Life expectancy and health differ greatly between emerging and developed countries and within countries. Global dependence on fossil fuels contributes to health inequalities through air pollution, the geopolitics of scarce resources and probable climate change arising from global warming. Substituting for fossil fuels (C), hydrogen (H2), as vector and store of energy produced from low-carbon and/or renewable sources could reduce health inequalities by improving the environment. It is unlikely that the global market would initiate such a change. Nation-states would not (...) act alone and would need to cooperate in leading it. Global recession might be the incentive that is needed to restructure a C-economy into an H2-economy. Yet, the transition would carry high costs, which would have to be borne by the developed countries in order to achieve a new treaty that included emerging countries. H2 for C is thus not only a technical fix, but also a global-ethical choice. (shrink)

Some of the most pressing and emergent societal challenges are often exposed by researchers in the field of educational research. Education Research and Schooling in Rural Europe by Cath Gristy, Li...

This volume explores the role of some of the most prominent twentieth-century philosophers and political thinkers as teachers. It examines what obstacles they confronted as teachers and how they overcame them in conveying truth to their students in an age dominated by ideological thinking.

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Regarded as the father of existentialist philosophy, he was also a political critic, moralist, playwright, novelist, and author of biographies and short stories. Thomas R. Flynn provides the first book-length account of Sartre as a philosopher of the imaginary, mapping the intellectual development of his ideas throughout his life, and building a narrative that is not only philosophical but also attentive to the political and literary (...) dimensions of his work. Exploring Sartre's existentialism, politics, ethics, and ontology, this book illuminates the defining ideas of Sartre's oeuvre: the literary and the philosophical, the imaginary and the conceptual, his descriptive phenomenology and his phenomenological concept of intentionality, and his conjunction of ethics and politics with an 'egoless' consciousness. It will appeal to all who are interested in Sartre's philosophy and its relation to his life. (shrink)

We are celebrating the centennial year of the birth of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). His death and the huge funeral cortege that spontaneously gathered on that occasion marked the passing of the last of the philosophical "personalities" of our era. Contrast, for example, his departure, which I did not witness, with that of Michel Foucault, which I did. The latter was acknowledged in a modest ceremony at the door of the Salpêtrière Hospital; his private funeral in the province was even (...) more stark. The two passings exhibit the distinction graphically. Foucault, the most likely candidate to become Sartre's successor as reigning intellectual on the Left Bank, exited the institution that had figured in several of his books attended by a small crowd of a couple hundred, admittedly assembled without public notification, on a damp morning to hear Gilles Deleuze read a brief passage from the preface to The Uses of Pleasure. Describing philosophy as "the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself," the message had an ironically haunting Sartrean ring. (shrink)

We are celebrating the centennial year of the birth of Jean-Paul Sartre. His death and the huge funeral cortege that spontaneously gathered on that occasion marked the passing of the last of the philosophical "personalities" of our era. Contrast, for example, his departure, which I did not witness, with that of Michel Foucault, which I did. The latter was acknowledged in a modest ceremony at the door of the Salpêtrière Hospital; his private funeral in the province was even more (...) stark. The two passings exhibit the distinction graphically. Foucault, the most likely candidate to become Sartre's successor as reigning intellectual on the Left Bank, exited the institution that had figured in several of his books attended by a small crowd of a couple hundred, admittedly assembled without public notification, on a damp morning to hear Gilles Deleuze read a brief passage from the preface to The Uses of Pleasure. Describing philosophy as "the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself," the message had an ironically haunting Sartrean ring. (shrink)

The political notoriety and literary fame of Jean‐Paul Sartre (1905–80) (he was awarded but refused the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962) have tended to eclipse his philosophical accomplishments, at least in the eyes of the public at large. This is unfortunate, since Sartre's philosophical writings are original and insightful, especially in those areas where the philosophy of being (ontology), philosophical psychology, and ethics overlap – the very space in which the literary imagination operates. In fact, there is probably (...) no philosopher of the twentieth century who so personified the creative tension between philosophy and literature as did Jean‐Paul Sartre. His enthusiasm for phenomenology as a method for philosophizing about concrete experience was doubtless born of that tension. After discussing Sartre's work as a phenomenologist, I shall analyze his thought in the areas of ontology, psychology, and ethics, as well as related fields of philosophical inquiry, concluding with several observations about the contemporary relevance of his philosophy. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre was arguably the best known philosopher of the twentieth century. But renown is not synonymous with admiration. One of the reasons why Sartre was disliked by many was his seemingly boundless tolerance for and even encouragement of violence or, as he would put it, “counterviolence.” As with any caricature, this image bears a hint of truth. Were the figure less important or the topic less current, one might leave it at that. But given the inescapable presence of (...) terrorist violence in our midst, it is imperative that we discover the truth of Sartre’s assessment of this phenomenon because he gave it more thought than most philosophers in the last century. In other words, we need a study like Santoni’s, and to begin with my conclusion, it is unlikely that another such thorough exposition and balanced assessment of this subject in Sartre’s work will appear. (shrink)

James A. Diefenbeck, Wayward Reflections on the History ofPhilosophyThomas R. Flynn Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason. Volume 1:Toward an Existential Theory of HistoryMark Golden and Peter Toohey Inventing Ancient Culture:Historicism, Periodization and the Ancient WorldZenonas Norkus Istorika: Istorinis IvadasEverett Zimmerman The Boundaries of Fiction: History and theEighteenth‐Century British Novel.

Philosophy as a way of life -- Becoming an individual -- Humanism : for and against -- Authenticity -- A chastened individualism? Existentialism and social thought -- Existentialism in the twenty-first century.

Deliberative democracy entails a commitment to deciding political questions on their merits. To that end, people engage in an exchange of reasons in a shared endeavour to arrive at the right answer or the best judgement they can make in the circumstances. Of course, in practice a shared judgement may be impossible to reach. Yet while compromise may seem a natural way of dealing with the disagreement that deliberation leaves unresolved – for example, some deliberative theorists argue that a willingness (...) to compromise manifests respect for the considered views of others, even as we continue to disagree with them – the relationship between deliberation and compromise is not as straightforward as one might think. To explain why, this paper contrasts conflicts of judgement with conflicts of preference, interest and value to show why greater attention needs to be paid to the character of the decision to be made. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky and Frances Egan argue that David Marr’s computational theory of vision is not intentional, claiming that the formal scientific theory does not include description of visual content. They also argue that the theory is internalist in the sense of not describing things physically external to the perceiver. They argue that these claims hold for computational theories of vision in general. Beyond theories of vision, they argue that representational content does not figure as a topic within formal computational theories (...) in cognitive science. I demonstrate that Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims about Marr’s theory are false. Marr’s computational theory contains a mathematical theory of visual content, based on empirical psychophysical evidence. It also contains mathematical descriptions of distal physical surfaces and objects, and of their optic projection to the perceiver. Much computational research on vision contains these types of intentional and externalist components within the formal, mathematical, theories. Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims demonstrate inadequate study and understanding of Marr’s work and other research in this area. Computational theories of vision, by containing empirically based mathematical theories of visual content, to this extent present naturalizations of semantics. (shrink)

This edition includes a new introduction by Peter J. Gomes that reflects on the impact of this book in the years since it was written.

Since the early 1970s, internal power sharing has remained central to the attempt to reach a political settlement on the constitutional structures for governing Northern Ireland. Even in the face o...

Although the idea of the public interest features prominently in many accounts of deliberative democracy, the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest is rarely spelt out with any degree of precision. In this article, I identify and defend one particular way of framing this relationship. I begin by arguing that people can deliberate about the public interest only if the public interest is, in principle, identifiable independently of their deliberations. Of course, some pluralists claim that the public interest (...) is an implausible idea, which casts doubt on the idea that there might be something for people to deliberate about. Yet while, following Brian Barry, we can get around this problem by defining the public interest as an interest in which everyone shares qua member of the public, what still needs to be explained is why people should be prepared to privilege this particular capacity. I argue that the account of political equality with which deliberative democracy is bound up offers a compelling explanation of this sort, even if it also gives rise to some difficult questions of feasibility. I conclude by considering the charge that any political scheme that framed the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest in this way would be undesirable. (shrink)

In this essay I contrast Kant and Hegel on the so-called right of necessity, or distress. The contrast is significant because it summarizes succinctly the difference between their respective philosophies of right. Furthermore, I take the difference to indicate what in Hegel’s philosophy of right makes it preferable to Kant’s. In sum, the issue between the two is whether or not the concept of justice is determined in part by what I term in the paper the vicissitudes of making a (...) worthwhile living. (shrink)

This article briefly reviews concerns related to the “cultural colonialism” of applying Western biomedical models of research ethics to non-Western groups. The feasibility of alternate ethical models is discussed and found wanting. In practical terms, many academic researchers in the United States are funded by federal agencies and are required to adhere to Title 45, Part 46 of the Code of Federal Regulations , legislation that is clearly grounded in the Western biomedical research tradition. Consequently, the question is not whether (...) this system of ethics should be applied but rather how it can be applied most sensitively, appropriately, and wisely. The remainder of this article discusses of how the authors have attempted to do so in each stage of their own research with Hispanic immigrants to the United States. (shrink)

Paul Thom's book presents Kilwardby's science of logic as a body of demonstrative knowledge about inferences and their validity, about the semantics of non-modal and modal propositions, and about the logic of genus and species. This science is thoroughly intensional. It grounds the logic of inference on "that in virtue of which" the inference holds. It bases the truth conditions of propositions on relations between conceptual entities. It explains the logic of genus and species through the notion of essence. (...) Thom interprets this science as a formal logic of intensions with its own proof theory and semantics. This comprehensive reconstruction of Kilwardby's logic shows the medieval master to be one of the most interesting logicians of the thirteenth century. (shrink)

The central concept in modern democratic theory outlined by a well-respected authority.

(2012). Introduction: The value and limits of rights: essays in honour of Peter Jones. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 15, The Value and Limits of Rights: Essays in Honour of Peter Jones, pp. 387-394. doi: 10.1080/13698230.2012.699394.