In Danto's view, Andy Warhol's Brillo Box was not only a radical attack on traditional definitions of the art work; it brought the history of Western art to a close. In this collection of interconnected essays, he grapples with this and many more of the most challenging issues in art today, from the problems of contemporary pluralism to the dilemmas of censorship and state support for artists.

«In un luogo molto lontano, in un tempo non troppo lontano, un artista dalla chioma bianca ha esposto in una galleria un oggetto particolare di nome Brillo Box. Brillo Box era un oggetto diverso da tutti gli altri. Non era una semplice scatola di spugnette abrasive come quelle che ci sono al supermercato. Infatti non era di cartone, bensì di legno, e aveva dimensioni differenti. Ma il punto non era, ovviamente, questo. Il punto era che Brillo Box (...) doveva essere visto come un’opera d’arte, anch... (shrink)

That’s my whole philosophy of art in a nutshell, finding the deep difference between art and craft, artworks and mere thing, when members from either class look exactly similar. What serves the purposes of ontology also serves the purpose of criticism. When you have found a similarity, avert your eyes and look for the explanation of how different artistic expression can look like affines of one another. Provo a iniziare con un indovinello: quale filosofo potrebbe avere nel salotto di casa, (...) a... (shrink)

Are Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes works of art? This article investigates the concept of art in regard to this question in six steps. (1) First, the radical challenge of art in modernity is explained. (2) Second, the concept of art in the history of philosophy is explored. (3) What follows is a discussion of three suggestions on how to understand the concept of art. (4) In the fourth step the question of the concept of art is framed more abstractly (...) and a discussion regarding its relationship between the contingent and necessary elements is offered. (5) As a result of this investigation some elements of the concept of art are suggested. (6) The final step is an answer to the initial question regarding whether or not Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes are works of art. (shrink)

L'idea che le avanguardie e il classicismo si pongano rispettivamente agli antipodi della storia dell’arte è un’opinione comunemente accettata. Tuttavia, ad una analisi più approfondita, essa risulta inconsistente e superficiale. Le caratteristiche fondamentali dell'opera artistica contemporanea sono normalmente riconosciute nel “dogma della indifferenza estetica” - ossia nella decisione di abbandonare il canone della bellezza ideale – e nella centralità del concetto a scapito della perfezione formale e tecnica. Eppure, queste categorie si rivelano familiari anche al mondo classico, per nulla estraneo (...) all’interesse verso il brutto e il grottesco, e all’arte antica, radicalmente concettuale (si pensi alle piramidi o a Stonehenge). Se da un lato il classicismo si avvicina quindi al moderno, dall'altro il moderno, nella sua serialità sacrale, nella sua trasfigurazione dell'oggetto comune in oggetto artistico e nella sua consacrazione del Museo, si accosta a un classicismo di cui pare impossibile liberarsi fino in fondo. (shrink)

Recognized in his day as a man of letters equaling Rousseau and Voltaire in France and rivaling Samuel Johnson, David Hume passed from favor in the Victorian age--his work, it seemed, did not pursue Truth but rather indulged in popularization. Although Hume is once more considered as one of the greatest British philosophers, scholars now tend to focus on his thought rather than his writing. To round out our understanding of Hume, M. A. Box in this book charts the interrelated (...) development of Hume's literary ambitions, theories of style, and compositional practice from his Treatise in 1739 through the Enquiries. In so doing, Box makes the case for Hume's career-long concern with the presentational modes of reaching an audience for his philosophical writings. Hume reacted to the popular failure of his masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature, Box suggests, by self-consciously exploring strategies in his subsequent works for agreeably bringing his readership to participate in the act of philosophizing. Combining a sensitive grasp of the ways Restoration period and eighteenth-century writers conceived the relations between rhetoric and philosophy with sound readings of particular texts, Box shows how Hume's literary concerns went beyond matters of style to involve persona, structure, and doctrine. While this book helps explain long-standing ambiguities surrounding Hume, especially by pointing out the tension between his created persona and his own voice, it also serves as an excellent introduction to his philosophy. (shrink)

Assisted dying is a divisive and controversial topic and it is therefore desirable that a broad range of interests inform any proposed policy changes. The purpose of this study is to collect and synthesize the views of an important stakeholder group—namely people with disabilities —as expressed by disability rights organisations in Great Britain. Parliamentary consultations were reviewed, together with an examination of the contemporary positions of a wide range of DROs. Our analysis revealed that the vast majority do not have (...) a clear public stance; those that do exhibit a significant diversity of opinion. DROs opposing legislation on assisted dying have argued that it would be premature, misguided, inequitable and culturally undesirable. Some specify conditions that would have to be satisfied before they could support legalisation, such as radical improvements in health and social care services and the elimination of discrimination against PwD. DROs supporting assisted dying maintain that a change in the law would promote autonomy, end intense suffering, can be delivered safely and is supported by the DRO’s membership. The discussion considers the reasons why several DROs adopt a neutral stance and the argument is made that, whatever their overarching stance on the issue, DROs need to be involved in the policy debate so that the crucial perspectives of PwD are heard and addressed. This is an important message for countries around the world that permit, or are considering legalising, assisted dying. (shrink)

The UK Medical Research Council, in order to further its mission of maintaining and improving human health, supports a substantial number of clinical trials on a wide variety of medical questions; some of these trials involve the use of placebos as controls or to maintain blinding. Before providing support, proposed trials are carefully reviewed to assess scientific quality, and to determine whether a placebo is required and is ethical — in addition to ethics review by independent Research Ethics Committees. Some (...) questions such as the choice of placebos in trials in developing countries, in surgical trials and those involving alternative medicine require consideration of additional, specific issues. Involvement of consumers in MRC work has been increasing and includes the establishment of a Consumer Liaison Group; members of this group comment on patient information leaflets for clinical trials, helping to improve patient understanding of trials and ensuring topics like placebo use are explained clearly. Views differ on the value of placebos in clinical care and on their mechanism of action; continuing research is helping to clarify the issues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 29, Number 2, November 2003, pp. 223-266 A Diplomatic Transcription of Hume's "volunteer pamphlet" for Archibald Stewart: Political Whigs, Religious Whigs, and Jacobites M. A. BOX, DAVID HARVEY, AND MICHAEL SILVERTHORNE Many scholars interested in David Hume will have encountered his defense of the beleaguered Archibald Stewart as it appears in an appendix in John Valdimir Price's The Ironic Hume (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965). (...) Additionally they might know of Price's discussion for The Biblioteck of 1973 of a copy with manuscript markings. A reason for revisiting this pamphlet is that the National Library of Scotland has graciously given permission to reproduce a copy (shelfmark NE.10.e.4) featuring a preface and significant markings in manuscript not in the copy that Price reproduced in his book. As Hume assumes considerable familiarity with the events to which he alludes, we have annotated the text to make it fully intelligible to readers two and half centuries after its composition. The rudimentary bibliographic facts and mysteries are as follows. Two editions survive to us, an octavo (in fours) and a rare duodecimo. Although there is no reason to regard the duodecimo as a second edition correcting or augmenting a first edition, it probably was manufactured after, and was textually derivative from, the octavo. We know nothing of the publishing of M. A. Box is Associate Professor of English, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, PO Box 755720, Fairbanks, AK 99775-5720, USA. David Harvey is at the Classics Department, University of Exeter, Queen's Building, Queen's Drive, Exeter EX4 4QH, UK. Michael Silverthorne is Associate Professor of History, McGiIl University, Stephen Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal H3A 2T7, Canada, e-mail: [email protected] 224 M. A. Box, David Harvey, and Michael Silverthorne the duodecimo, and doubtless that is as its producers intended. Its title page indicates, like that of the octavo, that the printing was done "for M. Cooper" in 1748, but William Strahan's ledgers register the printing in December 1747 of only the octavo in an edition of 1000 copies.1 The job is listed under bookseller Andrew Millar's account, not Mary Cooper's, probably for the reason that Cooper was a front whose role was to screen the true producers. It is possible that Millar hired someone other than Strahan to print the duodecimo, but it is also possible that someone other than Millar had it printed to mimic the octavo and take the opportunity it offered for concealment.2 A different editorial judgment is evinced in the duodecimo in that cosmetic measures are taken in it to obscure the identities of two military men ridiculed. For example, "Fowke" is rendered as "F—" and "John Cope" as "J-C-----." A digression on Mary Cooper is in order. This remarkable woman (died 1761) took over her husband Thomas's business upon his death 9 February 1743. That business had a history of "publishing" pamphlets and therefore made a plausible front for Millar, who in at least thirty-six other instances, none requiring courage, was willing to have his name appear on a title page with "M. Cooper." (This figure derives from a search by imprints using the English Short-Title Catalogue.) Until Thomas Cooper died, his name appeared on editions of John Armstrong's The Oeconomy of Love (1736 and thereafter) though only Millar's name is listed in the Stationers' Register (Foxon, English Verse A303-A311), and Mary's name is on the title page of the 1753 edition for which Strahan charged Millar (Strahan Papers, Add. MS 48800, s.v. August 1753). It was perhaps in this pattern that the second edition of Hume's heterodox Philosophical Essays (1750) would be reissued in 1751 with a new title page replacing Millar's name with Cooper's. That book was made temporarily a more alarming property by the superstitious panic of the London populace following the winter earthquakes in 1750, presaged by a bloody cloud. Within that year Bishop Thomas Sherlock caused a stir with a pastoral letter (A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London) blaming the earthquakes on several iniquities, "particularly heretical books" (Walpole, Correspondence 20... (shrink)

Line 24 on page 218 in the July number of this volume of Philosophy should read as follows: naturally out of matter itself lifeless or that consciousness and intelli-.

To carry on reasoning in the face of the implications of skepticism is what Fred Parker calls “sceptical thinking.” Not to be confused with the engineered vacillation leading to a tranquillizing suspense of judgement, it involves the double perspective of someone conducting a life, believing and reasoning as we do, while acutely aware that the whole endeavor is, in a sense, untenable. If, as Sir Philip Sidney famously said, an imaginative writer “nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth,” then the dilemma (...) posed by skepticism might be less embarrassing for that kind of writer than for philosophers. The latter purport to offer tenets valued according to their truth, however variously defined; the former, on the other hand, create “speaking pictures,” or verbal imitations. Skeptically thinking imaginative writers can create speaking pictures of a life in which knowledge is unavailable though people must reason, believe, and act. In a famous letter Keats went so far as to deem a kind of ataraxy to be a condition of the highest art, adducing Shakespeare’s “Negative Capability... of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason”. Parker does not discuss the possibility that negative capability might conduce to the highest flights of literature. He is concerned with the unresolved tensions of skeptical thinking that he sees as complicating key works of literature in the Hanoverian reigns. For their authors and readers, the negativity of skepticism was “disillusioning and destabilizing” if not ameliorated by a humor like Sterne’s or an irony like Hume’s. Humor or irony arises from the oddity that skepticism is put in its place only when we give up and allow nature to reassert itself. Not heroic measures, but backgammon and making merry with friends prevail over doubt. Sometimes, when the confrontation with skepticism gives rise to the precept of following nature, skepticism can result in “a surprising confidence of assertion”. (shrink)

In order to explore whether and how Jewish teachings influence the attitudes of strictly-orthodox Jews to clinical trials, 10 strictly-orthodox Jews were purposively selected and interviewed, using a semi-structured schedule. Relevant literature was searched for similar studies and for publications covering relevant Jewish teachings. Thematic analysis was used to analyse transcribed interviews and explore relationships between attitudes and Jewish teachings identified in the review. Participants’ attitudes were influenced in a variety of ways: by Jewish teachings on the over-riding importance of (...) preserving life—the need to avoid risks affecting life and health, while taking risks to preserve life—and the religious obligation to help others, as well as by previous experience. Attitudes mirrored those in the general population, enabling many participants to reach conclusions that did not differ materially from those of the general population or research ethics committees. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze the meaning of the concept of empire during the first years of the Francoist regime and try to clarify the different meanings that the various political and ideological groups that were part of the dictatorship gave to this concept. As will be explained, it is possible to find two main meanings for the concept of empire . The first one was linked to the notion of Hispanidad and was developed by the Catholic (...) and counter-revolutionary groups; in this case, empire was defined through the Catholic religion and the missionary role that Spain had played in the discovery of America, the moment that marked the beginning of the Spanish Empire. The second meaning was developed inside the Falangist party. It contained fascist values and was linked to an ideal of expansionism that would support specific policies. The aim here is to differentiate these meanings by paying attention to the different contexts in which they were produced. (shrink)

Recognized in his day as a man of letters equaling Rousseau and Voltaire in France and rivaling Samuel Johnson, David Hume passed from favor in the Victorian age--his work, it seemed, did not pursue Truth but rather indulged in popularization. Although Hume is once more considered as one of the greatest British philosophers, scholars now tend to focus on his thought rather than his writing. To round out our understanding of Hume, M. A. Box in this book charts the interrelated (...) development of Hume's literary ambitions, theories of style, and compositional practice from his Treatise in 1739 through the Enquiries. In so doing, Box makes the case for Hume's career-long concern with the presentational modes of reaching an audience for his philosophical writings. Hume reacted to the popular failure of his masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature, Box suggests, by self-consciously exploring strategies in his subsequent works for agreeably bringing his readership to participate in the act of philosophizing. Combining a sensitive grasp of the ways Restoration period and eighteenth-century writers conceived the relations between rhetoric and philosophy with sound readings of particular texts, Box shows how Hume's literary concerns went beyond matters of style to involve persona, structure, and doctrine. While this book helps explain long-standing ambiguities surrounding Hume, especially by pointing out the tension between his created persona and his own voice, it also serves as an excellent introduction to his philosophy. (shrink)

The article discusses poet Oliver Goldsmith's remarks, which illustrates philosopher and historian, David Hume's contemporary reputation. Goldsmith lamented, however, that the praise due to literary merit is already occupied by the first writers, who will keep it and get the better even of the superior merit which the moderns may possess. He said David Hume was one of those, who, seeing the first place occupied on the right side, rather than take a second, wants to have a first in what (...) is wrong. (shrink)

Philosophical naturalism faces a dilemma: take it as an ideology, and you face charges of internal incoherence, since the ideological stance itself does not look to be a deliverance of science. Forgo the ideological aspect, on the other hand, and naturalism becomes a merely subjective assessment, a cry of “yay for science!” that carries no normative weight for those who are not inclined to agree. I first argue that both horns of this dilemma are sharp, and that current attempts to (...) negotiate them have failed. I then give a plausible construal of methodological naturalism that is both ideological and internally coherent, and so threads this dilemma. Finally, I consider objections to this formulation of naturalism. (shrink)

The article focuses on the book "Essays, Moral and Political," by David Hume. In this book Hume quoted, but did not identify, two Hudibrastic couplets. He altered them so as to make them grammatically continuous with his prose, but not so much that a polite reader of his day would fail to recognize them.

Originally published in 1970. Two major changes have characterised science in the twentieth century. Firstly, there has been its rapid growth. Secondly, and central to the theme his book – science is no longer mainly an academic activity carried on in universities. Industry will soon be the largest employer of scientists. This book deals with issues of bureaucracy in science threatening its creativity and the failure of industry to recruit the best graduates, as well as what attracts people to study (...) science. (shrink)

The following review by "Crito" was reproduced in shortened form in 1888 (Dibdin, Annals, 89-90) and is not now readily available. It is transcribed and edited here as illustrative of the events prompting David Hume's dedication to John Home of Four Dissertations in 1757. The possibility that Crito was in fact Hume deserves exploring, though the question remains speculative given the evidence available.The review appeared as a letter in the Caledonian Mercury and the Edinburgh Evening Courant, both on 18 December (...) 1756, on the day of the fourth performance of Home's Douglas at what was then openly called a theater. Until recently the theater had been carefully denominated the "Concert-hall, Canongate," wherein .. (shrink)