This essay argues that the "classical" or "standard" computation model of an enviroment of thought may hamstring the nascent cognitive science of religion by masking the ways in which the bare biological brain is prosthetically extended and embedded in the surrounding landscape. The motivation for distinsuishing between the problem-solving profiles of the basic brain and the brain-plus-scaffolding is that in many domains non-biological artifacts support and augment biological modes of computation - often allowing us to overcome some of the brain's (...) native computation limitations. The recognition that in some contexts not all of the relevant computational machinery fits inside the head suggests that we should reconsider the possible role and significance of material culture in religious cognition. More specifically, the broad spectrum of rituals, music, relics, scriptures, statues and buildings typically associated with religious traditions may be more than quaint ethnographic window dressing. Rather than thin cultural wrap arounds that decorate the real cognitive processes going on underneath, these elements could represent central components of the relevant machinery of religious thought. By introducing tangible features of the world that can be physically manipulated and tracked in real-time, for example, the cognitive scaffolding that religious material culture affords seems tailor-made for allowing people to exchange the intricate "off-line" problems that arise from dealing with invisible, counter-intuitive supernatural agents for the kinds of "on-line" cognitive tasks they are naturally good at doing. (shrink)

I take up the question of how models of extended cognition might redirect the academic study of religion. Entering into a conversation of sorts with Emile Durkheim and Bruno Latour regarding the "overtakenness" of social agency, I argue that a robust portrait of extended cognition must redirect our interest in explaining religion in two key ways. First, religious studies should take up the methodological principle of symmetry that informs contemporary histories of science and begin theorizing the efficacy of gods as (...) social actors. Second, theorists of religion should begin noting how the work required to construct spaces in which the gods appear depends on the construction of disciplined and capable subjects. (shrink)

Compassion is a prosocial motivation that is critical to the development and survival of the human species. Cultivating compassion involves developing deep wisdom, insight, and understanding into the nature and causes of human suffering; and wisdom and commitment to take positive action to alleviate suffering. This perspective piece discusses how compassion relates to the context of modern technology, which has developed at a rapid pace in recent decades. While advances in digital technology build on humankind’s vast capacity to develop practical (...) tools that promise to enrich our lives and improve our social connections, in reality the effects are often far from benign. The motives underlying the development of many contemporary digital platforms seem rooted in competitiveness and capitalism; while modern social media and online platforms are having a profound and pervasive impact on the mental health and wellbeing of humans around the globe. Nonetheless, digital technology holds considerable potential to promote compassionate insight, wisdom, and prosocial behavior. We reflect on the current state of technology within human society and examine the notion of compassionate technologies; discuss how contemporary paradigm shifts such as the inclusive design movement may be harnessed to build tools and platforms that promote collective good and increase prosocial behavior; and highlight examples of initiatives that are harnessing modern technology to advance democracy, collective knowledge, and personal freedoms and agency. (shrink)

Flagging enrollments. Disappearing majors. Closed departments. The academic study of religion is in trouble. No Bosses, No Gods argues that Karl Marx is essential for reversing course—but it will take letting go of what most scholars think they know about him. The book’s first half draws on the scholarship of international specialists—as well as new translations of the original German texts—to present Marx the anti-theorist, a political journalist deeply skeptical about what happens when the professoriate sits down to "theorize" about (...) social worlds. The second half appeals to this modified portrait of Marx and charts a new course beyond both actually existing religious studies and contemporary genealogies of the religion category. The result, perhaps, is an academic study of religion worth having in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Although the theological elements of Robert Boyle’s mechanical philosophy have received careful scrutiny, his reflections on economic issues have largely been overlooked. This article takes a small step towards redressing this state of affairs. Rather than argue that Boyle – like John Locke or David Hume – was as interested in political economy as he was in discovering the nature of Nature, the article treats him as a point of entry for considering how early-modern England negotiated the revolutionary cultural and (...) economic changes that emerged as capitalism took command. More specifically, it uses one of Boyle’s less-famous inventions – a hydrostatic device for discriminating between real, degraded and counterfeit coinage – in order to explore how economic exchange began to acquire a patina of ‘objectivity’ in the 17th-century imagination. (shrink)

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theorizing about the natural origins of religion. More specifically, it argues that Darwin's commitment to locating elementary forms of the religious life in non-human animals was informed by his desire to sever the connection between the moral status of being human and the anthropological status of having a religion. The essay concludes that when we carefully examine the Darwinian solution to the evolutionary puzzle of religion, we discover how his naturalist (...) project was structured in quite fundamental ways by his normative commitments. (shrink)

Leading theologian Matthew Levering presents a thoroughgoing critical survey of the proofs of God's existence for readers interested in traditional Christian responses to the problem of atheism. Beginning with Tertullian and ending with Karl Barth, Levering covers twenty-one theologians and philosophers from the early church to the modern period, examining how they answered the critics of their day. He also shows the relevance of the classical arguments to contemporary debates and challenges to Christianity. In addition to students, this book (...) will appeal to readers of apologetics. (shrink)

This book explores both scientific and humanistic theoretical traditions in anthropology through the lens of ontology. The first part of the book examines different methods for generating valid anthropological knowledge, and proposes a shift in current consensus. Drawing on western scholars of antiquity and the medieval period and moving away from twentieth century theorists, it argues that we must first make ontological assumptions about the kinds of things that can exist (or not) before we can then develop epistemologies that study (...) those kinds of things. The book goes on to apply the ontology-first theory to a set of case studies in modern day conspiracy theories, misinformation, and magical thinking. It asserts that we need to move away from unneeded metaphysical assumptions of conspiracy theories being misinformation, and argues that reconstructing particular historical events can be a fruitful zone for application of quantitative methods to humanistic questions. Theorizing the Anthropology of Belief is an excellent supplementary suitable for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in anthropological theory. (shrink)

This book is a qualitative, interpretive, phenomenological, and interdisciplinary, examination of food and food practices and their meanings in the modern world. Each chapter thematically focuses upon a particular food practice and on some key details of the examined practice, or on the practice’s social and cultural impact.

Matthew Arnold was born at Laleham-on-Thames on 24 December 1822 as the eldest son of Dr Thomas Arnold and his wife Mary. He was educated at Winchester College, his father's old school; Rugby, where his father was headmaster; and Oxford. In 1851 he was appointed Inspector of Schools, pursuing this taxing career to support his wife and family until his retirement in 1886. He published his first volume of verse, The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, in 1849 followed by (...) Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems (1852) and five further collections which appeared, with a diminishing number of new poems in each, between 1853 and 1867, after which his creative gift appeared to dwindle still further and he published little poetry. His career as a writer of prose began to take over after his election to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford in 1857. Stimulated by preparing his lectures, many of the earliest published in 1865 as Essays in Criticism (First Series), he turned increasingly to the vigorous and widely ranging polemical commentaries on culture, religion, and society which were to make him known at home and abroad as the foremost critic of his day. He died suddenly of heart failure on 15 April 1888 while awaiting at Liverpool the arrival of his married daughter from America. (shrink)

We go through life, focusing our attention on many things. But how much do we focus on ourselves? We may be aware of many things, but are we self-aware? This is a question our contemporary culture asks us to consider more and more, and words like "self-awareness," "personal identity," "authenticity," and "mindfulness" are becoming not just buzz-words but virtues. The ancient dictum "know thyself" reverberates in all corners of our lives, from Disney characters on our TVs to DISC profiles at (...) our workplaces. Some of the more mindful members of our society may even be tempted to disdain those who are not as mindful as they are. But what if our self-aware culture, hailing us to pursue our true selves, is unaware of itself? What if our definitions of true and false self-understanding are myopic, slanted towards a narrow solipsism that is actually leading people away from authenticity, while all the while championing it? If so, how would we know? Who is best able to define these things and to teach us how to know ourselves truly? Matthew Brett Vaden traces the wisdom of past and modern-day sages to discover how we can truly discover ourselves. (shrink)

_Evil Media_ develops a philosophy of media power that extends the concept of media beyond its tried and trusted use in the games of meaning, symbolism, and truth. It addresses the gray zones in which media exist as corporate work systems, algorithms and data structures, twenty-first century self-improvement manuals, and pharmaceutical techniques. _Evil Media _invites the reader to explore and understand the abstract infrastructure of the present day. From search engines to flirting strategies, from the value of institutional stupidity to (...) the malicious minutiae of databases, this book shows how the devil is in the details. The title takes the imperative "Don't be evil" and asks, what would be done any differently in contemporary computational and networked media were that maxim reversed. Media here are about much more and much less than symbols, stories, information, or communication: media do things. They incite and provoke, twist and bend, leak and manage. In a series of provocative stratagems designed to be used, Evil Media sets its reader an ethical challenge: either remain a transparent intermediary in the networks and chains of communicative power or become oneself an active, transformative medium. (shrink)

This paper draws a distinction between ‘right MacIntyreans’ who are relatively optimistic that MacIntyre’s vision of ethics can be realised in capitalist society, and ‘left MacIntyreans’ who are sceptical about this possibility, and aims to show that the ‘left MacIntyrean’ position is a promising perspective available to business ethicists. It does so by arguing for a distinction between ‘community-focused’ practices and ‘excellence-focused’ practices. The latter concept fulfils the promise of practices to provide us with an understanding of the best work (...) for humankind and highlights the affinities between MacIntyre’s concept of a practice and Marx’s conception of good work as free, creative activity. The paper concludes with a suggestion that we reflect on the best forms of work so that we can strive to ensure the very best activities, those most consonant with our flourishing, one day become available to all. (shrink)

The language of morality and legality infuses every aspect of the Middle East conflict. From repeated assertions by officials that Israel has “the most moral army in the world” to justifications for specific military tactics and operations by reference to self-defense and proportionality, the public rhetoric is one of legal right and moral obligation. Less often heard are the voices of those on the ground whose daily experience is lived within the legal quagmire portrayed by their leaders in such uncompromising (...) terms. This Article explores the opaque normative boundaries surrounding the actions of a specific group within the Israeli military, soldiers returning from duty in Hebron in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. By examining interviews with these soldiers by an Israeli NGO, it identifies different narratives of legality and illegality which inform their conduct, contrasting their failure to adhere to conventional legal discourses with the broader “legalization” of military activities. Seeking an explanation for this disjunction, it explores the ways in which the soldiers’ stories nonetheless reflect attempts to negotiate various normative and legal realities. It places these within the legal landscape of the Occupied Palestinian Territories which has been normatively re-imagined by various forces in Israeli society, from the judicially-endorsed discourse of deterrence manifested in the day-today practices of brutality, intimidation and “demonstrating power,” to the growing influence of nationalist-religious interpretations of self-defense and the misuse of post-modernist theory by the military establishment to “smooth out” the moral and legal urban architectures of occupation. The Article concludes by considering the hope for change evident in the very act of soldiers telling ethically-oriented stories about their selves, and in the existence of a movement willing to provide the space for such reflections in an attempt to confront Israeli society with the day-to-day experiences of the soldier in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. (shrink)

The authors of this book engage in essay form in a lively debate over the fundamental characteristics of legal and moral rights. They examine whether rights fundamentally protect individuals' interests or whether they instead fundamentally enable individuals to make choices. In the course of this debate the authors address many questions through which they clarify, though not finally resolve, a number of controversial present-day political debates, including those over abortion, euthanasia, and animal rights.

A selection from Arnold's writing on education, other than Culture and Anarchy. All the pieces stem from his work as Inspector of Schools: they illustrate his concern both with the principles that must be established as a basis for the education of an industrial democracy and his practical concern with the day-to-day running of schools. 'Democracy' was first published as the introduction to The Popular Education of France. It faces the fundamental political problems and outlines the general objectives of a (...) state educational system. 'A French Eton' was the result of the same examination of French education to see what the British could learn from it; here he considers private education for the middle-classes. 'The twice-revised code' criticises the national Revised Code of 1862: a system founded on gross utilitarianism. Extracts from Arnold's reports as an inspector show the man of principle at work in particular circumstances and relating what he sees to what he would wish to see. The speech on his retirement comments on his lifetime of active involvement in education. (shrink)

Data is essential to governing those emerging matters of concern that confront the agrifood every day. But data is no neutral intermediary. It disrupts, exposes, and creates new social, economic, political, and environmental possibilities, whilst simultaneously hiding, excluding, and foreclosing others. Scholars have become attuned to both the constitutive role of data in creating everyday worlds, and the need to develop critical accounts of the materialities, spatialities and multiplicities of data relationships. Whereas this emerging work develops insight to the capacity (...) for data topologies to reterritorialise the spatial performances of everyday life, it has largely reduced the associated temporal dimensions to matters of fact. The effect of these performances has been to naturalize the temporal quality of speed and elide the multiple temporalities required to enact contemporary data worlds. Applying the lenses of infrastructuring, performativity and ferality, this paper explores temporality and data in the everyday worlds produced through the New Zealand kiwifruit industry’s focus on dry matter. The paper argues that temporalities are deeply embedded in the kiwifruit industry’s data relations. We show that while temporal data relations are critical to the industry, we also highlight ways in which those relations introduce new, potentially destabilizing performances into kiwifruit relations. (shrink)

The Impact of 9-11 on Religion and Philosophy is the sixth volume of the six-volume series The Day that Changed Everything? edited by Matthew J. Morgan. This volume features a foreword by John Esposito and contributors include Jean Bethke Elshtain, Philip Yancey, John Milbank, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, John Cobb and Martin Cook.

What is exploitation? -- Degrees of exploitation -- Motivations and mentality -- The exploiter's essential skillset -- Getting on the inside: winning the election -- Achieving total domination of the school system -- The tactics and weapons of war -- Torture and death of the educational leaders -- Cultivating the spies and snitches -- The veil of silence -- Judgment day will surely come -- Thy kingdom has come -- The deterioration begins -- Purging the community values from the school (...) system -- Purging the quality from the workforce -- Promoting and perpetuating incompetence -- The bad reputation -- Life at the schoolhouse for those left behind -- The impact on the community -- The death of the school system -- Who is at fault? -- What is governance and governance structure? -- Enhancing governance: the governance subcommittee -- How could the governance subcommittee make a difference? -- Role and function of the governance subcommittee more clearly defined -- The members of the governance subcommittee -- Legislative action is essential -- Which will it be: the DC-3 or the dreamliner?. (shrink)

A comparison of Plato's "Phaedo" and the "Mahāparanibbāna Sutta" of the Pāli Canon juxtaposes the character and teachings of Socrates and the Buddha as revealed by both texts, set just before their deaths. Discussed at length are similarities in technique (dialogue), personality (open-mindedness and compassion), and doctrine (especially regarding the purification of the soul over numerous lifetimes), as well as the subsequent development of Platonism and Buddhism after the deaths of the masters.

German Idealism was without doubt one of the most fruitful, influential, and exciting periods in the history of philosophy. The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism covers this revolutionary philosophical movement in remarkable detail and includes contributions from 36 of the leading scholars in the field, including Paul Guyer, Terry Pinkard, Violetta Waibel, Jason Wirth, and Günter Zöller. In his introduction, Matthew Altman investigates the meaning of idealism and sets the historical context. Ensuing chapters then consider the philosophical importance of (...) the movement’s four most important thinkers (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel) and explore the areas of philosophy on which they had their greatest impact. A concluding chapter examines the legacy of German Idealism from the nineteenth century to the present day. (shrink)

The doctrines and teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints support and even demand a strong environmental ethic. Such an ethic is grounded in the inherent value of all souls and in God’s commandment of stewardship. Latter-day Saint doctrine declares that all living organisms have souls and explicitly states that the ability of creatures to know some degree of satisfaction and happiness should be honored. God’s own concern for the well-being and progress of all life, and His (...) sacrifice through Jesus Christ, illustrate the generous way that He expects His children to exercise their brief stewardship of this world. In addition, the important role nature has played in the religious lives of Latter-day Saint members, from the Prophet Joseph Smith to the present day, argues strongly for wilderness preservation as a spiritual resource for future generations. (shrink)

A 47-year-old woman with a history of anxiety disorder is admitted to the hospital for shortness of breath. On the third day of hospitalization, she asks her physician for a copy of all documents pertaining to her care. What expectation should she have for full disclosure? Are there limits on her access to her medical records and do her physician's concerns about professional privilege matter?The virtues of transparency in medicine have been well described. As proponents of transparency, we favor patient (...) access to their medical records, but we are increasingly troubled by the ease and extent of disclosure in current practice as technology advances and... (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas provides a comprehensive survey of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant philosophical and theological reception of Thomas Aquinas over the past 750 years. This Handbook will serve as a necessary primer for everyone who wishes to study Aquinas's thought and/or the history of theology and philosophy since Aquinas's day. Part I considers the late-medieval receptions of Aquinas among Catholics and Orthodox. Part II examines sixteenth-century Western receptions of Aquinas (Protestant and Catholic), followed by a (...) chapter on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Orthodox reception. Part III discusses seventeenth-century Protestant and Catholic receptions, and Part IV surveys eighteenth- and nineteenth-century receptions (Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic). Parts V and VI focus on the twentieth century and takes into account the diversity of theological movements in the past century as well as extensive philosophical treatment. Parts VII and VIII unpick contemporary systematic approaches to Aquinas, covering the main philosophical and theological themes for which he is best known. With chapters written by a wide range of experts in their respective fields, this volume provides a valuable touchstone regarding the developments that have marked the past seven centuries of Christian theology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:An American Scholar Recalls Karl Barth’s Golden Years as a Teacher (1958–1964) by Raymond Kemp Anderson, and: The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth ed. by Richard E. BurnettMatthew R. JantzenAn American Scholar Recalls Karl Barth’s Golden Years as a Teacher (1958–1964) Raymond Kemp Anderson lewiston, ny: edwin mellen press, 2013. 438 pp. $159.95The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth Edited by Richard E. Burnett louisville, ky: westminster john knox (...) press, 2013. 242 pp. $35.00On April 2, 1966, Karl Barth received a letter from Peter Vogelsanger, informing him that Emil Brunner—the recipient of Barth’s thunderous “Nein!” on the subject of natural theology in 1934—was on his deathbed. Two days later, Barth responded and asked Vogelsanger to tell Brunner that “the time when I thought I should say No to him is long since past, and we all live only by the fact that a great and merciful God speaks his gracious Yes to all of us.” The irenic, compassionate, and affirming tone of this letter is typical of the “mature” Barth, whom Raymond Anderson studied under from 1958 to 1964 as a ThD student at the University of Basel. This period of doctoral study is the subject of Anderson’s interesting and eminently readable new book. Anderson enjoyably weaves together several different genres in his reflections on his experience with Barth, smoothly transitioning back and forth between personal memoir, constructive theological argument, and thoughtful interpretation of Barth’s life and writings.Structurally, the book offers a series of recollections and reflections gathered loosely around common themes rather than a tightly knit argument pursued rigorously from beginning to end. In other words, the work is a series of sketches from the artist’s notebook, as opposed to one intricate and detailed portrait focusing on a single subject. [End Page 207]In the first five chapters of the book, Anderson sketches a picture of the elderly Karl Barth who served as his “doktorvater,” drawing material from his student notes and personal memories of the years he spent with Barth in Basel. While Anderson finds continuity between the earlier and later writings of Barth, he suggests that the older Barth began to increasingly unfold the “fuller, grace-centered and human-shaped positive implications” of the earlier writings (viii). In Anderson’s experience, Barth’s early appeal to “Let God be God!” had in those later years “mellowed to an even deeper appeal to let God be himself, human as well, in the most unexpected ways” (11). This mellowing extended beyond Barth’s writing to his personality and demeanor as a teacher and theologian. The Barth whom Anderson knew was humble, understated, and compassionate, a sympathetic listener and a generous interpreter—in short, an “un-dogmatic” dogmatician (139).In the sixth chapter, Anderson shifts gears and reproduces extensive transcriptions of his own notes from several of Barth’s biweekly English-language colloquia on the topics of natural theology, the Old Testament promise, Paul Tillich, and existentialism. Anderson suggests that these notes are particularly valuable because in them one witnesses Barth explaining the bare essentials of his thinking in clear and simple English terms. This is true for large portions of the transcriptions. However, it must be said that there are also portions of these transcriptions that suffer from the lack of clarity that one might expect to find in student notes of discussions conducted in a language with which Barth was not completely comfortable. Nevertheless, these transcriptions provide previously unpublished primary source material from Barth that is worth examining.From chapter 7 until the end of the book, Anderson takes up the task of “sketching key insights and special teachings from the mature Barth that in the years since Barth’s death have shown themselves to carry special significance for our American college classroom, church school, and pulpit” (205). These include, but are not limited to, Barth’s attitude toward America, his emphasis on the priority of grace, his theology of nature (not his natural theology), and his positions on theories of religion, satisfaction theories of the atonement, election, universalism, and even the possibility of extraterrestrial life. This section also includes... (shrink)

ABSTRACTJohn Campbell’s Present State of Europe has been viewed, particularly by Guido Abbattista, as a change in Campbell’s view on British intervention on the continent. Campbell certainly alters his position from a conventional ‘Country’ and ‘Tory’ critique of British interventionism to acceptance, but this shift aligns him more closely with the Bolingbrokean political philosophy that undergirds much of his early thought as he accommodates this political philosophy to the dominant theory of foreign policy of his day, ‘balance of power’. Campbell (...) articulates a moderate, Tory view of balance of power by drawing upon Samuel Pufendorf’s idea of states-system, which allows Campbell to extend his ‘Country’-Bolingbrokean philosophy from inside to outside the state. By extending his views outside the state, Campbell indicates how continental intervention not only may be required based upon a nation’s fluctuating, indeterminate circumstances but also may be needed to protect far-flung subjects within an expanding British Empire. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Patricia Kelly, Ressourcement Theology:A Review EssayMatthew K. MinerdIntroductionAlthough now over seventy years in the past, the theological and ecclesiastical events of the 1940s, most often styled under some banner akin to "the crisis over the nouvelle théologie," leading up to the promulgation of the encyclical Humani Generis, retain a currency and interest to this very day. No doubt, the later influence of many of the so-called nouveaux théologiens leading (...) up to, during, and following the Second Vatican Council has contributed to the continued currency of their thought and the debates connected to it. Numerous monographs continue to be written concerning themes of "ressourcement," theological reform, and engagement with the world, all of which were dear to many of those who were embroiled in the philosophical and theological controversies of the 1930s and 1940s. Moreover, increased interest in certain long-buried conservative Thomist thinkers from this same era has led to renewed consideration regarding the concerns that they expressed at the time. In fact, it would seem that today, in 2022, the evaluation expressed in Nineteenth Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method by Fr. Gerald McCool (from a perspective rather different from my own) remains true, as the Church continues to live in the midst of an ongoing crisis of modernity that places us in tight continuity with so much of the past several centuries of European Christian intellectual history:In contemporary Catholic theology, the relationship between apologetics, or fundamental theology, and speculative theology is as much [End Page 353] an issue as it was in the nineteenth century.... And in contemporary Catholic theology, the relation between positive theology and speculative theology still remains a problem whose solution demands the use of a coherent system of epistemology and metaphysics.... The contemporary debate over theological method is simply another phase in the dialectical movement of Catholic theology's response to post-Enlightenment thought from the beginning of the nineteenth century through Vatican I, Aeterni Patris, the modernist crisis, between-the-wars Thomism, the New Theology controversy, and Vatican II up to the present.1The great crisis of the 1940s—whether we name it nouvelle théologie, after the reform-advocates of the era, or dialogue theologique, in honor of the Toulouse Dominicans' attempt to present a Scholastic position between, on the one hand, Fr. Chenu's and Congar's view of what the Saulchoir should be, and, on the other hand, the more-conservative Thomism of Frs. Garrigou-Lagrange, Gagnebet, and Gillon in Rome2—was and remains, in the words of Etienne Fouilloux, "the only theological debate of real [quelque] importance, at least in France, from the condemnation of Modernism to the time of the Second Vatican Council."3 And like any truly great event or crisis in intellectual-spiritual culture, it remains with us today in its fruits, both resolved and unresolved.Thus, when a new work is published dedicated to these events and the figures involved therein, the Catholic intellectual world should take heed, for our own self-understanding—whatever sui iuris Church in which we are ascribed—is at stake. Hence, the arrival of the collection of translations by Dr. Patricia Kelly of the University of St. Andrews is an event to be welcomed, even if elements of its publication also give rise to concern. This volume, Ressourcement Theology: A Sourcebook,4 gathering together essays by various parties involved on both sides of the specifically Francophone debates over theological method and truth that came to a head in the 1940s, provides the reading public with a dual "service": it presents in English a [End Page 354] number of texts not heretofore available, while also, unfortunately, bearing witness to the academic prejudices lingering against the authors writing from Rome and Toulouse concerning certain veins of thought in theological methodology during the inter-war and immediate post-war era. Although my review will be somewhat negative on certain points—both for technical textual reasons and because of the slanted narrative presented by Dr. Kelly—I wish only the best to her and her work, hoping that the concerns that I voice can serve as a springboard to dialogue, not retrenchment... (shrink)

The following article consists of an introduction by the first author, an annotated translation by the second, and then an analysis by the first, of the earliest known Scandinavian response to the Vampire phenomenon of Medvedia in 1732 by Nicolaus Boye, a state-employed physician residing in Stockholm. The translation shows that Boye’s own article, which constitutes a complete refutation of Johann Flückinger’s claims, was meticulously organised, abstracting and arguing against the major themes which he observed in the Visum et Repertum, (...) while the analysis shows that Boye was working under the topical medical theories of the Dutch botanist and physician Herman Boerhaave. The analysis also demonstrates the extent to which Boye’s rationalism in refuting the Visum at Repertum is informed by his Lutheranism and belief in the Day of Judgement, and concludes by showing examples of the impact his work exerted on other academics in the 1730s. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Seductiveness of Virtue: Abraham Joshua Heschel and John Paul II on Morality and Personal Fulfillment by John J. FitzgeraldMatthew R. PetrusekThe Seductiveness of Virtue: Abraham Joshua Heschel and John Paul II on Morality and Personal Fulfillment John J. Fitzgerald new york: bloomsbury t&t clark, 2017. 240 pp. $114The Seductiveness of Virtue offers a close study of the twentieth-century Polish-American rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the first Polish (...) pope, St. John Paul II, on the relationship between being good and being happy. Overall the book advances the conversation on the meaning and continued relevance of virtue in contemporary ethics, though its eagerness to build bridges across competing religious and philosophical traditions opens the argument to both methodological and substantive criticisms. [End Page 206]Fitzgerald divides the book into an introduction and four chapters. Chapter 1, "The Meaning of Our Question," establishes the definitions of concepts that Fitzgerald addresses throughout the rest his argument, including "happiness," "meaning," "freedom," "personal fulfillment," "good and evil," and "doing." Fitzgerald locates each term within the theologies of Heschel and John Paul II and provides his own definitions. Chapter 2, "Heschel and the 'Joys of Mitsvah,'" enters more deeply into Heschel's theology, arguing that, despite some ambiguity about whether morality will always lead to personal fulfillment, Heschel establishes a firm theological and practical connection between following the law (mitzvah) and being happy. Chapter 3, "John Paul II and the Good We Must Do to Have Eternal Life," engages in a similar analysis of John Paul's thought (including his writings before becoming pope) and, despite using different theological categories (chief among them "Christ"), arrives at a similar conclusion: there is a necessary connection between being good and being happy. Chapter 4, which also functions as a conclusion, places the comparison between Heschel and John Paul into a wider comparative context, examining how their respective conclusions on morality and the good relate to insights from other contemporary perspectives, including the Dalai Lama, Peter Singer, and present-day "positive psychology." Fitzgerald concludes by offering five reasons why it is important to continue, in his words, an "interworldview" and "interdisciplinary" dialogue on how virtue relates to happiness.The book is richly sourced—containing 199 footnotes, bibliography, and detailed index—and serves as a good addition to the libraries of those working on John Paul II, Abraham Heschel, virtue theory, or comparative ethics more broadly. Yet its breadth on the comparative front also highlights its vulnerabilities, particularly on the question of what defines the relationship between virtue and happiness from a normative perspective. While providing lucid descriptive accounts of different conceptions of God and the good, for example, Fitzgerald acknowledges near the book's conclusion, "whether one finds [any] author persuasive will depend in large part on one's prior conclusions about the existence and nature of God and the afterlife" (184) and notes that this topic "cannot be resolved or even explored here" (185). However, these "prior conclusions" themselves are ultimately most meaningful for answering the book's central question.This reticence to engage in meta-ethical questions also leads the text to a problematic epistemological and ethical equalizing of each perspective, one that allows Fitzgerald to claim, for example, "while there is much common ground between Heschel, John Paul II, and [Peter] Singer on the relationship between morality and fulfillment, there are also key differences" (174). Here Fitzgerald understates the contrast: one of the "key" differences between Singer's utilitarian materialism and John Paul II's gospel of life is that Singer's position could serve as a paradigmatic representation of the "culture of death" [End Page 207] that John Paul spent his papacy resisting. Thus, while providing an excellent analysis of each thinker individually, the book's argument would benefit from establishing a firmer and more transparent standard for evaluating ethical claims across traditions.Matthew R. PetrusekLoyola Marymount UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In July 2012, the Kazimierz Naturalist workshop gathered in Kazimierz-Dolny, Poland to discuss the topic Naturalizing Religion. A group of 16 presenters with backgrounds in philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and religious studies gave presentations with a general focus on the burgeoning field of the cognitive science of religion . This included keynotes from Robert McCauley, Jesper Sørensen, Helen de Cruz, and John Wilkins . The current special issue contains three of the papers presented during the 4-day-long conference. They represent the (...) scope and variety of the presentations, addressing both theoretical and empirical issues in the discussions of the new science of religion. The first paper, ‘Reduction, Explanation, and the New Science of Religion,’ by Christopher Pearson and Matthew P. Schunke, is a theoretical exploration of the term reduction and the ways in which it is applied to the scientific study of religion. Pearson and Schunk .. (shrink)

The work of three present-day Sankritist-philosophers, _God and the World's Arrangement_ allows readers to engage directly with writings of the classical Indian philosophers Śaṅkara and Vācaspati, as well as some of their most acute critics, on the question of whether the existence of a creator God can be known by reason alone. Carefully selected and annotated with the needs of students foremost in mind, these new translations will be of interest to anyone wishing to see up close a newly set (...) gem of our philosophical inheritance from global antiquity. (shrink)

Despite the recent upsurge of interest in comparative political theory, there has been virtually no serious examination of Buddhism by political philosophers in the past five decades. In part, this is because Buddhism is not typically seen as a school of political thought. However, as Matthew Moore argues, Buddhism simultaneously parallels and challenges many core assumptions and arguments in contemporary Western political theory. In brief, Western thinkers not only have a great deal to learn about Buddhism, they have a (...) great deal to learn from it. To both incite and facilitate the process of Western theorists engaging with this neglected tradition, this book provides a detailed, critical reading of the key primary Buddhist texts, from the earliest recorded teachings of the Buddha through the present day. It also discusses the relevant secondary literature on Buddhism and political theory, as well as the literatures on particular issues addressed in the argument. Moore argues that Buddhist political thought rests on three core premises--that there is no self, that politics is of very limited importance in human life, and that normative beliefs and judgments represent practical advice about how to live a certain way, rather than being obligatory commands about how all persons must act. He compares Buddhist political theory to what he sees as Western analogues--Nietzsche's similar but crucially different theory of the self, Western theories of limited citizenship from Epicurus to John Howard Yoder, and to the Western tradition of immanence theories in ethics. This will be the first comprehensive treatment of Buddhism as political theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Future of the Book: Images of Reading in the American Utopian Novel by Kevin J. HayesMatthew LeggattKevin J. Hayes. The Future of the Book: Images of Reading in the American Utopian Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. E-book, 192 pp. ISBN 9780192670960.Kevin J. Hayes is a writer of high regard, having published many books over his distinguished career, including biographical studies such as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, (...) George Washington: A Life in Books, and several on Edgar Allen Poe. Works like the 2020 monograph Shakespeare and the Making of America showcase his intersecting interests in biography, literature, and American political history. It is these interests that are very much on display in his 2022 monograph The Future of the Book: Images of Reading in the American Utopian Novel, and we should be thankful that Hayes has turned his attention to the subject of utopian fiction as he certainly has much to add to the discussion. The book is clearly a labor of love and Hayes writes with a great degree of detail and authority suggesting he has always held a deep interest in the utopian novel. In fact, from the preface, it is clear the research supporting this book has spanned many years.The preface sets it all up very neatly. Immediately, the reader is invited into the research story of the book. Hayes has an evocative and methodical style that carries that research throughout. The author is also careful in this preface to assert his expertise in the field. Having read “virtually every utopian novel in American literature published before 1910” on microfilm gives Hayes the opportunity to explore many of the obscure and lesser-known works of the period (ix), which he notes in his introduction is primarily between 1880 and 1915. Since many of these novels are yet to be digitized, his insight is notably rare.Aside from an introduction and conclusion, the book is divided into five chapters. The first is titled “The Residential Library” and is centrally about [End Page 601] books in home-spaces, from personal libraries to books on shelves in someone’s living room. Chapter 2, “The Public Library,” explores depictions of public libraries and ways that collected knowledge might be organized and made accessible in utopian visions. “The Idea of Authorship,” chapter 3, is about the professional/amateur status of authors in utopian societies. In this section, Hayes also explores ideas about literary quality and attempts to answer concerns that a utopian age would necessarily be incapable of producing great literature. Chapter 4, titled “The Newspaper,” details the struggles utopian authors have had with the newspaper format. Finally, “The Printed Page and the Written Word” examines ways in which utopian authors sought to refine the printed and written word and their innovative suggestions in this area. Each of these chapters opens by considering Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward in relation to the subject at hand and Bellamy’s 1888 novel is referred to extensively throughout The Future of the Book, offering a frame for Hayes’s exploration of utopian literature’s inner dialogue with the printed word.In his introduction, Hayes highlights that much of the scholarly work in this area has focused on dystopias. Indeed, when I think about the representation of literature in speculative fiction I tend, first, to think of the great dystopias like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which history is erased and rewritten by The Party, or Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, in which books are considered dangerous and thus are rigorously hunted and burned by the ironically named Firemen of the future. Alternatively, postapocalyptic movies spring to mind. Taking shelter in the New York Public Library, Sam Hall (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) frantically burns books for warmth despite the protests of several other characters in Roland Emmerich’s 2004 blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow. Likewise, in “Marooned” (1989), an episode of the British SF sitcom Red Dwarf (1988–), of which I was particularly fond during my formative years, a copy of the collected works of Shakespeare is burned to keep the last remaining human, David Lister (played by Craig Charles), alive. In the opposite direction, some postapocalyptic... (shrink)

Headlines in 2019 are inundated with claims about the “digital society,” making sweeping assertions of societal benefits and dangers caused by a range of technologies. This situation would seem an ideal motivation for ethics research, and indeed much research on this topic is published, with more every day. However, ethics researchers may feel a sense of déjà vu, as they recall decades of other heavily promoted technological platforms, from genomics and nanotechnology to machine learning. How should ethics researchers respond to (...) the waves of rhetoric and accompanying academic and policy-oriented research? What makes the digital society significant for ethics research? In this paper, we consider two examples of digital technologies (artificial intelligence and neural technologies), showing the pattern of societal and academic resources dedicated to them. This pattern, we argue, reveals the jointly sociological and ethical character of significance attributed to emerging technologies. By attending to insights from pragmatism and science and technology studies, ethics researchers can better understand how these features of significance affect their work and adjust their methods accordingly. In short, we argue that the significance driving ethics research should be grounded in public engagement, critical analysis of technology’s “vanguard visions,” and in a personal attitude of reflexivity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, & the Moral Life ed. by Reinhold Hütter and Matthew LeveringMatthew ShadleRessourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, & the Moral Life Edited by Reinhold Hütter and Matthew Levering Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010. 409 pp. $64.95This edited volume is a festschrift in honor of Romanus Cessario, OP, but, as its title suggests, it also has the larger (...) goal of showing that “ressourcement does not dispense with, but in fact requires, Thomism” (3). The contributors’ efforts to bring to light the insights of Aquinas are organized into three sections: theological method, sacramental theology, and moral theology.Readers of this journal will be most interested in the latter section. Highlights include Craig Steven Titus’s response to Jean Porter’s criticism of Aquinas’s doctrine of the unity of the virtues, in which Titus claims that Aquinas has a more developed awareness of moral struggle and development, even among the virtuous, than Porter allows, and that therefore Aquinas is not averse to the idea of a “flawed saint” (331). Steven A. Long distinguishes between acts that are necessary for the completion of a given end and those that are not, arguing that for the former the end defines the species of the act whereas the latter possess their own end and species independent of further intentions. Long’s purpose is to refute Martin Rhonheimer’s contention that condoms can be used by married couples to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS by showing that the use of condoms is not necessary for this purpose (since abstinence is also available), and therefore that such use must be considered an act of contraception regardless of any other good intentions involved. Joseph W. Koterski provides an excellent overview of the classical roots of the natural law theory and its modern exponents that could be useful in undergraduate and graduate courses, although the essay seems mismatched for the volume since the likely reader will probably find little new in it.An evaluation of the overall project of the volume requires a reading of the essays in the first section on theological method. Thomas Joseph White points to the Dominican theologians Marie-Dominique Chenu and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange as two extremes in the debate over historicity in theology: “in one we find history without sufficient recourse to dogma, while in the other we have dogma without sufficient recourse to history” (96). White insists that [End Page 218] theologians must find the proper balance between the two. It is not entirely apparent that those loosely identified with ressourcement Thomism have found this balance, if “recourse to history” includes sensitivity to the questions and concerns of one’s own age. In many of the essays in this volume it is unclear whose questions the authors’ exegeses of Aquinas are meant to answer, although other essays are quite engaging. Of course historical exegesis is necessary, but those involved in the mid-twentieth-century patristic ressourcement understood that the recovery of the sources was necessary precisely as an answer to the burning questions of the contemporary world. This is not accommodation, since the Christian tradition proposes something new to the world, but it proposes it with the confidence that human questioning is rooted in the innate desire for the triune God. The advocates of the earlier ressourcement saw the Thomism of their day as an obstacle to this dialogue between the Christian tradition and the contemporary world. The project of ressourcement Thomism will succeed to the extent that it shows how the teachings of Thomas Aquinas can contribute to this dialogue. [End Page 219]Matthew ShadleLoras CollegeCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's groundbreaking Critique of Pure Reason inaugurated a new way of understanding the world that continues to impact philosophy to the present day. With clear explanations and numerous examples, A Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason takes students step by step through the book in a way that captures their interest without sacrificing depth or intellectual rigor. Although it is informed by recent Anglo-American scholarship, the Companion focuses on Kant's own arguments rather than secondary texts and scholarly debates (...) that may otherwise distract from what Kant himself is attempting. The Companion first places the Critique in its historical and philosophical context before addressing the three main parts of the book in order: the Transcendental Aesthetic, the Transcendental Analytic, and the Transcendental Dialectic. The Companion also briefly explains how Kant continues his investigation into God, freedom, and immortality in the Critique of Practical Reason, and it concludes with an assessment of Kant's importance in the history of modern philosophy. Key features include a glossary of technical terms, with succinct definitions and cross-references, as well as an annotated bibliography of the most important English-language secondary sources on Kant's theoretical philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I explore privacy as a concept that becomes relevant and sometimes necessary under specific circumstances, but unnecessary in others. Privacy, I suggest, can be thought of as the right to be left alone and is integral to related concepts such as freedom, liberty, and independence. In light of the ongoing expansion of data-mining technologies, business models, and emerging modes of governance, I suggest that privacy is simultaneously more necessary and more at risk than ever. Privacy, in other (...) words, is fragile and must be appreciated, understood, and defended. At the same time, privacy is increasingly an obstacle for businesses, governments, and financial interests, all of whom are eager to extract our data, manage our expectations, and shape and control our desires. To achieve their objectives, I describe how these organizations have long used propaganda and persuasive techniques to shape and manage the opinions, values, and expectations of the public. These days, I argue, the meaning of privacy is being made to evolve in order to bolster these organizations’ interconnected efforts to expand their power and control and to pave the way for the imposition of digital IDs. I also reflect on the way propaganda is being used today, the ways it has been described in the past, and the ways it will evolve in the future—either in defense of freedom, liberty, and independence, or in service of organizations intent on expanding their power and control over managed populations. (shrink)

Flamm examines a dominant theme in Santayana’s philosophy: the spiritual life. He puts Santayana’s philosophy in dialogue with the novella Soul (Dzhan) by Andrey Platonov and examines the various ways Santayana associates crying with a materialist conception of the spiritual life.The association of crying and spiritual life is conspicuous enough in Santayana’s writings to merit exploration. In an astonishing variety of rhetorical modes Santayana writes of the various “cries” of spirit, of psyche, of soul, and of the human heart, emphasizing (...) the idea that it is through moral suffering that humans come to spiritual understanding (Some examples: “An impetuous spirit when betrayed by the world will cry …” (LR2, Chapter VIII, “Ideal Society,” p. 121); “the universal need and cry of human souls …” (LR3, Chapter XII, “Charity,” pp. 130–31); “spirit is physically the voice of the soul crying in the wilderness” (RB/RE, “The Nature of Spirit,” p. 568); “our very soul begins to cry for help” (RB/RE “On Cosmic Animism,” p. 576); “pain,” the “first form of distraction” in the psyche causes it to “awake with a sharp cry, a conscious protest” (RB/RE, “Distraction,” p. 679)). Santayana goes so far in one context to suggest that crying experiences testify to the existence of matter (“The more ecstatic or the more tragic experience is, the more unmistakably it is the voice of matter.” “Cross Lights,” SE, p. 25). In this chapter I link the various ways Santayana associates crying and spiritual life with the novella Soul (Dzhan) by Andrey Platonov (Andrey Platonov (1899–1951) was a Russian author whose works during the Stalinist era were heavily censored and banned and have only recently (relative to their importance, as of the late 1990s) begun appearing in approved English translations. I am a lover of Russian literature and no expert, but am prepared to agree with poet-translator Robert Chandler, who claimed (before he died in 2007) that Russians will come one day to recognize Platonov as their “greatest prose writer” (Chandler’s exquisite co-translation of Platonov’s Soul was chosen in 2004 as “best translation of the year from a Slavonic language” by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages)). Santayana in dialogue with Platonov offers a radiant picture of the materialist conception of spiritual life. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with Descartes’s view on the passions’ moral value, that is, their value with respect to achieving the ethical ends of virtue and happiness. In this regard, there is no question that the passions possess a kind of conative value because of their power to move or incline us in ways that contribute to ethical ends. This paper’s question is whether the passions also contribute to ethical ends in a cognitive sense by informing us of the moral (...) value of things, in other words, telling us whether things are good or bad with respect to the ends of virtue and happiness. The answer to this question is less clear for two reasons. Firstly, in order for the passions to inform us in this way they would have to be the sort of mental state that purports to tell us the way things are, in other words, that contain some sort of presentation or assessment of things. To borrow language from present day philosophy of mind, they would have to be contentful mental states. But this way of thinking about the passions is opposed by a long tradition, running from Descartes’s contemporaries to today, that regards Cartesian passions as purely conative or appetitive movements, along the lines of Thomistic passions. Secondly, even if the passions are contentful, it is not clear whether their contents accurately report the value of things with respect to ethical goals. Descartes frequently warns that the passions provide unreliable ethical guidance because they report on good and evil with respect to more bodily and animalistic aims: bodily health, self-preservation and the continuation of the species In taking up this question, I am guided by the work of Cambridge Platonist, Henry More. More offered a positive assessment of Descartes’s theory of the passions, which served as the basis for More’s ethical theory in the Enchiridion Ethicum. More’s astute reading of Descartes is useful to my investigation both because he reads the Cartesian passions as contentful mental states and because he uses this reading to explain their accuracy and reliability with respect to virtue. Following More's interpretation, I argue that Descartes recognizes a category of passions—including, most notably, the passion of generosity and the passions following from it—that are more ethically reliable and that serve roughly the same ethical functions as the affections of More's boniform faculty. (shrink)

Two recent and influential papers, van Rooij 2007 and Lassiter 2012, propose solutions to the proviso problem that make central use of related notions of independence—qualitative in the first case, probabilistic in the second. We argue here that, if these solutions are to work, they must incorporate an implicit assumption about presupposition accommodation, namely that accommodation does not interfere with existing qualitative or probabilistic independencies. We show, however, that this assumption is implausible, as updating beliefs with conditional information does not (...) in general preserve independencies. We conclude that the approach taken by van Rooij and Lassiter does not succeed in resolving the proviso problem. (shrink)

A 28-year-old female-to-male transgender patient presents to the emergency room with one day of pleuritic chest pain and shortness of breath. The patient is found to have an acute pulmonary embolus and is admitted is to the academic hospitalist teaching service for further management.The transgender population is diverse in gender identity, expression, and sexual orientation. Although estimates vary, one study suggests that 0.3% of adults identify as transgender. The U.S. National Transgender Discrimination Survey revealed that 28% of transgender adults have (...) experienced harassment in medical settings, 19% reported being refused care, and 28% postponed care because of discrimination... (shrink)

With everything from answers to frequent new-teacher questions and warnings of common new teacher pitfalls to specific strategies and veteran tricks useful for clawing back precious hours of the day, Matthew Johnson gives clear tips and clear reasons for them in a straightforward, jargonless voice and a mixture of practicality and philosophy.

This well crafted volume provides unflinching assessments of the philosophical values that are beginning to unite - and that continue to divide - the cultures of America and Europe. Its contributors offer arguments that are once timely, provocative, and accessible. - Larry A. Hickman, The Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale IL American and European Values is a far richer book than a misreading of its title might suggest: it is truly a both (American)-and (European), not an (...) either-or. The perspectives of its contributors range over time and place, from the anarchic California of Gold Rush days to modern Poland, Russia, and Turkey. Eclectic in the best sense of that word, it combines philosophy, literature, history, and even religion without ever straying far from its central theme. And, somewhat incidentally, it also demonstrates just how multifaceted and complex is the idea of pragmatism. - William McBride, Ph.D. is Arthur G. Hansen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University, Indiana. (shrink)

During the Nazi era, physicians provided expertise and a veneer of legitimacy enabling crimes against humanity. In a creative educational initiative to address current ethical dilemmas in clinical medicine, we conduct ethics learning missions bringing senior physicians to relevant Nazi era sites in either Germany or Poland. The tours share a core curriculum contextualising history and medical ethics, with variations in emphasis. Tours to Germany provide an understanding of the theoretical origins of the ethical violations and crimes of Nazi physicians. (...) Tours to Poland address the magnitude of the Nazi physician’s atrocities as well as displays of heroism by Jewish and righteous among the nations' physicians. Exemplary as well as shameful physician behaviour is analysed from an ethical perspective. A combination of unique educational methodologies maximises learning and personal growth, enabling participants to examine ethically complex clinical situations with extrapolation to modern-day medical practice. Learning is designed with relevance to contemporary medical ethics dilemmas such as beginning and end-of-life issues, providing tenets from which participants can develop as more ethical and informed physicians. Participant feedback confirms efficacy and worth of these growth-promoting ethics learning tours which should be expanded to other international groups and settings. (shrink)

Introduction to Global Military History provides a lucid and comprehensive account of military developments around the modern world from the eighteenth century up to the present day. Beginning with the background to the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary wars and ending with the recent conflicts of the twenty-first century, this third edition combines fully up-to-date global coverage with close analysis not only of the military aspects of war but also its social, cultural, political and economic dimensions and (...) repercussions. The new edition includes a fully revised chapter on conflicts during the eighteenth century, updated coverage of events post-1990 and increased coverage of non-Western conflicts to provide a truly international account of the varied and changing nature of modern military history. Covering lesser-known conflicts as well as the familiar wars of history and illustrated throughout with maps, primary source extracts and case studies, it is essential reading for all students of modern military history and international relations. (shrink)

Thomas L. Kane, a crusader for antislavery, women's rights, and the downtrodden, rose to prominence in his day as the most ardent and persuasive defender of Mormons' religious liberty. Though not a Mormon, Kane sought to defend the much-reviled group from the "Holy War" waged against them by evangelical America. His courageous personal intervention averted a potentially catastrophic bloody conflict between federal troops and Mormon settlers in the now nearly forgotten Utah War of 1857-58. Drawing on extensive, newly available archives, (...) this book is the first to tell the full story of Kane's extraordinary life. The book illuminates his powerful Philadelphia family, his personal life and eccentricities, his reform achievements, his place in Mormon history, and his career as a Civil War general. Further, the book revises previous understandings of nineteenth-century reform, showing how Kane and likeminded others fused Democratic Party ideology, anti-evangelicalism, and romanticism. (shrink)

Every day, television news operations have available dozens of video news releases (VNRs), public relations handout videos designed to mimic news formats. Electronic tracking indicates some of these VNRs are used. Critics typically assail VNRs on ethical grounds, that VNRs deceive audience members into thinking they are watching news gathered by reporters, rather than a promotional pitch. Using a snowball technique, the researchers presented survey respondents with authentic-looking local television news stories; 157 respondents evaluated three stories (out of nine). Some (...) stories used station-generated footage, some network, and some VNRs. Respondents were asked their best estimation of the source. The data indicated a real likelihood VNR deception is occurring. Two of the three VNRs deceived at least half the respondents. Respondents were incorrect an average of 46% of the time when attempting to identifying VNRs, compared to 29% incorrectly identifying network video and 20% incorrectly identifying locally shot video. (shrink)

© British Society of Aesthetics 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] does it mean for a thing to be ugly, or perhaps better, for something to be judged as such? We should admit that the matter is not transparent. Maybe that seems odd, since we find things ugly all the time; should not this be plain as day, then? But usually, it is what seems (...) plainest that, in the end, is most obscure.So what, then, is ugliness? What does it mean to find something ugly? Looking to cast some light on the matter, we might consider using Kant’s well-known account of beauty as our starting point, since Kant—apparently following ‘common sense’ —says that ugliness is ‘contrary to beauty’.2 Assuming the adequacy... (shrink)