One reason that Gramsci's writings are becoming ever more studied in the English-speaking world is their non-reductive approach. Today, the fact that a general theory of language informs Gramsci's Prison Notebooks is increasingly being recognized. While some parts of the writings on language have been translated into English, so far only the Italian editions have allowed an evaluation of the significance and role of linguistic issues in Gramsci. The following will seek to reconstruct the connections between die theory of language (...) and the more familiar elements of Gramsci's thought. In the translated Selections from the Prison Notebooks several passages suggest the centrality of linguistics in Gramsci's overall project. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Charles R. Kesler, an eminent scholar and prodigious editor, has exerted a profound influence on the study of American politics and the practice of American conservatism. A precocious high-school student, he impressed a visiting William F. Buckley Jr. who, before becoming a life-long friend, wrote him a recommendation letter to Yale. Kesler asked for another--to Harvard, where he completed his undergraduate degree and earned a PhD under the legendary professor Harvey C. Mansfield. An early passion for political journalism, played (...) out largely on the pages of National Review, led Kesler to author an NR cover story on his third great influence, Harry V. Jaffa. Kesler became a faculty colleague of Jaffa's at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University and is perhaps best known as the editorial helmsman of the Claremont Review of Books. The author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism and Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness, Kesler also co-edited (with William F. Buckley Jr.) Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought. His edited volume of The Federalist Papers is the best-selling edition version in the country. In this volume, Kesler's students, friends, and colleagues commemorate his four-decade career as a teacher, mentor, and scholar. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Achilles and Hector: The Homeric HeroBryan R. WarnickAchilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero, by Seth Benardete. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2005, 140 pp., $17.00 cloth, $10.00 paper.Seth Benardete (1930-2001) was one of the twentieth century's premiere scholars of the classical world. His prominence was largely due to his technical excellence in both ancient philosophy and classical philology, a rare combination that allowed him to become, as (...) Harvey Mansfield has written, "Our greatest student of the relation between poetry and philosophy."1 He wrote groundbreaking discussions of Greek literature (especially the tragedies) and the Platonic dialogues. His work culminated in his study of The Odyssey, The Bow and the Lyre (1997), a book that compared the plot of epic poetry to the development of a Platonic dialogue.Before Benardete achieved lasting fame, however, he was a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, working with Leo Strauss and the Committee on Social Thought and developing friendships with people like Allan Bloom. The writing of his dissertation is the stuff of scholarly legend. According to the story, it developed from a pile of nonsensical notes on the Iliad to a work of budding genius in four weeks. This dissertation, "Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero," was published in St. John's Review in 1985, and it has now been reprinted so that we can examine for ourselves the significance of Benardete's early work.As the title suggests, Benardete's dissertation looks at the theme of heroism in Homer, focusing on the Iliad. He examines the relationships between the poem's smallest parts and its largest themes. The book is divided into two sections. In the first section, Benardete grapples with how the small components of the Iliad, the epithets and similes, work together meaningfully to inform the larger heroic themes of the epic. The second section examines Homer's view of the tragic hero through an analysis of the plot. The analytic skill exhibited in both sections is fascinating: some parts of the study are brilliant, others strained, but none are boring.Benardete's purpose in the first section, he says, is to "vindicate the epithets" (135). This vindication is necessary because, as scholarship on the oral nature of the Homeric epics has developed, the significance of the smaller components has seemed to diminish. The epithets and similes have come to be seen as mere crutches for the oral poet; they are linguistic tools whose characteristics allow them to be plugged into Homer's unrelenting dactylic hexameter whenever a particular rhythmic pattern is needed. The poet uses the epithet of "swift-footed" Achilles, then, not so much because he particularly wants to say something meaningful about Achilles' swiftness, but because the particular rhythmic pattern of the epithet is a handy way to complete a line of poetry. The meaning of things like the epithets in any particular moment, it has seemed to many, should therefore be taken with a grain [End Page 115] of salt. In contrast, Benardete wants to argue that each particular use of an epithet has a significant meaning that informs, and even constructs, the epic's larger themes (for Benardete's purposes, the theme of heroism).Benardete's success in this goal is somewhat uneven, as even he later came to realize. A few of his conclusions appear rather stretched and neglect to consider the whole in the analysis of the parts. For example, Benardete looks at the Trojan epithets megathymoi ("great spirited") and hippodamoi ("tamers of horses") and finds them to be two manifestations of a constant Trojan character. One epithet is for the activities of war (megathymoi), the other one for peace (hippodamoi). But for Benardete, they both say the same thing about the constantly emotional, almost animalistic nature of Homer's Trojans, who are perfectly defined by passionate warfare: "The Trojans are more readily affected than the Achaeans, who can remove their armor and be different in peace than in war: but the Trojans cannot so easily shake off their temper" (21). While certainly interesting, such an analysis neglects to take into account prominent scenes like the one in which Astyanax, Hector... (shrink)

This paper aims to introduce a robust framework for forecasting demand, including data preprocessing, data transformation and standardization, feature selection, cross-validation, and regression ensemble framework. Bagging ), boosting and extreme gradient boosting regression ), and stacking are employed as ensemble models. Different machine learning approaches, including support vector regression, extreme learning machine, and multilayer perceptron neural network, are adopted as reference models. In order to maximize the determination coefficient value and reduce the root mean square error, hyperparameters are set using (...) the grid search method. Using a steel industry dataset, all tests are carried out under identical experimental conditions. In this context, STACK1 and STACK2 models provided better performance than other models. The highest accuracies of R2 of 0.97 and 0.97 are obtained using STACK1 and STACK2, respectively. Moreover, the rank according to performances is STACK1, STACK2, XGBR, GBR, RFR, MLP, ELM, and SVR. As it improves the performance of models and reduces the risk of decision-making, the ensemble method can be used to forecast the demand in a steel industry one month ahead. (shrink)

Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age - violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rules out restricting freedom except (...) on grounds that any rational citizen would accept. The book describes the essential commitments of free democracy, explains how religious and secular moral considerations can be integrated to facilitate co-operation in a world of religious pluralism, and proposes ideals of civic virtue that express the mutual respect on which democracy depends. Audi offers a balanced and sophisticated treatment of the relations between religion and politics in a modern, secular society. (shrink)

Allthough small business accounts for over 90% of businesses in U.K. and indeed elsewhere, they remain the largely uncharted area of ethics. There has not been any research based on the perspective of small business owners, to define what echical delemmas they face and how, if at all, they resolve them. This paper explores ethics from the perspective of small business owner, using focus groups and reports on four clearly identifiable themes of ethical delemmas; entrepreneurial activity itself, conflicts of personal (...) values with business needs, social responsibility and the impact of owners' personality on business ethics. The mechanisms for resolving ethical dilemmas is not at all clear, as there appears to be a web of filters which are used in an inter-connected way. However a common starting point for resolving an ethical delemma which involves others is based on identifying who it is (e.g., a friend or institution) and the quality of the relationship with that person. The research yielded a rich source of material on business ethics and it is clear that future researchers must focus on this sector if business ethics is to make significant advances. (shrink)

Views of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938 on education.

Po výkladu situace jako filozofického problému rozebírá autor různé formy a funkce, v nichž se uplatňuje situace v uměleckém díle (jako motiv, syžet, specifický výrazový prostředek apod.). Na konkrétních příkladechcharakterizujerůzné typy estetických situací, způsoby estetického zaujetí, podíl subjektivního a objektivního v situačním zážitku a ukazuje vlastnosti a společenský význam situačního estetična.

Vysokoškolská učebnice člení látku do tří oddílů (K obecným otázkám umění a literatury; Poetika; Geneze literárního díla a literární proces), v nichž se pokouší vyložit teorii literatury z jednotného hlediska a podat klíč kteoretickému objasnění všech literárních děl a řad.

This paper examines the perceived ethical values of Malaysian managers. It is based on the opinions of 15 hypothetical ethical/unethical business situations from the 81 managers who agreed to participate in the survey. The findings of this study showed that these Malaysian managers have high ethical values. However 53% of the respondents believed that the ethical standards of today are lower than that of 15 years ago. Apparently, this is related to the existence of many unethical business practices prevalent in (...) the modern business world. The behavior of one's immediate superior is the most important factor in influencing managers to commit unethical practices. The results also indicate only a slight variation among the managers in terms of perceived ethical values by virtue of job position, job specialization, type of business activity or the size of the business organization. (shrink)

Polanyi’s philosophy of “man in thought,” by all appearances, chronologically and structurally, seems to be founded on his epistemology. Polanyi’s epistemology of tacit knowing as integration is teleological. By his “ontological equation,” he patterned comprehensive (and complex) entities as emergence on his epistemology. This forces him to make puzzling formulaic statements which land him in trouble with fellow scientists. The equation also lends itself to unwarranted problematic interpretations. The exploration leads me to suggest that Polanyi may be understood as a (...) “rational realist” who insisted on a tacit knowledge version of interactionist mode of mind-body relation. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore the implementation of corporate ethical culture and policies as an adjunct to formal forms of corporate governance. The insurance industry utilises a variety of external governance structures, but is almost unique in that stock companies (which are exposed to an external market for corporate control) and mutual companies (which are owned by a subset of their customers) are in active competition. A questionnaire survey of senior executives in U.K. insurance companies was undertaken to explore the (...) implementation of ethical policies and codes, to investigate ethical attitudes, and to analyze the extent to which these policies and attitudes varied among companies. The results suggest that ethical policies have a higher profile and ethical attitudes and behaviour are more positive in mutual as opposed to stock insurance companies. These findings support the contention that a strong corporate ethical culture may be utilised to enhance formal corporate governance instruments. (shrink)

In 1931 the mathematical logician Kurt Godel published a revolutionary paper that challenged certain basic assumptions underpinning mathematics and logic. A colleague of Albert Einstein, his theorem proved that mathematics was partly based on propositions not provable within the mathematical system and had radical implications that have echoed throughout many fields. A gripping combination of science and accessibility, Godel’s Proof by Nagel and Newman is for both mathematicians and the idly curious, offering those with a taste for logic and philosophy (...) the chance to satisfy their intellectual curiosity. (shrink)

Background: Ethical dilemmas are an integral part of medicine. Whether physicians actually feel that they have made ethically problematic treatment decisions or choices in their work is largely unknown. Identifying physicians with ethical problems, and the types of problems and underlying factors, might benefit organisational and educational efforts to help physicians solve ethical dilemmas in a constructive way. We investigated how the frequency and types of ethically difficult treatment decisions vary by specialty.Method: A mail survey of all non-retired Finnish physicians (...) was conducted in 2004. Of those who had made any ethically problematic treatment decisions, the types of decisions and reasons given for these decisions were asked for. Factor analysis was used to investigate clustering of ethically problematic treatment decisions, and logistic regression to investigate the effect of specialty, adjusted for age and gender.Results: Psychiatrists experienced ethically problematic treatment decisions most frequently, followed by pulmonologists, internists and neurologists. Problems were reported least often by pathologists, laboratory physicians and ophthalmologists. Overtreatment was more common than undertreatment in most specialties, with the exception of psychiatrists who emphasised undertreatment and patient rights issues.Conclusion: Physicians of different specialties differ significantly regarding frequency and types of ethically problematic treatment decisions they have made. Psychiatrists differ from all other specialists in reporting more undertreatment and patient rights issues. Experiencing ethically problematic decisions might affect the quality of care and physician well-being in many ways. The findings could be useful for both under- and postgraduate ethics education. (shrink)