This book documents the "brave new world" of teacher, administrator, school, and student accountability that has swept across the United States in recent years. Its particular vantage point is the perspective of dozens of new teachers trying to make their way through their first months and years working in schools in the New York City metropolitan area. The issues they grapple with are not, however, unique to this context, but common problems found today in urban, suburban, and rural schools across (...) the United States. The stories in this book offer a compelling portrait of these teachers' encounters with the new culture of accountability and the strategies they develop for coping, even succeeding, within such demanding settings. _Learning to Teach in an Age of Accountability:_ *introduces research on teaching and engages the "big ideas" concerning teacher research, highlighting what we know and where that leads us; *offers a rich set of teacher narratives that are organized to widen the angle of vision from biography, to classrooms, schools, and society; and *includes questions and activities to encourage discussion and further research about the ideas raised; and *addresses the possibilities for best practice and curricular decision making in light of the issues and ideas presented in the book. This volume--unique in its portrayal of new teachers' encounters with issues of accountability--makes a singular contribution to the educational literature on new teachers. It is relevant to everyone interested in the contemporary world of teaching, and is particularly appropriate as a text for preservice and in-service students. All readers who believe that the key to a good school lies in attracting and keeping good teachers will find the issues presented here both personally engaging and deeply troubling. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

This study assessed the extent to which college students, tomorrow's executives, agreed with various commonly heard assertions regarding the tactics of those climbing the corporate career ladder. The study used essentially the same data collection instrument as that used in a recent study of business executives. The results indicate a highly significant relationship of the opinions to church affiliation, citizenship, and race of the subjects. Moderate levels of significant opinion differences related to the subjects' school, age, social class, and gender. (...) The subjects' opinions were not significantly related to their academic department, gradepoint average, or work experience. (shrink)

This study assessed the extent to which college students, tomorrow's executives, agreed with various commonly heard assertions regarding the tactics of those climbing the corporate career ladder. The study used essentially the same data collection instrument as that used in a recent study of business executives. The results indicate a highly significant relationship of the opinions to church affiliation, citizenship, and race of the subjects. Moderate levels of significant opinion differences related to the subjects' school, age, social class, and gender. (...) The subjects' opinions were not significantly related to their academic department, gradepoint average, or work experience. (shrink)

Presenting U.S. history as contested interpretations of compelling problems, this text offers a clear set of principles and strategies, together with case studies and "Mystery Packets" of documentary materials from key periods in American history, that teachers can use with their students to promote and sustain problem-finding and problem-solving in history and social studies classrooms. Structured to encourage new attitudes toward history as hands-on inquiry, conflicting interpretation, and myriad uncertainties, the whole point is to create a user-friendly way of teaching (...) history "as it really is" - with all its problems, issues, unknowns, and value clashes. Students and teachers are invited to think anew as active participants in learning history rather than as passive sponges soaking up pre-arranged and often misrepresented people and events. New in the Second Edition: New chapters on Moundbuilders, and the Origins of Slavery; expanded Gulf of Tonkin chapter now covering the Vietnam and Iraq wars; teaching tips in this edition draw on years of teacher experience in using mysteries in their classrooms since the publication of the first edition. (shrink)

Presenting U.S. history as contested interpretations of compelling problems, this text offers a clear set of principles and strategies, together with case ...

Patients with persistent pain who lack adetectable underlying disease challenge thetheories supporting much of biomedicalbody-mind discourse. In this context,diagnostic labeling is as inherently vulnerableto the same pitfalls of uncertainty that besetany other interpretative endeavour. The endpoint is often no more than a name ratherthan the discovered essence of a pre-existentmedical condition. In 1990 a Committee of theAmerican College of Rheumatology (ACR)formulated the construct of Fibromyalgia in anattempt to rectify a situation of diagnosticconfusion faced by patients presenting withwidespread pain. It was (...) proposed thatFibromyalgia existed as a ``specific entity'',separable from but curiously able to co-existwith any other painful condition. Epistemological and semiotic analyses ofFibromyalgia have failed to find any sign,clinical or linguistic, which coulddifferentiate it from other diffusemusculoskeletal pain states. The construct ofFibromyalgia sought to define a discernablereality outside the play of language and topass it off as a natural phenomenon. However,because it has failed both clinically andsemiotically, the construct also fails the testof medical utility for the subject inpersistent pain. (shrink)

This article asks under what circumstances controversial technologies would be considered seriously for remediation instead of being rejected out of hand. To address this question, the authors developed a conceptual framework called public acceptability of controversial technologies. PACT considers site-specific, decision-oriented dialogues among the individuals and groups involved in selecting or recommending hazardous waste remediation technologies. It distinguishes technology acceptability, that is, a willingness to consider seriously, from technology acceptance, the decision to deploy. The framework integrates four dimensions: an acceptability (...) continuum that underlies decision-oriented dialogues among individuals and constituency groups, the attributes of these individuals and groups, the attributes of the technology at issue, and the community context—social, institutional, and physical. This article describes and explores PACT as a tool for understanding and better predicting the acceptability of controversial technologies. (shrink)

This paper recounts the pedagogical benefits of the Hobbes Game to introduce students to Hobbes' social contract theory. The author introduces a modified version of John Immerwahr's Hobbes Game and organizes the activities according David Kolb's typology of learning styles. The game provides students with a concrete experience of thought experiments from the text and encourages reflective observation of the theory itself. Since the game mimics the experience of the Hobbesian state of nature students are able to see Hobbes' (...) arguments from different points of view along with abstract conceptualization in an active experimentation. (shrink)

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches (...) that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists. (shrink)

This paper recounts the pedagogical benefits of the Hobbes Game to introduce students to Hobbes' social contract theory. The author introduces a modified version of John Immerwahr's Hobbes Game and organizes the activities according David Kolb's typology of learning styles. The game provides students with a concrete experience of thought experiments from the text and encourages reflective observation of the theory itself. Since the game mimics the experience of the Hobbesian state of nature students are able to see Hobbes' (...) arguments from different points of view along with abstract conceptualization in an active experimentation. (shrink)

David Ehrenfeld argues that humanism emphasizes reason at the expense of emotion, and that its narrow focus on the use of reason to serve human interests leads to a dichotomy between man and nature in which ecological factors are subordinated to the satisfaction of human wants. In response, I argue that: (1) humanists stress employment of reflective reason and reason’s interrelations with other aspectsofthe human personality, (2) humanism’s typical commitment to naturalism locates man as part of nature and does (...) not entail an exclusive focus on human interests, and (3) humanism’s commitment to the legitimate sphere of human interests does not entail indifference to nonhuman nature, for a healthy environment is necessary for the long-term satisfaction of human interests. (shrink)

David Ehrenfeld argues that humanism emphasizes reason at the expense of emotion, and that its narrow focus on the use of reason to serve human interests leads to a dichotomy between man and nature in which ecological factors are subordinated to the satisfaction of human wants. In response, I argue that: humanists stress employment of reflective reason and reason’s interrelations with other aspectsofthe human personality, humanism’s typical commitment to naturalism locates man as part of nature and does not entail (...) an exclusive focus on human interests, and humanism’s commitment to the legitimate sphere of human interests does not entail indifference to nonhuman nature, for a healthy environment is necessary for the long-term satisfaction of human interests. (shrink)

There is as yet no general agreement about exactly when Locke's Second Treatise of Government was written. Primarily as a result of Peter Laslett's arguments, the old assumption that it was written after the Revolution of 1688 has been abandoned, and it is almost universally agreed that both of the Two Treatises were written (apart from a small number of additions made in 1689) in the period between Locke's return to England from France at the end of April 1679 and (...) his departure for Holland in August 1683. An earliest possible date for the First Treatise can be established without difficulty. It cannot have been started before Filmer's Patriarcha was published in the winter of 1679-80, and probably not before Locke bought his own copy on 22 January 1680. Theories about the composition of the Second Treatise may therefore be divided into two classes: those which suppose, with Laslett, that it was begun in 1679, before Patriarcha was published, and therefore before Locke could have formed any intention of writing the First Treatise; and those which hold that it was not started until Locke had written at least the main part of the First. The second is of course the traditional view, and one that was taken for granted before Laslett's work; its most notable defender has been Richard Ashcraft, who has accepted Laslett's demolition of the 1689 dating, but has diverged from him in ascribing the Second Treatise to the period after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament in March 1681. Ashcraft's criticisms of Laslett have been accepted by several recent writers, notably David Wootton, Mark Goldie and John Marshall, but they themselves have not agreed with each other or with Ashcraft in their positive claims. The whole question is therefore worth examining again. (shrink)

A Future for Socialism, John E. RoemerAgainst Capitalism, David Schweikart.

In this paper I study Milton Friedman’s statistical education, paying special attention to the different methodological approaches (Fisher, Neyman and Savage) to which he was exposed. I contend that these statistical procedures involved different views as to the evaluation of statistical predictions. In this light, the thesis defended in Friedman’s 1953 methodological essay appears substantially ungrounded.

RESUMO O presente estudo analisa a narrativa de Milton Hatoum utilizando como corpus as crônicas “Um sonhador” e “Margens secas da cidade”. Objetiva problematizar as características discursivas e estéticas da criação literária de Hatoum, a partir da perspectiva dialógica proposta por Mikhail Bakhtin, explorando, no discurso artístico-literário do escritor amazonense, as posições axiológicas refratadas em sua narrativa. Relaciona ainda a perspectiva epistemológica de Boaventura Santos acerca do desperdício da experiência social na modernidade/pós-modernidade, discutindo a crítica ao paradigma da racionalidade (...) atual denominado pelo autor de razão indolente. As análises iniciais alicerçadas nestas abordagens teórico-metodológicas evidenciam indícios, na narrativa cronística de Hatoum, que a aproxima de uma perspectiva contra-hegemônica e responsiva de representação literária. Pretende, assim, com esta inter-relação entre literatura, dialogismo e teoria do conhecimento, evidenciar as imbricações existentes entre o discurso sócio-histórico-econômico produzido pela crítica à modernidade/pós-modernidade e o discurso literário de Milton Hatoum. ABSTRACT This study analyzes Milton Hatoum’s narrative using the crônicas Um sonhador [A Dreamer] and Margens secas da cidade [Dry Riverbanks of the City] as corpus. It aims to ascertain the discursive and aesthetic characteristics of Hatoum’s literary creation from the dialogical perspective proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin, exploring the artistic-literary discourse of the Amazonian writer, the axiological positions refracted in his narrative. It also relates Boaventura Santos’ epistemological perspective about the waste of social experience in modernity/post-modernity, discussing the criticism of the paradigm of current rationality called by the author as indolent reason. Initial analysis based on these theoretical-methodological approaches show evidence in Hatoum’s cronistic narrative that brings it closer to a counter-hegemonic and responsive perspective of literary representation. Thus, with this inter-relationship among literature, dialogism and theory of knowledge, we intend to highlight the existing overlaps between the socio-historical and economic discourse produced by the critique of modernity / postmodernity and literary discourse of Milton Hatoum. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 141-160 [Access article in PDF] The Politics of Character in John Milton's Divorce Tracts David Hawkes nunquam privatum esse sapientum --Cicero I. There has recently been a great deal of debate over the relative influence on Milton's politics of two discordant revolutionary ideologies: classical republicanism and radical Protestant theology. 1 In the mid-seventeenth century the search for intellectual (...) precedents and rationalizations of the English revolution brought these two traditions into an uneasy alliance, and Milton, like many other revolutionary apologists, drew on both of them. Of course the two schools of thought are not necessarily incompatible. J. G. A. Pocock notes one point of connection between them: The context in which men attain their final end--or recover their prima forma, though this concept might not have been antinomian enough for the radical saints of the New Model--is that of apocalypse; the "end" of Aristotelian teleology is still united with the eschatological "end" of prophetic time. 2The Aristotelian "end" of man is the good, defined as "an activity of soul in accordance with virtue," and the belief that one can or has fulfilled that end is [End Page 141] certainly amenable to Protestant antinomianism. 3 Furthermore, as Sharon Achinstein points out, Milton's "conception of virtue... melds the religious notion of conscience with a classical sense of civic duty." 4 On the other hand there are significant differences between the classical and the Christian notions of "virtue" and the "good," which dictate that, as Nigel Smith puts it, "[c]lassical republicanism, properly conceived, would in many ways be in conflict with the millenarian, chiliastic and perfectionist Protestantism of the sects." 5 The problem faced by Milton as a Protestant Republican is that the definition of the "good" offered by millennial sanctification and that attainable through Aristotelian virtue are in many ways mutually exclusive and contradictory. They have been characterized as such ever since Augustine's City of God asserted that pagan ethics are incompatible with true, Christian virtue. 6 Millennialism relies on faith; civic humanist virtue relies on works. Antinomianism abolishes the law; republicanism institutes the rule of law. The saints are sanctified by grace; the virtuous are distinguished by their own strength of character. Radical Protestant freedom is negative and private--it is the ability to speak and worship according to the dictates of conscience; civic humanist liberty is positive and public, the ability to participate fully in the government of the res publica. While daunting, however, these contradictions are not quite insuperable. I believe that Milton finds a common denominator in the accounts given by these two traditions of psychological objectification and that the agreement of Roman and Christian morality on this point leads him to make the tendency to objectification (or rather the ability to resist that tendency) the central issue of his mature political theory.The political ideas of the classical republicans and their descendants, the Renaissance civic humanists, were based upon Aristotle's Politics and Nico-machean Ethics, while the intellectual sources of radical Protestantism can be traced to Luther's commentaries on Paul's epistles. During the English revolution the Pauline exegesis of the relationship between the old and the new covenants provided intellectual ammunition against custom and tradition, as well as inspiring the antinomianism of the radical fringe to which Milton was falsely accused of adhering during the divorce controversy. In the divorce tracts Milton points out that Aristotle and Paul share one fundamental tenet: they argue that interior and exterior slavery are of the same nature and therefore concomitant [End Page 142] and inseparable. Furthermore, Milton notes, Aristotle and Paul both claim that exterior and interior slavery consist in "carnality," the subjection of the spirit to the flesh. This identification of carnality with servility becomes a constant strain which runs throughout Milton's career and provides the consistent element in his apparently vacillating theories of politics and religion.II. Although this argument recurs throughout Milton's career, it is first hammered into shape during the divorce controversy... (shrink)

Milton's status as a political thinker has endured something of a checkered career. Recent scholarship has attended both to the complexity of Milton's character and the classical ideals permeating his political thought. This essay seeks to clarify further Milton's defence of the commonwealth, by situating his polemical writings of 1649 to 1653 in the context of the Engagement debate about the character and extent of loyalty to the new free state. This sheds an interesting and neglected light (...) both on that debate, the presentation of the case of the commonwealth and Milton's distinctive use of casuistry in that presentation. (shrink)

Milton's Socratic Rationalism focuses on the influence of Milton's years of private study of classical authors, chiefly Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle, on Paradise Lost. It examines the conversations of Adam and Eve as a mode of discourse closely aligned to practices of Socrates in the dialogues of Plato and eponymous discourses of Xenophon.

This essay attempts to develop a new theoretical model for business ethics distinct from the two canonical business‐ethics theories, the stakeholder theory and the shareholder value theory. Milton Friedman argued that because managers are agents of the company's owners, their sole moral responsibility is to maximize owner returns. Thomas Pogge has recently suggested that such a view involves a kind of moral incoherence and that we should reject the efficacy of social arrangements like the principal‐agent relationship in altering moral (...) obligations. Both views fail to give proper account of the dispersal of moral responsibilities in business contexts. We must distinguish “minimal moral obligations” (stemming from justice and rights) from “maximal moral obligations” (stemming from all other moral considerations, including duties of aid, beneficence, and the virtues). Minimal obligations apply to all persons, but maximal obligations can be effected by social arrangements like the owner‐manager relationship. There may be moral obligations incumbent on owners that do not apply to managers. Understanding this distribution of responsibilities enables us to develop a new and attractive model of business ethics––“the ownership model”––which places greater emphasis on the rights and responsibilities of the owners of business than has been traditional in business ethics. (shrink)

In this paper I study how the theoretical categories of consumption theory were used by Milton Friedman in order to classify empirical data and obtain predictions. Friedman advocated a case by case definition of these categories that traded theoretical coherence for empirical content. I contend that this methodological strategy puts a clear incentive to contest any prediction contrary to our interest: it can always be argued that these predictions rest on a wrong classification of data. My conjecture is that (...) this methodological strategy can contribute to explain why Friedman’s predictions never generated the consensus he expected among his peers. (shrink)

Milton Friedman’s 1953 essay created controversy and consternation amongst economists. It provided a prescription, based on empirically generated predictive success, of how to do economics, yet many saw it as a concession of the search for truth and theoretical beauty within the discipline. This article reviews a 50th anniversary festschrift devoted to views of the essay. The purpose of the volume is to provide today’s reader with the essay, responses, and a guide to interpreting it. The volume is selective (...) and several contributors have their own agendas, but the feeling of tumult the essay still engenders is nicely conveyed. (shrink)

The philosophy of Ayn Rand has had a role equal or greater than that of Milton Friedman or F.A. Hayek in shaping the contemporary neo-liberal consensus. Its impact was powerful on architects of Reaganomics such as Alan Greenspan, former Director of the World Bank, and the new breed of American industrialists who developed revolutionary information technologies in Silicon Valley. But what do we really know of Rand's philosophy? Is her gospel of selfishness really nothing more than a reiteration of (...) a quintessentially American "rugged individualism"? This book argues that Rand's philosophy can in fact be traced back to a moment, before World War I, when the work of a now-forgotten German philosopher called Max Stirner possessed an extraordinary appeal for writers and artists across Europe. The influence of Stirnerian Egoism upon that phase of intense creative innovation we now call Modernism was seminal. (shrink)

The paper explores the ongoing debate between the narrow version of CSR proposed by Milton Friedman and the broader version of CSR, which includes additional ethical and/or philanthropic obligations. Implications are then discussed.

The “basic debate” in business ethics between shareholder theory and stakeholder theory has underlined the field since its inception, with wide ranging normative, descriptive, and instrumental arguments offered on both sides. We maintain that insofar as this is primarily a normative debate, clarity can be brought by elucidating how it is framed by the political philosophies of liberalism and libertarianism.With liberalism represented by John Rawls’s theory of justice and libertarianism represented by the ideas of Milton Friedman and Robert Nozick, (...) and Edward Freeman, the paper shows that both liberalism and libertarianism can be interpreted to justify shareholder and stakeholder theory respectively. The debate between shareholder theory and stakeholder theory is framed by liberal and libertarian justifications that hinge primarily on whether and to what extent one should have exogenous or endogenous safeguards on corporate behavior. Accordingly, political philosophy turns out to be highly relevant to both business ethics and corporate governance, not because the corporation resembles the state, but because of the potential safeguards placed on the corporation by the state. (shrink)

The “basic debate” in business ethics between shareholder theory and stakeholder theory has underlined the field since its inception, with wide ranging normative, descriptive, and instrumental arguments offered on both sides. We maintain that insofar as this is primarily a normative debate, clarity can be brought by elucidating how it is framed by the political philosophies of liberalism and libertarianism.With liberalism represented by John Rawls’s theory of justice and libertarianism represented by the ideas of Milton Friedman and Robert Nozick, (...) and Edward Freeman, the paper shows that both liberalism and libertarianism can be interpreted to justify shareholder and stakeholder theory respectively. The debate between shareholder theory and stakeholder theory is framed by liberal and libertarian justifications that hinge primarily on whether and to what extent one should have exogenous or endogenous safeguards on corporate behavior. Accordingly, political philosophy turns out to be highly relevant to both business ethics and corporate governance, not because the corporation resembles the state, but because of the potential safeguards placed on the corporation by the state. (shrink)

In the beginning was the night. All light, shapes, language, and subjective consciousness, as well as the world and art depicting them, emerged from this formless chaos. In fantasy, we seek to return to this original darkness. Particularly in literature, visual representations, and film, the night resiliently resurfaces from the margins of the knowable, acting as a stage and state of mind in which exceptional perceptions, discoveries, and decisions play out. Elisabeth Bronfen investigates the nocturnal spaces in which extraordinary events (...) unfold, and casts a critical eye into the darkness that enables the irrational exploration of desire, transformation, ecstasy, transgression, spiritual illumination, and moral choice. She begins with an analysis of classical myths depicting the creation of the world and then moves through night scenes in Shakespeare and Milton, Gothic novels and novellas, Hegel's romantic philosophy, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Bronfen also demonstrates how modern works of literature and film, particularly film noir, can convey that piece of night the modern subject carries within. From Mozart's "Queen of the Night" to Virginia Woolf 's oscillation between day and night, life and death, and chaos and aesthetic form, Bronfen renders something visible, conceivable, and comprehensible from the dark realms of the unknown. (shrink)

A striking difference between those fields we classify as humanities and those we regard as sciences is the attitude within each field toward its history. Learning about literature, music, or the visual arts requires becoming knowledgeable about a significant amount of the history of those areas. And education in these fields, at whatever level, invariably involves some study of great accomplishments in the past. By contrast, scientific work and standard scientific textbooks make little reference to the history of the science (...) in question, and such reference is typically relegated to the appreciative mention in passing of important empirical discoveries or theoretical innovations. And professional training in the sciences, both graduate and undergraduate, involves no serious examination of the achievements or methodology of past scientific work, no matter how impressive and influential those achievements may have been. Progress dominates thinking in the sciences, and that emphasis may seem to explain such casual and occasionally condescending reference to the history of the sciences. But progress occurs in the humanities as well; even if some of the greatest artistic accomplishments are well in the past, there is remarkable innovation in style, technique, and methodology in the various arts. Some of the most monumental accomplishments in the sciences, moreover, are historical; nobody is likely to surpass the quality and importance of Newton's achievements, and few will ever equal those of Einstein. So it is unlikely that attitudes towards progress or past accomplishments can explain the divergent attitudes that fields in the sciences and humanities exhibit towards their own history. We can better understand this contrast by appeal to a characteristic feature of the arts. Nobody today writes in the manner of Milton, Racine, or Shakespeare, or composes in the manner of Bach or Beethoven, or paints in the style of Vermeer, Renoir, or Da Vinci. Even Picasso's early, somewhat ostentatious paintings in the styles of various past masters were more to show his prodigious abilities than they were original artistic endeavors.. (shrink)

From its inception with the first number of the magazine of opinion National Review and up to the advent of the Presidency of Richard Nixon the early American conservative movement struggled with the rising tide of civil rights protest and reform. This article examines the correspondence and published primary sources penned by leading members of the American conservative movement so as to offer a comprehensive, chronologically ordered assessment of the evolution of the views on racial inequality offered by the key (...) constituent ideological subcommunities within the American conservative movement: the traditionalists gathered around the pages of National Review, the “neoliberals” led by Milton Friedman y Friedrich von Hayek, the Southern, white conservatives and, lastly, the neoconservatives, which headed by Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz articulated much of such views in a manner palatable to a significant segment of the American political mainstream. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Louis Agassiz and the Platonist Story of Creation at Harvard, 1795-1846David K. NartonisIn 1846, naturalist Louis Agassiz took Harvard College by storm with his idealist approach to nature. In his initial lectures, repeated in New York the following year, Agassiz announced, "We have that within ourselves which assures us of participation in the Divine Nature and it is a particular characteristic of man to be able to rise in (...) that way above material Nature, and to understand intellectual existences." He then made it clear that by intellectual existences he meant a divine plan of creation. "What naturalists intend when they speak of what they call 'types'... may be easily understood by comparison. We all know that architects construct our dwellings according to plans conceived by them before the erection of the edifice."1 There is no doubt that Agassiz valued the careful collection of observational data. "It has only been step by step that man has acquired an insight into this plan."2 But his empiricism, if that is the right term, was entirely subordinate to apprehension of divine ideas, which alone deserved to be called science. In one recent account, The Metaphysical Club, which contains an excellent discussion of Agassiz's American career, author Louis Menand accurately describes this dual emphasis on observation and intuition. But Menand leaves unstated the problem of [End Page 437] Agassiz's welcome at Harvard, attributing his instant popularity to force of character.3A fuller explanation of Agassiz's welcome is to be found in the Scottish textbooks that dominated the Harvard philosophy curriculum prior to his arrival.4 Like Agassiz, textbook authors Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Brown recognized observation and intuition as twin sources of human knowledge. According to them, we observe our own moral tendencies and interpret them in the light of intuited ethical principles that even God must obey. Similarly, we observe nature and interpret its workings with the aid of intuited principles of common sense.5 There is no doubt that this dual emphasis on observation and intuition was entirely consistent with Agassiz's idealist biology. But his definition of species and genera as intellectual existences in the divine mind was not to be found in the official Scottish texts. In fact, Dugald Stewart, who governed the philosophy curriculum after 1820, insisted that there are "no existences in nature corresponding to general terms, and the objects of our attention in all our general speculations are not ideas but words."6 This was "long misunderstood by philosophers, who imagined that a generic word expresses an actual existence distinct from the individuals of which the genus is composed."7 Similarly, Thomas Brown lamented, "One fundamental error... as long as it retained its hold of the understanding, must have rendered all its energies ineffectual, by wasting them in search of objects, which had no real existence... I allude to... the various orders of universals."8 In this one respect, Stewart and Brown were in agreement with Alexander Pope when he counseled his many American readers "presume not God to scan" and ridiculed those who would "soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere."9But Harvard students and faculty were also reading books that promoted the intellectual existences that Agassiz saw behind nature and the Scots did [End Page 438] not. Chief among these books were Plato's Works (ca. 360 BCE), Philo's De Opificio Mundi (20 BCE to 50 CE), Ralph Cudworth's The True Intellectual System of the World (1678), and John Norris's An Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intellectual World (1701–04). These combined with such widely popular literature as John Milton's Paradise Lost (1668) and the prose works of Samuel Coleridge to form a kind of unofficial curriculum that ultimately made Agassiz's idealist view of nature especially welcome at Harvard.10 Modest at first, Harvard interest in intellectual existences bloomed with the appearance of books by Romantic writers on campus. In order to illustrate this long development, I will bolster my explanation with data from Harvard College library borrowing records—handwritten lists of the books borrowed by each library user during a one- or two-year period... (shrink)

This book explores the interconnections between Milton's politics, poetics and prose writings.