This book is intended for the use of the candid student, devised as a monitory preparation for deeper study of the philosophy of Spinoza. By its means it is hoped that the student may avoid the chief pitfalls of Spinoza-interpretation, and be carried past many of the difficulties encountered by the modern mind in the study of his writings. To this end perhaps the greatest hindrance to be met by the beginner is the ‘popular' exposition that attempts to expound the (...) thought of one age in terms of the favoured categories of another. By providing the necessary safeguards against misinterpretations arising from such causes, the author has sought to awaken interest in the closely knit fabric of Spinoza's doctrine of man and nature and God, and its practical import - and thus to revivify a specimen too long deprived of its native air. (shrink)

This book is intended for the use of the candid student, devised as a monitory preparation for deeper study of the philosophy of Spinoza. By its means it is hoped that the student may avoid the chief pitfalls of Spinoza-interpretation, and be carried past many of the difficulties encountered by the modern mind in the study of his writings. To this end perhaps the greatest hindrance to be met by the beginner is the 'popular' exposition that attempts to expound the (...) thought of one age in terms of the favoured categories of another. By providing the necessary safeguards against misinterpretations arising from such causes, the author has sought to awaken interest in the closely knit fabric of Spinoza's doctrine of man and nature and God, and its practical import - and thus to revivify a specimen too long deprived of its native air. (shrink)

Richard Janko's acclaimed translation of Aristotle's _Poetics_ is accompanied by the most comprehensive commentary available in English that does not presume knowledge of the original Greek. Two other unique features are Janko's translations with notes of both the _Tractatus Coislinianus_, which is argued to be a summary of the lost second book of the Poetics, and fragments of Aristotle’s dialogue On Poets, including recently discovered texts about catharsis, which appear in English for the first time.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 135-149 [Access article in PDF] Ghostly Comparisons: Anderson's Telescope H. D. Harootunian While the formation of area studies in the universities and colleges of the United States was initially inaugurated as a response to the Cold War "necessity" to win the hearts and minds of the unaligned, many of whom were new refugees of decolonization, one of its unintended consequences was to foster the development of (...) comparative perspectives of study across disciplines and different cultural regions. But this secondary goal was often diverted by the principal purpose of area studies programs to supply authoritative information on regions outside of Euro-America (the second and third worlds) considered crucial to the national security and to private businesses thrown increasingly into an expanding global market seeking new regions capable of providing buyers, workers, and materials. In time, the vocation of comparison became part of the unconscious of area studies, as the unit of the nation-state took precedence over all other considerations. Instead of envisaging genuinely interdisciplinary agendas that were able to integrate different disciplines, area studies have too often settled for simple multidisciplinarism, substituting coverage for comparison, language acquisition for method, the nation-state for the totality of the cultural region. Benedict Anderson's recent Spectre of Comparisons reminds us of the role played by area studies programs in the American academic profession during the nervous days of the Cold War and the wartime exigencies that led to their postwar organization and installation in a number of universities. But it also recalls for us the comparative promise associated with area studies and how it was either redirected to a multidisciplinary approach poorly disguised as interdisciplinarism or simply incorporated into large developmental narratives like modernization theory. It is instructive to see how Anderson's own work, rather than Southeast Asian area studies, has been able to achieve the remote goal of integration and comparison in a number of stunning examples that have eluded the collective efforts of many institutional programs. This singular success magisterially discloses how he was trained to envisage the region as a "unified" area studies program, even though little more than a geographical term named this unity, and what he needed to do to actually realize the dim prospect of achieving some sort of larger, integrated understanding, which was eventually inscribed in his seminal book, Imagined Communities. At the most basic level, Anderson was able to secure this effect first by roaming around the area (turning his banishment from Indonesia in 1972 to good use by shifting his attention to Thailand and then the Philippines). Yet, as his essays show, there were other, more intellectually and epistemologically compelling reasons which, if amplified, might provide such diversity with a sense of commonality that only geography and the putatively integrative approach of an area studies program seemed willing to promise even as they failed to deliver.Anderson situates his own intellectual trajectory within the institutional circumstances of the region as an area studies which he and his contemporary fellow students "helped give a certain reality" [Spectre 19]. In fact, "Southeast Asia" has always been [End Page 135] the common frame that structured the particular relationship between Europe of the colonizers and its Asian colonized and thus became the location that best exemplified for him the peculiar nature of the "haunting," as he puts it, as both the place of comparison and the necessity of comparability. In other words, Southeast Asia was the locus that best afforded a sighting of the spectacle of specters that recalled authorizing sister images in Europe and provided a perspective that was necessarily comparative. In Anderson's reckoning, comparison first referred to the circulation of images between metropole and colony and secondly between the various colonial sites that constituted Southeast Asia. As a result, Southeast Asia, and by extension all colonies, became the overdetermined place of haunting.Beyond the agency of the war, of course, was the experience of colonialism and those first modern interpreters of Asia who, as administrators, spent long years in the field serving imperial bureaucracies and who were in the incomparable position of examining such sites... (shrink)

Benedict Spinoza is feted as the philosopher par excellence of the popular democratic multitude by Antonio Negri and others. But Spinoza himself expresses a marked ambivalence about the multitude in brief asides, and as for his thoughts on what he calls “the rule of multitude,” that is, democracy, these exist only as meager fragments in his unfinished Tractatus Politicus or Political Treatise. This essay addresses the problem of Spinoza’s multitude. First, I reconstruct a vision of power that is found (...) in the Ethics but that tends to be overlooked in the scholarly literature: power is not just sheer efficacy or imposition of will, but rather involves a capacity for being-affected; I call this the conception of power as sensitivity. The second part of my argument shows how, given Spinoza’s emphatic political naturalism, the conception of power as sensitivity can be extended to his political philosophy to shed light on what Spinoza calls potentia multitudinis, or “the power of the multitude”—a term found solely in the Political Treatise and nowhere else in his oeuvre. This juxtaposition reveals significant qualifications to the liberatory potential of the multitude currently claimed in the scholarly literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 150-177 [Access article in PDF] The Desire for the Sovereign and the Logic of Reciprocity in the Family of Nations Lydia H. Liu It may sound like a truism that the modern nation cannot imagine itself except in sovereign terms. But what is this truism saying or, rather, withholding from us? When Benedict Anderson wrote his influential study of nationalism in 1983, he circumscribed the (...) imagining of the nation as "both inherently limited and sovereign" and relied on this basic understanding to explain the global transformation of dynastic empires into nation-states [Imagined Communities 6]. That insight, however, has not drawn to itself as much attention or scrutiny as some of his other concepts, like "print capitalism" or "creole nationalisms." If one were to name a few of the blind spots in the contemporary discussions of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and diaspora, one of them would be the place and placing of sovereignty and sovereign right. To those of us whose initial purpose has been to historicize the nation and nationalism, this blind spot cannot but raise some serious methodological and interpretive questions. Insofar as sovereignty articulates a major mode of exchange between nation and empire in recent history and moreover figures prominently in the realm of what Anderson calls "quotidian universals" [Spectre of Comparisons 33], the truism of its truth needs to be unpacked carefully.Hence, I would like to raise some tentative questions about desire and sovereignty, not in terms of legal studies, but in light of what we have learned about colonial exchange and its production of difference, fetishism, identity, and the logic of reciprocity. I am going to show that these intellectual and material developments have had significant bearings on the making of international law such that our inquiry into the latter can no longer be confined to the self-explanatory evolution of legal discourse. For sovereign thinking is one of those areas that must be reexamined, to borrow Edward Said's words, "according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments, and projections" [18].In this essay, I begin with a critical analysis of Benedict Anderson's work, focusing on the interplay of the historical and the universal in his study of the nation. I am particularly interested in examining what Anderson chose to do, or not to do, with sovereignty in his theory of nationalism, and I raise some questions about his idea of the "modular," whereby the universal takes on the role of a migrant figure making histories [End Page 150] here and there. Section two introduces the subject of fetishism and desire into the discussion by linking the display of the thrones of the Emperor Qianlong in British museums to significant moments of sovereign thinking in the reign of Queen Victoria and the Empress Dowager of China at the turn of the century. In section three, I attempt a detailed discussion of the sovereignty complex of Ku Hung-ming, a diasporic subject who grew up in colonial Malaysia, was educated in Europe, and ended up serving China as his adopted sovereign country. My analysis centers on Ku's well-known defense of the Empress Dowager during the popular nationalist uprising of 1900 and his work as a translator and publicist in Anglo-Chinese military confrontations. Finally, I turn to the theories of international law itself and ask how nineteenth-century jurists revised the notion of sovereignty to arrive at a new constitutive theory of recognition in the heyday of imperialist expansion. I argue that any attempt to explain the rise of the modern nation-state must take full account of this significant revision in the early nineteenth century, because the revision signaled a paradigmatic shift from natural law to positivist jurisprudence to the effect that a constitutive understanding of sovereign right would eventually overcome and displace the natural law notion of universal sovereignty. Sovereign Thinking in Migrant Nationalisms In Imagined Communities, Anderson pointed to sovereignty as a necessary condition in thinking about the nation when, for example, he... (shrink)

This inclusive, cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering, development, and culture. It offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary perspectives on how the philosophies of today’s cultural triumvirate—American, European and Chinese—are shaped and given nuance by the cross-fertilization of engineering and development. Scholars from the humanities and social sciences as well as engineers themselves reflect on key questions that arise in this relational context, such as how international development work affects the professional views, identities, practice and ethics of (...) engineers. The first volume to offer a systematic and collaborative study that cuts across continental boundaries, the book delineates the kinds of skills and competences that tomorrow’s engineering success stories will require, and analyzes fascinating aspects of the interplay between engineering and philosophy, such as how traditionally Chinese ways of thinking can influence modern engineering practice in the world’s most populous country. China’s problematic mix of engineering woes and wonders, from the high-profile crash on its high-profile rail network to its ‘bird’s nest’ Olympic stadium, adds to the urgency for reform, while Europe’s Enlightenment-informed legal frameworks are contrasted with Chinese mechanisms in their governance of the field of nanotechnology, a crucial element of future technical evolution. Fascinating and compelling in equal measure, this volume addresses one of the topics at the leading edge of humanity’s quest to survive, and to thrive.​. (shrink)

Much has been written by many distinguished persons about the philosophical, religious and ethical considerations of doctors and their involvement with torture. What follows will not have the erudition or authority of the likes of St Augustine, Mahatma Gandi, Schopenhauer or Thomas Paine. It represents the views of a very ordinary person; a presumption defended by the submission that many very ordinary persons have been, and will be, instruments for effecting, assisting or condoning the physical or mental anguish of others. (...) As practitioners of medicine, we are particularly vulnerable, since our particular knowledge and our privileged position may be so easily abused--to the detriment of others. Those of us who practice clinical forensic medicine have even greater responsibility by virtue of our daily contact with the enforcement of law, criminal procedure, and the machinations of the judiciary. We are thus particularly well placed to monitor, encourage or discourage the occurrence of evil practices within the community. It is imperative, therefore, that the ordinary doctor should be cognisant of, and be party to, a code of conduct formulated by his peers and having reference to his obligations as a citizen, and doctor, and to his ability to manipulate human activity. Forensic physicians have further discretionary powers as arbiters in the marriage of the art and ethics of healing with the principles and practice of justice. (shrink)

In Satire 3, Umbricius states his intention to leave Rome and delivers a long explanation of his decision, an explanation which develops into an invective against life in Rome. In the lines quoted above, Umbricius lists the ‘skills’ which are essential for success at Rome, ‘skills’ which he does not possess. The list comprises various mendacious, nefarious and criminal activities; Umbricius' stated inability to undertake such activities reinforces his claim to be a simple, honourable man . In this list is (...) his claim ‘I have never examined frogs’ entrails'. TLL glosses this passage ‘’ , the view taken by Friedländer too . Courtney takes a different view: ‘Presumably not for poisoning, which inspicere would hardly suit, but of divination … of an oriental type.’. (shrink)

primo pallentis hiatuhaeret adhuc Orci, licet has exaudiat herbas,ad manes uentura semel.Erichtho the Thessalian witch is conducting a necromancy: she has selected a corpse, applied her potions to it and invoked the powers of the Underworld to release its soul to deliver the prophecy. She specifies that this is a recent corpse whose soul has hardly entered the Underworld; hence she describes it as ‘still hesitating at the entrance to pallid Orcus’ chasm’ and as “a soul which will join the (...) dead only once’. However, as Francken says, ‘“exaudire herbas” est absurda iunctura’. The problem lies in either noun or verb. The phrase must refer to Erichtho's magic; the choice is between spells and potion, herbas in the sense ‘Incantation’ is apparently unparalleled, but herbas as a reference to Erichtho's brew is perfectly acceptable, especially given the long description of her concoction of the revivifying potion and of her application of it to the corpse in the preceding lines, 6.667–84. Moreover, only a few lines later Lucan draws a contrast between uerba and herbae, spells and potion. If herbas is sound, suspicion falls on exaudiat; the occurrence less than ten lines earlier of the uncontroversial exaudite preces, 6.706, which suggests scribal repetition, strengthens the suspicion. (shrink)

primo pallentis hiatuhaeret adhuc Orci, licet has exaudiat herbas,ad manes uentura semel.Erichtho the Thessalian witch is conducting a necromancy: she has selected a corpse, applied her potions to it and invoked the powers of the Underworld to release its soul to deliver the prophecy. She specifies that this is a recent corpse whose soul has hardly entered the Underworld; hence she describes it as ‘still hesitating at the entrance to pallid Orcus’ chasm’ and as “a soul which will join the (...) dead only once’. However, as Francken says, ‘“exaudire herbas” est absurda iunctura’. The problem lies in either noun or verb. The phrase must refer to Erichtho's magic; the choice is between spells and potion, herbas in the sense ‘Incantation’ is apparently unparalleled, but herbas as a reference to Erichtho's brew is perfectly acceptable, especially given the long description of her concoction of the revivifying potion and of her application of it to the corpse in the preceding lines, 6.667–84. Moreover, only a few lines later Lucan draws a contrast between uerba and herbae, spells and potion. If herbas is sound, suspicion falls on exaudiat; the occurrence less than ten lines earlier of the uncontroversial exaudite preces, 6.706, which suggests scribal repetition, strengthens the suspicion. (shrink)

Juvenal opens his eighth Satire with the question stemmata quid faciunt?, supplies an answer in line 20, nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus, and devotes the rest of the poem to exhorting his addressee to virtuous activity, both by negative exempla drawn from the degenerate nobility and by positive exempla drawn from the plebs, novi homines and the like. In lines 39–70 he addresses one particularly self-important noble and attempts to deflate his bombastic pride: in 56–67 he adduces an extended (...) illustration from the animal world, apparently such as was common in the schools of rhetoric. (shrink)

In Satire 3, Umbricius states his intention to leave Rome and delivers a long explanation of his decision, an explanation which develops into an invective against life in Rome. In the lines quoted above, Umbricius lists the ‘skills’ which (he implies) are essential for success at Rome, ‘skills’ which he does not possess. The list comprises various mendacious, nefarious and criminal activities; Umbricius' stated inability to undertake such activities reinforces his claim to be a simple, honourable man (e.g. lines 21–2). (...) In this list is his claim ‘I have never examined frogs’ entrails'.TLLglosses this passage ‘(sc. ueneni indagandi gratia)’ (TLL inspicio1951.70), the view taken by Friedländer too (‘zur Bereitung von Gift’). Courtney takes a different view: ‘Presumably not for poisoning, whichinspicerewould hardly suit, but of divination … of an oriental type.’. (shrink)

A distinction is commonly drawn between continuous sedation until death and physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia. Only the latter is found to involve killing, whereas the former eludes such characterization. I argue that continuous sedation until death is equivalent to physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia in that both involve killing. This is established by first defining and clarifying palliative sedation therapies in general and continuous sedation until death in particular. A case study analysis and a look at current practices are provided. This is followed by a (...) defense of arguments in favor of definitions of death centering on higher brain (neocortical) functioning rather than on whole brain or cardiopulmonary functioning. It is then shown that continuous sedation until death simulates higher brain definitions of death by eliminating consciousness. Appeals to reversibility and double effect fail to establish any distinguishing characteristics between the simulation of death that occurs in continuous sedation until death and the death that occurs as a result of physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia. Concluding remarks clarify the moral ramifications of these findings. (shrink)

Confucianism’s long historical association with despotism has cast doubts on its compatibility with democracy, and raise questions about its relevance in contemporary societies increasingly dominated by democratic aspirations. “Confucian democracy” has been described as a “contradiction in terms” and Asian politicians have appropriated Confucianism to justify resistance to liberalization and democratization. There has been a lively debate over the question of whether democracy can be found in Confucianism, from ancient texts such as the Analects and Mencius, to Confucian institutions such (...) as those recommended by Song dynasty Huang Zongxi. Philosophers have examined similarities and differences between Western ideas, such as autonomy, liberty, and rights, that are central to democratic theories on the one hand and Confucian ideas of virtue, ren, yi, li, zhi, exemplary person and authority. Scholars have studied the biographical accounts of prominent Confucians to understand the Confucian ideal person and society. Works arguing that there are elements of democracy in Confucianism, or that some Confucian ideas could provide the basis for a contemporary Confucian democracy, differ in the kind of democracy they choose as models. Liberal democracy was the model of earlier works; with increasing criticisms of liberal democracy in the past decades, a growing number of works arguing for Confucian democracy seek alternatives to liberal democracies, many proposing some kind of communitarian democracy as having affinity with the Confucian philosophical orientation. Besides conceptions of democracy that view it in terms of political systems, Dewey’s conception of democracy as the idea of community and primarily a moral ideal has also inspired attempts to reconstruct Confucian democracy. (shrink)