Power and authority in terms of the Ten Commandments (TCs) are discussed. The paper reviews the TCs in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The treatment and basis for power and authority in each religion are clarified. Implications of power and authority using the perspective of the TCs are provided. The paper suggests that in today's business environment people tend to be selective in identifying only with certain elements of the TCs that fit their interest and that the TCs should be viewed (...) as general moral guidelines. (shrink)

The current debate on “free agency” seems to highlight the romantic aspects of free agent and considers it a genuine response to changing economic conditions (e.g., high-unemployment rate, importance of knowledge in the labor market, the eclipse of organizational loyalty, and self pride). Little attention, if any, has been given to the religious root of the free agency concept and its persistent existence across history. In this paper, the current discourse on free agency and the conditions that have led to (...) its emergence are briefly discussed. The paper focuses on the theological perspectives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on the concept. Implications for management and business organizations are provided. (shrink)

Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in the Eastern Cape, the paper explores the interconnections between dreams (amathongo, amaphupha) and medicines (amayeza, imithi, amachiza) as aspects of the Xhosa diviner’s culture, knowledge and experience. Background information is provided in the introduction, inter alia, on the Xhosa patrilineal clan (isiduko), divination (imvumisa, evumiso) and religious and cultural change. The ability to dream, inter alia of the ancestors and medicines, is central to the diviner’s intuition and professional stock-in-trade, which are part and parcel (...) of a religious healing tradition. Examples of dreams involving the ancestors (iminyanya), diviners, clients and medicinal plants are presented and analysed in relation to relevant case material. The ritual significance of dreams is explored in some detail. The distinctions between diviner (igqirha lokuvumisa) and herbalist (ixhwele), and between medicines and charms (amakhubalo), receive attention in the section on medicines. The underlying purpose of traditional Xhosa religious ideology is discussed in the conclusion. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Emergence is an outstanding reference source and exploration of the concept of emergence, and is the first collection of its kind.

This book is not just about thinking or acting in transdisciplinary ways, but about being transdisciplinary. To achieve this requires a deconstruction of our current way of acting within the definition of being that others impose upon us. Transdisciplinarity is a phenomenological perspective of reality and its manifestation in the world in which we exist. The volume develops a widely based transdisciplinary understanding of the issues faced by higher education institutions and those who work within and with these institutions to (...) educate professionals. It incorporates international contributions from organisational theory, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, social sciences, philosophers and practitioners to create a volume that makes an important and distinct contribution to the literature on higher education and professional practice. "Transdisciplinarity provides one of our greatest challenges in higher education, both to the way it is organized and to the nature of the curriculum. This book is an important contribution to the debate about its implications." "Higher education is being challenged by the nature of knowledge and how it is organized-the world is transdisciplinary but out institutions are constrained by the disciplines. This book contributes to the important debates about the challenges transdisciplinarity provides to our institutions." Professor David Boud Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney. (shrink)

Is the world internally connected by a web of necessary connections or is everything loose and independent? Followers of David Hume accept the latter by upholding Hume’s Dictum, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Roughly put, anything can coexist with anything else, and anything can fail to coexist with anything else. Hume put it like this: “There is no object which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves.” Since Hume’s (...) day, Hume’s Dictum has played a major role in philosophy, especially in contemporary metaphysics. In ruling out necessary connections, Hume’s Dictum implies that causal relations and the laws of nature are contingent. It makes other demands on our metaphysics of science as well; for example, it places restrictions on our metaphysics of counterfactuals, dispositions, and explanation. The principle has applications in other areas too. Hume’s Dictum places constraints on our theories of abstract objects and moral properties. For example, Hume’s Dictum rules out the view that moral properties are distinct from, but necessarily connected to, non-moral properties. While Hume’s Dictum is a prominent principle in metaphysics, few Humeans have defended the principle at length. It is assumed more often than it is argued for. As a result, Hume’s Dictum no longer enjoys the reputation it once did. It’s common to hear complaints about the lack of arguments in support of Hume’s Dictum. Moreover, philosophers are increasingly willing to defend views that are at odds with Hume’s Dictum. A striking example of this is the recent explosion of interest in views that take causal relations and the laws of nature to be necessary. Humeans can no longer afford to be complacent. An extended defense of Hume’s Dictum is called for, and that’s what this dissertation aims to offer. This dissertation has three parts. In the first part, I lay out some preliminaries and offer a precise formulation of Hume’s Dictum. In the second part, I develop three arguments in favor of Hume’s Dictum. In the final part, I defend Hume’s Dictum against objections. (shrink)

Interpreting Figurative Meaning critically evaluates the recent empirical work from psycholinguistics and neuroscience examining the successes and difficulties associated with interpreting figurative language. There is now a huge, often contradictory literature on how people understand figures of speech. Gibbs and Colston argue that there may not be a single theory or model that adequately explains both the processes and products of figurative meaning experience. Experimental research may ultimately be unable to simply adjudicate between current models in psychology, linguistics and (...) philosophy of how figurative meaning is interpreted. Alternatively, the authors advance a broad theoretical framework, motivated by ideas from 'dynamical systems theory', that describes the multiple, interacting influences which shape people's experiences of figurative meaning in discourse. This book details past research and theory, offers a critical assessment of this work and sets the stage for a new vision of figurative experience in human life. (shrink)

Le Poidevin has recently presented an argument that gives rise to a serious problem for relationist theories of space. It appeals to the simple geometrical fact that if A, B and C are three points lying in a straight line, then AB and BC together entail AC. He suggests that an ontological relationship of supervenience must be appealed to to explain this entailment. Given this thesis of supervenience, relationism is implausible. I argue that the problem that Le Poidevin raises for (...) relationism should be rejected, because the thesis of supervenience is false. The latter rests upon what Le Poidevin refers to as ‘The explanatory principle', a principle which he claims to be a natural extension of the truthmaker principle. Contrary to this, I argue that given any plausible theory of truthmaking, the explanatory principle is false. With the rejection of this principle, Le Poidevin's argument against relationism collapses. (shrink)

Taken from a larger qualitative multi-case study, this article centers the voices of high school students who are from military affiliated families and how they want war to be taught to them. Using heritage history and difficult knowledge as theoretical frames, this article argues that military affiliated students seek a more robust teaching of war. Students demonstrated an interest in developing a deeper understanding of the community in which they live. Students requested a pedagogy that was inquiry and discussion based (...) with teachers not telling them what or how to think about war, a curriculum that was thematic in nature, teaching that was connected to the present, and teaching that was mindful of the personal connections students had to the subject of war through their family. (shrink)

Cognitive theories of metaphor understanding are typically described in terms of the mappings between different kinds of abstract, schematic, disembodied knowledge. My claim in this paper is that part of our ability to make sense of metaphorical language, both individual utterances and extended narratives, resides in the automatic construction of a simulation whereby we imagine performing the bodily actions referred to in the language. Thus, understanding metaphorical expressions like ‘grasp a concept’ or ‘get over’ an emotion involve simulating what it (...) must be like to engage in these specific activities, even though these actions are, strictly speaking, impossible to physically perform. This process of building a simulation, one that is fundamentally embodied in being constrained by past and present bodily experiences, has specific consequences for how verbal metaphors are understood, and how cognitive scientists, more generally, characterize the nature of metaphorical language and thought. (shrink)

Cognitive theories of metaphor understanding are typically described in terms of the mappings between different kinds of abstract, schematic, disembodied knowledge. My claim in this paper is that part of our ability to make sense of metaphorical language, both individual utterances and extended narratives, resides in the automatic construction of a simulation whereby we imagine performing the bodily actions referred to in the language. Thus, understanding metaphorical expressions like ‘grasp a concept’ or ‘get over’ an emotion involve simulating what it (...) must be like to engage in these specific activities, even though these actions are, strictly speaking, impossible to physically perform. This process of building a simulation, one that is fundamentally embodied in being constrained by past and present bodily experiences, has specific consequences for how verbal metaphors are understood, and how cognitive scientists, more generally, characterize the nature of metaphorical language and thought. (shrink)

When speakers utter metaphors, such as "Lawyers are also sharks," they often intend to communicate messages beyond those expressed by the metaphorical meaning of these expressions. For instance, in some circumstances, a speaker may state "Lawyers are also sharks" to strengthen a previous speaker's negative beliefs about lawyers, to add new information about lawyers to listeners to some context, or even to contradict a previous speaker's positive assertions about lawyers. In each case, speaking metaphorically communicates one of these three social (...) messages that are relevant to the ongoing discourse. At the same time, speaking metaphorically may express other social and affective information that is more difficult to convey using non-metaphorical speech, such as "Lawyers are also aggressive." We report the results of three experiments demonstrating that people infer different pragmatic messages from metaphors in varying social situations and that many metaphors can express additional pragmatic and rhetorical meanings beyond those conveyed by non-metaphorical language. These findings demonstrate the importance of trade-offs between cognitive effort and cognitive effects in pragmatic theories of metaphor use and understanding. (shrink)

This article discusses the British Nationalization of Labour Society , a group formed in response to the political ideas brought forth by Edward Bellamy’s novel Looking Backward. The article traces the roots of this group in British radicalism in general, and in campaigns for land nationalization and the works of Henry George in particular. The NLS were grounded in a deeply materialist and rationalist worldview and the influence of this on their political ideas and practice is shown. Relationships between the (...) ideas of the British Bellamyites and the ideas of British socialists are also discussed. (shrink)

In the second chapter of Utilitarianism John Stuart Mill writes: It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

Patočka’s text from 1946, right after World War II and before the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, analyzes the important historical events he was living through from a philosophical perspective. Patočka describes the crisis in Enlightenment-based social humanism, which even though having won the war, was left battered and distrusted for not preventing the disaster. With this branch of social humanism being discredited, people turned towards its Eastern manifestation, i.e., Socialism or Communism. Patočka distinguishes the various aspects of Socialism that exist (...) undifferentiated within the term: the concept of Man, ideology, and the Idea. The liberation of the Idea is twisted when combined with a material concept of Man as just one force among other forces, which the ideology then uses and abuses for an external aim. (shrink)

Higher education and the institution of the university exist in time, their essential nature now continually subject to change; change in students, in knowledge, in structure and in their own communities and those service. The nature of time in all the contemporary work on the university has been largely overlooked. This is an important omission and Universities in the Flux of Time has gathered leading academics whose contributions to the volume raise a debate as to the influence and use of (...) time in the university. They do this in an exploration of how these changes are perceived in higher education and how these affect its temporality from local, national and global perspectives. The book opens new spaces for the development of the university and civic society. The book develops an interdisciplinary understanding of the temporal issues of engaging with the past, present and future of higher education and its institutions, through consideration of the increased speed demanded for the production of able students and innovative research, to the accountability pressures from central governments and commerce. Reflecting on these issues in the higher education sector, Universities in the Flux of Time is split into three parts, with each one addressing time and its multiple relationships with the university: - Past, Present and Future - Knowledge and Time - Living with Time This volume will provide essential reading for those on Higher Education Studies courses as well as a wider audience of managers, practitioners, policy makers, academics and students and from many disciplinary perspectives including sociology, organisation studies, social psychology and the philosophy of education. (shrink)

In the immediate post-war period, a set of thinkers, most notably Jacques Maritain, developed influential natural law theories of constitutional democracy. The central tenet of the natural law approach to the post-war settlement was that, without the type of foundational understanding of the constitutional system it was proposing, the new democratic political institutions would relapse into totalitarianism. In response to this natural law challenge, Hans Kelsen sought to explicate and defend a self-consciously secular and relativistic understanding of the basis of (...) constitutional democracy. This article will examine the debate between the Kelsenian and the natural law view of constitutional democracy. The debate raises questions of foundational importance, and a number of issues are of particular concern in the present global context. These issues concern the role of moral pluralism and its relevance to the structure of constitutional democracy, and the relationship between universal values and the common good of particular communities. (shrink)

This paper presents an examination of the Fellowship of the New Life, a pioneering British socialist organization from the 1880s and 1890s. The paper outlines the organizations and some of the prominent individuals involved in the Fellowship, presents an overview of Fellowship analyses of existing society, and details their political programmes and actions. It shows that in both their analysis and their activities the Fellowship were very much of the socialist mainstream in their day. They rejected the dichotomies of their (...) society, such as individual-society, ends-means and materialism- ethicalism, and they sought to combine these facets of life in both their thought and their political campaigns. The conclusion reached is that this complex, resourceful and potent group have been ill-served by being given the simplistic and pejorative label of 'ethical' socialism. (shrink)

Parisinus 1672, executed at the instigation of Maximus Planudes, is the only manuscript which contains all seventy-eight extant moralia of Plutarch. It may be dated soon after 1302, the year in which Planudes appended to his manuscript of the Greek Anthology a πίναξ Πλουτρχου containing the titles of the first sixty-nine of the seventy-eight treatises and concluding with the words τατα πντα εὑρθη. The addition of nine further treatises to the Corpus was made possible by the discovery of two further (...) sources, one containing Nos. 70–7 and the other No. 78. The tradition of No. 78 is established beyond doubt: we are concerned here only with the remaining eight, Nos. 70–7. (shrink)

The totalising effect of consumerism, well-being and satisfaction is a discourse which may negate the value of struggle and mastery of complex subjects and a realization of personal potentiality. Why Universities Should Seek Happiness and Contentment considers the consequences of a hedonistic and well-being centred model of student education as one of the goals of higher education and proposes an alternative goal for higher education. In a globalised consumer society where the anxiety for an identity leads to the fear of (...) not reaching the standard, Paul Gibbs shows how anxiety can be harnessed to secure contentment with one's own future without the fear of consumer-induced emptiness. He conceptualises higher education in a counter-valued way to the current dominant discourse of higher education institutions and educational policy while placing students at the centre of their own educational activity. In doing so, Gibbs proposes contentment as a guiding principle of higher education. (shrink)

This volume provides readers with a broad overview of the different ways that irony emerges in human life, within interpersonal communication, instances of situational irony, literature and artistic creations. It emphasizes the importance of irony in ordinary thought, language, and communication.

This book offers a moral rather than instrumental notion of university education whilst locating the university within society. It reflects a balancing of the instrumentalization of higher education as a mode of employment training and enhances the notion of the students' well-being being at the core of the university mission. Compassion is examined in this volume as a weaving of diverse cultures and beliefs into a way of recognizing that diversity through a common good offers a way of preparing students (...) and staff for a complex and anxious world. This book provides theoretical and practical discussions of compassion in higher education, it draws contributors from around the world and offers illustrations of compassion in action through a number of international cases studies. (shrink)

In a recent broadcast talk it was said that philosophers commonly base arguments and theories on garbled versions of science. Professor Passmore's article in the April number of Philosophy seems to go some way to justifying this complaint. The article discusses the objectivity of history by a series of comparisons with science under various heads representing criteria of objectivity.

How do we think about the word politeia when this involves a reaching back to the past? The response, pursued in this paper, is that in the classical understanding of politeia there is a significant connection between the question of the ‘good’ and the constitution; a connection which has become occluded or obscured by modern constitutional thought. In support of this understanding of politeia it must be acknowledged that what is meant, in this paper, by ‘good’ is very different from (...) that conventionally found in contemporary constitutional, legal or political theory. In an effort to disclose how politeia unravels this novel sense of ‘the good’ the paper will closely consider the philosophical work of Hans-Georg Gadamer on Plato. The paper claims that this largely neglected work is of importance to contemporary constitutional philosophy, particularly in so far as it focuses, as in this paper, on classical traditions or origins within constitutional thought. (shrink)

Through explorations of Hermann Cohen's Ethics of Pure Will, an international set of scholars opens questions both about the text itself and about the relation of ethics and the Jewish tradition. Originally published as Volume 13 (2005) of The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy.

Few problems are as challenging to Levinas's ethics as the tension or even chiasm that opens between the ethics in relation to the face and the claims of the third. This paper offers a reading of the role of the judge in court as the model for understanding the relation of these two aspects of justice. I make reference to an essay by the legal theorist Robert Cover that explored the violence of the courtroom. He shows how society contains appropriate (...) violence by framing the institutions of the court. Levinas then appears in his repeated citation of a Talmudic text about the judge not facing the defendant in a court. Through a careful reading of the Talmudic text and the Biblical texts upon which it draws, we can see Levinas sorting out the different kinds of responsibility to which the judge responds. The paper ends with a brief reflection on how engaging with the specificity of a text offers new methodological resources for philosophical reflection. (shrink)

For many years, scholars have been moving away from the idea of a singular, secular, rationalistic, and mechanistic "Enlightenment project." Historian Peter Reill has been one of those at the forefront of this development, demonstrating the need for a broader and more varied understanding of eighteenth-century conceptions of nature. Life Forms in the Thinking of the Long Eighteenth Century is a unique reappraisal of Enlightenment thought on nature, biology, and the organic world that responds to Reill's work. The ten essays (...) included in the collection analyse the place of historicism, vitalism, and esotericism in the eighteenth century--three strands of thought rarely connected, but all of which are central to Reill's innovative work. Working across national and regional boundaries, they engage not only French and English but also Italian, Swiss, and German writers. (shrink)

In this essay, Domenico Jervolino summarizes twenty years of Ricoeur’s reading of Patočka’s work, up to the Neapolitan conference of 1997. Nowhere is Ricoeur closer to Patočka’s a-subjective phenomenology. Both thinkers belong, together with authors like Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, to a third phase of the phenomenological movement, marked by the search for a new approach to the relation between human beings and world, beyond Husserl and Heidegger. In the search for this approach, Patočka strongly underlines the relation between body, temporality (...) and sociality. Central to this new encounter of Patočka and Ricoeur is the discovery of an idea of inter-human community based on a a-subjective conception of existence. (shrink)

Extending the dialogue on corporate social performance as descriptive stakeholder management, we examine differences in CSP activity between family and nonfamily firms. We argue that CSP activity can be explained by the firm’s identity orientation toward stakeholders. Specifically, individualistic, relational, or collectivistic identity orientations can describe a firm’s level of CSP activity toward certain stakeholders. Family firms, we suggest, adopt a more relational orientation toward their stakeholders than nonfamily firms, and thus engage in higher levels of CSP. Further, we invoke (...) collectivistic identity orientation to argue that the higher the level of family or founder involvement within a family firm, the greater the level of CSP toward specific stakeholders. Using social performance rating data from 1991 to 2005, we find that family and nonfamily firms demonstrate notable differences in terms of social initiatives and social concerns. We also find that the level of family and founder involvement is related to the type and frequency of a family firm’s social initiatives and social concerns. (shrink)

Mandler's target article claims that infants' capacity to abstract certain kinds of information from perceptual ldisplays occurs through a special mechanism of ?perceptual meaning analysis?, which generates abstract, ?image-schemas? that are analogical representations summarizing spatial relations and movement in space. Under this view, perceptual processes give input to forming conceptual representations, but higher-order concepts are disembodied, symbolic representations that are stripped of their embodied roots. My alternative argument is that bodily experience has an enduring role in early conceptual development, and (...) throughout the lifespan, with image-schemas being continually tied to ongoing perceptual and kinesthetic actions. Many global and abstract concepts may be created in the moment given specific task demands and retain deep connections to embodied actions and experiences. (shrink)