世代・分野を超えた論客が集い、「公正な法」とは何かの問題に取り組み、そこで思考した成果を寄稿することで編まれた論文集。.

From Chernobyl to Fukushima, it became clear that the technology is a system evolutionary factor, and the consequences of man-made disasters, as the actualization of risk related to changes in the social heredity (cultural transmission) elements. The uniqueness of the human phenomenon is a characteristic of the system arising out of the nonlinear interaction of biological, cultural and techno-rationalistic adaptive modules. Distribution emerging adaptive innovation within each module is in accordance with the two algorithms that are characterized by the (...) dominance of vertical (transgenerational) and horizontal (infection, contagion) adaptive streams of information, respectively. Evolutionary risk is the result of an imbalance of autonomous adaptive systems have an essential attribute of adaptibe strategy of Homo. Technological civilization inherent predisposition to overcome their dependence on biological and physical components. This feature serves as an enhancer of the evolutionary generating conjugate with the scientific and technological development risk We can assume the existence of an intention of Western mentality to a high priority (positive or negative) of technological modifications micro-social environment and post- Soviet (East Slavic) mentality to modification of macro-social system. (shrink)

Judicial Deliberations compares how and why the European Court of Justice, the French Cour de cassation and the US Supreme Court offer different approaches for generating judicial accountability and control, judicial debate and deliberation, and ultimately judicial legitimacy. Examining the judicial argumentation of the United States Supreme Court and of the French Cour de cassation, the book first reorders the traditional comparative understanding of the difference between French civil law and American common law judicial decision-making. It then uses this analysis (...) to offer the first detailed comparative examination of the interpretive practice of the European Court of Justice. Lasser demonstrates that the French judicial system rests on a particularly unified institutional and ideological framework founded on explicitly republican notions of meritocracy and managerial expertise. Law-making per se may be limited to the legislature; but significant judicial normative administration is entrusted to State selected, trained, and sanctioned elites who are policed internally through hierarchical institutional structures. The American judicial system, by contrast, deploys a more participatory and democratic approach that reflects a more populist vision. Shunning the unifying, controlling, and hierarchical French structures, the American judicial system instead generates its legitimacy primarily by argumentative means. American judges engage in extensive debates that subject them to public scrutiny and control. The ECJ hovers delicately between the institutional/argumentative and republican/democratic extremes. On the one hand, the ECJ reproduces the hierarchical French discursive structure on which it was originally patterned. On the other, it transposes this structure into a transnational context of fractured political and legal assumptions. This drives the ECJ towards generating legitimacy by adopting a somewhat more transparent argumentative approach. (shrink)

This chapter describes an economic ethic implicit in the Daoist tradition that envisages economic health, not as synonymous with growth, but akin to stability. The Daoist notion of health aspires to achieving longevity of body, of political rule, and, in contemporary applications, of our natural environment. Longevity is possible through alignment with patterns of nature, and by shunning anthropocentric urges to dominate. In the context of contemporary economic discussion, the Daoist maxim of ‘noncoercive action’, or wuwei, is often likened to (...) the notion of laissez-faire in classical liberal economics. While both traditions advocate a lack of intervention, Smithian classical economics views self-interested desire as a positive force for increasing economic prosperity within society. By contrast, the Daoists of ancient China cautioned against excessive desire and self-interest. This chapter begins with a very brief history of Daoism and goes on to draw primarily from the core teachings of the Daoist tradition: the Zhuangzi and particularly the Daodejing. (shrink)

There has been increasing research into the COVID-19 pandemic and the theological responses to it. However, not much research has been done on the COVID-19 and how women, particularly in Africa, utilised spiritual resources to respond to the pandemic. This article sought to bridge this gap. The article utilised both descriptive and analytical methods, and argued that many African women were more concerned about the health of the community than their male counterparts who concentrated more on arguments about the pandemic. (...) Gleaning from our ethnographic data carried out from the Christ Apostolic Church and the Spirit and Life Family Bible Church in Nigeria, the article used Galen Watts’ theory of ‘spirituality of and for’ to analyse how African Christian women deployed their spirituality and resources to address the existential challenges the pandemic posed. It argued that the African Christian women shunned the ‘spirituality of’ argument that relates with discursive functions of being spiritual, which does not correspond to its practical application, and adopted ‘spirituality for’ which resonates with how spiritual resources are deployed to (re)solve existential challenges towards human flourishing. This, it argued, aligns much with the theology of The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.Contribution: The article concluded that most women were accentuated towards ‘spirituality for’ because it is compassion-driven and responds to the existential quest for the health of the community. (shrink)

Editors Wanda Teays, John-Stewart Gordon, and Alison Dundes Renteln have assembled the works of an interdisciplinary, international team of experts in bioethics into a comprehensive, innovative and accessible book. Topics covered range from torture and lethal injection to euthanasia, sex selection, vulnerable human subjects, to health equity, safety and public health, and environmental disasters like Bhopal, Fukushima, and more.

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Renewing Moral Theology: Christian Ethics as Action, Character, and Grace by Daniel A. WestbergHoward HarrisRenewing Moral Theology: Christian Ethics as Action, Character, and Grace Daniel A. Westberg DOWNERS GROVE, IL: IVP ACADEMIC, 2015. 281 PP. $25.00Renewing Moral Theology by Daniel Westberg has two professed purposes—to be a moral theology text for seminary use and to be a book with wider public appeal. Short chapters, real-life examples, simple reading (...) lists, and unobtrusive footnotes make it accessible to that wider public. Yet the rigor and careful argument will satisfy the need in many introductory classrooms for a moral theology text that is cognizant of Aquinas, Vatican II reforms, and Anglican scholarship.Westberg sees the 1960s as a disruptive time for ethical thought in the Anglican tradition, with the "shifting and seductive winds" of situation ethics gaining sufficient sway to sweep away the prevailing systematic approach to moral theology (9). He seeks to follow an Anglican path of mutual enrichment, blending Evangelical emphases and Catholic moral philosophy. Virtue ethics, with its roots in Aristotle and Aquinas and its more recent renaissance, is at the core of the book. Part 1 deals with moral reasoning and action, while part 2 discusses the seven principal virtues: wisdom in action, justice, fortitude, self-control, faith, hope, and love.The initial focus is on practical reasoning, action, and character, acknowledging that many daily questions have a moral component yet do not require casuistry and law for resolution. Westberg puts forward a four-stage model of practical reason involving intention, deliberation, decision, and execution, sourced from Aquinas (reminiscent of James Rest's Four Component Model). The model is used to show that both intellect and will must be engaged and that the process can be iterative. The importance of the Holy Spirit in the forming of character and in the infusion of the theological virtues is made clear in Westberg's elucidation of the sequence through practical reasoning to action. Christian ethics is different, and Christians need "a new way of explaining Christian discipleship" (18).Part 2 begins with a useful introductory chapter about the development of virtues, with a focus on Christ and a caution against vagueness, against reducing morality to an undefined love that is of little relevance in either deliberation or action. In the discussion of individual virtues, Westberg brings together traditional scholarship, including Aquinas, Augustine, Aristotle, and Barth, with contemporary work from theology, philosophy, and psychology including Hauerwas, O'Donovan, and Veritatis splendor. Westberg questions the idea, grounded in Aristotle, that excellence in a virtue lies in a mean between extremes, wondering [End Page 203] aloud if Aristotle went too far in this (152). The treatment of love includes an examination of the nature of agape in which Westberg sets out to show that this Christian love ought not be seen as self-sacrificing but as mutual and nurturing. The Gospel basis is apparent here as the argument is grounded on "God is love" (1 John 4:16); on examples of Jesus showing preferential love for the disciples and Lazarus, Martha, and Mary; and on "a mutuality of love in the Godhead," before noting parallels to Aristotle's notions of friendship (238–40).Throughout the book difficult questions are not shunned, with diversion avoided by pointing to alternative sources of more detailed analysis; animal ethics, loving one's enemies, and whether non-Christians can be "good" are dealt with in this way, while the implications of biblical teaching on sin receives a longer treatment. Renewing Moral Theology puts Christ at the center of a discussion of how to live well. It is accessible to the Christian who has an interest in moral questions while being sufficiently tightly argued for the introductory classroom at which it is also aimed.Howard HarrisUniversity of South AustraliaCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The concept of an appearance is bona fide and rule‐governed. It is such that appearances can be shared, which suggests that a visual appearance is a complex universal, compounded out of colour and spatial appearance. The only appearance material objects have is their look, because uniquely in the case of sight when the Attention lands upon its colour it lands upon the object, and it lands upon the object through landing upon its secondary quality. We experience the visual appearance when (...) we perceive the bearer to be endowed with those visible qualities that visually individuate it for us. Now the primary appearance in Physical Reality is the look of a material object, a ‘look in the round’, upon which aspect‐appearance is dependent. The relation between the two is charted, together with the vital role of the understanding in experiencing ‘looks in the round’, an experience that depends upon knowledge of the objective physical situation in which it occurs. Finally, the criteria of visibility are spelt out. (shrink)

Rationality of state is essential to consciousness, and depends both on self‐knowledge and on mental activeness—and above all upon the mental activity of thinking. What contribution does the overall activeness of the stream of consciousness make to the obtaining of consciousness? It firstly contributes to the epistemological and perceptual function, through ordering perceptual process. But it secondly conditions the intelligibility of the stream of consciousness of the conscious. The least apparently active experiences of the conscious, such as daydreaming, are shown (...) to be intentionally active, along with the others. This activeness makes possible rationality and explanatorial pellucidity in the development of that ‘stream’, which would otherwise be absent, because of the close link between activeness and rationality. This internal intelligibility has epistemological repercussions, for it is a necessary condition for making sense of the outer phenomenal world. (shrink)

The stream of consciousness of the waking conscious manifests both meaningfulness and interiority as the dream does not. The variety of meaning involved is spelt out. It emerges that it is a derivative of the overall mental activeness of consciousness together with the fact that the activeness pre‐eminently includes the thinking process. This is the one active experiential line that carries its own rationale, for thinking is a mental willing, which par excellence knows where it is going, indeed is the (...) meaning‐giver par excellence in the mind. The nature of thinking is investigated, including the rationale of its close link with the use of language. Thinking is an active process of engendering phenomena in one's understanding, whose object is a changing entity expressed in the symbolism that encapsulates thought. It lies at the heart of consciousness, being the custodial agency responsible for the continuing state of rationality necessary for the state, and is coincident with the interiority of that state. (shrink)

Proprioception is true perceiving. It and touch form a closely linked mutually dependent yet diverse pair. The puzzle whereby the demands upon the Attention of proprioception are no distraction in instrumental action is resoluble through the fact that the internal active content within an instrumental deed is a harmonious hierarchy. The ‘long‐term body image’ is a causally posited something whose content encompasses body shape, which is a necessary but insufficient condition of proprioception of body shape and posture. It is distinct (...) from the ‘short‐term body image’, which designates the internal content of the proprioceptive perception of the body at any moment. The main philosophical problem consists in assembling a bona fide veridical concept of the long‐term image. Reasons for positing it begin with the common content in the short‐term images over lengthy periods. But they must be supplemented by the fact that bodily sensations do not represent body shape, being already dependent on body‐awareness for both individuation and position. Only through hypothesizing a long‐term image can one make sense of proprioception. Reasons are given for believing the body image is a dispositional psychological phenomenon, it is one and the same when explaining proprioception and sensation‐location, it is an empirical postulate, and even though it falls short of being an a priori necessity, it is as deeply embedded in animal existence as proprioception. (shrink)

What is implicit in a typically human perception of a material object? First, perceivability is a contingent property of its bearer, relative to perceiver and conditions. Typically, human perception is special in involving the use of concepts and an awareness of object‐structures. When we visually recognize a material object, an almost limitless array of properties and procedures are by implication condensed into an instant: one entertains multiple beliefs, and posits at a distance, multiple properties. Then the experiential integration of the (...) almost limitless visual evidence of a material object is dubbed ‘constituting the material object out of experience’. Central concepts in doing so are those of side, outside, surface, interior, and part. The most important of these experiential syntheses is the spatial, whose unit is the 3D‐seeing of object‐sides, a concept that depends upon those of 2D/3D and 2D/2D seeing. Two vitally important elements in this procedure are, first, the work of the understanding, second, an awareness of the objective physical situation of perceiver and object. (shrink)

Self‐awareness—knowledge of self and of one's mental states—is of central importance in ensuring the properties constitutive of consciousness in rational beings. A modified Cartesian thesis is defended: that a well‐formed state of self‐conscious wakefulness is such that the present contents of that mind must be insightfully given to its owner. This is demonstrated through investigating four different states in which insight is diminished and consciousness absent or impaired: sleep, trance, intoxication, and psychosis. These states are analytically explored, and the thesis (...) proven in each case. It emerges that the very items that constitute consciousness in unthinking animals, do the same in thinking animals, only in a more developed form. The differentia of the state of self‐conscious wakefulness is analysed into the co‐presence of a syndrome of mutually necessitating properties : self‐knowledge, rationality, freedom, thinking, etc. When this syndrome is conjoined with the availability of the perceptual attention, together with experience, the state is fully constituted. This is the answer to the fundamental question: what is consciousness? (shrink)

Secondary qualities are essential to sight, hearing, smell, and taste, and correspond to the sensations definitive of each sense. They are relative, first to which beings they appear to, secondly to the conditions under which they do so. Dispositionist analyses are examined, along with materialist, and rejected: the former because colour is predicable of after‐images, the latter because a disjunct of material properties in principle ‘found’ any secondary quality. While attributions to physical objects are relative, attribution to sensations are absolute: (...) sensations of red are absolutely, intrinsically, essentially red. ‘Red’ names the look predicable necessarily of the sensation of red and contingently and derivatively of much else. What is of central importance to the secondary quality, indeed the rationale behind the very concept, is that it is the only psychological phenomenon that can be an immediate material or external object of noticing. From this unique property, compounded with the psycho‐physical nomic situation governing its objectification, flows the special utility of the secondary quality. Namely, to take its place as material object for the Attention in an experience in which it simultaneously qualifies a whole string of causally interrelated items: sensation, light, surface, side, and object. (shrink)

In perception, objects come to the attention. Accordingly, one might come to believe that ‘The Attention’ names the capacity to harbour events of the specific idiosyncratic type, noticing. In fact it signifies an experiential mental space to which objects can come in perception and, which can contain experiences. After all, many mental phenomena other than perception require awareness if they are to so much as exist, e.g. emotion and thought, thanks to being experiences. That experiential space is of limited extent, (...) for at any moment the mind can experience so much and no more. Indeed, the space is no more than the existence of such a limit, and has no autonomous existence other than the fact of that limit, and it is a dangerous illusion to hypostatize the limit as a real space, leading one to misunderstand what it is to experience an experience. Then there is reason for supposing that the experiences of the moment constitute a system. This circle or centre of awareness is the Attention. And it is to this Attention that perceived existents come—as object. This happens when a noticing or perceiving occurs. (shrink)

The definition of perception is defended by piecemeal assembling of the concept of perception. We begin with the assumption that some event is an intentionally directed experience; add that it is of a type that aspires to ‘success’‐status, as seem‐see and try‐act aspire to status see and act ; and add that the object actually exists, and that the ‘aspiration’ is successful. Now this complex property fits both action and perception. Then to define action we have the need of a (...) further and indefinable concept, that of will, whereas to define perception we have all the conceptual material we need, for we need no more than the concepts, experience, and object. Perception is unique in being the only experience that finds its identity under the concept of experience, for it is merely awareness or experience taking an extensional object. Then since consciousness and experience are universal to any account of mind, perception likewise must have a position of centrality in the mind. It is an a priori‐given a priori‐definable concept, built out of a priori‐given concepts.. (shrink)

The topic is the state of wakeful consciousness. Of what kind is this state? It is the pre‐eminent and ‘founding father’–species of the genus, state of consciousness, all other species being privative derivatives from the original. Consciousness, which is endowed with necessary properties, is constituted‐by rather than the cause‐of its necessary properties. These last include the negative properties of lacking an intentional object, of not being the perception of anything, and of being inexperiencable, together with the following positive properties: encompassing (...) experience, accessibility of the perceptual attention, suitable mode of belief‐formation, obligatory mental activeness together with immediate acquaintance with past and future, and conditional availability of the bodily will. This is a characterization of the consciousness of both rational and non‐rational animals. (shrink)

Modern ethico-philosophical literature treats spirituality as a value characteristic of moral consciousness, although spirituality is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Therefore, this one-sided approach is wrong. In considering this problem, two approaches were identified: theological and purely philosophical. In philosophical thought, the understanding of spirituality as a qualitative characteristic of consciousness, actions and actions of a person, its ability to do good for the benefit of society, its people, and the state, was affirmed. And if so, any person, regardless of (...) his or her outlook, is spiritual. (shrink)

Are new democracies with divided government and volatile parties politically ill fated? The literature suggests so, but cases of emergent democracies such as Taiwan and Brazil that face both conditions defy the prediction. This paper explains why: party volatility follows from pursuing distinct executive and legislature agendas under divided government; the political ambition that underlies these conditions sustains democratic and even political performance. We evaluate the argument through government spending in Taiwan. The results corroborate our expectations: they show more parties (...) composing the legislature as government spending favors an executive agenda and neglects a legislative welfare-spending agenda. The findings make three contributions to the literature: first, they reveal a political divide between executive and legislature rather than ideological parties to undercut concerns regarding performance. Second, they demonstrate that the strategic use of government spending to institutionalize party development along an executive agenda fuels party fragmentation. Third, they show that legislators split, switch, or create alternative routes to office in reaction to strategic spending to underscore that ambition underlies party volatility and divided government. (shrink)

Oliver Sacks MD, Clinical Professor of Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, talked with Anthony Freeman during his visit to London in January 1995 to publicize his recently published book An Anthropologist on Mars. The interview is preceded by an overview of the book.

James O. Young seeks to explain why we value music so highly. He draws on the latest psychological research to argue that music is expressive of emotion by resembling human expressive behaviour. The representation of emotion in music gives it the capacity to provide psychological insight--and it is this which explains a good deal of its value.

In this article, the author analyzes the concept of religious foundations of culture and power as a problem of Russian political consciousness. The paper reveals the patterns of interaction between the religious and political traditions of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. The author provides Bargradsky project case as a unique example of such influence, identifying its mean in the later Russian Empire’s political history. Philosophical-political case that is analyzed in the article makes it possible to trace the (...) inner links between religious attitudes and political imagination of Russian monarchical circles and to identify the peculiarities of religious and political self-awareness of Russian power, its mechanisms for the selecting the ideas, symbols, images of the national political, religious and artistic culture in the last period of the Russian Empire. From our point of view, it would be most effective to combine the cultural-historical and the philosophical and historical approaches both in the reconstruction of Bargradsky project and in studies of Russian political culture. The article examines both the political conditions of activities and spiritual-cultural goals of Bargradsky Committee on Bargradsky project in Italian Bari as well as in Saint Petersburg in the 1910s. The author discusses the religious concept of Russian political culture, applying philosophical-historical method for the analyses Bargradsky Committee activity and its attempt to slow down the degradation of the Russian autocracy. The major emphasis is placed on the political and philosophical way of analysis as well as on the possibility of introducing the results of philosophical-historical research into current debates on the issue of alternatives to Russian history. (shrink)

We define in precise terms the basic properties that an ‘ideal propositional paraconsistent logic’ is expected to have, and investigate the relations between them. This leads to a precise characterization of ideal propositional paraconsistent logics. We show that every three-valued paraconsistent logic which is contained in classical logic, and has a proper implication connective, is ideal. Then we show that for every n > 2 there exists an extensive family of ideal n -valued logics, each one of which is not (...) equivalent to any k -valued logic with k < n. (shrink)

This study is aimed at evaluating the influence of the god of iron on ironworking communities in Ǹsúkkā cultural area. In the study area, the Supreme God – Chúkwú Òkìkè, Chínēkè or Chúkwú Ábíàmà is believed to control the affairs of humanity. He is worshipped through intermediaries such as Ányánwù [Sun God], Àmádíòhà, Áhàjīōkù [fertility goddess], Àlà [earth goddess] and the god of iron, which is called by different names in the study area such as Ékwéñsū-Úzù, Òkóró-Údùmè, Chíkèrè Àgùrù and (...) Áshéné. But, how effective is the god of iron in the study area? To provide answers to this question, ethnographic research method, involving in-depth structured interviews, field observation and photographic documentations, was used to gather data on the subject matter while data collected were analysed descriptively. This article is of the view that the influence of the god of iron in the study area is whittling down as a result of Westernisation and Christianity.Contribution: The study indicates an increasing resistance to the Euro-centrism, which has suppressed beliefs in the god of iron and the associated practices. (shrink)

This paper rejoins the debate surrounding Thomas Tymockzko’s paper on the surveyability of proof, first published in the Journal of Philosophy, and makes the claim that by attending to certain broad features of modern conceptions of proof we may understand ways in which the debate surrounding the surveyability of proof has heretofore remained unduly circumscribed. Motivated by these historical reflections, I suggest a distinction between local and global surveyability which I believe has the promise to open up significant new advances (...) in the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

El presente artículo corresponde a un análisis sobre la existencia del hombre actual inmerso en el capitalismo y su relación con el sufrimiento humano, modo de vida que él mismo ha ayudado a construir y mantener en procura de un hedonismo que le hace olvidarse como sujeto doliente. Dada su responsabilidad en el devenir de este sistema económico social, el planteamiento que aquí se expone, invita a repensar al hombre en la búsqueda aproximada por la verdad de sí mismo y (...) de su ser-en-el-mundo al modo heideggeriano. Es así como este escrito procura dejar en claro cuál es el estatuto que en la actualidad ocupa el hombre en el mundo capitalista, espacio en el que se requiere responsabilizarse por sí mismo y por los otros. Para ello, se acude a la biografía de Vincent van Gogh como ejemplo de un hombre que decidió vivir de acuerdo con su pasión, en la sencillez y lejos de todo sistema capitalista; que se atrevió a mirar de frente el dolor y a encontrar en su sufrimiento y el de los otros una verdad. Un hombre que logró captar el realismo de la pobreza y de la bondad humana y que por ello pagó y resistió el precio de la diferencia, que por estar ajeno a todo capitalismo fue catalogado con el rótulo de la “locura” en cuya esencia se encubrió un gran saber. (shrink)

The analysis of historical literature allows to consider profoundly the development of national culture and science of the 18th-first half of the 20th centuries and the formation and change of different historical concepts. With the analysis of historical periods that are highlighted in the research, general trends in the changing of paradigms about Russian historical development were concluded, which were translated to mass historical consciousness from the beginning of the 18th century up to 1917. The periods were closely connected with (...) the specific political, historical and economic changes in Russian Empire and with the dominance of certain textbooks during this time. The books were selected because of a number of factors: their inclusion to the school curriculum, the number of publications, the equal number of textbooks devoted to different historical periods. For the analysis were used 19 textbooks, schoolbooks for different courses of secondary schools and primary schools. All the sources of educational literature were grouped into two concepts - officially-state and the liberal. Each publication was highlighted the dominant concept as a base for the whole textbook. There is also a characteristic of the concepts that are presented chronologically. The analysis represents school history books as an important source for the formation of state policy in the representing of Russian history, and, that is more important, for creation of the concept of the state of Russian history. (shrink)

Almost all of us would agree that the experience of art is deeply rewarding. Why this is the case remains a puzzle; nor does it explain why many of us find works of art much more important than other sources of pleasure. Art and Knowledge argues that the experience of art is so rewarding because it can be an important source of knowledge about ourselves and our relation to each other and to the world. The view that art is a (...) source of knowledge can be traced as far back as Aristotle and Horace. Artists as various as Tasso, Sidney, Henry James and Mendelssohn have believed that art contributes to knowledge. As attractive as this view may be, it has never been satisfactorily defended, either by artists or philosophers. Art and Knowledge reflects on the essence of art and argues that it ought to provide insight as well as pleasure. It argues that all the arts, including music, are importantly representational. This kind of representation is fundamentally different from that found in the sciences, but it can provide insights as important and profound as available from the sciences. Once we recognise that works of art can contribute to knowledge we can avoid thorough relativism about aesthetic value and we can be in a position to evaluate the avant-garde art of the past 100 years. Art and Knowledge is an exceptionally clear and interesting, as well as controversial, exploration of what art is and why it is valuable. It will be of interest to all philosophers of art, artists and art critics. (shrink)

When T. S. Eliot wrote his preface to Simone Weil's The Need for Roots in 1952 his own fame helped launch the book to a prominent place in the Englishspeaking world. The preface despite its warm admiration for Simone Weil, however, says little about the content of the book. What it does do is praise Weil as a balanced thinker who is ‘more truly a lover of order and hierarchy than most of those who call themselves conservative, and more truly (...) a lover of the people than most of those who call themselves Socialist’. Since Eliot's stated intention in the preface was merely to get the reader to hold his prejudices in check and to be patient with those of Weil what he wrote was perhaps sufficient. Yet one wishes that he had said more; not to tease out further comments from one so celebrated but because Eliot himself had spent a certain amount of time thinking and writing on many of the problems which The Need for Roots addresses. His efforts are found in two monographs. The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture which have been collected and published as Christianity and Culture. (shrink)