. Management scholars and practitioners often believe that individuals and organizations benefit by trusting their work contacts. (Husted, 1998; Sonnenberg, 1994) Trust is generally viewed as “good” and imperative to a modern functioning economy (Blau, 1964; Hosmer, 1995; Zucker, 1986) Consequently, scholars and practitioners have given scant attention to the “downside” of trust, despite the fact that trust involves taking risk under conditions of uncertainty (Rousseau et al., 1998) Recent corporate scandals show that people suffer when they misplace trust in (...) untrustworthy organizations and individuals. This paper develops a model of the causes and consequences of “over-trust,” which we define as a state where a trustor’s trust exceeds that which is warranted given the conditions. The antecedents of overtrust related to characteristics of the trustee, the trustor, and situational characteristics. We examine the role played by self-monitoring and perceived power base of the trustee as two key trustee characteristics. Among trustor characteristics, we examine the role (played by trustor’s core evaluation, core values). based on cultural affiliation), prior experiences with trustees, and use of habitual thinking behavior. Under characteristics of the situation, we examine the role played by uncertainty inherent in the situation, perceived threat from the context, degree of task interdependence, and organizational systems and routines. Next, we examine three consequences of over-trust – leniency in judging the trustee, delay in perceiving exploitation, and increased risk-taking. We conclude our paper by developing a set of guidelines that organizational members may employ to avoid over-trust. (shrink)

At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise.

Alchemy is central to Jung's hypothesis of the collective unconscious. In this volume he begins with an outline of the process and aims of psychotherapy, and then moves on to work out the analogies between alchemy, Christian dogma and symbolism and his own understanding of the analytic process. Introducing the basic concepts of alchemy, Jung reminds us of the dual nature of alchemy, comprising both the chemical process and a parallel mystical component. He also discusses the seemingly deliberate mystification of (...) the alchemists. Finally, in using the alchemical process as providing insights into individuation, Jung emphasises the importance of alchemy in relating to us the transcendent nature of the psyche. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading Paradise Regained EthicallyRobert B. PierceMuch modern criticism follows a long tradition by attending to the presumed effect of literature on our personal and political lives. Feminists, cultural materialists, new historicists, and postcolonialists frequently remind us that texts are "not innocent," and such analysts seek to make explicit the values and judgments that literary texts encourage in their readers. Whether in the vein of unmasking or of celebrating, we (...) critics often attribute great ethical and political significance to the works we study, but we are inclined to be vague about the mechanisms by which these effects occur. Given that I share this presumption that the texts we love to study matter to our lives, I would like to look more closely at how the process occurs, taking Milton's Paradise Regained as a test case.Does our reading of literary texts affect us ethically, and should it?1 An ancient and powerful critical tradition has taken for granted that the answer to both questions is yes. At the very least, good literature read properly is seen as one among the shaping forces of our education. But, beginning in the late eighteenth century, the theoretical movement to separate esthetics from ethics rendered this assumption problematic. Perhaps the beautiful is a value quite separate from the good. Later the literary school of estheticism brashly proclaimed the triumph of beauty over goodness under the banner of art for art's sake, [End Page 208] and Auden more modestly noted in "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" that "poetry makes nothing happen,"2 presumably including in the denial the moral betterment of its readers. The idea that literature is good for us has been almost embarrassing for the past century or so. On the other hand, many feminists and cultural critics have recently argued in effect that literature is often bad for us, that it is implicated in the ethical and political life of the time when it is produced and also in the time when it is received or consumed, so that it may tend to reinforce the ideology of one period or the other. In their assumption that literature is ethically significant they agree with most ordinary people and with the cultural right, especially in concern about its influence.What does this recent set of contentions entail? The term "implicated" that is characteristically used in such analysis claims at a minimum that the literary text in question has been shaped in production, consumption, or both by larger cultural forces, shaped in such a way as to incorporate certain values. Most such analyses go further to assert or suggest that the text under study helps to reinforce those values in the original audience or in later consumers (sometimes by attacking opposed values).3 The characteristic rhetorical stance in such readings is an implied warning to the reader against the insidious effect of the text lest it instill some fallacious, unethical, or politically harmful attitude or idea. Often the reader is rhetorically invited to share a position of intellectual superiority along with the critic, both of them above the corruption that afflicts an unspecified gullible audience. Thus many modern critics identify a romanticizing of war and the military hero in Shakespeare's Henry V, though they differ among themselves in that some locate both poison and cure in the text itself (suggesting, for example, that Shakespeare subverts the official ideology that he portrays), while some offer a "reading against the text," a cure administered by the critic against the wholly poisonous work.Such critics frequently manifest a reasonable caution about their own ethical and political stance. In an age of widespread pluralism and cultural relativism, we have learned to suspect self-confident proclamations of the ethical and political truth by critics as well as by literary authors, and in particular we are suspicious of official codes of conduct, including our own. Also we are (often at least) less confident than our forebears in purporting to state the meaning of a text. We have learned to heed the ambiguities and self-undermining elements in texts that complicate the capacity of any simple critical statement to reflect adequately what the text means. We no... (shrink)

In this chapter, we will discuss three key ethical issues related to data collected in stakeholder-engaged research: (1) data ownership, (2) deciding how data are used, and (3) deciding what is published. We begin with the legal and regulatory policies of universities and sponsors around data ownership and data sharing. We then discuss the role of principal investigator(s) in a study and/or partnership leaders as data stewards for the development and implementation of partnership practices for data decision-making. We examine the (...) implications of funding and timing since many decisions related to data use and sharing often happen after the project has ended. Finally, we discuss the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders (e.g., funder, researcher, and nonacademic partner) and offer lessons to be learned and resources for partnerships. (shrink)

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all (...) sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading Paradise Regained EthicallyRobert B. PierceMuch modern criticism follows a long tradition by attending to the presumed effect of literature on our personal and political lives. Feminists, cultural materialists, new historicists, and postcolonialists frequently remind us that texts are "not innocent," and such analysts seek to make explicit the values and judgments that literary texts encourage in their readers. Whether in the vein of unmasking or of celebrating, we (...) critics often attribute great ethical and political significance to the works we study, but we are inclined to be vague about the mechanisms by which these effects occur. Given that I share this presumption that the texts we love to study matter to our lives, I would like to look more closely at how the process occurs, taking Milton's Paradise Regained as a test case.Does our reading of literary texts affect us ethically, and should it?1 An ancient and powerful critical tradition has taken for granted that the answer to both questions is yes. At the very least, good literature read properly is seen as one among the shaping forces of our education. But, beginning in the late eighteenth century, the theoretical movement to separate esthetics from ethics rendered this assumption problematic. Perhaps the beautiful is a value quite separate from the good. Later the literary school of estheticism brashly proclaimed the triumph of beauty over goodness under the banner of art for art's sake, [End Page 208] and Auden more modestly noted in "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" that "poetry makes nothing happen,"2 presumably including in the denial the moral betterment of its readers. The idea that literature is good for us has been almost embarrassing for the past century or so. On the other hand, many feminists and cultural critics have recently argued in effect that literature is often bad for us, that it is implicated in the ethical and political life of the time when it is produced and also in the time when it is received or consumed, so that it may tend to reinforce the ideology of one period or the other. In their assumption that literature is ethically significant they agree with most ordinary people and with the cultural right, especially in concern about its influence.What does this recent set of contentions entail? The term "implicated" that is characteristically used in such analysis claims at a minimum that the literary text in question has been shaped in production, consumption, or both by larger cultural forces, shaped in such a way as to incorporate certain values. Most such analyses go further to assert or suggest that the text under study helps to reinforce those values in the original audience or in later consumers (sometimes by attacking opposed values).3 The characteristic rhetorical stance in such readings is an implied warning to the reader against the insidious effect of the text lest it instill some fallacious, unethical, or politically harmful attitude or idea. Often the reader is rhetorically invited to share a position of intellectual superiority along with the critic, both of them above the corruption that afflicts an unspecified gullible audience. Thus many modern critics identify a romanticizing of war and the military hero in Shakespeare's Henry V, though they differ among themselves in that some locate both poison and cure in the text itself (suggesting, for example, that Shakespeare subverts the official ideology that he portrays), while some offer a "reading against the text," a cure administered by the critic against the wholly poisonous work.Such critics frequently manifest a reasonable caution about their own ethical and political stance. In an age of widespread pluralism and cultural relativism, we have learned to suspect self-confident proclamations of the ethical and political truth by critics as well as by literary authors, and in particular we are suspicious of official codes of conduct, including our own. Also we are (often at least) less confident than our forebears in purporting to state the meaning of a text. We have learned to heed the ambiguities and self-undermining elements in texts that complicate the capacity of any simple critical statement to reflect adequately what the text means. We no... (shrink)

The Sublime Today considers contemporary applications of aesthetic philosophy and earlier theories of the sublime from Longinus, Boileau, Burke, Kant, and Hegel to current literary and cultural contexts. Today, aesthetic experience itself seems to be changing, given the rise of new media and new conditions for the viewing and the reception of works of art. How might the rhetoric of the sublime be used to both describe our current situation and help formulate constructive responses to it? The Sublime Today collects (...) the work of scholars in literature, film, art, and media studies and provides a forum for investigating the contemporary relevance of the sublime, both as it has been understood historically and as it has been formulated by more recent theorists such as Jameson, Lyotard, Kristeva, and others. The volume includes essays on literary readings of the sublime in Coetze, Eggers, Lahiri, and Auster; essays on film and the visual arts in the work of François Ozon and in recent participatory art; and essays on how new technologies and media, as in media representations of 9/11, re-frame our relationship to the aesthetics of the sublime, especially as they intersect with questions of gender, the postcolonial, and the uneasy politics of terror. (shrink)

Levinas did not present any new ethical theories; he did not even give any normative recommendations. But his phenomenological investigations help us to understand how the idea of ethics emerges and how we try to cope with it. The purpose of this paper is to suggest some implications from a reading of Levinas on how ethical challenges are handled within a management perspective. The paper claims that management, both in theory and in practice, is necessarily egocentric and thus ethically biased. (...) Therefore, ethics, defined as the idea that it is possible to do otherwise than pursue one's own interest, must have its source outside the scope of management. Levinas identifies this source as the call for responsibility from the Other, beyond the reach of managerial control. He also suggests how this idea of ethics is put into practice, especially in economic life: the existence of money makes it both possible and necessary to compare unique and incomparable others. Management tools may be used in the service of always more justice, as it also may be used for the opposite purpose. Instead of trying to draw a normative conclusion from Levinas, we may distinguish between two ways of experiencing reality: one through language and knowledge, covering both descriptive and normative knowledge, including business ethics, and the other through the particular events of encounters, from where this knowledge is continuously questioned through the call for responsibility, and thereby may provide possibilities for continuous improvements towards always more justice. (shrink)

Levinas did not present any new ethical theories; he did not even give any normative recommendations. But his phenomenological investigations help us to understand how the idea of ethics emerges and how we try to cope with it. The purpose of this paper is to suggest some implications from a reading of Levinas on how ethical challenges are handled within a management perspective. The paper claims that management, both in theory and in practice, is necessarily egocentric and thus ethically biased. (...) Therefore, ethics, defined as the idea that it is possible to do otherwise than pursue one's own interest, must have its source outside the scope of management. Levinas identifies this source as the call for responsibility from the Other, beyond the reach of managerial control. He also suggests how this idea of ethics is put into practice, especially in economic life: the existence of money makes it both possible and necessary to compare unique and incomparable others. Management tools may be used in the service of always more justice, as it also may be used for the opposite purpose. Instead of trying to draw a normative conclusion from Levinas, we may distinguish between two ways of experiencing reality: one through language and knowledge, covering both descriptive and normative knowledge, including ‘business ethics’, and the other through the particular events of encounters, from where this knowledge is continuously questioned through the call for responsibility, and thereby may provide possibilities for continuous improvements towards always more justice. (shrink)

Abstract:Can I (and you) talk sensibly about William Shakespeare's works? Some historicists see insuperable barriers in trying to understand utterances from different times and cultures, and some skeptics see such barriers in trying to read other minds. In Ludwig Wittgenstein's famous utterance about not understanding a talking lion, is the early modern Englishman Shakespeare one of those lions? Or can a magic key see past such barriers in one of the critical systems that we are offered? I argue that (...) the answer to both questions is no. (shrink)

Contemporary Bioethics: A Reader with Cases is the most cutting-edge bioethics anthology/casebook available. Incorporating introductions, readings, and cases that span the breadth of the discipline, this exceptional volume captures the spirit of bioethics as a rich, exciting, and continuously evolving field. Addressing all of the essential topics--including abortion, reproductive ethics, end-of-life care, research ethics, and the allocation of resources--it also moves beyond the "classic" approach of other books by extending into timely and provocative issues like terrorism, cosmetic surgery, immigration, genetic (...) manipulations, links between first- and third-world health, and--unique to this book--environmental sustainability and climate change. In addition, Contemporary Bioethics is the only book of its kind that includes both philosophical and religious perspectives.The text opens with a substantial introduction that presents key ethical principles, theories, and methods and shows students how to use these tools to frame and address ethical dilemmas in medicine. Covering the brief yet captivating history of the field, the introduction also considers the role of religion in the development of bioethics and examines differences between secular and religious modes of argumentation. Each of the seven topical chapters contains an in-depth introduction, a selection of concise readings representing a diverse range of moral perspectives, discussion questions, and a collection of full-length and provocative case studies that enable students to further explore the issues.Ideal for introductory courses in bioethics and biomedical ethics, Contemporary Bioethics is supplemented by a Instructor's Manual on CD and a Companion Website containing resources for both students and professors, including chapter summaries, additional cases with discussion questions, ideas for further reading, vocabulary flashcards, self-quizzes, and more. (shrink)

For decades questionnaires have been used to measure the cognitive and psychological effects of prenatal genetic testing, but little is known about why some women undergo testing and others decline. Research indicates that many factors influence decision making, including values and beliefs. What is often denied rather than recognized is that the professional and personal values and beliefs held by the health care provider influence the patient’s decision. It is assumed that, if genetic services are delivered in a nondirective manner, (...) patients will not be affected by the provider’s personal and professional standpoint. The qualitative research data reported here challenge this assumption. Getting to know patients’ moral understanding and patterns of ethical reasoning by listening to their personal stories is recommended as a better way for nurses to help patients to make informed and autonomous decisions about prenatal genetic screening or diagnostic tests. (shrink)

Western philosophy’s relationship with prisons stretches from Plato’s own incarceration to the modern era of mass incarceration. Philosophy Imprisoned: The Love of Wisdom in the Age of Mass Incarceration draws together a broad range of philosophical thinkers, from both inside and outside prison walls, in the United States and beyond, who draw on a variety of critical perspectives (including phenomenology, deconstruction, and feminist theory) and historical and contemporary figures in philosophy (including Kant, Hegel, Foucault, and Angela Davis) to think about (...) prisons in this new historical era. All of these contributors have experiences within prison walls: some are or have been incarcerated, some have taught or are teaching in prisons, and all have been students of both philosophy and the carceral system. The powerful testimonials and theoretical arguments are appropriate reading not only for philosophers and prison theorists generally, but also for prison reformers and abolitionists. (shrink)

The history of philosophy risks a self-opacity whereby we overestimate or underestimate our proximity to prior modes of thinking. This risk is relevant to assessing Hegel’s appropriation by McDowell and Priest. McDowell enlists Hegel for a quietist answer to the problem with assuming that concepts and reality belong to different orders, viz., how concepts are answerable to the world. If we accept Hegel’s absolute idealist view that the conceptual is boundless, this problem allegedly dissolves. Priest enlists Hegel for a dialetheist (...) answer to the problem with assuming that truth and falsity are mutually exclusive, viz., how certain sentences are both true and false. If we accept Hegel’s dialectical view that certain contradictions are necessary, this problem allegedly dissolves. For both McDowell and Priest, we find a true friend in Hegel. I argue that McDowell’s and Priest’s appropriations of Hegel overestimate Hegel’s affinity with quietism and dialetheism. McDowell reads Hegel as a quietist who silences metaphysical claims and the skeptical questions they raise against commonsense, but neglects Hegel’s adaptation of ancient skepticism against commonsense. Priest reads Hegel as a dialetheist who subordinates formal logic to dialectical logic by affirming the truth of certain contradictions, but neglects Hegel’s commitment to resolving contradictions for the sake of truth qua whole. I diagnose their misreadings in terms of what Hegel regards as the three moments of logic and argue that while McDowell jumps to its third moment, Priest stalls at its second moment. According to Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, logic has three “moments”: the abstractive moment of the understanding, which “stops short” at fixed categories; the negative moment of dialectic, which discovers the “genuine nature” of the categories, viz., that each “passes over, of itself, into its opposite”; and the positive moment of speculation, which grasps the “unity” of categories through the “dissolution” of their inner opposition. Hegel warns that if these moments are “kept separate from each other […] they are not considered in their truth”. I suggest that quietist and dialetheist readings of Hegel fail to consider truthfully the unified moments of his logic. In his quietist critique of metaphysics, McDowell enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of concept and reality. But McDowell helps himself directly to the third moment of logic, where the unity of the categories, and hence the boundlessness of the conceptual, would be fully articulated. Since he arrives at the third moment prematurely, ignoring its prior moments, he obscures its truth (§1). In his dialetheist critique of formal logic, Priest enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of truth and falsity. But Priest restricts himself gratuitously to the second moment of logic, where contradictions within the categories are not yet resolved. Since he stalls at the second moment, severed from its final moment, he obscures its truth (§2). I argue we can extricate Hegel from quietist and dialetheist misreadings only if we grasp the truth of the three moments of logic. (shrink)

Schelling scholars face an uphill battle. His confinement to the smallest circles of ‘continental’ thought puts him at the margins of what today counts as philosophy. His eclipse by Fichte and Hegel and inheritance by better-read thinkers like Kierkegaard and Heidegger tend to reduce him to a historical footnote. And the sometimes obscure formulations he uses makes the otherwise difficult writings of fellow post-Kantians seem comparatively more accessible. For those seeking to widen these circles, see through this eclipse and (...) elucidate these formulations, a deeper internal challenge is to make sense of the appearance and disappearance of intellectual intuition in Schelling’s work. The term’s apotheosis is often attributed to the height of German idealism and especially to Schelling’s identity philosophy, outside which he subjects the term to a radical critique. The identity philosophy aims to cognize the absolute ground of the system of knowledge and the system of nature, for which cognition Schelling enlists intellectual intuition. While the identity philosophy falls between a Fichtean debut and a late attack on Hegel, it is difficult to determine its exact parameter. I propose that a necessary condition for doing so is to clarify the explanatory role of intellectual intuition—that is, the specific problem to which it is the intended solution—on which the identity philosophy depends. To this end, I will trace a nexus of problems that Schelling’s use of intellectual intuition is meant to solve. Doing so will not only help to delineate the identity philosophy, but show it to be continuous with Schelling’s earlier and later periods. In §1, I account for the nexus of the problems of grounding, freedom and meaning. These problems demand, respectively, a principle by which cognition forms a system rather than an aggregate, a principle by which a system of cognition is compatible with freedom rather than incompatible and a principle by which a system of freedom can show why there is meaning rather than none. In §2, I reconstruct Schelling’s argument in the identity philosophy for why intellectual intuition can resolve this nexus of problems and, in §3, his arguments during other periods of his thought for why it cannot. I conclude in §4 by suggesting why the identity philosophy is continuous with these periods. Beyond fulfilling the interpretive task of making sense of intellectual intuition in Schelling’s sprawling corpus, my aim is thus to contribute to a unified reading of the latter. (shrink)

This chapter intervenes in recent debates in Kant scholarship about the possibility of a general logical alien. Such an alien is a thinker whose laws of thinking violate ours. She is third-personal as she is radically unlike us. Proponents of the constitutive reading of Kant’s conception of general logic accordingly suggest that Kant rules out the possibility of such an alien as unthinkable. I add to this an often-overlooked element in Kant’s thinking: there is reason to think that he grants—and (...) in fact presupposes—the possibility of a transcendental logical alien. Such an alien is a knower whose laws of experience purport to violate ours. She is first-personal as she is radically like us. In other words, she is us, insofar as we are alienated from ourselves and our experience. I go on to draw an analogy between her, a dogmatist, and another transcendental alien, an evil agent. Just as a dogmatist is alienated from her (our) experiential laws, an evil agent is alienated from her (our) moral law. These forms of theoretical and practical self-conceit require self-knowledge in the form of a critique of speculative or practical reason. In bringing this point out, I aim to shift from the question of whether logical laws constitute our thinking to the question of whether grasping our experiential and moral laws as our laws constitutes our reason. (shrink)

One of the ways of dividing all philosophers into two kinds is by saying of each whether he is an ordinary man's philosopher or a philosophers' philosopher. Thus Plato is a philosophers' philosopher and Aristotle an ordinary man's philosopher. This does not depend on being easy to understand: a lot of Aristotle's Metaphysics is immensely difficult. Nor does being a philosophers' philosopher imply that an ordinary man cannot enjoy the writings, or many of them. Plato invented and exhausted a form: (...) no one else has written such dialogues. So someone with no philosophical bent, or who has left his philosophical curiosity far behind may still enjoy reading some of them. (shrink)

2011 Reprint of 1943 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "St. Thomas Aquinas" is enriched by the author's unique ability to see the world through the saint's eyes, a fresh and animated view that shows us Aquinas as no other biography has. Acclaimed as the best book ever written on Aquinas by such outstanding Thomists as Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and Anton Pegis, this brilliant biography will completely capture the reader and leave him (...) desirous of reading Aquinas' own monumental work. (shrink)

This full-length study of Plato's dialogue Phaedrus, now in paperback, is written in the belief that such concerted scrutiny of a single dialogue is an important part of the project of understanding Plato so far as possible 'from the inside' - of gaining a feel for the man's philosophy. The focus of this account is on how the resources both of persuasive myth and of formal argument, for all that Plato sets them in strong contrast, nevertheless complement and reinforce each (...) other in his philosophy. Not only is the dialogue in its formal structure a dovetail of myth and argument, but the philosophic life that it praises is also shaped by an acknowledgement of the limitations of argument and the importance of mythical understanding. By means of this correlation of form and content Plato invites his readers, through the very act of reading, to take a first step along the path of the philosophical life. (shrink)

This Companion provides a fresh and comprehensive account of this outstanding work, which remains among the most frequently read works of Greek philosophy, indeed of Classical antiquity in general. The sixteen essays, by authors who represent various academic disciplines, bring a spectrum of interpretive approaches to bear in order to aid the understanding of a wide-ranging audience, from first-time readers of the Republic who require guidance, to more experienced readers who wish to explore contemporary currents in the work’s interpretation. (...) The three initial chapters address aspects of the work as a whole. They are followed by essays that match closely the sequence in which topics are presented in the ten books of the Republic. Since the Republic returns frequently to the same topics by different routes, so do the authors of this volume, who provide the readers with divergent yet complementary perspectives by which to appreciate the Republic’s principal concerns. (shrink)

Dr Agich takes up a previous difficult case related by Dr Kottow in an earlier issue of the Journal. He analyses the three ethical problems as presented in the case and offers his own opinion of it as well as his own conclusions with regard to the medical ethical aspects of it. Unlike Dr Kottow, Dr Agich's reading of the case indicates that the application of the principle of informed consent does not rule out ethical decisions for the physician, but (...) emphasizes the relevance of ethical analysis beyond the issue of informed consent. (shrink)

This response suggests that in writing the history of ethics, it is important to take seriously what the principals wrote and believed, distinguishing it carefully from our own responses to their writings, or from subsequent uses to which their writings may have been put. For example, when reading Thomas Aquinas and Francisco de Vitoria on just war against non‐Christian peoples, forcible conversion and conquest are clearly condemned. Whatever the attitudes of their contemporaries, not to mention later thinkers up to the (...) present, there is no foundation in Aquinas and Vitoria for holy war or “exceptionalism,” American or otherwise. (shrink)

As historiographical studies on ancient China gradually move from the center to the margins of the public's field of vision, research on historiographical studies concerning ancient China have been undergoing some unusual changes. A truly considerable quantity of bamboo slip and silk manuscripts have either been discovered by archaeologists or accidentally unearthed in the last twenty years. Although these have been made public very slowly, even maddeningly so, the few of them that have appeared before the world in the course (...) of time have again and again both elated relatively sensitive historiographers and placed them in a quandary. They also have once and again confronted the system of ancient history that had been regarded as "final" with the prospect of utter collapse and the need to be rewritten. After the Mozuizi discoveries in Gansu in the 1950s, there were those of Mawangdui, Yinqueshan, and Shuihudi in the 1970s, and those of Shuanggudui, Bajiaolang, Zhangjiashan, and Baoshan in the 1980s; and it is said that there were astounding discoveries, though not yet made public, at Jingmen and Lianyungang in the 1990s. These "bamboo slip and silk manuscripts" that touch upon almost every aspect of the pre-Qin and Han areas of "the schools of the various masters," "number lore" (shu shu), "prescriptive techniques" (fang ji), "law," and "institutions" make us ask ourselves in astonishment: How many more mysteries of ancient China are still buried under the ground? (shrink)

One of Hume's most well-known works and a masterpiece of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature is indubitably worth taking the time to read.