This volume explores the work and thought of Edith Stein (1891-1942). It discusses in detail, and from new perspectives, the traditional areas of her thinking, including her ideas about women/feminism, theology, and metaphysics. In addition, it introduces readers to new and/or understudied areas of her thought, including her views on history, and her social and political philosophy. The guiding thread that connects all the essays in this book is the emphasis on new approaches and novel applications of her (...) philosophy. The contributions both extend the interdisciplinary implications of Stein's thinking for our contemporary world and apply her insights to questions of theatre, public history and biographical representation, education, politics, autism, theological debates, feminism, sexuality studies and literature. The volume brings together for the first time leading scholars in five language-groups, including English, German, Italian, French and Spanish-speaking authors, thereby reflecting an international and cosmopolitan approach to Stein studies. (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers have assumed that psychological knowledge is knowledge about, and held by, the individual mind. _Psychological Knowledge_ challenges these views. It argues that bodies of psychological knowledge are social institutions like money or the monarchy, and that mental states are social artefacts like coins or crowns. Martin Kusch takes on arguments of alternative proposals, shows what is wrong with them, and demonstrates how his own social-philosophical approach constitutes an advance. We see that exists a substantial (...) natural amount of philosophical theorising, a body of work that tries to determine the nature and structure of folk psychology. An introduction to the workings of constuctivism, _Psychological Knowledge_ is an insightful introduction to the history of psychology and the recent philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In A Social History of Truth, Shapin engages these universal questions through an elegant recreation of a crucial period in the history of early modern science: ...

An interdisciplinary reappraisal of Lynn White, Jr.’s “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” reopens several issues, including the suggestion by Peter Harrison that White’s thesis was historical and that it is a mistake to regard it as theological. It also facilitates a comparison between “Roots” and White’s earlier book Medieval Technology and Social Change. In “Roots,” White discarded or de-emphasized numerous qualifications and nuances present in his earlier work so as to heighten the effect of certain rhetorical aphorisms (...) and to generalize their scope and bearing well beyond what the evidence could bear. The meaning of Genesis and other biblical books proves to be just as important in White’s thesis as their historical reception. In “Roots,” White presents, alongside other contentions, the claims that Christian doctrines have all along been both anthropocentric and despotic, especially in the West, and that this is where the real roots of the problems are to be found. These claims, however, conflict with most of the relevant evidence. An adequate reappraisal of White’s work needs to recognize that there is a cultural determinism parallel to the technological determinisms alleged by R. H. Hilton and P. H. Sawyer, to endorse Elspeth Whitney’s “single-cause” critique of links between religion and technological change in the Middle Ages, and to treat sympathetically Whitney’s claim that White and some of his eco-theological critics (despite their disagreements) have in common both their valorizing of individual beliefs and values and their neglect of economic and institutional factors. Nevertheless, our ecological problems need to be understood through explanations turning on beliefs and values as well as on economics and institutions. (shrink)

There is a move to centralise scattered documents; to archive all hardcopies of published journals in one place. PESA is moving to the institutionalisation of its history. We may ask, if philosophy of education in Australasia began at Bassar College, University of New South Wales on 20 May 1970, or if it emerged from the post-war focus on teacher education, teaching on the philosophy of education. Further to the injunction that we query who may be foregrounded; who assigned to (...) possible appendices of any PESA stories? By definition the non-members, the rejected scripts, the programme notations of those who failed to present at conferences will be the omissions. And the very fact that some have been rejected, for perhaps inadequate philosophising, for moving beyond the discourse of the liberal understanding of education means that there will always be gaps, omissions, a select record. In what ways may the archive order us? How do we ensure that archival history of PESA is not the work only of Great Wo/men. We will find that after ordering and collating disorderly archives, that what is collated will be incomplete. Our question may be as was Lorimer and Philo’s, ‘should we be “allowing more disorder into the archive”’? (shrink)

In this groundbreaking work, Ellen Meiksins Wood rewrites the history of political theory, from Plato to Rousseau. Treating canonical thinkers as passionately engaged human beings, Wood examines their ideas not simply in the context of political languages but as creative responses to the social relations and conflicts of their time and place. She identifies a distinctive relation between property and state in Western history and shows how the canon, while largely the work of members or clients of (...) dominant classes, was shaped by complex interactions among proprietors, labourers and states. Western political theory, Wood argues, owes much of its vigour, and also many ambiguities, to these complex and often contradictory relations. In this new edition, incorporating both volumes, the book takes us from classical antiquity to the age of enlightenement. In the first volume, Wood traces the development of the Western tradition from classical antiquity through to the Middle Ages in the perspective of social history--a significant departure not only from the standard abstract history of ideas but also from other contextual methods. In the second volume, Wood moves on to explore the formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. In her focus on canonical thinkers through the ages, Wood illuminates a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history"--Publisher's website. (shrink)

This anthology opens new perspectives in the domain of history, philosophy, and science teaching research. Its four sections are: first, science, culture and education; second, the teaching and learning of science; third, curriculum development and justification; and fourth, indoctrination. The first group of essays deal with the neglected topic of science education and the Enlightenment tradition. These essays show that many core commitments of modern science education have their roots in this tradition, and consequently all can benefit from a (...) more informed awareness of its strengths and weaknesses. Other essays address research on leaning and teaching from the perspectives of social epistemology and educational psychology. Included here is the first ever English translation of Ernst Mach’s most influential 1890 paper on ‘The Psychological and Logical Moment in Natural Science Teaching’. This paper launched the influential Machian tradition in education. Other essays address concrete cases of the utilisation of history and philosophy in the development and justification of school science curricula. These are instances of the supportive relation of HPS&ST research to curriculum theorising. Finally, two essays address the topic of Indoctrination in science education; a subject long-discussed in philosophy of education, but inadequately in science education. This book is a timely reminder of why history and philosophy of science are urgently needed to support understanding of science. From major traditions such as the Enlightenment to the tensions around cultural studies of science, the book provides a comprehensive context for the scientific endeavour, drawing on curriculum and instructional examples. Sibel Erduran, University of Oxford, UK The scholarship that each of the authors in this volume offers deepens our understanding of what we teach in science and why that understanding matters. This is an important book exploring a wide set of issues and should be read by anyone with an interest in science or science education. Jonathan Osborne, Stanford University, USA This volume presents new and updated perspectives in the field, such as the Enlightenment Tradition, Cultural Studies, Indoctrination in Science Education, and Nature of Science. Highly recommended. Mansoor Niaz, Universidad de Oriente, Venezuela This volume provides an extremely valuable set of insights into educational issues related to the history and philosophy of science. Michael J Reiss, University College London, UK. (shrink)

This new book proposes a way out of the crisis by letting go of the idea that psychology needs ‘new’ foundations or a new identity, whether biological, discursive, or cognitive. The psychological is not narrowly confined to any one aspect of human experience; it is quite literally ‘everywhere’. Drawing on a range of influential thinkers including Michel Serres, Michel Foucault, AN Whitehead, and Gilles Deleuze, the book proposes a strong process-oriented approach to the psychological, which studies ‘events’ or ‘occasions.’.

A. W. Carus champions Rudolf Carnap’s ideal of explication as a model for liberal political deliberation. Constructing a linguistic framework for discussing social problems, he argues, promotes the resolution of our disputes. To flesh out and assess this proposal, I examine debate about the social institutions of marriage and adoption. Against Carus, I argue that not all citizens would accept the pragmatic principles underlying Carnap’s ideal. Nevertheless, explication may facilitate inquiry in the social sciences and be used (...) to create models that help us to understand past disputes. This latter application reveals explication’s potential for refining the social histories that inform contemporary political discourse. (shrink)

Originally published in 1973,this book describes the medieval origins of the British education system, and the transformations successive historical events – such as the Reformation, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution – have wrought on it. It examines the effect on the educational pattern of such major cultural upheavals as the Renaissance; it looks at the different parts played by church and state, and the influence of new social and educational philosophies.

Originally published in 1973,this book describes the medieval origins of the British education system, and the transformations successive historical events – such as the Reformation, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution – have wrought on it. It examines the effect on the educational pattern of such major cultural upheavals as the Renaissance; it looks at the different parts played by church and state, and the influence of new social and educational philosophies.

BOOK REVIEWS 145 intuition. And, Moreau insists, unlike the TIE, where experience seems to fade away after it has done its propadeutic work, in the Ethics its principles continue to inform our relationship with the world, albeit under the guidance of reason. This is a long and very rich book, and I cannot, in a short review, do justice to the complexity of its theses and the scholarly depth of its argumentation. The unity of its themes and the force and (...) originality of Moreau's claims make for compelling reading. He does at times seem to be pushing some of his claims a bit far, perhaps claiming for the place of experience in the Ethics more than some scholars will be willing to concede. But that, of course, is a matter for future debate. Moreau's book will certainly be much discussed among those interested in Spinoza's philosophy, and should be read by anyone interested in the nature of rationalism. STEVEN NADLER University of Wisconsin, Madison.. (shrink)

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, population geneticists sought computational solutions to integrate greater numbers of genetic traits into their debates about the ancestral relationships of human groups. At the same time, geneticists’ longstanding assumptions about Jewish communities, especially Ashkenazim, were challenged by a series of social, political, and intellectual developments. In Israel, the entrenched cultural and political dominance of Ashkenazi Jews faced major social upheaval. Meanwhile, to counteract lingering anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States, Arthur (...) Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe and Raphael Patai and Jennifer Patai Wing’s The Myth of the Jewish Race argued that Jewish identity was not connected to biological ancestry from the ancient Israelites. Drawing on scientific publications and archived correspondence, this article reconstructs a transnational social history showing how geneticists responded to these shifting claims about Ashkenazi identity and ancestry. Many argued that these claims could be tested using new statistical models, which provided allegedly more “objective” estimates of ancestral gene frequencies and histories of population admixture. However, they simultaneously engaged in heated debates over the relative superiority of competing statistical approaches. These debates reveal how the transnational reverberations of Israeli ethnic politics and Euro-American anti-Semitism affected the development of new calculations for genetic admixture, permanently shifting the assumptions of population genetic research on Jewish populations as well as other human groups. (shrink)

Eleven contributions by Muslim and Jewish scholars--philosophers, historians, political scientists, and theologians--examine such topics as Moroccan saint veneration, nationalism and religion in Jewish and Muslim fundamentalism, the social psychology of religious disappointment, and Kabbalah and Sufism. Editor Selengut (religious studies, Drew University) provides an introduction. There is no index. c. Book News Inc.

Social and cultural difference. "Only historicize": history, material culture (food, clothes, books), and the future of Dante studies -- Dante's sympathy for the other, or the non-stereotyping imagination: sexual and racialized others in the Commedia -- Contemporaries who found heterodoxy in Dante: Cecco d'Ascoli, Boccaccio, and Benvenuto da Imola on Fortuna and Inferno 7.89 -- Dante's limbo and equity of access: non-Christians, children, and criteria of inclusion and exclusion, form Inferno 4 to Paradiso 32 -- Metaphysical difference. Toward (...) a Dantean theology of eros: form Dante's lyrics to the Paradiso -- Amicus eius: Dante and the semantics of friendship -- Paradiso and the mimesis of ideas: realism versus reality -- Dante squares the circle: textual and philosophical affinities of Monarchia and Paradiso (Solutio distinctiva in Mon. 3.4.17 and Par. 4.94-114) -- Difference as punishment or difference as pleasure: from the tower of Babel in De vulgari eloquentia to the death of Babel in Paradiso 26 -- Aristotelian disruptions 1: wealth and society. Aristotle's Mezzo, courtly Misura, and Dante's Canzone "Le doci rime": humanism, ethics, and social anxiety -- Dante and wealth, between Aristotle and Cortesia: from the moral Canzoni "Le dolci rime" and "Poscia ch'amor" through Convivio to Inferno 6 and 7 -- Aristotelian disruptions 2: love and compulsion. Archeology of the Donna Gentile: the importance of disconversion in conversion narratives -- Dante and Cecco d'Ascoli on love and compulsion: the epistle to Cino, "Io sono stato," the third heaven -- "Voi che 'ntendendo il terzo ciel movete," a dramatization of "utrum de passione in passionem possit anima transformari": conflict, compulsion, consent, conversion -- Critical philology and Italian cultural history. The case of the lost original ending of Dante's Vita nuova: more notes toward a critical philology -- Critical philology and Dante's Rime. (shrink)

The respective philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor Adorno share a concern with articulating a critique of Husserlian phenomenology which would do justice to the materiality of the subject. With this commonality in mind, it is argued that Levinas reifies this materiality by endowing it with a metaphysical priority expressive of ethical universality. In contrast, Adorno eschews the philosophical obsession with the assertion of metaphysical priority, insisting on the complexly historical nature of material life. In place of the Levinasian concern (...) with the subject’s forgetting of her or his ethical responsibilities to ‘the Other’, Adorno’s notion of the primacy of the object helps to articulate the ways in which the subject is always already materially bound by singular social histories which are essentially exclusionary. Amelioration of our suffering would thus depend on a concrete break in material social life, rather than on an abstractly conceived revelation of transcendence. (shrink)

Book review, feminist history of technology.

The article starts with the brief review of the history of the creation of actor-network theory (ANT), followed by the explanation of its basic notions. The author observes the difficulties of understanding and translation of the main ANT terms “actor” and “network”. In the main part of the article the author considers a famous episode from the history of giant airships known as “Miracle at Echterdingen” – that is a sudden revelation of the national spirit of German Empire (...) as the result of the flight and catastrophe of zeppelin LZ4 in august 1908. She discusses methodological limits of the historical reconstructions of “Miracle at Echterdingen” in Douglas Botting’s “The Giant Airships” (1980) and Peter Fritzche’s “Nation of Fliers” (1992). It is demonstrated that ANT allows to overcome not only the obvious weakness of the linear narrative that Botting followed, but also the oxydenthalism of Peter Fritsche’s approach and to confirm Latour’s thesis that “modernism’s accounts of itself may have no relation to what has actually happened to it”. As the result of the implementation of ANT, the network of forces which circulated in German society and lead to the Echterdingen phenomenon, is revealed. (shrink)

First published in 1946, History of Western Philosophy went on to become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy. Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexed people from time immemorial, it is 'long on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly scepticism', as the New York Times noted, and it is this, coupled with the sheer brilliance of its scholarship, that has (...) made Russell's History of Western Philosophy one of the most important philosophical works of all time. (shrink)