I take it that liberal justice recognises special protections against the restriction of speech and expression; this is what I call the Free Speech Principle. I ask if this Principle includes speech acts which might broadly be termed ‘hate speech’, where ‘includes’ is sensitive to the distinction between coverage and protection , and between speech that is regulable and speech that should be regulated . I suggest that ‘hate speech’ is too broad a designation to be usefully analysed as a (...) single category, since it includes many different kinds of speech acts, each of which involves very different kinds of free speech interests, and may cause very different kinds of harm. I therefore propose to disaggregate hate speech into various categories which are analysed in turn. I distinguish four main categories of hate speech, namely (1) targeted vilification, (2) diffuse vilification, (3) organised political advocacy for exclusionary and/or eliminationist policies, and (4) other assertions of fact or value which constitute an adverse judgment on an identifiable racial or religious group. Reviewing these categories in the light of the justifications for the Free Speech Principle, I will argue that category (1) is uncovered by the Principle, categories (2) and (3) are covered but unprotected , and that category (4) is protected speech. (shrink)
Peircean semeiotics—Peirce's own term, in contrast to the discipline of "semiotics" that is usually spelled without the second "e"—has generated a substantial secondary literature, much of it designed to clarify Peirce's obscure, unsystematic, and continuously developing ideas about signs articulated over a forty-year career, but some of it in the attempt to illuminate other disciplines or fields of inquiry (e.g., one of the most recent being the provocative Cinema and Semiotic: Peirce and Film Aesthetics, Narration, and Representation, by Johannes Ehrat, (...) published by the University of Toronto Press in 2005). T. L. Short's comprehensive discussion advances the conversation, or at least attempts to do so, in at .. (shrink)
Robert Smid is senior lecturer in philosophy and religion at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts. This book, a slightly revised version of his recent PhD dissertation from Boston University, is dedicated to Robert Cummings Neville, under whose guidance it was originally written. As the title suggests, this volume explores various methods of comparative philosophers in the pragmatist and process traditions of American philosophy. Smid thus focuses his analytic lens on William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966), F. S. C. Northrop (1893–1992), the collaborative (...) work of David Hall (1937–2001) and Roger Ames (1947-), and Neville himself (1939-). The four chapters at the heart of the book—between the introduction and final .. (shrink)
The question about divine action remains contested in the discussion between theology and science. This issue is further exacerbated with the entry of pentecostals and charismatics into the conversation, especially with their emphases on divine intervention and miracles. I explore what happens at the intersection of these discourses, identifying first how the concept of "laws of nature" has developed in theology and science and then probing what pentecostal-charismatic insights might add into the mix. Drawing from the triadic and evolutionary metaphysics (...) of Charles Sanders Peirce, I propose a reconsideration of the "laws of nature" as habitual, dynamic, and general but nevertheless real tendencies through which the Holy Spirit invites the world to inhabit the coming kingdom of God. This proposal contributes to the articulation of an authentic Pentecostal-charismatic witness at the theology-and-science table while also enabling a more plausible and coherent account of divine action for pentecostal-charismatic piety and Christian practice in the twenty-first century. (shrink)
The study investigated the effects of three cultural variables – country of employment, race/ethnicity and religion – on managerial views of profit and 15 other business priorities. In total, 203 responses were obtained (120 randomly and 83 by quota) from executives and managers belonging to either of two race/ethnic groups (Caucasian and Chinese) and three religious denominations (Christian, Buddhist and Malay Muslim) located in three different countries (Australia, Singapore and Malaysia). Findings indicated that these three different cultural variables affected (to (...) varying degrees) the attitudes of managers towards profit and other related business concerns. Managers working in Malaysia, the Malay Muslims and Caucasians in particular, had the highest regard for profit whilst those employed in Australia were found, on the whole, to be the most (socially) considerate toward their employees, customers and environment. This study pointed to the need for cultural ethics as a complementary function in business. (shrink)
The Yijing/Binary System Episode involved Leibniz' discovery of a de facto representation of the binary number system in the sixty-four-hexagram Fu Xi "Yijing." Scholars have left the match unexplained, since they have found no evidence of a forgotten binary number system in ancient China. The interesting similarities and differences are discussed between the thought of Leibniz and that of Shao Yong, both of whom, it is argued, understood and recognized the importance of the double geometric progression in the diagram.
Two philosophical problems are thoroughly treated here: (1) how close the philosophical idea of Hong Tae-yong in eighteenth-century Korea is to the non-absolutist Weltanschauung of Chuang-tzu, and (2) how, by means of this non-absolutist idea, Hong was able to question the orthodox sinocentrism that most Korean Neo-Confucianists of the time stubbornly took for granted. Hong felt that Korean intellectuals had to look beyond sinocentrism for a consciousness of their own cultural identity. As a Confucian reformist, he highlights the realization (...) of this cultural identity as the imminently required move to accomplish social reform. (shrink)
'He appears to be persecutor and I the persecuted: is not this difference the mere creature of the imagination?' -/- Caleb is a guileless young servant who enters the employment of Ferdinando Falkland, a cosmopolitan and benevolent country gentleman. Falkland is subject to fits of unexplained melancholy, and Caleb becomes convinced that he harbours a dark secret. His discovery of the truth leads to false accusations against him, and a vengeful pursuit as suspenseful as any thriller. -/- The (...) novel is also a powerful political allegory, inspired by the events of the decade following the French Revolution. This new edition reproduces the original novel of 1794, which captures the raw indignation and sense of injustice felt by victims of British law. It includes the startlingly different manuscript ending, and selected variants in the second and third editions reflecting changes in Godwin's political and philosophical thinking. (shrink)
This paper is an interpretation of the thought of the twentieth century Korean religious thinker, Yoo Yŏng-mo (柳永模, 1890-1981), a pioneer figure who sought to re-conceptualise a Christian understanding of the Ultimate Reality in the light of a positive openness to the plurality of Korean religions. Yoo Yŏng-mo considered that it was possible to present an overall picture of harmony and complementarity between the three traditions of Korea and Christianity, and this is endorsed by the present thesis. This essay is (...) aimed at providing a religious rationale for inter-faith dialogue. Using the principles of ‘Change’ (易, i) and ‘Yin-ying’ (陰陽)dominated in Chinese Classics and East Asian way of thinking, this paper lays out a methodology for envisaging harmony and mutual complementarity between traditions. The effect of some central concepts from within Confucian, Buddhist and Taioist tradition on the Christian thought of Yoo Yŏng-mo is then analysed and examined. In this respect, this paper argues that the Ultimate Reality based on the principle of harmony and mutual complementarity is not only both personal and impersonal as well as both transcendent and imminent, but also neither personal nor impersonal as well as neither transcendent nor imminent. Essentially, therefore, this essay accepts that Yoo Yŏng-mo’s equating of the Christian idea of God with the ‘Great Ultimate’ (太極) in Confucianism, with ‘Nothingness’ (無) in Buddhism and with the ‘One’ or Tao (道) in the thought of Lao-Chuang (老莊思想) of Taoism is a legitimate equivalence to make and that this does indeed pave the way for a potentially fruitful dialogue between Korea’s main religions. The drawing together of the Great Ultimate, Absolute Nothingness, the One Absolute from the Tao and the traditional personal God of Christianity gives the discussion an entirely new direction which has become a challenge for traditional orthodoxChristian theology and also for a pluralistic religious society. (shrink)
