals who had been condemned to death continued, while on death row, to cling hypocritically to Buddhism to find some feeling of solace. For instance, Hirota Kōki never abandoned his attachment to Zen and the warrior class and... (shrink)