Foucault's work has had a profound impact on the medical humanities over the last decade or so. However, most work to date has focused on Foucault's earlier writings rather than his later contributions on the self and governmentality. This article assesses the significance of the concept of governmentality for critical scholarship in the medical humanities, particularly in creating ethical awareness in the field of health care. It examines the context for Foucault's later work, and contributions arising from (...) class='Hi'>scholarship building on this work. The governmentality literature, it is argued, raises novel questions about the ways we have come to think about health care in late modern societies. However, there are some limitations with this body of work which have not been fully acknowledged by scholars. The article discusses some of these limitations and offers some suggestions for a fruitful way forward. (shrink)

There is a widespread policy assumption that school leaders such as headteachers and governors need to have 'training courses' which are constituted by a growing corpus of Education Management Studies (EMS) if they are to achieve successfully current schooling goals of 'effectiveness', 'quality', 'excellence' and 'value for money'. Another body of work which attempts to address these issues in a wider cultural framework and which may be called Critical Leadership Studies (CLS) is regarded as interesting for those studying for (...) higher graduate qualifications but hardly relevant for everyday school busyness. While EMS is constructed as 'practical' and therefore a necessary constituent of the National Professional Qualification for Headteachers and other training courses for school leaders, CLS is constructed as 'academic' and more suitable for the EdD seminar. It will be argued here that both cultural analysis and recent research shows this to be a simplistic and reductionist view with dangerous policy consequences. Critical scholarship in education has much to offer to those meeting the everyday challenges of school leadership. In particular, feminist critical scholarship offers oppositional models to both traditional and market forms of patriarchal school leadership. (shrink)

In this text, I respond to a paper by Erik Thorstensen entitled “Public Involvement and Narrative Fallacies of Nanotechnologies.” In his paper, Thorstensen critically reviews a previous ELSA project on engagement and nanotechnology known by the acronym DEEPEN. While I agree that the ELSA community could benefit from the critical examination of earlier research, I believe the approach taken by Thorstensen is not a constructive one. My response deals with three main issues: the character of the paper, narrative theory, (...) and interdisciplinarity. (shrink)

To date, B&S researchers have pursued their normative aims through strategic and moral arguments that are limited because they adopt a rational actor behavioral model and firm-level focus. I argue that it would be beneficial for B&S scholars to pursue alternate approaches based on critical realism (CR) and neoinstitutional theory (IT). Such a shift would have a number of benefits. For one, CR and IT recognize the complex roots of firm behavior and provide tools for its investigation. Both approaches (...) also note the importance of social context and IT, in particular, points to tangible sites where changes in (and outcomes of) corporate practices can be assessed. CR also has an emancipatory ethos which harkens a role for scholars in social change, while IT provides mechanisms to ground this ethos in tangible activities that go beyond appealing to managers’ strategic or moral sensibilities. (shrink)

Most historical Jesus scholars agree that Jesus was regarded by his contemporaries as a great miracle worker. However, many of these same scholars deny that they can pronounce on the truth of the miracle stories as historians. There are at least two arguments for this position. One is based on an alleged empirical constraint on historical practice, which excludes divine causation. The other argument is rooted in the presumption that it is anachronistic to impose modern understandings of miracles on ancient (...) authors. I argue that both objections are unsuccessful. (shrink)

In Against the Spiritual Turn: Marxism, Realism and Critical Theory Sean Creaven sets out to reject Christian theism on materialist grounds. This paper critiques Creaven’s argument from a critically realist Trinitarian Christian standpoint. His failure to engage with Christian theologians, philosophers and biblical scholars, on the a priori ground that since Christianity is inherently irrational Christian scholarship must also be inherently irrational, effectively locks his argument in a vicious intellectual circle. His self-imposed alienation from Christian scholarship generates (...) an ideologically driven thesis of questionable academic integrity. This methodological failure is exacerbated by his preference for inductive and deductive reasoning over a critically realistic retroductive epistemology. (shrink)

The world of international relations and law is constantly changing. There is a risk of the systematic undermining of international organisations and law over the next years. Feminist approaches to international law will need to adapt accordingly, to ensure that they continue to challenge inequalities, and serve as an important and critical voice in international law. This article seeks to tell the story of feminist perspectives on international law from the early 1990s till today through a discussion between three (...) generations of feminist international legal scholars: Hilary Charlesworth, who, with her colleagues, contributed to the area in the immediate post-Cold War years, Gina Heathcote, who over the past decade has published extensively on feminist perspectives on the use of force and collective security, and Emily Jones, an early career scholar working on feminist approaches to international law. The conversation, which began as a Skype discussion, considers both the ways in which feminist approaches to international law have changed over the past two decades, as well as the ways in which they have been shaped by global politics, before turning to consider the future for feminist approaches to international law. The impact of feminist approaches to international law has been considerable. However, it seems that feminist approaches still lack legitimacy and credibility in many mainstream circles, remaining on the disciplinary periphery. Charlesworth, Heathcote and Jones discuss potential ways in which to manage some of these tensions, noting both the importance of ‘speaking to ourselves’ as a creative and nurturing space, as well as the need to be seen as a more credible voice in the mainstream. They note the need, too, for further feminist work beyond the realms of sexual violence and women’s representation. While the great amount of work in this area is, indeed, foundational, having achieved many important legal and political outcomes, feminist approaches should now develop beyond these areas. Doing so will not only propel this area of scholarship in new and exciting directions, but it might help feminist scholarship gain further traction by avoiding categorisation only under the umbrella of “women’s issues” and thus ready dismissal as just another specialist area of international law in the era of fragmentation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDavis argues that the familiar periodization dividing European history into medieval and modern phases disguises a claim to power as a historical fact. It justifies slavery and subjugation by projecting them onto the “feudal” Middle Ages and non‐European present, while hiding forms of slavery and subjugation practiced by “secular” modernity. Periodization thus furnishes one of the most durable conceptual foundations for the usurpation of liberty and the abuse of power.In part I, devoted to “feudalism,” Davis traces the legal, political, and (...) colonial struggles behind the development of the concept of “feudal law” in early modern France and England and unravels just how that concept hides colonial oppression while justifying European sovereignty. In part II, devoted to “secularization,” she demonstrates the failure of twentieth‐century critics of “secularization” like Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg, and Reinhart Koselleck to break out of the limits imposed by the medieval/modern periodization. Part II concludes with a look at conceptual alternatives in the writings of Amitav Ghosh and the Venerable Bede.Three limitations of this book are worth mentioning. It traces the political history hidden by the concept of “feudalism,” but does not trace the political history hidden by the concept of “religion.” It offers no answer to the question of how to break the link between scholarship and politics without ending up in a logical impasse or reinforcing the link. It does not address the possibility that answering this question may require breaking with the terms of professional historical inquiry. Perhaps the question could be answered in terms like those that led Wittgenstein to characterize his Philosophical Investigations as remarks on the natural history of human beings. (shrink)

This book is about the use of legal scholarship by judges. It discusses the possibility that legal scholarship may function as a genuine source of law in modern municipal legal systems. The book advances a number of claims, some conceptual, some empirical, some normative. The major conceptual claims are found in Chapters 2 and 3, where a general account of the notion of a source of law is provided. Roughly, sources of law are documents or practices (e.g. statutes, (...) judicial decisions, official customs) from which norms can be derived that function as sources of content-independent reasons for judges to decide legal cases one way or another. The relevant notion of content-independence is derived (with qualifications) from H.L.A. Hart's jurisprudence. Indeed, the book's analysis of the concept of a source of law relies at various points on Hartian insights about law and legal reasoning. Chapter 4 argues that legal scholarship - or, more precisely, a particular type of legal scholarship that might be described as standard or doctrinal - can be, and indeed is, used as a source of law in modern legal systems. The conclusion that legal scholarship is used as a source of law (and thus as a source of content-independent reasons for action) may come as a surprise to those who associate judicial recourse to legal scholarship with judicial activism. This association is discussed and criticized in Chapters 5 and 6. It is argued that, in spite of a relatively common opinion to the contrary, legal scholarship can be used to mitigate discretion. In fact, it is precisely because it can be used in this way that judges sometimes refer to scholarship deceptively and suggest that it limits discretion in situations in which it really does not. The concluding chapter addresses potential objections not explicitly discussed in earlier chapters.. (shrink)

The starting point for this paper is the ongoing debate about the relation between research and policy in education. Recent developments in England and Scotland are reviewed in the context of political and academic arguments about the nature and function of research activity. The defensiveness of the research community in the face of professional and political attacks is examined critically. A case study of the Higher Still programme is used to illustrate the complexity of the relationships between evidence, ideology, values (...) and professional practice. It is argued that the research community needs to become more politically sophisticated and to advance a clearer vision of its social function in advanced democratic societies if its potential contribution to educational development is to be realised. The dangers of a retreat to a narrow empirical role are highlighted. (shrink)

There are signs that a list of parallelisms containing quite lengthy citations of republican works in prose and all kinds of verse, as well as remarks highly critical of Virgil, provided the material of Saturnalia 6. 2, Saturnalia 6. 3, and Saturnalia 6. 1. 55–65.1 Whereas Macrobius transmits the uersus parallelisms practically without comment, the locus parallelisms have a certain amount of discussion clustered at the beginning and at the end. This is for the most part neutral and matter (...) of fact but in 6. 2. 33 the harsh tone of an obtrectator makes itself heard: nee Tullio conpilando, dummodo undique ornamenta sibi conferret, abstinuit. The original list was excerpted very carelessly: in 6. 2. 29 the Virgil citation ought to continue for two more verses; in 6. 2. 7, 9, and 24 the Lucretius citations are likewise defective. (shrink)

Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy was one of the most widely read and influential texts in medieval Europe, considering questions such as: how can evil exist in a world governed by God? And how is happiness still attainable despite the vicissitudes of fortune? Written as a dialogue between Boethius and Lady Philosophy, and alternating between poetry and prose, the Consolation is of interest not only to philosophers, but to students of classics and literature as well. In this Critical Guide, the (...) first collection of philosophical essays devoted exclusively to the Consolation, thirteen new essays demonstrate its ongoing vitality and break open its riches for a new generation of readers. The essays reflect the diverse array of approaches in contemporary scholarship and attend to both the literary features and the philosophical content of the Consolation. The volume will be invaluable for scholars of medieval philosophy, medieval literature, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

In this editorial essay I explore the possibilities of ‘improvement scholarship’ in order to set the scene for the theme of, and the other papers in, this issue. I contrast a narrow conception of quality improvement research with a much broader and more inclusive conception, arguing that we should greatly extend the existing dialogue between ‘problem-solving’ and ‘critical’ currents in improvement research. I have in mind the potential for building a much larger conversation between those people in ‘improvement (...) science’ who are expressly concerned with tackling the problems facing healthcare and the wider group of colleagues who are engaged in health-related scholarship but who do not see themselves as particularly interested in quality improvement, indeed who may be critical of the language or concerns of QI. As one contribution to that conversation I suggest that that the increasing emphasis on theory and rigour in improvement research should include more focus on normative theory and rigour. The remaining papers in the issue are introduced including the various ways in which they handle the ‘implicit normativity’ of QI research and practice, and the linked theme of combining relatively ‘tidy’ and potentially ‘unruly’ forms of knowledge. (shrink)

My paper concerns Berkeley’s notion of theology. After brief considerations on the general attitude toward religion by Berkeley, I try to assess the immaterialistic approach to three main topics of theology: the ground of any theological knowledge, natural theology, revealed theology. My argument takes in consideration particularly Berkeley’s criticism of Scholasticism. My claim is the following: Berkeley holds that all men have an immediate experience of God’s presence, but this experience is not direct conceptual knowledge. I shortly compare my views (...) with D.Berman’s in section two of the paper. The third section deals with the lines of direction of immaterialistic theology. I claim that Berkeley argues for a twofold source of the experience of the divine. The first is natural and regards all human kind. Platonism is the context of Berkeley’s treatment. The second is historical and concerns just Christians. Reference is to the Bible. I treat the problem of the consistency of these two different ways to make an experience of God, comparing my position with that by J.S.Spiegel. Finally I briefly consider Berkeley’s defence of historico-critical reading of the Bible, as a consequence of his attitude towars the second source of theology. (shrink)

One of the key insights of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is the idea that gender-based subordination is not just something done to women, but also something women do to themselves. This raises a question about ethical responsibility: if women are complicit, or actively implicated in their own oppression, are they at fault? Recent Beauvoir scholarship remains divided on this point. Here, I argue that Beauvoir did, in fact, ethically criticize many women for their complicity, as a sign (...) of what she called “bad faith”. I challenge recent accounts by Nancy Bauer and Manon Garcia, who both read Beauvoir as exonerating complicit women. According to this reading, women emerge as human “freedoms” within a social world where a “destiny” of inferiority is already prepared for them. Their self-subordination is then an inevitable product of acting in a patriarchal world. I argue, however, that this interpretation generates a crucial tension, leading Bauer and Garcia to call on women to stop being complicit, while also claiming they cannot avoid complicity. I propose instead a different interpretation, on which feminine complicity is often fueled by criticizable ethical attitudes that are far from inevitable. By revisiting Beauvoir’s notion of “bad faith”, I show that this account is compatible with recognizing the limitations imposed on women’s agency and I show that this feminist ethical criticism is itself an important part of a collective project of social transformation. (shrink)

Critical legal studies is one of the most challenging developments in the contemporary study of law. Drawing heavily on the radical political culture of the period since the 1960s, critical legal studies assents the necessity of a politics of law - a politics which sees law, not as something apart, but as engaged in the multitude of arguments, battles and struggles which produce the human condition. Such a committment decisively rejects the dominant tradition of Anglo-American legal scholarship, (...) the expository orthodoxy or, more crudely, the 'black-letter law' approach. The essays in this book provide the first wide ranging exploration of the aims and scope of critical legal studies in Britain. They draw on a diversity of intellectual traditions, including feminism, Marxism, critical theory and deconstruction and explore the implications of the critical approach for important areas such as property, contract, company, and labour law. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to highlight an interdependence between procedural and agential norms that undermines their neat separation when appraising argumentation. Drawing on the munāẓara tradition, we carve a space for sequencing in argumentation scholarship. Focusing on the antagonist’s sequencing of critical moves, we identify each sequence’s corresponding values of argumentation: coalescence, reliability, and efficacy. These values arise through the mediation of virtues and simultaneously underpin procedural as well as agential norms. Consequently, an ambiguity between procedure (...) and agent becomes apparent. This ambiguity hints at the potential for a virtue theory of argumentation that draws on procedural norms. (shrink)

Critical Legal Studies poses a direct and expressed challenge to the basic tenets of American legal education and scholarship. Critical Legal Studies postulates that law is not a scientific exercise involving the application of objective principles, but rather a creative process involving the selection of conflicting rules which has the effect of reinforcing the existing political order. In an effort to explain the contribution of Critical Legal Studies to argumentation theory, this essay briefly discusses the role (...) of legal reasoning in the American legal system, describes and critiques Legal Positivism, lays the intellectual foundation for Critical Legal Studies, and considers the implications that this conception of jurisprudence has for argumentation theory. (shrink)

The paper criticizes criminal law scholarship for helping to construct and failing to expose analytic structures that falsely claim a higher level of rationality and coherence than current criminal law theory deserves. It offers illustrations of three such illusions of rationality. First, it is common in criminal law discourse for scholars and judges to cite any of the standard litany of "the purposes of punishment" -- just deserts, deterrence, incapacitation of the dangerous, rehabilitation, and sometimes other purposes -- as (...) a justification for one or another liability rule or sentencing practice. The cited "purpose" gives the rules an aura of rationality, but one that is, in large part, illusory. Without a principle defining the interrelation of the "purposes," nearly any rule can be justified by some "purpose of punishment." Thus, a decision maker can switch among distributive principles as needed to provide an apparent rationale for whichever rule the person prefers, even if that preference is not based on rational criteria. A second example is found in a central mechanism for determining an offenderâs blameworthiness: the use of an individualized objective standard. The widely used mechanism avoids the problems acknowledged to attend a strictly objective standard. A person's situation and capacities are central to an assessment of whether a person can be fairly blamed for a violation, and the individualized objective standard allows the decision maker to take these into account. At the same time, the mechanism avoids reversion to a completely subjective standard, which might exempt many blameworthy cases from liability. In reality, however, the mechanism only shifts the form of the problem. Codes that use the individualized objective standard fail to provide a principle by which one can determine those characteristics of an offender with which the objective standard ought to be individualized and those with which it ought not. Without a governing principle, the issue again is left to the discretion of decision makers, with no guidance as to how that discretion is to be exercised. A final illusion obscures whether the criminal justice system is, in fact, in the business of "doing justice." The "criminal justice" system imposes "punishment" and encourages moral condemnation of those found "guilty" of "crimes." But while the system cultivates its doing-justice image, it increasingly shifts to a system of essentially preventive detention, where a violator's sanction is derived more from what is needed to incapacitate him from committing future offenses than to punish him for a past offense. There are great advantages to the deception, but also serious costs and inefficiencies. The paper discusses why some illusions are more objectionable than others and what the existence of such illusions says about modern criminal law scholarship. (shrink)

This study aims to critically and systematically investigate the contemporary discourse within scholarship on world-class universities in different higher education context. It applies critical discourse analysis to review articles from some top higher education academic journals and books published between 2000 and 2019. Exploring the notion of world-class university involves international-level identities and models, national-level policies and strategies, and institutional-level responses and practices. Findings highlight the absence of a clear definition of the concept of world-class university, an obvious (...) Western-dominated value-laden paradigm, hegemony of global rankings discourse, priority of policies and strategies and inexplicit suggestions for practical application of research findings. Applying the critical discourse analysis, we examine the mission of higher education research towards global competitiveness and global rankings and the attitudes towards the challenges in pursuing world-class universities and its dissemination through the international academic publications as value neutral. This study focuses on recognizing, articulating, and critiquing biases in research production and dissemination. Different researchers might provide multiple critical scopes to investigate international inclusive scholarship on world-class universities. This study also contributes to the approaches in which discourse both shapes and is shaped by globalization and internationalization trends in the higher education contexts, and future orientations in this study. (shrink)

The paper is a critical discussion of scholarship on the "Critique of Pure Reason" published during the past ten years. The emphasis is on Anglo-American authors. I identify and discuss three main trends in the field: a shift from the general discussion of transcendental arguments to the analysis and evaluation of particular proofs in Kant; a renewed interest in the doctrine of transcendental idealism and the distinction between things in themselves and appearances; and the emergence of an entire (...) body of literature on Kant's philosophy of mind, centered around the idea of a "transcendental psychology." The main body of the text is supplemented by extensive bibliographical information provided in the notes. (shrink)

Systematically reading Jewish exegesis in light of Homeric scholarship, this book argues that more than 2000 years ago Alexandrian Jews developed critical and literary methods of Bible interpretation which are still extremely relevant today. Maren R. Niehoff provides a detailed analysis of Alexandrian Bible interpretation, from the second century BCE through newly discovered fragments to the exegetical work done by Philo. Niehoff shows that Alexandrian Jews responded in a great variety of ways to the Homeric scholarship developed (...) at the Museum. Some Jewish scholars used the methods of their Greek colleagues to investigate whether their Scripture contained myths shared by other nations, while others insisted that significant differences existed between Judaism and other cultures. This book is vital for any student of ancient Judaism, early Christianity and Hellenistic culture. (shrink)

Mainstream management scholarship has for the last half century largely legitimated its scholarship and production of knowledge on the grounds that its research is objective, neutral, scientific and uninfluenced either by its researchers or by data distorted by subjectivist human factors (Locke & Spender 2011). However, over the decades there have been serious and sustained criticisms of aspects of this scholarship not least from within the field by mainstream scholars, eg Otley (Accounting, Organizations and Society 5: 413-428, (...) 1980, 1995, 2007) and Panozzo (Accounting, Organizations and Society 22: 447-480, 1997) on grounds of the inadequacy of synchronic studies that were found to be non-replicable; of the limitations of surveys/questionnaires, so frequently used to acquire data; of abstract idealisations unrelated to the real world and on an ‘obsessive preoccupation with numbers’ (Locke & Spender 2011:xiii). Serious criticisms have been made of this type of scholarship more generally in the social sciences on the grounds of political bias (see eg Bourdieu 1990). Claims to the scientific nature and therefore legitimacy of this type of research have also been contested. On the other hand examples of alternate scholarship, advocating and using mixed method and multi-paradigmatic approaches, have been published in the same high-ranking journals as has research using the mainstream approaches mentioned above (see eg Chenhall & Euske 2007, Brown & Brignall 2007). These showed a richness in the data, generally unobtainable in solely objectivist approaches. Yet despite these factors, mainstream scholarship has in the main continued to produce objectivist, empiricist, quantitative-focussed research and knowledge (Green 2013). Reasons for this have been suggested, at the local level, the academy, including its administration, heads of department and journal editors driven by the criteria set by high-ranking journals (Green 2012b). At a wider level, the US government’s fright at the successful launch of the Soviet Sputnik led to demands for ‘hard’ science also in the management field (Green 2012b). Managerialism, a dominant ideology (and not only in the West), has been an influence on researchers’ approaches, giving managers the prerogative of having the necessary knowledge and also the power and capability successfully to implement strategies independently of their subordinates (Green 2012b, 2013). Although these explanations may have some mileage in explaining the persistence of this type of scholarship, and its resistance to the multitude of criticism against it and to compelling examples of more inclusive research, further explanations have been sought. It is argued in this paper that deeper explanations may lie in the power of neoliberal ideas, principles and policies which have spread beyond economics, permeating and seriously affecting other aspects of life including education and scholarship. (shrink)

While the need to protect vulnerable research participants is universal, conceptual challenges with the notion of vulnerability may result in the under or over-protection of participants. Ethics review bodies making assumptions about who is vulnerable and in what circumstance can be viewed as paternalistic if they do not consider participant viewpoints. Our study focuses on participant vulnerability in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research. We aim to illuminate students’ views on participant vulnerability to contribute to critical analysis (...) of the role and processes of ethics review. Additionally, we aim to highlight the importance of seeking the views of participant communities, especially in research environments beyond ethics review’s medical origins. Thirty-four students from a health-related faculty at a university in Aotearoa New Zealand, participated in five focus groups. Participants discussed factors affecting their potential participation in research drawing upon a series of vignettes based on examples of published SoTL projects. Themes, generated using reflexive thematic analysis, built a participant-informed picture of vulnerability. Findings indicate that students do not generally consider themselves vulnerable and instead consider participation in SoTL research through an agentic lens. Students expect that participation will be voluntary, not negatively impact their grades, and not single them out so that others could judge them. Our study also highlights the value students place on relationships with one another and teaching staff and the implications these have for SoTL research participation and future professional practice. This research challenges research ethics committees to think further about vulnerability in the context of SoTL whilst highlighting the importance of providing opportunities for research participants more broadly to explore and vocalize their views as members of participant communities. (shrink)

"Critical Approaches to International Relations: Philosophical Foundations and Current Debates explores the achievements of a wide variety of critical approaches in International Relations theory, discusses the barrage of criticism and theoretical openings they levied against the IR orthodoxy and suggests future potential of critical IR scholarship to improve not only our explanatory possibilities, but also our ethical and practical horizons. In line with this broad objective, the book examines a number of influential approaches within critical (...) IR scholarship, including core strands of critical IR theory such as Marxism, post-structuralism, Feminism, post-colonialism and green politics as well as some sub-school approaches such as Marxist theories of imperialism, dependency perspective, uneven and combine development and non-western IR theory. Contributors are: M. Kürşad Özekin, Engin Sune, Çağdaş Özeniş, Gözde Turan, Mine Nur Küçük, Neslihan Dikmen Alsancak, Zeynep Arıöz, Pınar Akgül, and Altuğ Günar"--. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Critical Legal Studies as Analytic Jurisprudence: The Critique of Liberal Rights Theory Critical Legal Studies as Social Theory Conclusion References.

Late Antiquity witnessed intense scholarly activity on Virgil's poems. Aelius Donatus’ commentary, the twelve-bookInterpretationes Vergilianaecomposed by the fourth-century or fifth-century rhetorician Tiberius Claudius Donatus and other sets of scholia testify to the richness of late ‘Virgilian literature’. Servius’ full-scale commentary on Virgil's poetry marked a watershed in the history of the reception of Virgil and in Latin criticism in general. Primarily ‘the instrument of a teacher’, Servius’ commentary was intended to teach students and readers to read and write good Latin (...) through Virgil. Lauded by Macrobius for his ‘learning’ and ‘modesty’, Servius attained supremacy as both a literary critic and an interpreter of Virgil, the master of Latin poetry. Hisauctoritashad a profound impact on later Virgilian erudition. As Cameron notes, Servius’ commentary ‘eclipsed all competition, even Donatus’. Significantly, it permeated non-Virgilian scholarship from the fifth century onwards. The earliest bodies of scholia on Lucan, the tenth-century or eleventh-centuryCommenta BernensiaandAdnotationes super Lucanumand thescholia uetustioraon Juvenal contain material that can be traced as far back as Servius’ scholarly masterpiece. (shrink)

New Critical Legal Thinking articulates the emergence of a stream of critical legal theory which is directly concerned with the relation between law and the political. The early critical legal studies claim that all law is politics is displaced with a different and more nuanced theoretical arsenal. Combining grand theory with a concern for grounded political interventions, the various contributors to this book draw on political theorists and continental philosophers in order to engage with current legal problematics, (...) such as the recent global economic crisis, the Arab spring and the emergence of biopolitics. The contributions instantiate the claim that a new and radical political legal scholarship has come into being: one which critically interrogates and intervenes in the contemporary relationship between law and power. (shrink)

This article reviews Michael Laffin’s fresh presentation of Luther’s political theology, which draws on contemporary Lutheran theological scholarship and interpretation to counter the assaults on Luther’s thought by such representative modernity critics as Milbank and Herdt.

Senator Fulbright has developed a similar theme, in an important and perceptive speech.2 He describes the failure of the universities to form "an effective counterweight to the military-industrial complex by strengthening their emphasis on the traditional values of our democracy." Instead they have "joined the monolith, adding greatly to its power and influence." Specifically, he refers to the failure of the social scientists, "who ought to be acting as responsible and independent critics of the Government's policies," but who, instead, become (...) the agents of these policies. "While young dissenters plead for resurrection of the American promise, their elders continue to subvert it." With "the surrender of independence, the neglect of teaching, and the distortion of scholarship," the university "is not only failing to meet its responsibilities to its students; it is betraying a public trust.". (shrink)

This article calls for a rethinking of critical sociology. Representing classical critical sociology, the Bourdieusian paradigm illustrated domination, but its negative foundation removed actors’ power, privileging sociological knowledge as capable of identifying (social) transcendental categories of thought. Latour’s constructivism challenged this privilege, giving actors the political power of aggregating collectives around their common concerns at the cost of emphasizing domination and critique. We propose a critical approach that evades a transcendental perspective reliant on pure negation, producing a (...) more positive critical sociology founded on processualist phenomenological and pragmatic perspectives, principally Merleau-Ponty and Dewey. Actors and researchers can collectively ruminate on their perspectives and concerns to challenge power structures and transform their worlds. At the center of this is the social-mien, a creative reimagination of habitus. A brief discussion of the protests and scholarship surrounding the Notre-Dame-des-Landes activists’ practice of democracy highlights the utility of the approach and serves as a model for future application. (shrink)

Critical Legal Theory has conventionally been traced to the social, political, and philosophical movements of the 1960s and, before that, to the early-twentieth-century ‘realist’ critique of modern jurisprudence. In truth, however, its origins go back to classical and pre-modern thought, and to their acknowledgement of the centrality of law in attempts to conceive of the good life, or the just polity—a centrality that is, moreover, also discernible in the recent gravitation of a number of contemporary philosophers and theorists towards (...) law. Against the ‘restricted’ and ‘conservative’ character of modern jurisprudence, Critical Legal Theory constitutes a return to this more general interest in law and legality. Exceeding the limits of jurisprudence, it has, moreover, drawn upon the most ancient and most contemporary traditions of critical thought in order to pursue new ways of understanding, living, and imagining the law. Critical Legal Theory is now an established—if heterogeneous and controversial—field of study, represented by numerous international journals, regional organizations, and global conferences. As the field continues to flourish as never before, this new title in Routledge’s Major Works series, Critical Concepts in Law, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. Indeed, it is a landmark collection of Critical Legal Theory’s principal sources, orientations, movements, and themes. The first volume in the collection illuminates the foundations of Critical Legal Theory in contemporary continental thought, as well as providing an account of its institutional history. Volume II, meanwhile, examines the ways in which Critical Legal Theory has addressed and problematized conventional jurisprudential ideas about law, drawing upon the insights of philosophy, as well as other disciplines. Volume III assembles the best and most influential research to provide an overview of the movements that characterize the field. The scholarship assembled in the final volume brings together the key work to explore a range of substantial themes with which Critical Legal Theorists have engaged. Supplemented with a full index and comprehensive introductions, newly written by the editors, which situate the collected material in the context of more general theoretical traditions, as well as in critical relation to jurisprudence, _Critical Legal Theory_ is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital resource. (shrink)

Editors’ AbstractThis articles expresses a strong discontent with Sinologism and argues that its rise is the result of an uncritical application of Said’s Orientalism and postcolonial theory to Sinology, and that its proponents have committed a grave error in treating Sinology as a discourse of ideology full of subjective imaginations, to the neglect of the fact that Sinology is a branch of objective scholarship. After reviewing the evolution of the concept of Sinology in history, it critically analyzes some major (...) ideas of Sinologism in relation to Orientalism and draws the conclusion that the proponents of Sinologism are unaware of the inherent problems in Said’s theory and postmodern theory, have inadequate knowledge of Sinological history, and oversimplified the complex issues in Sinological studies. (shrink)

This four volume set is a collection of some of the most significant scholarship published on the philosophy of Socrates in the last half century. The contributors include many of the most prominent scholars in this field. As the growth in Socratic studies in the past three decades is due in large part to the influential work of Gregory Vlastos, articles by him figure prominently in the collection, and works by other authors are generally related to his work. The (...) volumes deal with different areas of Socratic thought. The first volume begins with the question whether and to what degree we can discern a distinctive philosophy of Socrates in the ancient sources. The second volume deals with the trial of Socrates and the philosophical issues that arise from it. The third volume considers the philosophical methodology of Socrates and the fourth his moral philosophy. This collection shares some material with earlier collections on the philosophy of Socrates, but it is more extensive and up-to-date. Unlike other collections, which may offer the reader only a single article on a given topic, this collection offers a conversation in-depth. The reader can thus get a sense of the dimensions of the scholarly debate on these central issues in the philosophy of Socrates. No collection can be complete, but this aims at a representative portrait of Socratic studies in the last fifty years. (shrink)

In this paper, we critically appraise institutions for people with disabilities, from residential facilities to outpatient clinics to social organizations. While recognizing that a just and inclusive society would reject virtually all segregated institutional arrangements, we argue that in contemporary American society, some people with disabilities may have needs that at this time can best be met by institutional arrangements. We propose ways of reforming institutions to make them less isolating, coercive, and stigmatizing, and to provide forms of social support (...) the larger society denies many people with disabilities. Although these reforms far fall far short of abolition, they draw heavily on the work of disability scholars and advocates who call for the complete replacement of institutional arrangements with systems of supported living. The consideration of non-ideal-solutions is useful not only in reforming existing institutional arrangements, but in bringing disability scholarship and advocacy to bear on bioethics, which has paid little attention to institutions for people with disabilities. We intend this paper to redress the neglect within mainstream bioethics of the complex ethical problems posed by institutions. (shrink)

Critical theory as a Post-Marxist discourse is a category of academic thought that broadly involves theoretical scholarship aimed at interrogating the structures and discourses of power. As such, i...

The nascent church in Jerusalem represented in Acts 6 verses 1–3 was promptly challenged by the problem of inequity and lack of fair play among the various stakeholders and such disaffection reached a situation of murmur and open agitation. This challenge to the apostles was a threat to the consolidation of the already established Christian community in Jerusalem and its spread to the whole world. Something must be done to arrest the situation or the Church runs the risk of disintegration. (...) Having some moral lessons drawn from the pericope at the back of the mind, one notices that recently there has been a clamour by the different geopolitical groups in Nigeria to restructure the Nigerian political system. The clamour is based on the failed position of post-war federalism to give all parts of Nigeria’s pluralistic society a fair and equal representation which hitherto was meant to stop Nigeria from another civil war or the cry for cessation by one region or another. The church, as an impartial umpire in the art of politics, should, in the midst of the turmoil, serve as the conscience of the masses, pressing hard to the actualisation of the demands of the masses. The study, through historical-critical method of biblical scholarship with Form criticism, analysed that situation of agitation to inequality and gross misrepresentation in the book of Acts 6:1–3, pressing to offer vital lessons to Nigeria in her quest for political restructuring. It concluded by finding out that Nigeria’s pluralistic nature, when restructured, should be a catalyst for global vision attainment and sustainable development. (shrink)

These volumes provide a comprehensive selection of high quality critical discussions of Spinoza's philosophy published in, or translated into English since 1970. Edited by a distinguished academic panel, these volumes allow current debates on key themes to be followed through in depth, and present to readers the diversity of philosophical approach and interpretation that characterizes recent Spinoza scholarship.