The works of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) ranged from the early _Thoughts on the Education of Daughters_ to _The Female Reader_, a selection of texts for girls, and included two novels. But her reputation is founded on _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ of 1792. This treatise is the first great document of feminism—and is now accepted as a core text in western tradition. It is not widely known that the germ of Wollstonecraft’s great work came out of an earlier (...) and much shorter vindication—A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), written in the context of the issues raised by the French Revolution. This edition, which follows the model of other Broadview Editions in including a range of materials that help the reader to see the work in the context of its era out of which it emerged, is arranged chronologically, opening with Wollstonecraft’s “other vindication.” It also includes a wide range of other documents in appendices, as well as a comprehensive and authoritative introduction, chronology, and full index. (shrink)

fusion theory challenges efforts to see theory as inhibiting by presenting an approach that is innovative, eclectic, and subtle in order to draw out competing and constellating ideas and opinions. This collected volume of essays examines fusion theory and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to the reading of various works of Indian English novelists.

Today a variety of theological approaches offer fresh and enriching insights, yet much of contemporary religious thought can be disorienting for the beginning student of theology. This accessible introduction presents aspects of the thought of Fr. Bernard Lonergan SJ, (1904–1984) in a way that makes his vital contribution to contemporary theology accessible to the beginning student. The author minimizes technical terms and explains basic ideas with user-friendly examples. Rather than a survey of diverse contemporary theological opinions, or a thematic presentation (...) of one topic, the book tries to clear away confusions by focusing on the theologian concerned with those topics. The book will thus encourage creative ways of overcoming some of the unnecessary obstacles for students who want to explore theology today. (shrink)

We argue that Hume was wrong to identify constant conjunction in time as the sole associative principle responsible for belief. On principles that can be grounded on his own account, constant contiguity in space ought to produce the same effect. We close by examining some of the ways in which a recognition of the influence of contiguity relations might have assisted Hume in resolving problems that otherwise arise with his accounts of causality and objectivity.

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

Hayden White’s proposal that the meaning of historical writing is determined by the figure of speech (“trope”) which the historian applies to the data of research challenges a naive understanding of historical writing concerned merely with the presentation of past facts. To answer the charge that the poetic imposition of meaning does not allow for truthful representation of the Holocaust, White appeals to the knowable facts of the past which are then structured according to a figure of speech. He thus (...) hopes to secure the element of ideology critique while maintaining that facts are arranged according ta the historian’s decision and not according to the historian’s understanding of what was, in Lonergan’s language, “going forward” in the past. This essay argues that, although meaning is not already present in the events of the past, neither is it simply imposed on these events by the historian’s trope. Lonergan’s more adequate construal of historical writing recognizes the dynamism of inquiry which rejects a naive view of facts, yet also argues for the possibility of truthful, albeit always partial, representations of events. (shrink)

Hayden White’s proposal that the meaning of historical writing is determined by the figure of speech (“trope”) which the historian applies to the data of research challenges a naive understanding of historical writing concerned merely with the presentation of past facts. To answer the charge that the poetic imposition of meaning does not allow for truthful representation of the Holocaust, White appeals to the knowable facts of the past which are then structured according to a figure of speech. He thus (...) hopes to secure the element of ideology critique while maintaining that facts are arranged according ta the historian’s decision and not according to the historian’s understanding of what was, in Lonergan’s language, “going forward” in the past. This essay argues that, although meaning is not already present in the events of the past, neither is it simply imposed on these events by the historian’s trope. Lonergan’s more adequate construal of historical writing recognizes the dynamism of inquiry which rejects a naive view of facts, yet also argues for the possibility of truthful, albeit always partial, representations of events. (shrink)

This is the first edition in over a century to present David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Dissertation on the Passions, Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, and Natural History of Religion in the format he intended: collected together in a single volume. Hume has suffered a fate unusual among great philosophers. His principal philosophical work is no longer published in the form in which he intended it to be read. It has been divided into separate parts, only some (...) of which continue to be published. This volume repairs that neglect by presenting the four pieces that Hume in later life desired to "alone be regarded as containing [his] philosophical sentiments and principles" in the format he preferred, as a single volume with an organization that parallels that of his early Treatise of Human Nature. This edition's introduction comments on the historical origins and evolution of the four parts and draws attention to how they mutually inform and support one another. The text is based on the first (1758) edition of Hume's Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. Notes advise the reader of the changes made in the final (1777) edition. Excerpts from the work of some of Hume's most important contemporary critics are included as appendices. Hume's abundant references to ancient historians, geographers, poets, and philosophers—many of them now quite obscure—are rendered accessible in this volume through extensive textual notes and a bibliography of online sources. (shrink)

This paper reviews the principal objections that Hume's Scots "common sense" contemporaries had to his account of the understanding. In the absence of any but the most scant evidence of Hume's own reactions to these criticisms, it weighs what he might have said in his own defense.

An edition of David Hume's _Enquiry concerning Human Understanding_ featuring an introduction to its composition and reception by Hume's contemporaries together with responses from his most significant contemporary critics: George Campbell, Thomas Reid, James Beattie, and Immanuel Kant. This edition also keeps track of the major changes Hume made to his work between the first edition of 1748 and the posthumous edition of 1777.

ABSTRACT:A wide range of research uses patterns of genetic variation to infer genetic similarity between individuals, typically referred to as genetic ancestry. This research includes inference of human demographic history, understanding the genetic architecture of traits, and predicting disease risk. Researchers are not just structuring an intellectual inquiry when using genetic ancestry, they are also creating analytical frameworks with broader societal ramifications. This essay presents an ethics framework in the spirit of virtue ethics for these researchers: rather than focus on (...) rule following, the framework is designed to build researchers’ capacities to react to the ethical dimensions of their work. The authors identify one overarching principle of intellectual freedom and responsibility, noting that freedom in all its guises comes with responsibility, and they identify and define four principles that collectively uphold researchers’ intellectual responsibility: truthfulness, justice and fairness, anti-racism, and public beneficence. Researchers should bring their practices into alignment with these principles, and to aid this, the authors name three common ways research practices infringe these principles, suggest a step-by-step process for aligning research choices with the principles, provide rules of thumb for achieving alignment, and give a worked case. The essay concludes by identifying support needed by researchers to act in accord with the proposed framework. (shrink)

This paper examines the principal objections that Hume’s Scots contemporaries, George Campbell, James Beattie, and Thomas Reid raised against his views of testimony, belief, and the “theory of ideas.” In opposition to Kant’s claim that “Reid, Oswald, and Beattie” had “appealed to common sense as an oracle when insight and research [failed them]” and had “[taken] for granted what [Hume] meant to call into doubt while emphatically, and often with great indignation, demonstrating what he had never thought to question” it (...) is shown that, in each case, Hume’s critics understood him correctly and raised serious objections. But it is also shown that Hume’s work contains all the materials necessary to mount an effective response to their objections. (shrink)

Hume appears to have sometimes taken religion to be founded on reason, at other times to have taken it to be founded on faith, and at yet other times to be based on authority. All of these views can be found in the different pieces collected together in the second volume of his Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. By means of an analysis of what Hume meant by "genuine religion," "true religion," and "rational religion," I uncover a consistent, sincere (...) view that Hume sustained throughout his published works. This view is atheistic. (shrink)

Hume had two principal arguments for denying that we can have an idea of a vacuum, an argument from the non-entity of unqualified points and an argument from the impossibility of forming abstract ideas of manners of disposition. He also made two serious concessions to the opposed view that we can indeed form ideas of vacua, namely, that bodies that have nothing sensible disposed between them may permit the interposition of other bodies without any apparent motion or occlusion and that (...) it is possible to conceive the contents of a room to be evacuated without being compelled to conceive the walls moving into contact. To reconcile these concessions with his arguments and show why we only “falsely imagine” that we can form the idea of a vacuum, Hume developed a psychological theory of the perception of “invisible and intangible distance” that has something in common with Berkeley’s account of the perception of outward distance. This paper argues that this theory is both untenable and inconsistent with fundamental Humean principles. It explains why Hume should have rejected the two arguments against the idea of a vacuum and why accepting ideas of vacua would have been more in line with the rest of his thought than attempting to deny that we have any such ideas. (shrink)

In Book 1, Part 2, Section 3 of his _Treatise of Human Nature_, David Hume argued that the idea of time arises from the experience of succession. In doing so, he raised a difficult question about the nature of that experience. The experience must be an experience had over time, not an experience of time. But how is that possible? This paper investigates how far mechanisms Hume appealed to when accounting for such related phenomena as causal inference, the understanding (...) of abstract terms and the attribution of necessitating power to causes – habituation, the formation of expectations and the projection of feelings – can serve as a Humean way of defending Hume's account of temporal experience. In passing the paper questions the soundness of Hume's arguments for concluding that it is impossible to experience time without experiencing change. (shrink)

This chapter examines what Hume and Reid had to say about what Reid called our intellectual powers: sensation, conception, perception, memory, abstraction, judgement, and reasoning. In the process it examines their opposed views on the nature of mind, on the representation of space and the spatiality of mental content, on temporal experience and the metaphysics of time, on the conception of non-existent objects, and on conceivability and possibility. The chapter critically examines what each had to say in his own defence (...) and what Reid had to say in opposition to Hume, and conjectures what Hume might have said in response to Reid. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Hume's thought on comportment between the sexes developed over time. In the Treatise he was interested in explaining why the world seeks to impose artificial virtues of chastity and modesty on women and girls, and how it manages to do this so successfully. But as time passed he became increasingly concerned with justice towards women and the role of free interactions between the sexes in facilitating sociability. While his later work continues to explain the (...) origin of the artificial female virtues of chastity and modesty in the way he had in the Treatise, it also recognizes and condemns proprietary attitudes towards women and surveys various ways of achieving a balance between male jealousy and sociability. It concludes by condemning the male vices of jealousy and "gallantry" while suggesting that the emphasis on female chastity and modesty is excessive. (shrink)

This paper reviews Hume's arguments concerning space and time in the second part of the first book of the _Treatise_. It is argued that Hume's views on the finite divisibility of our ideas of space and time and on space and time as manners of disposition are coherent and well-defended. The same cannot be said about his views on vacuum and the impossibility of temporal passage in the absence of change.

There are good reasons to think that at least a part of Hume's project in the ‘The natural history of religion’ was to buttress a philosophical critique of the reasonableness of religious belief undertaken in other works, and to attack a fundamentalist account of the history of religion and the foundations of morality. But there are also problems with supposing that Hume intended to achieve either of these goals. I argue that two problems in particular – accounting for Hume's neglect (...) of revelation, and accounting for his remarks on the ‘invincibility’ of the reasons for ‘genuine theism’ – can only be resolved by recognizing that Hume's purposes in ‘The natural history’ were not fundamentally critical. If I am right, Hume's purpose was mainly to explain why ‘false’ or ‘adulterate’ forms of religious belief are so widespread and so influential. (shrink)

This paper argues that Hume was first and foremost a moral psychologist and a determinist, not a moralist. When confronting the fact of moral disagreement, notably in "A Dialogue" affixed to his moral enquiry, he maintained that it is not psychologically possible to approve of the conflicting norms of other cultures, except in the case of sometimes approving of individuals in other cultures for abiding by those objectionable norms rather than fomenting cultural upheaval. All cultures should nonetheless agree on the (...) most general and fundamental moral principles as well as on most specifics. But there are non-trivial specific cases on which there will be irreconcilable disagreements, based on conflicting beliefs concerning utilities, finer matters of taste, and uncertainties over how best to maximize conflicts between the useful/agreeable and the personal/social. In these cases, we would be wise to consider whether tolerating the conflicting views of others would be more useful and agreeable than attempting to enforce conformity. Toleration is among the less obvious virtues, but it is one that experience has by now taught us to adopt, at least in certain cases. (shrink)

A survey of work on perception, mind, and mental representation by 18th century philosophers after Berkeley, notably Robert Smith, William Porterfield, David Hume, Etienne de Condillac, and Thomas Reid.

David Hume’s philosophical work presents the reader with a perplexing mix of constructive accounts of empirically guided belief and destructive sceptical arguments against all belief. This book reconciles this conflict by showing that Hume intended his scepticism to be remedial. It immunizes us against the influence of “unphilosophical” causes of belief, determining us to proportion our beliefs to the evidence. In making this case, this book develops Humean positions on topics Hume did not discuss in detail but that are (...) of interest to contemporary philosophers: consciousness and the unity of consciousness, temporal experience, visual spatial perception, the experience of colour and other qualia, objective experience, and spatially extended minds. It also challenges currently accepted interpretations of Hume’s views on the finite divisibility of space and time, vacuum, the duration of unchanging objects, and identity over time. It deals with criticisms of Hume that were raised by his contemporaries, notably by Thomas Reid, draws attention to earlier seventeenth‑ and eighteenth‑century work that has bearing on the interpretation of Hume’s thought, and compares Hume’s achievements with those of later nineteenth‑century psychologists and philosophers. (shrink)

Book 1, Part 4, Section 5 of Hume’s Treatise is taken up with a response to an argument for the immateriality of the soul that Hume considered “remarkable,” and that Kant was later to describes as the “Achilles” (the strongest) of all the arguments for this conclusion. This paper surveys versions of the argument offered by Cudworth, Bayle, and Clarke before going on to argue that Hume’s own treatment of the argument departs from the standard in a number of important (...) ways. The departures restate the argument in Humean terms, replacing premises concerning inherence, substance, and action, which Hume considered to be false or unintelligible, with ones mentioning conjunction at a location in space, which he considered to be at least intelligible. These changes challenge the view that Treatise 1.4.5 was intended as a satire or a lampoon. A satire or lampoon exposes a flat statement of its target view to ridicule. It does not modify that view— certainly not by way of introducing improvements to make it more intelligible. Hume meant to endorse what he said in Treatise 1.4.5. In particular, he meant to endorse the tenets that that there are mental states that are spatially extended, and that it is as difficult to explain how an immaterial soul could contain extended mental images as to explain how a material soul could contain unextended thoughts. (shrink)

In this significant contribution to the history of logic and exemplary work of contextual exegesis, David Owen shows that the early modern conception of reasoning was radically different from our own and applies this insight to the interpretation of Hume. We take the conclusions of deductive arguments to be entailed by premises in virtue of the form of those arguments. But early modern philosophers had a non-formal view of reasoning, dictated by the “way of ideas.” Owen maintains that we (...) must read Hume with this early modern conception of reasoning in mind if we are to understand his views on induction, scepticism with regard to reason, and the warrant for belief. (shrink)

Review of The Clarendon Edition of Hume’s Essays, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp and Mark A. Box, with Michael Silverthorne, J. A. W. Gunn, and F. David Harvey. 2 volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2021. Pp. 1200. ISBN: 97880198847090.

This chapter is particularly concerned with the status of history, dance history especially, within Dance Studies. It asks what has befallen the more recent status of history, once an epistemological support at a critical stage in Dance Studies’s early development, now that Dance Studies is better established, relatively speaking, within the academy. Is history so much scaffolding which, having fulfilled its purpose in enabling the disciplinary plant to take root, is to be dismantled and, if not actually discarded, at least (...) demoted? Three factors will be identified and proposed as having particular significance in this connection, imbuing this chapter with a tri-partite structure. The first concerns the already noted strong imprint of Cultural Studies on Dance Studies and the possible bearing of this imprint on dance history’s status within Dance Studies. For the particular manner in which Dance Studies has construed Cultural Studies may, this chapter will suggest, have impacted upon dance history’s standing within communities of dance scholarship. The second factor has to do with the implications, for dance history, of a particular critique based in a branch of dance scholarship, that perceives phenomenology, which it deems a good fit for dance inquiry, as inherently antithetical to history. In particular, this critique takes the work of Michel Foucault - which it identifies closely with, and as, historical practice - as incompatible with dance enquiry. Incompatibility is staked on the twin grounds of Foucault’s break with, and supposed resulting and enduring antipathy towards, phenomenology; and his perceived embrace of history which is, itself, also understood to result from such a break. In effect, then, this critique questions the very suitability, for dance research, of approaches based in history-focussed inquiry. The ability to call this critique into question, in the ways that the present discussion, in seeking to rehabilitate Foucault, and so history, needs to demonstrate, constitutes the third factor. This final factor makes two particular, further demands of this chapter. Namely that the interrelated questions of Foucault, phenomenology, and dance; and of the position which phenomenology has itself adopted in relation to history, be re-visited and re-evaluated to the extent that space reasonably allows. Fortunately, these interrelated questions are ones which have - relatively recently - preoccupied scholarship on Foucault, and on phenomenology, respectively. This preoccupation may in and of itself be one possible indicator that there is indeed more at stake, and so to consider, regarding both questions, than the lines drawn by the aforementioned critique might suggest. (shrink)

RiassuntoSulla base di nuove considerazioni, si propone la ricostruzione della battaglia di Pidna (168 a.C.) sotto l’aspetto topografico, tattico e strategico. Il luogo dello scontro individuato da N.G.L. Hammond viene confermato, ma vi sono dettagli delle fonti che fanno pensare a una diversa disposizione delle truppe. La battaglia sembra essere stata accuratamente preparata dai Romani.

This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".