In her dedicated promotion of feminism and pacifism, especially during the 1930s, Vera Brittain (1893–1970) was strongly influenced by Ber­trand Russell’s writings, especially Marriage and Morals (1929) and Which Way to Peace? (1936). Both were members of the Peace Pledge Union, and she continued as a sponsor after Russell abandoned his pac­ifism soon after the beginning of the Second World War. She admired his political and social activism in the aftermath of that war, endorsing it as much as her family (...) situation allowed; and, as chairman of the Peace News board, Brittain intervened in Russell’s support when a dispute broke out between him and the editor. Although their rela­tionship was personally limited, Russell’s influence on her opinions and actions was profound. (shrink)

Students of the Enlightenment have long assumed that the major movement towards atheism in the Ancien Régime was centered in the circle of intellectuals who met at the home of Baron d'Holbach during the last half of the eighteenth century. This major critical study shows, contrary to the accepted views, that in fact, atheism was not the common bond of a majority of the members and that, far from being alienated figures, most of the members were privileged and publicly successful (...) citizens devoted to peaceful and gradual reform. Alan Charles Kors determines the coterie's membership and discovers it to have been a diverse assemblage of philosophes, men of letters, and scientists. Analyzing the thought and behavior of those members who lived past 1789, the author argues that the hostility to the Revolution expressed by the coterie's survivors was fully consistent with their world view. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

'Myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. It is always there, lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity' Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the StateAs a central part of his philosophy of symbolic forms as a form of religious expression, and as a political problematic the question of myth belongs at the heart of Ernst Cassirer's intellectual enterprise. Using a variety of methodological and conceptual approaches, these papers examine the persistence of myth as a symbolic (...) form from a variety of perspectives: philosophical, anthropological, psychological, political, and historico-cultural. In its way each paper attempts, in Cassirer's phrase, to 'see the adversary face to face'.The contributors to this volume are Paul Bishop, Alan Cardew, Milad Doueihi, Dina Gusejnova, Cyrus Hamlin, Stefanie Hölscher, Kai Kresse, John Michael Krois, Barbara Naumann, Detlev Pätzold, Martine Prange, Birgit Recki, Edward Skidelsky, Roger Stephenson and Jonathan Westwood. (shrink)

It began with a lie. Perhaps not a big lie, at least I didn't think so at the time, but a lie nevertheless. My Vicar had taken me for an interview with our Bishop following my application, supported by him, to undergo ordination training. My Vicar had prepared me well except that he never warned me that I would be asked if I was sure that I had a vocation. I had to hazard a guess at what this question (...) meant. I wanted to be a clergyman like the Vicar and I sensed that if I answered: , to the bishop's question, I probably wouldn't be proceeding much further. So I said , not really knowing what I was committing myself to. Later I worked out that the question was meant to reassure the bishop that I had had a word from God. At the end, many, many years later, when I admitted to myself that there really wasn't a god, it was the same question that rose up to meet me. By then I had to admit that I had never, ever had a word from God. (shrink)

Whatever fond hopes their author may have entertained when he published them, the Letters of the younger Pliny did not meet with an appreciative public. The first, indeed almost the only, writer before modern times to have read them with care and to have signalled his admiration by imitation is Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Auvergne in the late fifth century.

This issue of the Kybernetes journal is concerned with the philosophical question- Can a Machine Think? Famously, in his 1950 paper `Computing Machinery andIntelligence' [9], the British mathematician Alan Turing suggested replacing this question - which he found \too meaningless to deserve discussion" - with a simple -behavioural - test based on an imagined `Victorianesque' pastime he entitled the`imitation game'. In this special issue of Kybernetes a selection of authors with a special interest in Turing's work (including those who (...) participated in the 2008 AISB Turing Symposium) have been invited to explore and clarify issues arising from Turing's 1950 paper on the Imitation Game; now more widely known as the Turing test. (shrink)

lecture 1. Introduction : intellectual history and conceptual change -- lecture 2. The dawn of the 17th century : Aristotelian scholasticism -- lecture 3. The new vision of Francis Bacon -- lecture 4. The new astronomy and cosmology -- lecture 5. Descartes's dream of perfect knowledge -- lecture 6. The specter of Thomas Hobbes -- lecture 7. Skepticism and Jansenism : Blaise Pascal -- lecture 8. Newton's discovery -- lecture 9. The Newtonian revolution -- lecture 10. John Locke, the revolution (...) in knowledge -- lecture 11. The Lockean moment -- lecture 12. Skepticism and Calvanism : Pierre Bayle -- lecture 13. The moderns, the generation of 1680-1715 -- lecture 14. Introduction to deism -- lecture 15. The conflict between deism and Christianity -- lecture 16. Montesquieu and the problem of relativism -- lecture 17. Voltaire, bringing England to France -- lecture 18. Bishop Joseph Butler and God's providence -- lecture 19. The skeptical challenge to optimism, David Hume -- lecture 20. The assault upon philosophical optimism, Voltaire -- lecture 21. The philosophes : the triumph of the French Enlightenment -- lecture 22. Beccaria and enlightened reform -- lecture 23. Rousseau's dissent -- lecture 24. Materialism and naturalism, the boundaries of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

The Archaic takes as its major reference points C.G. Jung's classic essay, 'Archaic Man' (1930), and Ernesto Grassi's paper on 'Archaic theories of history' (1990). Moving beyond the confines of a Jungian framework to include other methodological approaches, this book explores the concept of the archaic. Defined as meaning 'old-fashioned', 'primitive', 'antiquated', the archaic is, in fact, much more than something very, very old: it is timeless, inasmuch as it is before time itself. Arch,̇ Urgrund, Ungrund, 'primordial darkness', 'eternal nothing' (...) are names for something essentially nameless, yet whose presence we nevertheless intuit. This book focuses on the reception of myth in the tradition of German Idealism or Romanticism (Creuzer, Schelling, Nietzsche), which not only looked back to earlier thinkers (such as Jacob Boehme) but also laid down roots for developments in twentieth-century thought (Ludwig Klages, Martin Heidegger). The Archaic also includes: - studies of the Germanic dimension of the archaic (Charles Bambach, Alan Cardew) - a discussion of the mytho-phenomenological approach to the archaic (Robert Josef Kozljani)̈ - a series of articles on Jung's understanding of the archaic (Paul Bishop, Susan Rowland, Robert Segal). This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, anthropologists and phenomenologists, as well as students of psychology, cultural studies, religious studies, and philosophy, as it seeks to rehabilitate a concept of demonstrable and urgent relevance for our time. (shrink)

The Archaic takes as its major reference points C.G. Jung's classic essay, 'Archaic Man' (1930), and Ernesto Grassi's paper on 'Archaic theories of history' (1990). Moving beyond the confines of a Jungian framework to include other methodological approaches, this book explores the concept of the archaic. Defined as meaning 'old-fashioned', 'primitive', 'antiquated', the archaic is, in fact, much more than something very, very old: it is timeless, inasmuch as it is before time itself. Arch,̇ Urgrund, Ungrund, 'primordial darkness', 'eternal nothing' (...) are names for something essentially nameless, yet whose presence we nevertheless intuit. This book focuses on the reception of myth in the tradition of German Idealism or Romanticism (Creuzer, Schelling, Nietzsche), which not only looked back to earlier thinkers (such as Jacob Boehme) but also laid down roots for developments in twentieth-century thought (Ludwig Klages, Martin Heidegger). The Archaic also includes: - studies of the Germanic dimension of the archaic (Charles Bambach, Alan Cardew) - a discussion of the mytho-phenomenological approach to the archaic (Robert Josef Kozljani)̈ - a series of articles on Jung's understanding of the archaic (Paul Bishop, Susan Rowland, Robert Segal). This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, anthropologists and phenomenologists, as well as students of psychology, cultural studies, religious studies, and philosophy, as it seeks to rehabilitate a concept of demonstrable and urgent relevance for our time. (shrink)

This article identifies the context of Augustine's theology of grace. His disappointing experiences as a priest and young bishop impacted his theological notions of gratia, especially as they would mature during the Pelagian crisis. Using Cyprian as an authority, Augustine argued against the Donatist idea of grace solely through membership in the 'pure' church and sacramental grace only via ministers free from ecclesial-sin (traditio). Instead, Augustine argued that all grace is solely through God and that all humanity and the (...) earthly Church was a mixed body of the fallen and blessed and in need of divine grace. (shrink)

The Irish Reformation is a contentious issue, not just between Catholic and Protestant, but also within the Protestant churches, as competing Presbyterian and Anglican claims are made over the history of the Irish reformation. This chapter looks at the way in which James Seaton Reid,, laid claim to the Reformation for Irish Dissent in his History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. It then examines the rival Anglican histories by two High Churchmen: Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor; (...) and Charles Elrington,, the Regius Professor of Divinity in Trinity College, Dublin. It is clear that, in each case, theological and denominational conviction decisively shaped their history writing. Equally, however, significant advances were made by all three scholars in unearthing important new primary sources, and in identifying key points of controversy and debate which still represent a challenge to eccleciastical historians, of whatever denomination or none, today. (shrink)

Begun by Ernst Behler and Bernd Magnus, and now under the editorial direction of Alan D. Schrift and Duncan Large, Stanford University Press’s ambitious project to offer in nineteen volumes a complete translation of the fifteen-volume Kritische Studienausgabe of Nietzsche’s works is proceeding apace. Volume 14 corresponds to volume 10 of the KSA and, while its first fragment demonstrates the need for its helpful editorial apparatus to make sense of these texts, its second raises more general questions about translation. (...) These questions are discussed at some length in the “Translators’ Afterword” provided by Paul S. Loeb and David F. Tinsley.In a section entitled... (shrink)

In September 1982 then Bishop Desmond Tutu appeared before the Eloff Commission of Inquiry. After politely explaining the activities of the South African Council of Churches to the government appointed commission, Tutu ended on a defiant note: -/- God's purposes are certain. They [i.e. the S.A. government] may remove a Tutu; they may remove the South African Council of Churches, but God's intention to establish His Kingdom of justice, of love, of compassion, will not be thwarted. We are not (...) scared, certainly not of the Government, or any other perpetrators of injustice and oppression, for victory is ours through Him who loves us.1 -/- Others have also made appeals like this in time of need, and many are bound to continue the practice in the future. However, it is tragically ironic that the institutions and individuals that Tutu singles out as the "perpetrators of injustice and oppression" in his deputation invoke the very same deity in their deliberations. As I shall show in this paper, the founders of apartheid also lay claim to God in their attempts to overcome their sociological and political problems. But the Afrikaners are not alone in their appeal to faith to justify their actions. Many of the early settlers in South Africa also rest their vision of the solutions to the problems of South Africa on their understanding of "God's intention to establish His Kingdom of justice, of love, and compassion." Prominent among those with this vision for Africa are the missionaries. -/- An assessment of the involvement of the missionaries in South Africa is clearly too vast an undertaking for this paper. What I can do here is provide only some indication of the perspective imported by some of these influential participants in the development of the country. (shrink)

This collection explores the impact of Richard Dawkins as scientist, rationalist and one of the most important thinkers alive today. Specially commissioned pieces by leading figures in science, philosophy, literature, and the media, such as Daniel C. Dennett, Matt Ridley, Steven Pinker, Philip Pullman and the Bishop of Oxford, highlight the breadth and range of Dawkins' influence on modern science and culture, from the gene's eye view of evolution to his energetic engagement in public debates on science, rationalism, and (...) religion. The volume includes personal reminiscences and critical debate as well as accessible discussions of science – it provides a stimulating tribute to a remarkable intellectual. (shrink)

In protecting the spiritual domain of the Church, Augustine began by bypassing State involvement, but as his willingness for coercion increased over time, he would often require the intervention of the secular domain, resulting often enough in their mutual benefit. The article assess and re-states the peculiar circumstances and how those impacted the development of the bishop of Hippo’s schema for religious coercion and ask whether this explanation suffices to clarify this enigmatic part of the life of Augustine.

This article identifies the context of Augustine's theology of grace. His disappointing experiences as a priest and young bishop impacted his theological notions of gratia, especially as they would mature during the Pelagian crisis. Using Cyprian as an authority, Augustine argued against the Donatist idea of grace solely through membership in the 'pure' church and sacramental grace only via ministers free from ecclesial-sin (traditio). Instead, Augustine argued that all grace is solely through God and that all humanity and the (...) earthly Church was a mixed body of the fallen and blessed and in need of divine grace. (shrink)

Contemplating Suicide: The Language and Ethnics of Self Harm By Gavin J. Fairbairn Routledge, 1995. Pp. xxx. ISBN 415?10606. £12.95(pbk). Religious Transformation in Western Society. The End of Happiness By Harvie Ferguson, Routledge, 1992. Pp. xvi + 269. ISBN 0?415?02574?5. £XX.xx. Feminism and the Self: The Web of Identity By Morwenna Griffiths Routledge, 1995. Pp. 191. ISBN 0?415?09821?1. £12.99 (pbk). Faith, Scepticism and Personal Identity. A Festschrift for Terence Penelhum Edited by J.J. Macintosh and H. A. Meynell University of (...) Calgary Press, 1994. Pp. vii + 304. CAN$27.95. The Shape of Space (second edition) By Graham Nerlich Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0?521?45645?2. Logical Learning Theory: A Human Teleology and its Empirical Support By Joseph F. Rychlak University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Pp. 387. ISBN 0?8032?3904?1. £32.95 Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief By Alan P.F. Sell University of Wales Press, 1995. Pp. x + 338. (shrink)

The purpose of medical humanities is to improve the delivery of effective health care through a better understanding of disease in society, and in the individual. The interfaces between the science of medicine and the arts, philosophy, sociology and law interpret causes and effects of disease. The field of medical ethics is the most prominent offspring of this wider debate, yet the context of disease in the life of the individual and of society is profound and far-reaching. The influences of (...) medicine on the humanities and vice versa are all around, yet only recently have they been recognised in the wider world of health care. How can you encapsulate the essence of medical humanities and teach it to health professionals? Medical Humanities is designed to fill the need for a clear, well illustrated text that both provides the principles for the individual reader, and encourages discussion. The issues are explored in four main sections. Based on a highly successful seminar, and with contributions from leading writers, thinkers, and teachers, this book provides a comprehensive and authoritative reference for what is becoming a professional requirement in medicine. It will be invaluable for clinicians and students alike. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold antirealist views about morality, according to which moral facts or truths do not exist. Does this imply that other types of normative facts, such as epistemic facts, do not exist? The Normative Web develops a positive answer to this question. By means of an analogy between moral and epistemic facts, Terence Cuneo presents a compelling defence of robust realism in ethics. In so doing, he engages with a range of antirealist positions in epistemology such as error (...) theories, expressivist views, and reductionist views of epistemic reasons. (shrink)

Building on the strengths of the first edition, the second edition of the Irwin Nicomachean Ethics features a revised translation (with little editorial intervention), expanded notes (including a summary of the argument of each chapter), an expanded Introduction, and a revised glossary.

This exceptional book examines and explains Plato's answer to the normative question, "How ought we to live?" It discusses Plato's conception of the virtues; his views about the connection between the virtues and happiness; and the account of reason, desire, and motivation that underlies his arguments about the virtues. Plato's answer to the epistemological question, "How can we know how we ought to live?" is also discussed. His views on knowledge, belief, and inquiry, and his theory of Forms, are examined, (...) insofar as they are relevant to his ethical view. Terence Irwin traces the development of Plato's moral philosophy, from the Socratic dialogues to its fullest exposition in the Republic. Plato's Ethics discusses Plato's reasons for abandoning or modifying some aspects of Socratic ethics, and for believing that he preserves Socrates' essential insights. A brief and selective discussion of the Statesmen, Philebus, and Laws is included. Replacing Irwin's earlier Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford, 1977), this book gives a clearer and fuller account of the main questions and discusses some recent controversies in the interpretation of Plato's ethics. It does not presuppose any knowledge of Greek or any extensive knowledge of Plato. (shrink)

In this book the author argues that human musical understanding is rooted in the traditions of culture and that experience of music depends crucially on what the individual brings to it.

Since the 1950s, Terence Penelhum has been a leading contributor to studies on the thought of David Hume. In this collection, he presents a selection of the best of his essays on Hume. Most of the essays are quite recent and three are previously unpublished.

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to (...) the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B. We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?". (shrink)

Recent theoretical and philosophical movements within the study of material culture are more carefully attending to the variety of ways in which human artefacts, institutions, and cultural developments extend, shape and alter human cognition over time. Material Engagement Theory in particular has set out to map, explore and understand the relational nature of mind and material world as can be read through cultural artefacts. Within the context of MET, the neurological concept of metaplasticity has been expanded to include the affective (...) domains of technology, materials, and things in the neurological development and architecture of the plastic human mind; a ‘transactional’ relationship between a plastic mind and a plastic material world that are correlated at the ontological level. The challenges of mapping this metaplasticity of mind lie in understanding how the mind and material culture should be understood in relation to the constantly changing lifeworlds of humans over time; the ecological, social, technological and environmental contexts that form the historical specificity of cognitive development. This paper explores how the historical specificity of metaplasticity can be made tangible through the study of material culture, focusing upon the particular activity of oil painting. It will be argued that paintings can provide clues to the historical specificity of the mind that crosses the lifeworld of human action; the technological, phenomenological, philosophical, material, and social conditions underpinning the creation of a painted mark. Drawing from a range of sources that have a root within a Deleuzian process philosophy, the paper builds an account of painting that can be read as expressing the encultured and historical manipulation of paint as an expressive material in itself; an action rendered visible that express the historical emergence of mind. (shrink)

Qu’elle soit ingrate ou réussie, la vieillesse soulève des questions incontournables : celles de la mort et de la souffrance, de la responsabilité et de la vulnérabilité. Du silence et de la parole aussi. Être vulnérable, c’est être fragile, friable ; c’est avoir besoin de son prochain. La vulnérabilité est liée, notamment, à la maladie, au grand âge, à la dépendance ou au fardeau de l’aide. Or, les personnes aidées et aidantes sont surtout des femmes. Il y a les femmes (...) du grand âge et les femmes de tous les âges, qui exécutent à leurs côtés, bénévolement, un travail domestique de santé. Faisons apparaître les obstacles au respect des droits et au pouvoir d’agir de ce « couple vulnérable » aidant-aidé, dans une perspective critique et féministe du droit et de l’éthique. Brisons le silence. (shrink)

Theories of affective influences on cognition posit that negative mood may increase cognitive load, causing a decrement in task performance (Seibert & Ellis, [1991]. Irrelevant thoughts, emotional mood states, and cognitive task performance. Memory & Cognition, 19(5), 507–513), or cause a shift to more analytic thinking, which benefits tasks requiring attention to detail (Schwarz & Clore, [1983]. Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(3), 513–523). We previously reported (...) that individuals who are higher in the trait of emotional reactivity performed better on an inhibitory task with increasing negative mood whereas low-reactive individuals showed the converse pattern (Gabel & McAuley, [2018]. Does mood help or hinder executive functions? Reactivity may be the key. Personality and Individual Differences, 128, 94–99; [2020]. React to act: Negative mood, response inhibition, and the moderating role of emotional reactivity. Motivation and Emotion, 44(6), 862–869). Because high-reactive individuals are more accustomed to negative affect (Nock et al., [2008]. The emotion reactivity scale: Development, evaluation, and relation to self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. Behavior Therapy, 39(2), 107–116), we speculated that negative mood engendered analytic thinking but without a task-incongruent increase in cognitive load – thereby facilitating performance. Here, we induced a heuristic or analytic approach to information processing prior to performance of an inhibitory task and expected different results pending the thinking style induced. In the heuristic condition, increasing negative mood was associated with better performance for high-reactive participants but not their low-reactive counterparts. In the analytic condition, increasing negative mood was associated with better performance irrespective of emotional reactivity. Our results are consistent with the notion that negative mood engenders analytic thinking which may benefit response inhibition provided it does not increase task-incongruent cognitive load. (shrink)

The years from 1918 to 1945 remain central to European History. It was a breath-taking time during which the very best and very worst attributes of Mankind were on display. In the euphoria of peace which followed the end of the First World War, the Baltic States emerged as independent forces on the world stage, participating in thrilling experiments in national and transnational governance. Later, following economic collapse and in the face of rising totalitarianism among even Europe’s most cultured nations, (...) Baltic communities succumbed to nationalism too. During wartime, Baltic peoples became both victims and, sometimes, victimisers. Ultimately their victimhood lasted until the end of the Cold War, yielding consequences still discernible at the start of the twenty first century. Taking the period 1918 to 1945 as pivotal, this collection of essays examines some of the key themes in Baltic History as they are emerging today. These include appreciations of identity, autonomy and the rights of national minorities; the everyday and social foundations of international security; and the importance of historical memory to popular and political identities. (shrink)

The concept of “ethical research” holds considerable sway over the ways in which contemporary biomedical, natural, and social science investigations are funded, regulated, and practiced within a variety of countries. Some commentators have viewed this “new” means of governance positively; others, however, have been resoundingly critical, regarding it as restrictive and ethics bodies and regulations unfit for the task they have been set. Regardless, it is clear that science today is an “ethical” business. The ways in which formal and informal (...) ethical discourses and practices—what might be called “regimes of normativity”—structure scientific work and the meanings it is ascribed with have, however, been underexplored. This article attends to how science and ethics articulate; how they are, in many ways, co-produced. Exploring these processes of co-production casts into sharp relief the essential emotionality of science; the relationships investigators have with their colleagues, work, and research participants pulse with emotion, potentially shaping in important ways the very kinds of knowledge that laboratories produce. (shrink)

What can we learn about management ethics from other cultures and societies? In this textbook, cross-cultural management theory is applied and made relevant to management ethics. To help the reader understand different approaches that global businesses can take to operate successfully and ethically, there are chapters focusing on specific countries and regions. As well as giving the wider geographical, political and cultural contexts, the book includes numerous examples in every chapter to help the reader critique universal assumptions of what is (...) ethical. By taking a closer look at the way we view other cultures and their values, the author challenges us to rethink commonly held assumptions and approaches in cross-cultural management, and to apply a more critical approach. (shrink)

Exploring Aristotle's philosophical method and the merits of his conclusions, Irwin here shows how Aristotle defends dialectic against the objection that it cannot justify a metaphysical realist's claims. He focuses particularly on Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics, stressing the connections between doctrines that are often discussed separately.

The development of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association9s _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_—the DSM-5—has reenergised and driven further forward critical discourse about the place and role of diagnosis in mental health. The DSM-5 has attracted considerable criticism, not least about its role in processes of medicalisation. This paper suggests the need for a sociology of psychiatric critique. Sociological analysis can help map fields of contention, and cast fresh light on the assumptions and nuances of debate (...) around the DSM-5; it underscores the importance of diagnosis to the governance of social and clinical life, as well as the wider discourses critical commentaries connect with and are activated by. More normatively, a sociology of critique can indicate which interests and values are structuring the dialogues being articulated, and just how diverse clinical opinion regarding the DSM can actually be. This has implications for the considerations of health services and policy decision-makers who might look to such debates for guidance. (shrink)