Thomas Paine's words were like no others in history: they leaped off the page, inspiring readers to change their lives, their governments, their kings, and even their gods. In an age when spoken and written words were the only forms of communication, Paine's aroused men to action like no one else. The most widely read political writer of his generation, he proved to be more than a century ahead of his time, conceiving and demanding unheard-of social reforms that are now (...) integral elements of modern republican societies. Among them were government subsidies for the poor, universal housing and education, pre- and post-natal care for women, and universal social security. An Englishman who emigrated to the American colonies, he formed close friendships with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and his ideas helped shape the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which one biological object is a part of another biological object? This paper answers this question by developing a general, systematic account of biological parthood. I specify two criteria for biological parthood. Substantial Spatial Inclusionrequires biological parts to be spatially located inside or in the region that the natural boundary of t he biological whole occupies. Compositional Relevance captures the fact that a biological part engages in a biological process that must make a necessary contribution (...) to a condition that is minimally sufficient to one or more of the characteristic behaviors of the biological whole. Instead of emphasizing the diversity of part-whole relations in the biological world, this paper asks what biological part-whole relations have in common and what constrains their existence, in general. After presenting the two criteria for biological parthood I discuss in how far my account can cope with hard cases (e.g., redundant parts) and I reveal the merits and limits of monism. (shrink)

Mary Shepherd's An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, first published in 1824, was a pioneering work in metaphysics and epistemology. Together with her 1827 Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, they make her one of the most important philosophers of her era. Although widely neglected by the history of philosophy in the decades after her death, her works have recently begun to attract the attention and sustained study they deserve. In the course of her (...) writings, Shepherd offers trenchant and detailed rebuttals of the arguments and conclusions of many prominent predecessors-including George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Lawrence, and especially David Hume-but she is no merely negative thinker. On the contrary, her critiques are always in the service of her own distinctive and highly original doctrines, which are of striking contemporary interest. Appearing two hundred years after its original publication, this is the first full modern edition of her first book, which presents and defends the theory of causation and scientific knowledge that constitutes the cornerstone of her entire philosophy. The edition includes an extensive introduction and scholarly notes throughout that provide historical and philosophical context while explaining the central ideas of the work. It also includes Shepherd's two essays published in 1828 and all of her known letters-all but one of them published here for the first time-which shed significant additional light on her philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Anger has potential epistemic value in the way that it can facilitate a process of our coming to have knowledge and understanding regarding the issue about which we are angry. The nature of anger, however, may nevertheless be such that it ultimately undermines this very process. Common non-philosophical complaints about anger, for instance, often target the angry person as being somehow irrational, where an unformulated assumption is that her anger undermines her capacity to rationally engage with the issue about which (...) she is angry. Call this assumption the charge of emotional irrationality regarding anger. Such a charge is pernicious when levelled at the anger of those in positions of marginalisation or oppression, where it can threaten to silence voices on the very issue of the injustices that they face. In this paper I thus provide a much-needed interrogation of this charge. Firstly, and drawing on empirical literature on the effects of anger on decision-making, I flesh out the charge and why it poses a threat to how the epistemic value of anger has been defended. Secondly, I argue that the charge of emotional irrationality regarding anger can nevertheless be unwarranted, at least within a common context of political anger. (shrink)

How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. She discusses "joyful revolt" with Julia Kristeva, the idea of "the rest of the world" with Gayatri Spivak, the "art of living" with Michel Serres, the "carnival of the senses" with Michael Taussig, the relation of hope to passion and to politics with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto (...) Laclau. A dozen stimulating minds weigh in with their visions of a better social and political order. The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change. (shrink)

In this book, Mary Midgely turns a spotlight on the fashionable view that we no longer need or use moral judgements. She shows how the question of whether or not we can make moral judgements must inevitably affect our attitudes to the law and its institutions, but also to events that occur in our daily lives.

Agonistic Democracy explores how theoretical concepts from agonistic democracy can inform institutional design in order to mediate conflict in multicultural, pluralist societies. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Nietzsche, Schmitt, and Arendt, Marie Paxton outlines the importance of their themes of public contestation, contingency and necessary interdependency for contemporary agonistic thinkers. Paxton delineates three distinct approaches to agonistic democracy: David Owen's perfectionist agonism, Mouffe's adversarial agonism, and William Connolly and James Tully's inclusive agonism. Paxton demonstrates how each is fundamental to (...) enabling citizens to cultivate better virtues for themselves and society (Owen), motivating democratic engagement (Mouffe) and enhancing relations of respect and understanding between conflicting citizens (Connolly and Tully). Situated within the context of a deeply polarised post-Trump America and post-Brexit Britain, this book reveals the need to rethink our approach to conflict mediation through democratic institutions. Pulling together insights from experimental research with deliberative democratic innovations, Paxton explores how agonistic theory might be institutionalised further. Through discussing ways in which agonistic institutions might be developed to render democracy more virtuous, more engaging, and more inclusive, Agonistic Democracy provides a unique resource for students of contemporary political theory. (shrink)

This is the first modern edition of the works of Lady Mary Shepherd, one of the most important women philosophers of the early modern period. Shepherd has been widely neglected in the history of philosophy, but her work engaged with the dominant philosophers of the time - among them Hume, Berkeley, and Reid. In particular, her 1827 volume Essays on the Perception of an External Universe outlines a theory of causation, perception, and knowledge which Shepherd presents as an alternative (...) to what she sees as the mistaken views of Berkeley and Hume. What she ultimately presents is an original and systematic metaphysics and epistemology. Shepherd's Essays consists of two parts. The first is a theory of perception and knowledge of the external world, which is designed to rebut idealism and skepticism about the external world and show that our ordinary beliefs are based on reason. The second is a collection of essays on topics in metaphysics and epistemology, including the immateriality and eternity of the mind, the relationship between mind and body, the possibility of miracles, the association of ideas, the relationship between physical and mathematical reasoning, and the epistemology of testimony. Antonia LoLordo's edition of Shepherd's Essays includes scholarly notes throughout the text that provide historical and philosophical context and expand on the major concepts of Shepherd's system. Her extensive introduction to Shepherd's life and works surveys some of the major points of Shepherd's system, points out directions for future research, and offers guidance for readers planning to teach her work in their courses. This volume is an invaluable primary resource for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates interested in metaphysics, epistemology, and early modern philosophy. (shrink)

Mobile health research involving pervasive sensors, mobile apps and other novel data collection tools and methods present new ethical, legal, and social challenges specific to informed consent, data management and bystander rights. To address these challenges, a participatory design approach was deployed whereby stakeholders contributed to the development of a web-based commons to support the mHealth research community including researchers and ethics board members. The CORE platform now features a community forum, a resource library and a network of nearly 600 (...) global members. The utility of the participatory design process was evaluated by analyzing activities carried out over an 8-month design phase consisting of 86 distinct events including iterative design deliberations and social media engagement. This article describes how participatory design yielded 55 new features directly mapped to community needs and discusses relationships to user engagement as demonstrated by a steady increase in CORE member activity and followers on Twitter. (shrink)

This chapter, which examines the unity shared between what appear to be conflicting modes of natural investigation, an often neglected aspect of the history of British natural philosophy, also discusses the views of Francis Bacon on observation and experiment and describes his system of the sciences. It looks at aspects of Bacon's program for natural philosophy that made critics set the divide Baconian natural philosophy and the mathematical sciences of the seventeenth century. The chapter furthermore highlights the role of the (...) Baconian system of the sciences in the acceptance of Isaac Newton's Principia mathematica. (shrink)

Inspired and in honor of the work of noted political theorist Mary P. Nichols, the essays in this volume explore political ideas and implications in a range of works of philosophy, literature, and film from classical antiquity to the present day, creating an interdisciplinary conversation across genres.

How do we act justly in the world? How can we ethically respond to social and economic crisis and the desperation caused by violence and atrocity? Justice and Love is a philosophical dialogue on how to imagine and act in a more just world by theologian Rowan Williams and philosopher Mary Zournazi. Drawing on examples from the European Migrant Crisis to Brexit, the authors reflect on justice as a condition of being rather than cold fact. Looking at different religious (...) and philosophical traditions to enrich our language of justice, this book explores the love and patience needed for social healing and the imagination required to experience the world in new ways. (shrink)

Few works have had the impact on contemporary philosophy exerted by Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Twentieth-century philosophers in France were bound together by a reading of Hyppolite's translation and commentary. Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, and Bataille were all shaped by Kojève's lectures on the book. Late twentieth-century philosophers such as Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, and Irigaray all operate against a Hegelian horizon. Similarly, in Germany Heidegger, Adorno, and Habermas developed their philosophies in large part through an engagement with Hegel. In the United (...) States the book has had a profound influence on feminism and gender studies. Thinkers as diverse as Butler, Benhabib, Mills, and Honig have developed political theories as well as theories of sexual difference by rereading Hegel's reading of Antigone. As Derrida suggests, this text must be read. It lays out the infrastructures and architectures of life in the modern nation state. It unfolds a grand narrative of the ways of thinking and acting that comprise human experience in "our time." The purpose of the text is to effect a transformation in readers, so that they cease to think of themselves as particular humans and come to know that their existence inheres in membership in a complex community-social, cultural, economic, religious, aesthetic, and political infrastructures that form the culture of possibilities in which self-consciousness emerges and is sustained. Rawlinson's reading reveals how Hegel's politics of the "we" is undermined both by his effacement of sexual difference and by his misappropriation of art as a "betrayal of substance." Both of these gestures discount specificity in favor of a generic subject and a mutual recognition in which the other is the same. She uses Hegel's own critique of abstraction against him to rethink the "we" as a community of difference, figured materially in the differentiated styles or signatures of art, and in so doing argues that that the task of phenomenology is never completed and that the abstract concepts of logic will always be dependent on phenomenology's productive or generative movement. In her reading Hegel is neither a metaphysician nor a subjective idealist. He is a phenomenologist, analyzing experience to articulate the ways in which humans generate narratives and material infrastructures to sustain the complexities of life. (shrink)

Après une agrégation de philosophie (1983), Marie-Dominique Couzinet s'est formée à la recherche en Italie, à l'Institut Universitaire Européen de Florence, et en France, au CNRS. Maître de conférences (1996) habilitée à diriger les recherches (2009), elle enseigne l'histoire de la philosophie de la Renaissance à l'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (UFR de philosophie ; Centre d'Histoire des Systèmes de Pensée Moderne : EA 1451). Ses travaux portent sur la philosophie de la Renaissance au XVIe siècle en France et en Italie, (...) l'histoire et la transmission des savoirs dans la culture humaniste européenne et l'historiographie consacrée à la Renaissance. Elle est l'auteur de Méthode et histoire à la Renaissance. Une lecture de la Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem de Jean Bodin (Paris, Vrin, 1996) ; Bibliographie des écrivains français : Jean Bodin, Paris- Rome (Éditions Memini, 2001), et Sub specie hominis. Études sur le savoir humain au XVIe siècle (Paris, Vrin, 2007). / This study analyzes the links between philosophy, humanism and scholarly culture according to Ramus, the great 16th-century pedagogue – a prime target of the so-called "critique of pedantry", which asserted that one had to choose between teaching and thinking. It offers new critical tools to approach his oeuvre. (shrink)

Nietzsche has recently enjoyed much scrutiny from the _nouveaux critiques_. Jacques Derrida, the leader of that movement, here combines in his strikingly original and incisive fashion questions of sexuality, politics, writing, judgment, procreation, death, and even the weather into a far-reaching analysis of the challenges bequeathed to the modern world by Nietzsche. _Spurs_, then, is aptly titled, for Derrida's "deconstructions" of Nietzsche's meanings will surely act as spurs to further thought and controversy. This dual-language edition offers the English-speaking reader who (...) has some knowledge of French an opportunity to examine the stylistic virtuosity of Derrida's writing—of particular significance for his analysis of "the question of style.". (shrink)

The Application Of The Judeo-Christian Ethic To Some Of Our Modern Problems In Social Relations, Politics, And Religion.

In Vodou Cosmology and the Haitian Revolution in the Enlightenment Ideals of Kant and Hegel, Vivaldi Jean-Marie begins with an interpretation of the rise of Vodou practices in Saint-Domingue which is sensitive to the social, spiritual and cultural challenges of the slaves communities in Saint-Domingue, later Haiti. He shows effectively that Vodou cosmology emerged as a spiritual, social and cultural technology for the enslaved to overcome the dissonance and brutality of slavery in Saint-Domingue. Vodou Cosmology thus assumes the tripartite role (...) of spiritual, social and cultural compass for slaves who, concurrently with the development of Vodou, managed to establish a common ethos. Furthermore, to situate the rise of Vodou cosmology within the larger discourse of the Enlightenment and argue that it heralded a radical Enlightenment in the African diaspora, Jean-Marie compares and contrasts some aspects of the philosophies of Kant and Hegel with the social, spiritual and cultural experience of the enslaved communities of Saint-Domingue. This comparison shows that Kant and Hegel's depiction of African Negroes' mores and their religious practices in the colonies fails to capture that Vodou cosmology was both a mechanism of resistance and the medium to restore their social, spiritual, and cultural identity against the backdrop of the Atlantic slave trade. Also, he elaborates the Enlightenment's conception of African Negroes as commercial currency and specifically Hegel's view of slavery in the colonies as the manifestation of divine providence. He concludes that the significance of the Haitian Revolution lies in the fact that it ascribed freedom to people of African descent in the diaspora and is thus implicit in later themes of black freedom. The Haitian Revolution ties blackness with freedom and mapped out a radical enlightenment in the European colonies. (shrink)