William L. O'Neill's lively history of American women's struggle for equality is written with style and a keen sense for the variety of possible interpretations of 150 years of the feminist movement, from its earliest stirring in the 1830's to the latest developments in the 1980s. O'Neill's most controversial thesis is that the feminist movements of the past have largely failed, and for reasons that remains of deep concern; the movements have never come to grips with the (...) fact that marriage and the family are the chief obstacles to women's emancipation. O'Neill also holds that the sexual revolution of the 1920s, far from liberating women, actually undermined their role in American life. O'Neill treats seriously the ideas of the great feminist leaders and their organizations. His was the first book to deal directly with the failure of feminism as a social force in American society; to tie together the scattered people and events in the history of American women; and to examine seriously feminist experience in the twentieth century. Since the women's agenda is hardly complete, the women's movement remains active, often militantly so. In this new revised edition, O'Neill interprets and illumines not only the history of feminism, but aspects of feminism that still trouble us today. O'Neill's book was widely heralded upon its initial publication. Elizabeth Janeway, writing for Saturday Review, calls it "a truly intelligent discussion...an extraordinary perceptive analysis." Carl Degler, in the Magazine of History calls A History of American Feminism "the most challenging and exciting book on the subject of women to appear in years." And Lionel Tiger, writing for the NewRepublic, says that "O'Neill has turned his mastery of a wide range of historical sources into a lively, engaging, and almost faultlessly sensible book.". (shrink)
John O'Neill explores the human passions as both the object of psychoanalysis and the creative principle of Freud's own discovery and practice of psychoanalysis. Love, hate, anger, jealousy, envy, knowledge, and ignorance: the passions dominate infancy, adolescence, and adulthood, marking them with narcissism, murder, seduction, and self-destruction. They are both the soul's theater and the soul of theater, art, literature, and music. If fear, hate, envy, and jealousy rival love, beauty, and knowledge, or turn into one another, they just (...) as surely expand the human heart. The original essays in this volume analyze the human passions in Freud's metapsychology, from the case histories of Dora, Rat Man, and Schreber to his studies of Leonardo da Vinci, Gradiva, and the "Case of Homosexuality in a Woman." Other essays are devoted to Macbeth, the Judgment of Solomon, Virginia Woolf, and Freud's own adolescence. In constructing a genealogy of the passions from early to late modernity, these studies show the subtle interaction of psychic and social conflict, of ambivalence and disavowal in the workings of the human soul. Contributors are John O'Neill, William Kerrigan, Donald L. Carveth, Jerome Neu, Kathleen Woodward, Claire Kahane, Mary Jacobus, John Forrester, Ellie Ragland, Geoff Miles, and Laurence A. Rickels. (shrink)
John O'Neill explores the human passions as both the object of psychoanalysis and the creative principle of Freud's own discovery and practice of psychoanalysis. Love, hate, anger, jealousy, envy, knowledge, and ignorance: the passions dominate infancy, adolescence, and adulthood, marking them with narcissism, murder, seduction, and self-destruction. They are both the soul's theater and the soul of theater, art, literature, and music. If fear, hate, envy, and jealousy rival love, beauty, and knowledge, or turn into one another, they just (...) as surely expand the human heart. The original essays in this volume analyze the human passions in Freud's metapsychology, from the case histories of Dora, Rat Man, and Schreber to his studies of Leonardo da Vinci, Gradiva, and the "Case of Homosexuality in a Woman." Other essays are devoted to Macbeth, the Judgment of Solomon, Virginia Woolf, and Freud's own adolescence. In constructing a genealogy of the passions from early to late modernity, these studies show the subtle interaction of psychic and social conflict, of ambivalence and disavowal in the workings of the human soul. Contributors are John O'Neill, William Kerrigan, Donald L. Carveth, Jerome Neu, Kathleen Woodward, Claire Kahane, Mary Jacobus, John Forrester, Ellie Ragland, Geoff Miles, and Laurence A. Rickels. (shrink)
This essay discusses engineering ethics in Puerto Rico by examining the impact of the Colegio de Ingenieros y Agrimensores de Puerto Rico (CIAPR) and by outlining the constellation of problems and issues identified in workshops and retreats held with Puerto Rican engineers. Three cases developed and discussed in these workshops will help outline movements in engineering ethics beyond the compliance perspective of the CIAPR. These include the Town Z case, Copper Mining in Puerto Rico, and a hypothetical case researched by (...) UPRM students on laptop disposal. The last section outlines four future challenges in engineering ethics pertinent to the Puerto Rican situation. (shrink)
In this book, William O'Neill, S.J., offers an interpretation of the nature and scope of practical reasoning in light of postmodern philosophical criticism.
Theologians differ not merely as to whether, but as to how Christian morality might be distinctive. In this essay, I consider the differing senses of distinctiveness in Christian ethics, i.e., how the predicate “Christian” qualifies the justification of moral judgment; the form, extension, and modal force of moral rules; and the morally relevant description of action in the theological ethics of Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the “autonomy school” of Josef Fuchs and Bruno Schüller. The essay concludes (...) with an assessment of the distinctiveness of Christian ethics in Iight of the foregoing criticism. (shrink)
Ramon Lemos provides an enhancement of a traditional realistic metaphysics. This work is not a general metaphysics text, and, although the positions taken are consistent with much of Aristotelianism and medieval realism, the work is not a historically oriented treatise. This can be seen as defining the book's contribution to metaphysics: the development of certain metaphysical principles in light of modern, and especially twentieth-century, disputes about logical and linguistic issues. Berkeley, Chisholm, Descartes, Green, Hampshire, Hegel, Hume, Husserl, Kant, Leibniz, Lewis, (...) Locke, Peirce, and Strawson are discussed in the text and others, such as Sellars, occur unnamed, while evaluations are made of various views. (shrink)
An overview of the significant ideological options in American educational philosophy focusing mainly on contemporary public education in the United States. Part I presents the Educational Ideologies Inventory, a diagnostic test derived from the conceptual model of six basic educational ideologies, defines key terms and discusses the relationship between philosophy and education. Part II identifies and defines the three conservative ideologies: educational fundamentalism, intellectualism and conservatism. Part III examines the three liberal ideologies: educational liberalism, liberationism and anarchism. Part IV provides (...) a comparative review of the six ideologies. Includes an appendix on Judaism and Jewish education. (shrink)
This volume is a collection of ten essays by Douglas Gasking (1911–1994), a significant figure in Australian philosophy. There are three previously published papers, “Mathematics and the World” (proposing a form of conventionalism), “Causation and Recipes” (expounding a manipulation account of causation), and “Clusters”, (an account of certain varieties of class-membership). The seven previously unpublished papers include further work on causation, some epistemological issues, subjective probability, a carefully worked out account of the sense in which observable behaviour can be criterial (...) for mental states, and the distinction between deductive and inductive arguments.The introduction to the volume describes Gasking’s life and work, and a bibliography lists Gasking’s publication, and also works of other philosophers who have engaged with Gasking’s ideas. (shrink)
Environmental problems have an ethical dimension. They are not just about the efficient use of resources. Justice in the distribution of environmental goods and burdens, fairness in the processes of environmental decision-making, the moral claims of future generations and non-humans, these and other ethical values inform the responses of citizens to environmental problems. How can these concerns enter into good policy-making processes?Two expert-based approaches are commonly advocated for incorporating ethical values into environmental decision-making. One is an 'economic capture' approach, according (...) to which existing economic methods can be successfully extended to include ethical concerns. For example, stated preference methods, especially contingent valuation, have been developed to try and capture ethical responses as 'non-use values' of the environment, in particular 'existence values'. The other is a 'moral expert' approach which confines economic methods to the analysis of welfare gains, and assumes committees of ethical experts will complement economic expertise.Both approaches face problems in terms of addressing many widely held ethical values about the environment. Furthermore, both face problems concerning the democratic legitimacy of their procedures. How can policy-making be made responsive to different ethical values? What role is there for new deliberative and participatory methods? How far do existing decision-making institutions have the capacities to incorporate different modes of articulating environmental values?This policy brief examines the limitations of current attempts to capture ethical values within existing economic instruments and considers how these limitations might be overcome. Section 1 examines the assumptions that standard economic theory makes about individuals when they express values and make choices about the environment. The current models of agents that inform policy-making are seen to be ill-suited to incorporating the ethical responses of agents and this reveals some of the policy failures that may result. Section 2 shows how the physical and social properties of many environmental goods prevent their being treated as commodities. Section 3 considers the problems surrounding conceptions of fairness and legitimacy in processes for environmental valuation. Section 4 raises questions concerning the capacities of policy-making institutions to take cognisance of the results of different methods for articulating environmental values. (shrink)
In this essay, I consider the rival liberal and communitarian accounts of justice emerging in complex, pluralist societies. I argue that we err in posing the question of human rights as a Hobson's choice between a formal, universal metanarrative, as envisioned in philosophical liberalism, or as a merely local, ethnocentric narrative of the western bourgeoisie, as in the communitarian critique. For human rights are best viewed rhetorically, as establishing the possibility of rationally persuasive argument across our varied narrative traditions. The (...) essay concludes by attending to the role of religious belief in the public reason of a postmodern society. (shrink)
In the wake of uncivil strife—of genocide, "ethnic cleansing," apartheid— the prospect of forgiveness seems as elusive as the notion itself. In this paper, I seek to assess the complex factors that render forgiveness or social reconciliation such vexed concepts. For Desmond Tutu's pleas for "confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation in the lives of nations" meet with his fellow Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka's objection that justice is ill "served by discharging the guilty without evidence of mitigation—or remorse." One may, of course, (...) speak of unspeakable suffering; yet tragedy is never given simply. How we remember the Rwandan genocide, the legacy of apartheid, or the Shoah—whether as morally tragic or merely an unimportant political failure—depends upon how we "see" or imagine evil. To remember such suffering, we must first evoke what is effaced, bring to word the transgressed command. Only then can we speak of social reconciliation, forgiveness, or the fitting measures of retribution and reparation. Imagining, remembering, redressing evil—these, I will argue, comprise distinct, yet finally inseparable elements of social reconciliation, each admitting of no less distinct orders of legal-political, ethical, and religious interpretation. (shrink)
