Garry Wills is the polymathic public intellectual bemoaned as missing from American letters. A professor emeritus at Northwestern University, he has built upon his early studies in classics and patristics, while bringing his considerable intellect to bear on American culture, politics, and religion, notably through provocative articles and books on wars, past and present presidents, and the Catholic Church Wills has distinguished himself in the crowded field of Civil War history; fearlessly taken on the legacies of Richard Nixon and Ronald (...) Reagan, among other presidents; and offered a critical voice in many fraught ethical discussions, especially in the areas of war and peace. Nation and World, Church and God gathers original critical reflections by leading writers and scholars on Garry Wills's life work. Organized around the themes of "Classics," "Civil War," "War and Peace," and "Theology, Church, and the Arts," the book reflects the cultural acumen, fine-grained political analysis, ethical candor, and theological wisdom of one of America's most prolific writers. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Communities and Persons A Phenomenological Distinction between Community and Society Community Society The Self and its Social Roles Dispositional Vectors and the Shaping of Personality The Personality The Sociopathic Personality Type Conclusion.

David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical and literary classic of the highest order. It is also an extremely relevant work because of its engagement with issues as alive today as in Hume's time: the design argument for a deity, the problem of evil, the dangers of superstition and fanaticism, the psychological roots and social consequences of religion. In this outstanding and unorthodox collection, an international team of scholars engage with Hume's classic work. The chapters include state-of-the-art contributions (...) on the central interpretive questions posed by the Dialogues as well as major contributions relating it to contemporary issues in philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, moral psychology, and social philosophy. Additional contributions tackle the historical and philosophical background of the Dialogues, relating it to Hume's own systematic philosophy, to the work of other key seventeenth and eighteenth-century figures - Locke, Clarke, Bayle, Cudworth, Malebranche, Spinoza, Lord Bolingbroke, and Voltaire, among others - to early modern neo-Epicureanism in the life sciences, and, notably, to what Darwin missed by thinking too much like William Paley and not enough like Hume's Philo. Overall, this volume provides fresh and even groundbreaking perspectives on Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. It is essential reading for students and scholars of Hume, the history of modern philosophy, philosophy of religion and the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

The Struggle for the Soul of Teacher Education is a much-needed exploration of the unprecedented current controversies and debates over teacher education and professionalism. Set within the context of neo-liberal education reforms across the globe, the book explores how the current struggles over teaching and teacher education in the US came about, as well as reflections on where we should head in the future. Zeichner provides specific examples of work that moves teacher education toward greater congruency between ideals and practices, (...) while outlining the basis for a new form of community-based teacher education, where universities and other program providers, local communities, school districts, and teacher unions share responsibility for the preparation of teachers. Ultimately, Zeichner problematizes an uncritical shift to more practice and clinical experience, and discusses the enduring problems of clinical teacher education needed for this shift to be educative. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Hegel's Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference Hegel's Justification of His Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference in “Consciousness” “Self‐Consciousness,” Thought, and the Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference Hegel's Interim Critique of the Ego‐Centric Predicament Conclusion References.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Co‐extensiveness of Understanding and Sensibility Identity and Predication Objective Purport and Kant's Transcendental Deduction Proving Mental Content Externalism Transcendentally Notes References.

Kenneth Wain's excellent publication brings together a number of papers on postmodern issues. They reflect the author's lifelong professional interest in the areas of Politics, Ethics, and Education as well as his deep involvement with writers collectively referred to as postmodernists. Originally rough scripts or notes prepared for talks given in public lectures, seminars, and conferences, these papers are therefore much more polished than in the original version but still manage to preserve much of the freshness of the live performance, (...) and this is one of their attractions. Among the thinkers discussed we find Richard Rorty, John Dewey, Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (shrink)

Après avoir erré quelques années, étudiant férocement studieux mais aussi très anarchiste, après avoir déambulé le long des docks du port de Glasgow, alors du dernier stade de la révolution industrielle, entouré d'une drôle de musique où les accents de Rimbaud («Je me crois en enfer») et de Hölderlin («Ce que tu veux, c'est un monde») se mêlaient aux phrasés grinçants de L'Opéra de quat'sous de Bertolt Brecht, je me posais la question : que faire? Que faire de fondamental? D'abord (...) pour donner un fondement et un mouvement à une existence individuelle, mais aussi pour tenter de changer le cours des choses, sur les plans culturel, civilisationnel et sociopolitique. Pendant le XIXe et le XXe siècle on a cru, malgré tout, que l'Histoire était synonyme de Progrès. Qu'elle menait quelque part : à un grand Etat, au communisme universel, à un Supermarché du bonheur. Personne n'a plus confiance dans l'Histoire. D'où un grand vide existentiel et culturel. Sans utopisme, sans réenchantement facile, Kenneth White entreprend une navigation hauturière dans un espace de vie et de pensée, qui a toujours existé au large de l'Histoire. Les escales de ce voyage sont au nombre de cinq : une analyse socio-politique de la fin de la modernité ; une investigation qui remonte aux origines de la culture ; l'examen de diverses tentatives de refondation sociale à travers le monde ; la question, posée encore trop timidement par l'écologie, de l'habitation de la Terre ; et enfin, une critique de la situation contemporaine de l'art. (shrink)

This book... is a set of case studies, relating and reflecting on the stories of specific practitioners, in identified Asian contexts, struggling to act purposefully and conscientiously within their spheres of work, to meet their professional duties as they understand them. Through careful examination of these selected cases, we can learn a great deal about the kinds of moral competence practitioners require in order to act effectively and well in public life.

Anyone who has taught an introductory ethics course has found themselves having to explain that some important words can be used in different ways. There is the way social scientists talk when they refer to the norms of a Balinese cockfight, the values of early modern scientific culture, and the morality of Bolsheviks. This chapter examines the possibility that the social aspects of morality might tell us something important about what morality must be, and thus inform our metaethics. It reviews (...) a case for a profitable engagement between metaethics and foundational questions about the social world. The chapter summarizes how extant metaethical views might accommodate, and indeed gain support from, the social features of morality. Naturalists are interested in whether moral facts can earn their keep in our scientific worldview by explaining empirical phenomena. More recent work premised on the idea that moral judgment is based on sentiment sees a more limited role for social induction. -/- . (shrink)

Philosophers of biology typically pose questions about individuation by asking “what is an individual?” For example, we ask, “what is an individual species”, “what is an individual organism”, and “what is an individual gene?” In the first part of this chapter, I present my account of the gene concept and how it is used in investigative practices in order to motivate a more pragmatic approach. Instead of asking “what is a gene?”, I ask: “how do biologists individuate genes?”, “for what (...) purposes?”, and “do their practices of individuating genes serve these purposes?" In the second part of this chapter, I propose that we use this approach when analyzing concepts of organisms and biological individuals. Following philosophical pragmatism, I argue that we should abstain from attempts to situate individuation of Darwinian individuals or of holobionts in a philosophy of nature. Instead, we should analyze practices of individuating organisms in terms of three-place relations between the world, ideas, and human purposes and actions. I conclude with three lessons: an ontological, an epistemological, and a meta-philosophical lesson, which I suggest, apply to philosophy of science generally and to philosophy and metaphysics at large. (shrink)

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

Craik published only one complete work of any length, this essay on The Nature of Explanation.

"The decisive event in the history of modern aesthetics was Kant's Critique of Judgement. The seminal concepts of this work include the theory of the creative imagination, the 'purposiveness without purpose' of works of art, and the disinterestedness and subjective universality of judgements of taste. These concepts have remained basic in the aesthetic tradition from Kant's day to the present. The Quest for Imagination presents essays on several of the most important twentieth-century representatives of that tradition: George Santayana, Wallace Stevens, (...) Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, Jacques Maritian, Jean-Paul Sartre, Northrop Frye, Edmund Husserl, Stephane Mallarme, Georges Poulet, and Gaston Bachelard. The essays introduce some of the finest thought on literature that this century has produced. Coming at a time when literature is frequently debased to propaganda and political cliche, they affirm the vitality of the aesthetic approach and the importance of the profession of letters in modern life." -- Dust jacket. (shrink)

"The decisive event in the history of modern aesthetics was Kant's Critique of Judgement. The seminal concepts of this work include the theory of the creative imagination, the 'purposiveness without purpose' of works of art, and the disinterestedness and subjective universality of judgements of taste. These concepts have remained basic in the aesthetic tradition from Kant's day to the present. The Quest for Imagination presents essays on several of the most important twentieth-century representatives of that tradition: George Santayana, Wallace Stevens, (...) Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, Jacques Maritian, Jean-Paul Sartre, Northrop Frye, Edmund Husserl, Stephane Mallarme, Georges Poulet, and Gaston Bachelard. The essays introduce some of the finest thought on literature that this century has produced. Coming at a time when literature is frequently debased to propaganda and political cliche, they affirm the vitality of the aesthetic approach and the importance of the profession of letters in modern life." -- Dust jacket. (shrink)

Any attempt to construct a philosophy of Value must presuppose some general understanding of what Value is. And so it might seem natural to begin with a precise definition of the concept we are about to investigate. What, we might ask ourselves, is the characteristic peculiar to all those situations in the description of which we are accustomed to use the word “value” or its cognate terms, and distinguishing them as a class from all those situations to which we do (...) not apply the word? Proceeding empirically in this way, from an inspection of the “field of application” of the word “value” we might reasonably hope to discover a “highest common factor” of all the data, which would be the required definition of the concept “Value.” But we should be met at the outset by radical differences of opinion about the scope of the relevant data. (shrink)

This paper approaches the problem of the ontology of the photographic image ‘post-digitalization’ historically, via a conception of photography as the historical totality of photographic forms. It argues, first, that photography is not best understood as a particular art or medium, but rather in terms of the form of the image it produces; second, that the photographic image is the main social form of the digital image ; and third, that there is no fundamental ontological distinction regarding indexicality between photographically (...) generated digital images and those of chemically based photography. ‘The anxiety about the real’ produced by digital imagery has its origins elsewhere, in the ontological peculiarities of the social form of value in societies based on relations of exchange. Distinguishing between the ‘event of capture’ and the ‘event of visualization’, it is argued that it is in its potential for an infinite multiplication of visualizations that the distinctiveness of the digital image lies. In the digital image, the infinite possibilities for social exchange generated by the abstraction of value from use finds an equivalent visual form. (shrink)

Background and methods: Psychiatric research can occasionally present particular ethical dilemmas, but it is not clear what kind of problems local research ethics committees actually experience in this field. We aimed to assess the type of problems that committees encounter with psychiatric research, using a postal survey of 211 LRECs.Results: One hundred and seven of those written to replied within the time limit. Twenty eight experienced few problems with psychiatric applications. Twenty six emphasised the value of a psychiatric expert on (...) the committee. The most common issues raised were informed consent and confidentiality . The use of placebos , the validity of psychiatric questionnaires and overuse of psychiatric “jargon” in psychiatric applications also raised concern.Conclusions: Our results suggest that LRECs have specific concerns regarding methodology, consent, and confidentiality in psychiatric research, and that they find psychiatric input invaluable. (shrink)

By way of a selective comparison of the work of Georges Canguilhem and Henri Bergson on their respective conceptions of ‘problematology’, this article argues that the centrality of the notion of the ‘problem’ in each can be found in their differing conceptions of the philosophy of life and the living being. Canguilhem’s model, however, ultimately moves beyond or away from (legislative) philosophy and epistemology towards the question of ethics in so far as his vitalism is a means of signalling the (...) refusal of the supposition that all of the dimensions of life are or might be in our possession. Michel Foucault’s project, though directed for the most part to very different subject-matter, worked out a similar logic in the historical problematology of the sciences of ‘man’ and mentalities of government and power; and the results were equally ethical in so far as Foucault’s nominalist historical problematology entailed the refusal of any idea that all of the dimensions of our anthropological ‘essence’ are, or could be, likewise, in our possession. (shrink)

This article argues that the notion of the archive is of some value for those interested in the history of the human sciences. Above all, the archive is a means of generating ethical and epistemological credibility. The article goes on to suggest that there are three aspects to modern archival reason: a principle of publicity whereby archival information is made available to some or other kind of public; a principle of singularity according to which archival reason focuses upon questions of (...) detail; and a principle of mundanity, whereby the privileged focus of archival reason is said to be the commonplace dimension of everyday life. (shrink)

Numerous authors have interpreted the history of anthropological and medical conceptions of race in nineteenth century France as following a path mapped out by phrenology, anthropometry, and Paul Broca's version of physical anthropology. On balance, this has resulted in an historical narrative centered on Parisian intellectual life and one leaving the impression that by the 1890s anthropological theories had moved away from ethnological and cultural explanations toward more biological views of race. This article, by contrast, examines the world beyond Paris (...) and the literatures of naval and army medicine from about 1830 to 1920. It describes the contours of a medical and anthropological pluralism in matters of race and ethnicity and argues that cultural and ethnological perspectives remained important to theorists of race through World War I. (shrink)

The clinical ethics propounded by Richard Zaner is unique. Partly because of his phenomenological orientation and partly because of his own daily practice as a clinical ethicist in a large university hospital, Zaner focuses on the particular concrete situations in which patients and their families confront illness and injury and struggle toward workable ways for dealing with them. He locates ethical reality in the clinical encounter. This encounter encompasses not only patient and physician but also the patients family and friends (...) and indeed the entire lifeworld in which the patient is still striving to live. In order to illuminate the central moral constituents of such human predicaments, Zaner discusses the often-overlooked features of disruption and crisis, the changed self, the patients dependence and the physicians power, the violation of personal boundaries and their necessary reconfiguring, and the art of listening. (shrink)

(2013). An Empirical Study: To What Extent and In What Ways Does Social Foundations of Education Inform Four Teachers’ Educational Beliefs and Classroom Practices? Educational Studies: Vol. 49, No. 6, pp. 540-563.

Despite the enormous influence of Michel Foucault in gender studies, social theory, and cultural studies, his work has been relatively neglected in the study of politics. Although he never published a book on the state, in the late 1970s Foucault examined the technologies of power used to regulate society and the ingenious recasting of power and agency that he saw as both consequence and condition of their operation. These twelve essays provide a critical introduction to Foucault's work on politics, exploring (...) its relevance to past and current thinking about liberal and neo-liberal forms of government. Moving away from the great texts of liberal political philosophy, this book looks closely at the technical means with which the ideals of liberal political rationalities have been put into practice in such areas as schools, welfare, and the insurance industry. This fresh approach to one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century is essential reading for anyone interested in social and cultural theory, sociology, and politics. (shrink)