"A magisterial accomplishment that will be the standard in this field for years to come."--John D. Caputo, Villanova University "Outstanding, entirely original, absolutely groundbreaking.... It is quite simply the best account to date--and the best we can expect for decades in the future--of the philosophical development of Heidegger's early thought."--Thomas Sheehan, Loyola University "A magisterial accomplishment that will be the standard in this field for years to come."--John D. Caputo, Villanova University.

According to four dimensionalism, the material world is divided into momentary stages. In a four-dimensional world, which objects are the ordinary things, the things we normally name and quantify over? Aggregates of stages, according to most four-dimensionalists, but according to stage theorists (or exdurantists), ordinary objects are instead to be identified with the stages themselves. (A temporal counterpart theoretic account of de re temporal predication is then given.) This paper argues that a stage theorist is best positioned to accept David (...) Lewis's argument from temporary intrinsics for four-dimensionalism, since stage theorists are the only four-dimensionalists who attribute monadic temporary intrinsic properties to ordinary things. (shrink)

In "Sider on Existence" (Noužs, 2007), David Liebesman and Matti Eklund argue that my "indeterminacy argument", according to which quantifiers are never vague, clashes with my "naturalness argument", according to which quantifiers "carve at the joints". There is, I argue, no outright inconsistency. But Liebesman and Eklund have shown that my arguments are not as independent as it may have appeared. The best defense of the indeterminacy argument is via the naturalness argument.

There is broad agreement among social researchers and social ontologists that the project of dividing humans into social kinds should be guided by at least two methodological commitments. First, a commitment to what best serves moral and political interests, and second, a commitment to describing accurately the causal structures of social reality. However, researchers have not sufficiently analyzed how these two commitments interact and constrain one another. In the absence of that analysis, several confusions have set in, threatening to undermine (...) shared goals for the responsible modeling of social kinds of humans. This essay first explains the source and substance of these confusions. Then, by distinguishing different value-laden investigative questions into the classification of social kinds of humans, it sets out specific relations of dependence and constraint between empirically-driven investigations and value-driven investigations into social kinds of humans. The result is a more detailed and fruitful framework for thinking about the classification of social kinds that respects both normative interests and mind-independent causal regularities. (shrink)

This paper presents a new solution to the problem of peer disagreement that distinguishes two principles of rational belief, here called probability and autonomy. When we discover that we disagree with peers, there is one sense in which we rationally ought to suspend belief, and another in which we rationally ought to retain our original belief. In the first sense, we aim to believe what is most probably true according to our total evidence, including testimony from peers and authorities. In (...) the second, we aim to base our beliefs only on objective evidence and argumentation, even if that lowers the probability of their being true. The first principle of rational belief tends to serve the short-term epistemic interests of individuals, while the second tends to serve the long-term epistemic interests of both individuals and groups. The best way to reconcile these principles in cases of peer disagreement is to associate them with two corresponding species of belief, here called perception and opinion. (shrink)

The core idea of David Armstrong’s combinatorial theory of possibility is attractive. Rearrangement is the key to modality; possible worlds result from scrambling bits and pieces of other possible worlds. Yet I encounter great difficulty when trying to formulate the theory rigorously, and my best attempts are vulnerable to counterexamples. The Leibnizian biconditionals relate possibility and necessity to possible world and true in.

Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice is an unsung classic of contemporary social philosophy. It combines the first analysis by a social theorist of the practical intelligibility governing action with an exciting perspective on how the structure of social phenomena determines and is itself perpetuated by action. Bourdieu, however, misinterprets his own theory of intelligibility as a theory of the causal generation of action. Moreover, he attempts to analyze the underlying structure of intelligibility with a set of fundamental oppositions that at (...) the same time structure the social phenomena found in the worlds through which people live. It is argued that practical intelligibility has no underlying structure, that the fundamental oppositions apply at best to traditional societies alone, and that these oppositions do not even structure intelligibility in such societies but, instead, are only a descriptive scheme with which a social scientist can reconstruct social phenomena in them. The outline of a more adequate account of practical intelligibility is also presented. (shrink)

In an article in Scientific American (March 1994, pp. 68–74) entitled “The Quantum Physics of Time Travel”, Oxford physicist David Deutsch and Oxford philosopher Michael Lockwood give a defense of the physical possibility of time travel based on the “Many Worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics. This positive view of theirs is not my concern, however—I want to quarrel with their argument that time travel cannot be accommodated in any other way.1 The best way to spell out the traditional “grandfather paradox” (...) that appears to threaten the possibility of time travel involves the notion of ability, or personal possibility, or free will. An example of David Lewis’s: Tim travels back in time with the intent to kill his grandfather.2 Let us fix the case as one in which Tim in fact will not kill Grandfather; still, it seems that he can kill Grandfather because he is a good shot, has a gun, and is alone with Grandfather at close range. As Lewis says, Tim “has what it takes” to kill Grandfather. However, it is also compelling that Tim cannot kill Grandfather, because if Grandfather had been killed in his youth, Tim would not have existed to kill him. It is important to realize that the paradox essentially involves the notion of ability. No inconsistency results from supposing that Tim does not kill Grandfather. As for the case in which Tim does kill Grandfather, there are various possibilities. We could tell a consistent time travel story in which Tim kills Grandfather, but Grandfather is miraculously resurrected. Or one in which Tim kills Grandfather, but in which Grandfather has already had a child. Or one in which Tim kills Grandfather permanently, before Grandfather has any children, but in which Tim’s grandfather is someone other than Grandfather. As for the story in which Tim both kills Grandfather permanently in such a way that Grandfather has no children, and also is descended from Grandfather, this is an inconsistent time travel story; but of course the existence of some.... (shrink)

In this essay, the author maintains that Gadamer’s affirmation of the relation among art, truth, and beauty is less a sign of conservatism or nostalgia than it is a key to his innovative and insightful examination of our experience of art. Gadamer’s approach to both the truth claim and the beauty of art flows from his association of the being of art with enactment (Vollzug). Yet, increasingly over the course of his writings, Gadamer appears to relinquishes talk of art in (...) this sense as a ,work‘ in favor of an emphasis on the kinship between art and the phenomenon of play. In light of this shift, it is argued that Gadamer’s conception of the truth claim and beauty of art may best be understood not as properties of a product or artifact, of something already enacted and thus complete in itself, but, instead, as nothing other than the very enacting of that freedom which he finds at the heart of human play. (shrink)

This survey seeks to define the present situation and climate for translating Heidegger into English after the disastrous translation (1999) of the Beiträge, Heidegger’s second magnum opus after Sein und Zeit. The 12 translations that have appeared since then tend to handle Heidegger’s neologisms in less ludicrous ways and continue to find ways to bend the highly restrictive rules imposed on translations by Heidegger’s literary executor. There are still errors of omission and commission in the German originals that carry over (...) into the translations. A few of the English translators add to the errors of omission and commission but most tend to be competent and conscientious, producing excellent results. Yet even the best translators slack off in their production of the permitted glossaries, which are indispensable for demarcating Heidegger’s terminology in the time period involved and provide the reader a starting basis for an index, which is prohibited. (shrink)

It is increasingly clear that children's excessive consumption of products high in added sugar causes obesity and obesity-related health problems like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic syndrome. Less clear is how best to address this problem through public health policy. In contrast to policies that might conflict with adult's right to self-determination — for example sugar taxes and soda bans — this article proposes that children's access to products high in added sugars should be restricted in the same (...) way that children's access to tobacco products is restricted. The article first considers how the recommended policy will protect a child's right to an open future while not violating parental rights. The article then explores how the implementation of the recommended policy can help transform the social meaning of sugar and thereby curb the parental supply of added sugar to children — a central cause of obesity. The article also addresses several potential objections. (shrink)

Empirical knowledge exists in the form of antiskeptical conditionals, which are propositions like [if I am not undetectably deceived, then I am holding a pen]. Such conditionals, despite their trivial appearance, have the same essential content as the categorical propositions that we usually discuss, and can serve the same functions in science and practical reasoning. This paper sketches out two versions of a general response to skepticism that employs these conditionals. The first says that our ordinary knowledge attributions can safely (...) be replaced by statements using antiskeptical conditionals, which provides a way around the standard sort of skeptical argument while accepting its soundness with respect to the usual targets. The second analyzes the objects of our ordinary knowledge attributions as antiskeptical conditionals, which allows us to refute, not just evade, the skeptic's argument. Both versions compare favorably to the best-knowncurrent approaches to skepticism, including semantic contextualism. (shrink)

The practice of philanthropy, which releases private property for public purposes, represents in many ways the best angels of our nature. But this practice's noteworthy virtues often obscure the fact that philanthropy also represents the exercise of private power. In The Tyranny of Generosity, Theodore Lechterman shows how this private power can threaten the foundations of a democratic society. The deployment of private wealth for public ends may rival the authority of communities to determine their own affairs. And, in societies (...) characterized by wide disparities in wealth, philanthropy often combines with background inequalities to make public decisions overwhelmingly sensitive to the preferences of the rich. Allowing private wealth to dictate social outcomes collides with core commitments of a democratic society, a society in which people are supposed to determine their common affairs together, on equal terms. But why exactly is democracy valuable? How should these values be weighed against the liberty of donors and the many social benefits that philanthropy promises? Lechterman explores these questions by examining various topics in the practice of philanthropy: the respective roles of philanthropy and government, public subsidies for private giving, the use of donations for political speech, instruments of perpetual giving, the rise in giving by commercial corporations, and effective altruism as a guide for individual giving. These studies build to a surprising conclusion: realizing the democratic ideal may be impossible without philanthropy--but making philanthropy safe for democracy also requires fundamental changes to policy and practice. (shrink)

Problems in the field of health law often force tradeoffs between uniformity and particularity in health care decision-making. Patients are highly diverse in terms of their basic health status, willingness to accept risk or uncertainty in new treatments, and ability to pay for care. And health care experts - doctors, research scientists, insurance company reviewers, and health economists - are similarly diverse in their perception of the best treatment and payment structure choices. In a world with such persistent heterogeneity of (...) opinions and preferences, a society's choice between centralized rules for treatment and payment and a more diffuse decisional regime is both crucial and controversial. Opt for a uniform national rule - say, a federal statute governing treatment standards, drug approval, or health finance - and many beneficial autonomous transactions between doctors and patients are squelched, with possible detrimental effects on population health and medical innovation. (shrink)

Problems in the field of health law often force tradeoffs between uniformity and particularity in health care decision-making. Patients are highly diverse in terms of their basic health status, willingness to accept risk or uncertainty in new treatments, and ability to pay for care. And health care experts - doctors, research scientists, insurance company reviewers, and health economists - are similarly diverse in their perception of the best treatment and payment structure choices. In a world with such persistent heterogeneity of (...) opinions and preferences, a society's choice between centralized rules for treatment and payment and a more diffuse decisional regime is both crucial and controversial. Opt for a uniform national rule - say, a federal statute governing treatment standards, drug approval, or health finance - and many beneficial autonomous transactions between doctors and patients are squelched, with possible detrimental effects on population health and medical innovation. (shrink)

This survey seeks to define the present situation and climate for translating Heidegger into English after the disastrous translation (1999) of the Beiträge, Heidegger’s second magnum opus after Sein und Zeit. The 12 translations that have appeared since then tend to handle Heidegger’s neologisms in less ludicrous ways and continue to find ways to bend the highly restrictive rules imposed on translations by Heidegger’s literary executor. There are still errors of omission and commission in the German originals that carry over (...) into the translations. A few of the English translators add to the errors of omission and commission but most tend to be competent and conscientious, producing excellent results. Yet even the best translators slack off in their production of the permitted glossaries, which are indispensable for demarcating Heidegger’s terminology in the time period involved and provide the reader a starting basis for an index, which is prohibited. (shrink)

Adorno's work “What does‘processing of the Рast’ mean” for the first time was presented as a report on November 6, 1959 before the Coordination Council on Christian-Jewish Cooperation. In this work Adorno considered the essence of social ideology prevailing in postwar Germany, which predetermined the strategies of social reconciliation with the political crimes of the former national-socialist power. According to the philosopher the social ideology of the consumer society uses a large number of appropriate means to stabilize its dominant position (...) in society. First of all this ideology tries to eliminate the collective historical memory of people about the horrors of the war period, trying to squeeze them out of the collective consciousness, in particular, through the memories of people about the “best times” of life under the “guardianship” of the previous totalitarian power. The philosopher marked as surrogate the identity of these people which socially integrated only through the authority of the power personality. They do not identify themselves with the victims of the totalitarian regime because of the influence on their consciousness of the cultural elements of this social ideology. Another consequence of this influence is the alienation of these people from the idea of democracy as a factor of properly sociocultural transformations. Adorno defined the new “democratic pedagogy” and the enlightenment as a “second education” as effective means to overcome this influence. They are practically implemented in a society as those educated people who have knowledge about the past crimes of the totalitarian regime. In this manner they cause within the educational process of the effective “re-education of the Past” through the formation of a personal understanding of an individual about social causes and the terrible consequences of rule of a totalitarian regime. This makes possible of his “political full-grown” and makes impossible of historic recurrence of the crimes of authoritarian power in Europe. (shrink)

There are things of which it is true to say that there are no such things. How can we resolve this paradox? Panayot Butchvarov argues that there are objects of reference that are not also entities, where the former must merely be thinkable but the latter must be indefinitely re-identifiable. This paper argues that fictional and many other unreal objects are indeed indefinitely re-identifiable, so they must be counted as existing things on Butchvarov's theory. The paradox is best resolved by (...) distinguishing among domains of existence: Sherlock Holmes exists in the unrestricted domain of objects and in the fictional domain created by Conan Doyle, but not in the domain of the real world. Thus to exist and to be real are different things; all objects exist in some domain, but only real objects really exist. (shrink)

It is increasingly clear that children's excessive consumption of products high in added (or extrinsic) sugar causes obesity and obesity‐related health problems like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic syndrome. Less clear is how best to address this problem through public health policy. In contrast to policies that might conflict with adult's right to self‐determination — for example sugar taxes and soda bans — this article proposes that children's access to products high in added sugars should be restricted in (...) the same way that children's access to tobacco products is restricted. The article first considers how the recommended policy will protect a child's right to an open future while not violating parental rights. The article then explores how the implementation of the recommended policy can help transform the social meaning of sugar and thereby curb the parental supply of added sugar to children — a central cause of obesity. The article also addresses several potential objections. (shrink)

This online essay explores how the term "miracle" is best defined and whether it is possible for scientists, as scientists, to believe in miracles.

Many have said that God is hidden. This alleged hiddenness is particularly troublesome for evangelical Christianity, much more so than generally recognized, for it would render certain facts about the world and about the Bible very hard to explain on the hypothesis that the God of evangelical Christianity exists. Those facts would be best explained by appeal to the alternate hypothesis that that deity does not exist. Three evidential, epistemic, atheological arguments emerge from this consideration. One of them is the (...) Argument from Nonbelief, which focuses on the fact that there is widespread nonbelief in the given deity. I have written essays and a book (NONBELIEF & EVIL) on that one. The other two are the Argument from Confusion (to be labeled AC) and the Argument from Biblical Defects (ABD). AC focuses on the fact that there is widespread confusion among Christians regarding important doctrinal issues, including morality and salvation. ABD focuses on the fact that there are various defects in the Bible. The present essay is devoted to the latter two arguments. (shrink)

A temporal perfect being is best conceived of as having essentially the power to change his mind-even from doing a morally right act to doing one that is morally wrong. For, this power allows him to increase his moral worth by constantly refraining from changing his intentions to do the right thing. Such a being could not possess the power to form an unalterable intention to do the right thing. Could an omnipotent, omniscient being have this power to change his (...) mind and yet know what his future intentions will be? Four arguments that imply a negative answer are considered and rebutted. (shrink)

The main point of this article is that more credence should be given in teacher education to performative dimensions of teaching. I agree with David Carr that the requisite capabilities are probably best learned in actual schools. I employ Turnbull’s conception of performativity, which speaks of tacit cultural learning. Following Wilfred Carr I go back to Aristotle, and to debate between Gadamer and Habermas, before arriving at the view that expert teaching practice should be in the spirit of phronesis. The (...) article then proposes that school-university collaboration should be the standard motif of teacher preparation, the context within which the spirit of phronesis can be realized and modeled. (shrink)

In the 24 years since the founding of BioEssays, the level of translational research, as well as the expectations for its success, have burgeoned. Based on our analysis of current and projected US efforts to establish effective centers of translational research, our own institutional experience and discussions with academic research center leaders and institutional research executives, we have arrived at several critical conclusions about how best to foster disease‐based research on the institutional, national and international level, what summary statistics may (...) best serve as a measurement of successful practice, roughly how much more money will be required to fund the ongoing venture in the US and how to organize and promote this vision. BioEssays 30:1025–1029, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

‘et quid agam?’ ‘rogat! en saperdas aduehe Ponto, castoreum, stuppas, hebenum, tus, lubrica Coa. 135 tolle recens primus piper et sitiente camelo. uerte aliquid; iura.’ In 1. 136, Clausen's’ adoption of et from the best manuscripts would warm the heart of A. E. Housman, who takes exception to the e, ex, and ec of other editors : ‘Spell it as you will, the preposition is not natural: the camel carried the pepper on his back, not in any of his numerous (...) stomachs; and it does not follow that we ought to say “tollere piper e camelo” because there exist such phrases as “desilire ex equo”.’ Instead, he takes both primus and sitiente camelo as adverbial adjuncts to the predicate which are parallel in force and therefore united by the conjunction et. (shrink)

‘et quid agam?’ ‘rogat! en saperdas aduehe Ponto, castoreum, stuppas, hebenum, tus, lubrica Coa. 135 tolle recens primus piper et sitiente camelo. uerte aliquid; iura.’In 1. 136, Clausen's’ adoption of et from the best manuscripts would warm the heart of A. E. Housman, who takes exception to the e, ex, and ec of other editors : ‘Spell it as you will, the preposition is not natural: the camel carried the pepper on his back, not in any of his numerous stomachs; (...) and it does not follow that we ought to say “tollere piper e camelo” because there exist such phrases as “desilire ex equo”.’ Instead, he takes both primus and sitiente camelo as adverbial adjuncts to the predicate which are parallel in force and therefore united by the conjunction et. (shrink)

Abstract The broad concern of this article is to contribute to discussions within hermeneutical philosophy that address the question of life as a form of correlation. More specifically, its purpose is to shed light on the character of life as correlation with reference to a basic aspect of this correlation: our living relation to things. To this end, the author focuses, first, on the later Heidegger's suggestion that our proper relation to things takes shape as an enactment guided by the (...) releasement or letting-be ( Gelassenheit ) of things in their independence; and, second, on Günter Figal's recent claim that this enactment, in turn, depends on our referential relation to the exteriority or objectivity of things. The author concludes that our living relation with things may be understood best in terms of the movement or mutual interplay of these two conditions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American UniversityTheodore GracykArt Subjects: Making Artists in the American University, by Howard Singerman. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999, 296 pp., $19.95 paper.Howard Singerman's Art Subjects is a study of the training of visual artists in American universities from 1912 to the present. More precisely, the book is an account of how two philosophies ofeducation have competed to inform (...) that training. At the outset, Singerman announces that the book explores a long-standing "struggle between vision and language" (p. 10) that culminates with a decisive privileging of language. The book mimics its putative subject in at least one interesting way. As it was for art and the training of American artists in the twentieth century (at least on Singerman's account of them), so it is with the book. Each moves from a practice grounded in objective reality to a jargon-ridden discourse that limits entry to anyone outside of its acutely self-regarding disciplinary field. Although the book's acknowledgments segment thanks one individual for demanding thatSingerman "come to a real conclusion" for the book, readers should note Singerman's subsequent admission that it may not have one. At times it even appears that Singerman goes out of his way to avoid drawing one.Art Subjects appears to have started life as Singerman's doctoral dissertation, but it only occasionally displays the dull by-the-numbers writing of such documents. The book has a clear organization and its numerous quotations are carefully documented. The overall argument is framed, beginning and end, with Singerman's autobiography of his own time as a university art student. It provides him with his framing question: if he has a M.F.A. in sculpture but never learned to sculpt, what does his professional degree signify? The answer is that it indicates that his work is no longer facile. He has progressed from the realm of the artist whose work is professional, displaying facility, to the stage where he is professional. He has progressed to the point where being an artist is theartist's true subject: "Artists are the subject of graduate school; they are both who and what is taught" (p. 3). If this progression is best indicated by an artist's lack of facility in producing works of art, that is the price of professionalism. In the post-World War II university, art training is "founded on the primacy of theory over practice" (p. 181). Yet the result is professionalism without a clear profession other than as an employee of the post-World War II university: the M.F.A. prepares artists for the university discipline of art. Citing Foucault, Singerman seems satisfied that artists have taken command of a theoretical field. Disciplinary boundaries are created and policed by its rules of professional discourse. At the same time, Singerman declares his intention to "use the concept of the discipline as it constrains and structures discourses to keep from having to judge whether or not art is a profession" (p. 201). He likewise mentions [End Page 119] but does not take any stand on the "putative decline of recent art" (p. 210). This ongoing refusal to judge deprives the book of potentially interesting conclusions. It also calls into question Singerman's repeated references to the "self-criticality" of the discipline.Singerman's neutrality might berefreshing were it not for his use of Foucault to introduce the notion that each new "proposition" within the disciplinary discourse represents progress in a "theoretical field," moving "knowledge" forward. Talking about art (and not, to be sure, talking all that much about specific works of art) and talking about being an artist may or may not represent progress. For instance, Singerman's early chaptersmake the case that the triumph of artistic modernism must be understood as a repudiation of a "female" aesthetic and even of women as artists. Singerman returns to the topic ofwomen artists only once, to note Griselda Pollock's approval of the entry of feminism into the academic discipline of art. Thus Singerman is silent on the question of whether progress is made when the number of women is... (shrink)

Drawn from a series of lectures that Wm. Theodore de Bary delivered in honor of the Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi, _Confucian Tradition and Global Education_ is a unique synthesis of essay and debate concerning the future of Chinese education and the potential political uses of Confucianism in the contemporary world. Rapid modernization and the rise of English as a global language increasingly threaten East Asia's cultural diversity and long-standing Confucian traditions. De Bary argues that keeping Confucianism alive in China is (...) not only a matter of "Chinese identity," but also a critical part of achieving a multicultural global education. Scholars take different views on what is worth preserving in Confucian tradition, and whether it is possible for the classical teachings to remain relevant in today's high-tech educational environment. De Bary and his contributors assert that the Chinese classics are the key to this survival, and therefore their inclusion in a global humanities curriculum is essential. De Bary also believes in the power of the classics to humanize the modernization process and to shape a more democratic East Asia. Kwan Tze-wan discusses the difficulty of teaching the Chinese humanities in English when certain ideas and values are best expressed in a native language, and Cheung Chan Fai demonstrates how it is still possible for Confucian humanism to contribute to a modern liberal education. Timely and passionately argued, _Confucian Tradition and Global Education_ is a major work emphasizing the importance of Chinese philosophy in the post-World War II era. (shrink)

This survey seeks to delineate the present situation and climate for translating Heidegger into English after the disastrous translation in 1999 of the Beiträge, Heidegger's second magnum opus after Sein und Zeit. The 13 translations that have appeared since then tend to handle Heidegger's neologisms in less ludicrous and more lucid ways and continue to find ways to bend the highly restrictive rules imposed on translations by Heidegger's literary executor. There are still errors of omission and commission in the German (...) originals that carry over into the translations. A few of the English translators add to the errors of omission and commission but the majority tends to be competent and conscientious, generally producing good results. Yet even the best translators slack off in their production of the permitted glossaries, which are indispensable for demarcating Heidegger's terminology in the time period involved and provide the reader with a starting basis for an index, which is prohibited. (shrink)

Most laboratory experiments studying Tullock contest games find that bids significantly exceed the risk-neutral equilibrium predictions. We test the generalisability of these results by comparing a typical experimental implementation of a contest against the familiar institution of a ticket-based raffle. We find that in the raffle initial bid levels are significantly lower and bids adjust more rapidly towards expected-earnings best responses. We demonstrate the robustness of our results by replicating them across two continents at two university labs with contrasting student (...) profiles. (shrink)

Theodor W.Adorno was one of the towering intellectuals of the twentieth century. His contributions cover such a myriad of fields, including the sociology of culture, social theory, the philosophy of music, ethics, art and aesthetics, film, ideology, the critique of modernity and musical composition, that it is difficult to assimilate the sheer range and profundity of his achievement. His celebrated friendship with Walter Benjamin has produced some of the most moving and insightful correspondence on the origins and objects of (...) the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. This unprecedented collection, devised and assembled by one of Europe's rising social theorists, distills the best from published assessments and responses to Adorno's oeuvre. The collection is divided into 4 volumes: Volume 1: Philosophy, Ethics and Critical Theory Part 1: Negative Dialectics Included here are contributions on the concept of totality in the writings of Adorno and Lukacs; Adorno and Bourgeois Philosophy; the relationship between Adorno and Kierkegaard; Adorno's Critique of Idealism; Adorno and Linguistics; Adono and Habermas. Part 2: Ethics and Redemption This is comprised of contributions on Adorno and Truth; Adorno's Inverse Theology; and Adorno and the Ineffable Part 3: Critical Theory, Ideology Critique and Social Science Included here are contributions on Adorno's relation to the Positivist Dispute; the Popper-Adorno Controversy; Adorno and Empirical Research; and Hermeneutics and Critical Theory. Volume 2: Aesthetic Theory Part 1: Art and Politics in 'Aesthetic Theory' This includes material on the De-Aestheticization of Art; Adorno, Utopia and Mimesis; Adorno and autonomous art; Adorno and Dialectics; Adorno, Marxism and Art; Art and Criticism in Adorno's Aesthetics; Adorno's concept of the Avant-Garde. Part 2: Philosophy of Music This includes contributions on Adorno's music and social criticism; Adorno and nostalgia; Adorno, Heidegger and the meaning of music; Adorno and Wagner. Part 3: On Jazz The material included here addresses questions of Adorno and Popular Music; Adorno's encounter with jazz; Adorno, Jazz and Society; and the reasons for Adorno's apparent hatred of jazz. Volume 3: Social Theory & The Critique of Modernity Part 1: On 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment' Included here are chapters on the dialectic of enlightenment and post-functionalist thought; dialectic of enlightenment as genealogy critique; the relationship between the dialectic of enlightenment, modernity and postmodernity; Adorno's critique of progress; Adorno and theories of subjectivity; and the dialectic of enlightenment and rationality. Part 2: Anti-Semitism This consists of material on Adorno and Horkheimer; and Adorno and Public Sphere Part 3: Popular Culture and Capitalism Included here are contributions on Adorno and Sport; Adorno's alleged left-wing elitism; Adorno's critique of astrology and the Occult; Benjamin and Adorno on Disney; Adorno, Totalitarianism and the Welfare State; and Adorno and Mass Society. Volume 4: Cultural Theory and the Postmodern Challenge Part 1: 'Damaged Life': Exile in America This section includes Leo Lowenthal's insightful recollections of Adorno; Adorno and the primal history of subjectivity; Adorno and Los Angeles; Adorno's relation to American culture; and Adorno's exile in England. Part 2: Film Theory This section includes chapters on Adorno and the Culture Industry; Benjamin, Adorno and Contemporary Film Theory; Adorno, Aesthetics and the Social. Part 3: Wellmer and Adorno Included here are papers on Aesthetic, Psychic and Social Synthesis in Adorno and Wellmer; and New German Aesthetic Theory after Adorno. Part 4: Jameson on Adorno Included here are papers on Jameson, Adorno and the persistence of the Utopian; and a Marxism for Postmodernism Part 5: Modernism and Postmodernism This section contains papers on Adorno, Foucault and the Modern Intellectual; Adorno, Foucault and Two forms of the Critique of Modernity; Adorno and the Habermas-Lyotard Debate; Adorno, Postmodernism and Edward Said; Adorno, Heidegger and Postmodernism; Adorno and the Decline of the Modern Age; The literary process of modernism; Adorno, Tradition and the Postmodern Part 5: The Feminist Response Included here are contributions on Adorno and Judith Butler; Adorno, Art Theory and Feminist Practice; and Gender in the writings of Adorno and Horkheimer. The collection comes with a superb Introduction to Adorno by Gerard Delanty which elucidates the main contributions of this penetrating and enduring thinker. Comprehensive and consistently illuminating, the collection includes the thought on Adorno from some of the most distinguished commentators on social theory. Included here are selections from the writings of Susan Buck-Morss, Martin Jay, Agnes Heller; David Frisby; Johann Arnason; Richard Wolin; Andrew Bowie; Robert Hulnot-Kentor; Leo Lowenthal; Richard Rorty Axel Honneth; Albrecht Wellmer; and Jurgen Habermas. The result is a peerless research resource allowing readers to delve into all aspects of Adorno's extraordinary accomplishments in social thought, philosophy and cultural criticism. It will be required reading for students of the Frankfurt School, Marxism, Critical Theory, Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics and Social Theory. (shrink)

A new title in Routledge’s Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers series, this is a two-volume collection of the very best recent scholarship on Theodor W. Adorno . It is an essential successor to an earlier four-volume collection, Theodor Adorno , edited by Simon Jarvis and published by Routledge in 2006. Recent decades have seen a remarkable growth of scholarly studies devoted to Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy and social theory. Every year, conferences and publications all over the world (...) testify to a lively interest. Indeed, since his death in 1969, Adorno has been read and discussed not only by philosophers but by researchers in all areas of the theoretical humanities, and his impact has been considerable both inside and outside the academy. This new Routledge collection brings together the very best of recent research on Adorno. The editor has particularly focused on works that take account of contemporary developments in philosophy and social theory, demonstrating how Adorno’s view may engage with contemporary theoretical concerns. With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Theodor W. Adorno II is an indispensable work of reference. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital research resource. (shrink)

A new title in Routledge’s Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers series, this is a two-volume collection of the very best recent scholarship on Theodor W. Adorno. It is an essential successor to an earlier four-volume collection, _Theodor Adorno_, edited by Simon Jarvis and published by Routledge in 2006. Recent decades have seen a remarkable growth of scholarly studies devoted to Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy and social theory. Every year, conferences and publications all over the world testify to a (...) lively interest. Indeed, since his death in 1969, Adorno has been read and discussed not only by philosophers but by researchers in all areas of the theoretical humanities, and his impact has been considerable both inside and outside the academy. This new Routledge collection brings together the very best of recent research on Adorno. The editor has particularly focused on works that take account of contemporary developments in philosophy and social theory, demonstrating how Adorno’s view may engage with contemporary theoretical concerns. With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, _Theodor W. Adorno II_ is an indispensable work of reference. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital research resource. (shrink)

The treatise On those who wrongly accuse wise men, of the past and present, preserved anonymously in MSS. Vindobonensis theol. gr. 174, containing works ol Georgios Galesiotes, and Vaticanus gr. 112, is a product of the literary quarrels of the first quarter of the XIV c., coming from somebody belonging to the circle of Theodore Metochites. The anonymous author shares Metochites' view concerning the lasting value of the whole canon of Greel literature, refusing to admit that only Demosthenes and Aelius (...) Aristeides are of any real help to those contemporary authors who try to imitate the Attic style.It is possible that the Letter 11 of Manuel Gabalas was sent to the author of the treatise in question, since a passage of that Letter is very similar to a passage of the anonymous treatise. Kourouses, identifying the addressee of Letter 11 of Gabalas with Nikephoros Choumnos, thought that the author of the anonymous treatise was Georgios Oinaiotes. However, the verbal similarities between the anonymous treatise and the letters of Oinaiotes, detected by Kourouses, are rather trivial. On the other hand, there are several striking resemblances between the anonymous treatise and the rhetorical works of Metochites, which may be easily explained if we assume that the anonymous author was Metochites himself. Though the evidence presented in this paper has at best a cumulative value, our hypothesis explains the circumstances of that treatise's writing better than any other hypothesis previously put forward. It is possible that the opponents of Metochites were those narrow-minded compilers of dictionaries , who did not refrain from accusing prominent authors of the past of not conforming to the rules of Attic language. (shrink)

My title is taken from the frontispiece to Ogilby's translation of Aesop ; since every Renaissance poet believed the statement to be true, let me start with my own example. John Denham's only play, The Sophy, published in August 1642, is a tale about the perils of jealousy. The good prince Mirza, after a miraculous victory over the Turks, returns in glory to his father's court, but leaves it shortly thereafter. In his absense, Haly, the evil courtier, follows a friend's (...) advice to " work on [the king's] fears, till fear hath made him cruel"1 and poisons the king's mind with jealousy against his son. Mirza returns only to be brutally blinded and killed, and the emperor soon dies stricken with remorse. Now it happens that Parliament justified all its actions in the months preceding the civil war on the grounds of the "fears and jealousies" that the king had inspired. Charles was incensed by the slogan and claimed angrily that he, if anyone, had the most cause for fears and jealousies.2 Denham obviously decided that here was the all-consuming topic around which a predominantly royalist drama could be written. He followed what I believe was the standard practice - the method that Fulke Greville said Sidney used and that Congreve repeated at the end of the century when he declared of The Double Dealer that "I design'd the Moral first, and to that Moral I invented the Fable."3 He found a plot in Thomas Herbert's Travels into Diverse Parts of Asia that recorded some terrible cruelties and catastrophes caused by jealousy, and he added the point that the emperor's mind had been wrought upon by his counselor. There is no evidence that the play was ever acted, but the most casual reader would have said to himself, "Yes, history reminds us that states destroy themselves through fears and jealousies, and we should abate our own before it is too late." · 1. Sir John Denham, The Poetical Works, ed. Theodore Howard Banks, 2d ed. , p.245. The references to fear and jealousy are so ubiquitous in the play that they need not be listed here.· 2. On March 1, 1642, in the angriest of his replies to Parliament so far, Charles exclaimed, "You speake of Jealousies and Feares: Lay your hands to your hearts, and aske your selves whether I may not likewise be disturbed with Feares and Jealousies: And if so, I assure you this Message hath nothing lessened them" . Although phrases like "distempers and jealousies" had been used earlier, Clarendon on two occasions is quite specific that "fears and jealousies" were "the new words which served to justify all indispositions and to excuse all disorders" in January 1642 . Taken with other evidence, Clarendon's remarks strongly suggest that The Sophy was written after Coopers Hill, and during seven months preceding its publication in August 1642.· 3. William Congreve, The Complete Plays, ed. Herbert Davis , p. 119. And compare John Donne in Sermons, ed. Evelyn M. Simpson are George R. Potter , 9:274: "All wayes of teaching are Rule and Example: and though ordinarily the Rule be first placed, yet the Rule it selfe is made of Examples...for, Example in matter of Doctrine, is as Assimiliation in matter of Nourishment; The Example makes that that is proposed for our learning and farther instruction, like something which we knew before, as Assimilation makes that meat, which we have received and digested, like those parts which are in our bodies before."John M. Wallace, author of Destiny His Choice: The Loyalism of Andrew Marvell and articles on Milton, Dryden Denham, Traherne, and Arnold, is professor of English at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

I argue that Theodor W. Adorno is best understood as a moral perfectionist thinker in the stripe of Stanley Cavell. This is significant because Adorno’s moral philosophy has not received serious interest from moral philosophers, and much of this has to do with difficulties in situating his thought. I argue that once Adorno is situated in this way, then, like Cavell, he offers an interesting moral perspective that will be of value to a variety of moral theorists. My argument (...) proceeds in two broad steps: first, I show that Cavell and Adorno share a distinct epistemological orientation, one that centers around the impossibility of knowledge in certain situations, and trades on a Kantian and post-Kantian picture. Second, I show that their moral perfectionism fundamentally rests on such epistemology. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas both champion the goal of a rational society. However, they differ significantly about what this society should look like and how best to achieve it. Exploring the premises shared by both critical theorists, along with their profound disagreements about social conditions today, this book defends Adorno against Habermas' influential criticisms of his account of Western society and prospects for achieving reasonable conditions of human life. The book begins with an overview of these critical (...) theories of Western society. Both Adorno and Habermas follow Georg Lukács when they argue that domination consists in the reifying extension of a calculating, rationalizing form of thought to all areas of human life. Their views about reification are discussed in the second chapter. In chapter three the author explores their conflicting accounts of the historical emergence and development of the type of rationality now prevalent in the West. Since Adorno and Habermas claim to have a critical purchase on reified social life, the critical leverage of their theories is assessed in chapter four. The final chapter deals with their opposing views about what a rational society would look like, as well as their claims about the prospects for establishing such a society. Adorno, Habermas and the Search for a Rational Society will be essential reading for students and researchers of critical theory, political theory and the work of Adorno and Habermas. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his contributions to aesthetics and social theory. Critics have always complained about the lack of a practical, political or ethical dimension to Adorno's philosophy. In this highly original contribution to the literature on Adorno, J. M. Bernstein offers the first attempt in any language to provide an account of the ethical theory latent in Adorno's writings. Bernstein relates Adorno's ethics to major trends in contemporary moral philosophy. He analyses the full range of (...) Adorno's major works, with a special focus on Dialectic of Enlightenment, Minima Moralia and Negative Dialectics. In developing his account Bernstein lays particular stress on Adorno's contention that the event of Auschwitz demands a new categorical imperative. This book will be widely acknowledged as the standard work on Adorno's ethics and as such will interest professionals and students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, art history and music. (shrink)

Although Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his association with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, he began his career as a composer and successful music critic. _Night Music_ presents the first complete English translations of two collections of texts compiled by German philosopher and musicologist Adorno—_Moments musicaux_, containing essays written between 1928 and 1962, and _Theory of New Music_, a group of texts written between 1929 and 1955. In _Moments musicaux_, Adorno echoes Schubert’s eponymous cycle, with its (...) emphasis on aphorism, and offers lyrical reflections on music of the past and his own time. The essays include extended aesthetic analyses that demonstrate Adorno’s aim to apply high philosophical standards to the study of music. _Theory of New Music_, as its title indicates, presents Adorno’s thoughts and theories on the composition, reception, and analysis of the music that was being written around him. His extensive philosophical writing ultimately prevented him from pursuing the compositional career he had once envisaged, but his view of the modern music of the time is not simply that of a theorist, but clearly also that of a composer. Though his advocacy of the Second Viennese School, comprising composer Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, is well known, many of his writings in this field have remained obscure. Collected in their entirety for the first time in English, the insightful texts in _Night Music _show the breadth of Adorno’s musical understanding and reveal an overlooked side to this significant thinker. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno has a reputation for being adamantly opposed to empirical social science; he denounced it as, at best, a methodological fetish and, at worst, a source of reification. For the most part, scholars have implicitly followed Adorno's view, variously explaining away the impetus for or de‐emphasizing the importance of his participation in a number of varied studies in the social and human sciences between the late 1930s and mid‐1950s. This chapter begins to correct this imbalance by returning attention (...) to three of Adorno's most important empirical studies: “The Essential Value of Radio to All Types of Listeners” (1938–1941), “Anti‐Semitism among American Labor” (1944–1945), and “The Function of Anti‐Semitism in the Personality” (1944–1950). First, the chapter reconstructs Adorno's penetrating critique of existing research methods. Adorno came to see that empirical studies of individuals' preferences and opinions propagated the illusions of choice, preference, experience, and individuality that were necessary to the ideology of contemporary capitalism. But Adorno did not countenance the abandonment of these empirical techniques. Second, the chapter documents Adorno's revision and implementation of empirical techniques in the study of prejudice and authoritarianism. Adorno, it shows, used techniques ranging from social statistics to behavioral psychology. Adorno did not seek to rescue or to synthesize these approaches but instead insisted on the necessity of pursuing each empirical method until it terminated in contradiction. By so doing, he held, empirical social science could be used to illuminate the incongruities of the capitalist economy and social totality itself. (shrink)

What happens at college parties? Why do students dress and behave the way they do? Who has power, and what kind? And are college students happy overall with party and hookup culture? In response to undergraduates' skepticism of researchers' accounts of hookup culture, the author engaged 126 college students as ethnographers to observe and analyze this complex social reality at parties.

ABSTRACT In contemporary American medical practice, certain physicians are critical and wary of the current emphasis on patient autonomy in medicine, questioning whether it really serves the complex needs of severely ill patients. Physicians such as Eric Cassell and Thomas Duffy argue that the duty of beneficence should override the duty to respect autonomy when conflicts arise in clinical situations. After evaluating their claim that severe illness robs patients of their autonomy, I will argue that this perceived conflict between beneficence (...) and autonomy is ill‐conceived, resting on misperceptions about both the capacity for autonomy and the meaning of hope. Considering insights on hope from phenomenologist Gabriel Marcel and theologian William Lynch, as well as drawing upon a case study involving a bone marrow patient, I claim that respecting and nurturing patients’ capacity for autonomy is a necessary condition for acting beneficently and fostering authentic hope. (shrink)

Best known for his two-year sojourn at Walden Pond in Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau is often considered a recluse who emerged from solitude only occasionally to take a stand on the issues of his day. In _Thoreau’s Democratic Withdrawal_, Shannon L. Mariotti explores Thoreau’s nature writings to offer a new way of understanding the unique politics of the so-called hermit of Walden Pond. Drawing imaginatively from the twentieth-century German social theorist Theodor W. Adorno, she shows how withdrawal from the (...) public sphere can paradoxically be a valuable part of democratic politics. Separated by time, space, and context, Thoreau and Adorno share a common belief that critical inquiry is essential to democracy but threatened by modern society. While walking, huckleberrying, and picking wild apples, Thoreau tries to recover the capacities for independent perception and thought that are blunted by “Main Street,” conventional society, and the rapidly industrializing world that surrounded him. Adorno’s thoughts on particularity and the microscopic gaze he employs to work against the alienated experience of modernity help us better understand the value of Thoreau’s excursions into nature. Reading Thoreau with Adorno, we see how periodic withdrawals from public spaces are not necessarily apolitical or apathetic but can revitalize our capacity for the critical thought that truly defines democracy. In graceful, readable prose, Mariotti reintroduces us to a celebrated American thinker, offers new insights on Adorno, and highlights the striking common ground they share. Their provocative and challenging ideas, she shows, still hold lessons on how we can be responsible citizens in a society that often discourages original, critical analysis of public issues. (shrink)