This highly acclaimed, prize-winning biography of one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century is here reissued in a trade paperback edition for a new generation of readers. In a new preface the author offers an account of writings by and about Arendt that have appeared since the book's 1982 publication, providing a reassessment of her subject's life and achievement. Praise for the earlier edition: “Both a personal and an intellectual biography... It represents biography at its best.”—Peter Berger, (...) front page, The New York Times Book Review “A story of surprising drama.... At last, we can see Arendt whole.”—Jim Miller, Newsweek “Indispensable to anyone interested in the life, the thought, or... the example of Hannah Arendt.”—Mark Feeney, Boston Globe “An adventure story that moves from pre-Nazi Germany to fame in the United States, and... a study of the influences that shaped a sharp political awareness.”—Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch Cover drawing by David Schorr. (shrink)

As a founding father of Existentialism, Karl Jaspers has been seen as a twentieth-century successor to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard; as an exponent of reason, he has been seen as an heir of Kant. But studies tracing influences upon his thought or placing him in the context of Existentialism have not dealt with Jaspers's concern with the political realm and how we think in it and about it. In this study Elisabeth Young-Bruehl explicates Jaspers's practical philosophizing, his search for (...) ways in which we can orient ourselves toward our world and its political questions. (shrink)

Cette biographie de référence éclaire d'un jour nouveau tout un pan de la vie intellectuelle du XXe siècle, celui de ces universitaires juifs allemands obligés de fuir le IIIe Reich et qui, d'étape en étape, finirent par trouver refuge aux Etats-Unis. Le livre associe la présentation des grandes étapes de la pensée et de l'œuvre de Hannah Arendt aux événements historiques qui la sollicitent et au tableau des amitiés et des cercles successifs. Si la liaison qu'elle eut brièvement au début (...) des années 30 avec Heidegger est désormais bien connue, d'autres aspects de son existence, pourtant du plus haut intérêt, le sont moins : son rapprochement avec le sionisme sous l'égide de Kurt Blumenfeld avant et pendant la guerre, son mariage avec Günther Stern, puis avec Heinrich Blücher, sa longue amitié aux Etats-Unis avec la romancière Mary McCarthy ou avec le poète W.H. Auden. Polémiste redoutable et critique cinglante, constante dans ses fidélités, et en premier lieu dans sa relation avec cette grande conscience allemande que fut Karl Jaspers, Arendt a traversé tous les débats du siècle, sans jamais céder ni sur son indépendance d'esprit ni sur sa lucidité : face au totalitarisme, dont elle forge le concept, mais aussi face au racisme et aux mouvements pour les droits civils aux Etats-Unis, face à la création de l'Etat d'Israël et au devenir du sionisme, face à l'engagement américain dans la guerre du Vietnam, face à la révolte de la jeunesse des années 60. Ne s'abandonnant jamais à la tentation aristocratique du retrait, elle accomplit une œuvre de pensée sans avoir besoin de décrier le monde, mais en prônant l'amour de la réalité, donnant ainsi l'image rare d'une vie de penseur à la hauteur de ses accomplissements spéculatifs. Indisponible depuis une dizaine d'années, cet ouvrage a été mis à jour et enrichi d'une nouvelle préface de l'auteur. (shrink)

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl illuminates the psychological and intellectual demands writing biography makes on the biographer and explores the complex and frequently conflicted relationship between feminism and psychoanalysis. She considers what remains valuable in Sigmund Freud's work, and what areas - theory of character, for instance - must be rethought to be useful for current psychoanalytic work, for feminist studies, and for social theory. Psychoanalytic theory used for biography, she argues, can yield insights for psychoanalysis itself, particularly in the understanding (...) of creativity. (shrink)

Psychoanalytica Elisabeth Young-Bruehl gaat nader in op de bewering van Jonathan Sacks in diens openingslezing dat het Verbond van Noach gold voor alle mensen, niet slechts een groep uitverkorenen, en dat het daarmee ruim baan gaf tolerantie en vrijheid van godsdienst. Young-Bruehl is eerder van het tegendeel overtuigd: het Verbond legt wetten op die al wie ze niet gehoorzaamt, uitsluiten. De monotheïstische godsdiensten blijven daarmee bij uitstek intrinsiek autoritair en sadomasochistisch van aard.

Mind and the Body Politic is a collection of Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's essays and lectures on political theory, psychoanalysis, feminism, and the theory of biography.

The topic of Hannah Arendt's Jewish identity can be approached from many directions. This chapter considers Arendt in the context of the vision of world history articulated by her teacher and mentor Karl Jaspers, in which her people, the Jews of Palestine, were considered as one of the “Axial Age” peoples. It argues that it is Arendt's Jewish identity—not just the identity she asserted in defending herself as a Jew when attacked as one, but more deeply her connection to the (...) Axial Age prophetic tradition—that made her the cosmopolitan she was, while Jaspers's cosmopolitanism was more learned than inherited and reinforced by group experience. (shrink)

Three basic assumptions distinguish Thucvdides' historical perspective from the perspective of the debate speeches in his history: he did not assume that events are continuous or repeatable, that human nature in unchangeable, and that the ultimate causes of human affairs are within human ken. In Thucydides' history, statesmen and citizens are judged by their capacities to do as Thucydides himself tried to do -judge novelty and greatness clearly. Lastingly effective good judgment unifies people because it stems from and appeals to (...) respect for the imponderables of human affairs, the unpredictability of the future and the fragility of human nature. Those who can appreciate novelties know that the future will not be lacking in them, as those who can appreciate greatness know that its causes are ultimately beyond analysis. Like Thucydides himself, such people are storytellers rather than moralists. (shrink)

This paper describes the first phase of an ongoing education and research project guided by three main intentions: (1) to create opportunities for phronesis in the classroom; (2) to develop new understandings about phronesis as it relates to nursing care generally and to caring for specific groups, like formerly incarcerated adults; and (3) to provide an opportunity for formerly incarcerated adults and graduate nursing students to participate in a dialectical conversation about ethical knowing. Gadamer's writings on practical philosophy, phronesis, and (...) the Socratic dialectic provide the philosophical foundation and framework for the project. The first phase in the project was a 4‐h class within a graduate‐level health promotion course during which 30 nursing students and three formerly incarcerated panelists engaged in a dialectic conversation about what it means to care for formerly incarcerated adults in a meaningful way. After the class, two focus groups were conducted, one with the students and one with the formerly incarcerated panelists. Findings articulated participants' prejudices and assumptions prior to the class, expanded sense of phronesis, and ability to consider nursing practice within a larger ethical framework. Panelists and students left the class with a deeper understanding of one another and expressed an openness towards continued dialectic conversations together. Use of the Socratic dialectic within nursing curricula reflects a current and critical trend in nursing education to bring non‐epistemologic forms of knowledge into the classroom. (shrink)

I begin by examining the answer to a traditional puzzle concerning supererogatory acts: if they are good to do, why are they not required? The answer often given is that they are optional acts because they cost the agent too much. This view has parallels with the traditional view of religious sacrifice, which involves offering up something or someone valuable as a gift or victim and experiencing a ‘cost’ as part of the ritual. There are problems with the idea that (...) costs justify the optional nature of supererogatory acts, however, and I suggest that these problems mirror the tensions that are found in Christian theology when a traditional view of sacrifice is adopted. (shrink)

What do we understand by God’s goodness? William Alston claims that by answering this question convincingly, divine command theory can be strengthened against some major objections. He rejects the idea that God’s goodness lies in the area of moral obligations. Instead, he proposes that God’s goodness is best described by the phenomenon of supererogation. Joseph Lombardi, in response, agrees with Alston that God does not have moral obligations but says that having rejected moral obligation as the content of divine goodness, (...) Alston cannot help himself to supererogation as a solution to the content of God’s moral goodness. If God has no moral obligations and does not perform supererogatory acts, Lombardi suggests that God’s goodness may be explicated through concentrating on God’s benevolence, but he does not develop this theme. I propose that Alston’s idea of divine supererogation without obligation is sustainable, but that a reshaping of the concept of supererogation is required; one in which love, rather than benevolence, plays an important part. If the love associated with supererogation is characterised in a certain way, I suggest this adds a new angle to the understanding of divine goodness. (shrink)

Why, after fifty years of fossil fuelled “brown growth” and steadfast refusal to join international agreements on carbon reduction did South Korea prioritize “green growth” as an overarching national initiative in 2008? Our principal aim is to explain Korea’s ambitious pursuit of GG since that time. We argue that Korean-style environmentalism is best understood as an extension of the long-held philosophy of developmentalism amongst the policy-making elite. We first examine the origins and specify the central tenets of this new philosophy (...) that we term developmental environmentalism. We then discuss the motivations that led the policymakers to embrace developmental environmentalism, and the means by which GG was translated into swift and sustained policy action. While the empirical focus of this article is Korea, we conclude by tentatively proposing an analytical framework that might explain why some countries are more likely than others to initiate a sustained shift towards GG. (shrink)

Raimond Gaita's example of saintly love, in which the visit of a nun to psychiatric patients has profound effects on him, has been criticised for being an odd and unconvincing example of saintliness. I defend Gaita against four specific criticisms; firstly, that the nun achieves nothing spectacular, but merely adopts a certain attitude towards people; secondly, that Gaita must already have certain beliefs for the example to work; thirdly, that to be acclaimed a saint requires a saintly biography, not just (...) an incidence of good behaviour; and finally, that there is something oppressive about saintly behaviour. I consider that Gaita does indeed leave himself open to criticism on this last point by claiming that saints love impartially. I argue that his description of the example suggests rather that the customs and practices of partial love are at the heart of saintliness and not some form of 'life-denying' impartiality. If I am right, then this has the twofold effect of making saintliness appear achievable by ordinary mortals and explaining our feelings of wonder in the face of such saintly behaviour. (shrink)

The epigrams of the Carmina Priapea comically celebrate the exploits of the ithyphallic god Priapus, most often seen lording over his garden threatening would-be thieves with rape. In so doing, they promote a phallocentric sex-gender ideology whose valorized position was reserved for the active man who could control himself and dominate others. But the physical experience of reading these poems runs counter to the codes of masculinity their content upholds. Their rhythms and sounds immerse the reader in a range of (...) all-over pleasures that undermine the bodily comportment championed and embodied by Priapus himself. They thereby invite their readers to experience what I call the touch of the cinaedus, an expansive sensuality associated with this maligned sexual type. The Carmina Priapea's ongoing suggestion that entering this garden of verse will turn its readers into cinaedi might, then, be read as a promise as well as a threat. This promise is no less than the promise of poetry itself, a form of linguistic organization that invites all readers to revel in the cinaedus' liberating touch. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to determine whether Facebook use affects biological response to stress and to characterize participants’ use of Facebook during a stressful event. Methods: College students completed a modified Trier Social Stress Test including video recording. Participants were randomly assigned to the Facebook group or control group (no preparatory materials). Pulse and salivary cortisol were measured and compared using t tests. Trained coders assessed videos for 13 common Facebook actions and categorized them as purposeful (...) (tool based) or nonpurposeful (distraction); pulse was compared between groups using Fisher’s exact test. Results: Of 41 participants, 14 (36%) were male and 36 (88%) were Caucasian, mean age was 19.6 ± 1.4 years; 19 participants were randomized to the Facebook group. Comparing Time 1 and Time 3, there were no significant differences in cortisol or pulse change between the Facebook group and the control group. However, males in the control group had a mean pulse reduction of −3.5 ± 0.2 bpm between baseline and Time 3; males in the Facebook group had a mean pulse increase of 10 ± 8.6 bmp (p =.01). Overall, 58.8% of videos were categorized as primarily tool based. Participants who primarily demonstrated distracted use of Facebook had higher than average pulse rates at Time 3 (mean 85.1 vs. 73.6 bpm, p =.03). Discussion: Male Facebook users and participants who demonstrated distracted Facebook use showed increased biologic signs of stress during a stressful event. Some college students may find Facebook use detrimental to performance in stressful situations, but this may vary by gender and type of use. (shrink)

Farmers have been characterized as people whose ties to the land have given them a deep awareness of natural cycles, appreciation for natural beauty and sense of responsibility as stewards. At the same time, their relationship to the land has been characterized as more utilitarian than that of others who are less directly dependent on its bounty. This paper explores this tension by comparing the attitudes and beliefs of a group of conventional farmers to those of a group of organic (...) farmers. It was found that while both groups reject the idea that a farmer’s role is to conquer nature, organic farmers were significantly more supportive of the notion that humans should live in harmony with nature. Organic farmers also reported a greater awareness of and appreciation for nature in their relationship with the land. Both groups view independence as a main benefit of farming and a lack of financial reward as its main drawback. Overall, conventional farmers report more stress in their lives although they also view themselves in a caretaker role for the land more than do the organic farmers. In contrast, organic farmers report more satisfaction with their lives, a greater concern for living ethically, and a stronger perception of community. Finally, both groups are willing to have their rights limited (organic farmers somewhat more so) but they do not trust the government to do so. (shrink)

Sex is a fundamentally important biological variable. Recent years have seen significant progress in the integration of sex in many aspects of basic and clinical research, including analyses of sex differences in brain function. Significant advances in the technology available for studying the endocrine and nervous systems are now coupled with a more sophisticated awareness of the interconnections of these two communication systems of the body. A thorough understanding of the current knowledge, conceptual approaches, methodological capabilities, and challenges is a (...) prerequisite to continued progress in research and therapeutics in this interdisciplinary area. Sex Differences in the Brain provides scientists with the basic tools for investigating sex differences in brain and behavior and insight into areas where important progress in understanding physiologically relevant sex differences has already been made. This book was edited and co-authored by members of the Isis Fund Network on Sex, Gender, Drugs and the Brain, sponsored by the Society for Womens Health Research. The book is arranged in three parts. The first part of the book introduces the study of sex differences in the brain, with an overview of how the brain, stress systems, and pharmacogenetics differ in males and females and how this information is important for the study of behavior and neurobiology of both genders. The second part presents examples of sex differences in neurobiology and behavior from both basic and clinical research perspectives, covering both humans and nonhuman animals. The final part discusses sex differences in the neurobiology of disease and neurological disorders. For interested individuals as well as those who are considering conducting research at the intersections of endocrinology, neuroscience, and other areas of biomedicine, the study of sex differences offers exciting and challenging questions and perspectives. This book is intended as a guide and resource for clinicians, scientists, and students. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We argue that in societies like our own the prevailing view that parents have both special responsibilities for and special rights over their children fails to give a proper understanding of the autonomy both of parents and of children. It is our claim that there is a logical priority of the separable interests of a child over the autonomy of its parents in the fulfilment of their special responsibilities for and the exercise of their special rights over their children. (...) However, we believe that in acknowledging the child as a distinct locus of interests appropriate weight can still be given to parental autonomy. In particular, since raising a child is a long‐term commitment which plays a central role in the life‐plans of many adults it will be a legitimate exercise of an adult's autonomy strongly to influence the future of any children involved in such a plan. Such influence will be quite separate from paternalistic concern for those children. But the logical priority of the child's interests will at the same time show why parents are not entitled to behave proprietorially toward their children, even when paternalistic concern is called for. (shrink)

Recent arguments claim that behavioral science has focused – to its detriment – on the individual over the system when construing behavioral interventions. In this commentary, we argue that tackling economic inequality using both framings in tandem is invaluable. By studying individuals who have overcome inequality, “positive deviants,” and the system limitations they navigate, we offer potentially greater policy solutions.

Current work on hooking up—or casual sexual activity on college campuses—takes an individualistic, “battle of the sexes” approach and underestimates the importance of college as a classed location. The authors employ an interactional, intersectional approach using longitudinal ethnographic and interview data on a group of college women’s sexual and romantic careers. They find that heterosexual college women contend with public gender beliefs about women’s sexuality that reinforce male dominance across both hookups and committed relationships. The four-year university, however, also reflects (...) a privileged path to adulthood. The authors show that it is characterized by a classed self-development imperative that discourages relationships but makes hooking up appealing. Experiences of this structural conflict vary. More privileged women struggle to meet gender and class guidelines for sexual behavior, placing them in double binds. Less privileged women find the class beliefs of the university foreign and hostile to their sexual and romantic logics. (shrink)

Despite increasing interest in the figure of Socrates and in love in ancient Greece, no recent monograph studies these topics in all four of Plato's dialogues on love and friendship. This book provides important new insights into these subjects by examining Plato's characterization of Socrates in Symposium, Phaedrus, Lysis and the often neglected Alcibiades I. It focuses on the specific ways in which the philosopher searches for wisdom together with his young interlocutors, using an art that is 'erotic', not (...) in a narrowly sexual sense, but because it shares characteristics attributed to the daimon Eros in Symposium. In all four dialogues, Socrates' art enables him, like Eros, to search for the beauty and wisdom he recognizes that he lacks and to help others seek these same objects of erôs. Belfiore examines the dialogues as both philosophical and dramatic works, and considers many connections with Greek culture, including poetry and theater. (shrink)

Experiments with young infants provide evidence for early-developing capacities to represent physical objects and to reason about object motion. Early physical reasoning accords with 2 constraints at the center of mature physical conceptions: continuity and solidity. It fails to accord with 2 constraints that may be peripheral to mature conceptions: gravity and inertia. These experiments suggest that cognition develops concurrently with perception and action and that development leads to the enrichment of conceptions around an unchanging core. The experiments challenge (...) claims that cognition develops on a foundation of perceptual or motor experience, that initial conceptions are inappropriate to the world, and that initial conceptions are abandoned or radically.. (shrink)