"A discussion of how everyday bystanders can learn to recognize and meet their shared and institutional political responsibilities for hunger, poverty, famine, civil war, wars of conquest and invasion, epidemics and pandemics, and genocide" ...

From the contents: Reason's reach: liberal tolerance and political discourse.- Individualism and political dialogue.- Phronesis and political dialogue.- Democracy and intellectual mediation: after liberalism and socialism.- Participation, power, and democracy.- Retribution in democracy.

Individuals’ coping strategies have a profound effect on how well they respond to negative life events. Despite this, most coping strategies instruments that are available currently have been developed exclusively in Western contexts. In the present study, a Coping Strategies Scale for use with Chinese participants was developed and validated based on responses from 734 Chinese university students. Results supported a seven-factor structure for the CSS, which included the dimensions of Withdrawal, Positive Adaptation, Problem-solving, Disengagement, Prosocial Focus, Seeking Emotional Support, (...) and Self-regulation. The results supported the validity of the seven-factor CSS in terms of its content, associated response processes, internal structure, and relationships with other variables. Based on these results, the CSS provides a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing the coping strategies used by Chinese adults in confronting potentially adverse psychological events. (shrink)

The wedge problem, that is, the propagation of radiation or particles in the presence of a wedge, is examined in different contexts. Generally, the paper follows the historical order from Sommerfeld's early work to recent stochastic results—hindsights and new results being woven in as appropriate. In each context, identifying the relevant mathematical problem has been the key to the solution. Thus each section can be given both a physics and a mathematics title: Section 2: diffraction by reflecting wedge; boundary value (...) problem of differential equations; solutions defined on mutiply connected spaces. Section 3: geometrical theory of diffraction; identificiation of function spaces. Section 4: path integral solutions; path integration on multiply connected spaces; asymptotics on the boundaries of function spaces. Section 5: probing the shape of the wedge and the roughness of its surface; stochastic calculus. Several propagators and Green functions are given explicitly, some old ones and some new ones. They include the knife-edge propagator for Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions, the absorbing knife edge propagator, the wedge propagators, the propagator for a free particle on a μ-sheeted Riemann surface, the Dirichlet and the Neumann wedge Green function. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This essay explores a simple argument for a Ground of Being, objections to it, and limitations on it. It is nonsensical to refer to Nothing in the sense of utter absence, hence nothing can be claimed to come from Nothing. If, as it seems, the universe, or any physical ensemble containing it, is past-finite, it must be caused by an uncaused Ground. Speculative many-worlds, pocket universes and multiverses do not affect this argument, but the quantum cosmologies of Alex Vilenkin, and (...) J. B. Hartle and Stephen Hawking, which claim that the universe came from literally nothing, would. I argue that their novel project cannot work for reasons both physical (their "nothing" is actually a vacuum state governed by eternal physical laws) and methodological (physical theory cannot explain the emergence of the physical per se). Thus my argument stands. However, as David Hume showed, a posteriori arguments like mine infer a creation, and Creator, of a certain character, namely, a stochastic concept of creation and a panentheistic, partly physical Creator lacking omniscience and omnipotence. Rather than undermining the cosmological argument, as Hume intended, these limitations liberate the concept of the Ground from unnecessary problems, as Hartshorne suggested. (shrink)

Both as cardinal and as Pope Benedict XVI, one of Josef Ratzinger's consistent concerns has been the foundational moral imperatives of the natural law. In 2004, then Cardinal Ratzinger requested that the University of Notre Dame study the complex issues embedded in discussions about "natural rights" and "natural law" in the context of Catholic thinking. To that end, Alasdair MacIntyre provided a substantive essay on the foundational problem of moral disagreements concerning natural law, and eight scholars were invited to respond (...) to MacIntyre's essay, either by addressing his work directly or by amplifying his argument along other yet similar paths. The contributors to this volume are theologians, philosophers, civil and canon lawyers, and political scientists, who reflect on these issues from different disciplinary perspectives. Once the contributors' essays were completed, MacIntyre responded with a closing essay. Throughout the book, the contributors ask: Can a persuasive case for a foundational morality be made etsi Deus daretur? And, of course, persuasive to whom? The exchanges that take place between MacIntyre and his interlocutors result, not in answers, but in rigorous attempts at clarification. __Intractable Disputes about the Natural Law__ will interest ethicists, moral theologians, and students and scholars of moral philosophy. "Lawrence Cunningham has assembled an esteemed group of scholars to provide incisive analyses of the contemporary state of natural law theory, particularly in light of Alasdair MacIntyre's groundbreaking work. The essays are lucid, engaging, and intellectually sophisticated. __Intractable Disputes about the Natural Law_ _is a must-read not only for moral theologians, but for anyone concerned about the conceptual foundations of human rights, human dignity, and moral dialogue in pluralistic societies." --_Stephen J. Pope, Boston College_ "MacIntyre's first essay, on its own, would make this book an important scholarly contribution. But the ensuing contributions enable the book to flourish further, with contributions on subjects both readily associated with natural law and moral disagreement as well as those more creatively connected to the genesis of the text. Cunningham's volume both broadens and deepens contemporary thinking on a perennial topic, and will richly reward its readers." --_William C. Mattison III, The Catholic University of America_. (shrink)

In this brief commentary, I focus on Part II of Kant and Mysticism, where Stephen Palmquist explores the space for mystical experience in Kant. In particular, I focus on what Palmquist calls ‘immediate experience’ or ‘encounters’; what he calls the ‘supervening’ of religious experience on ordinary experience; and moral conscience as the ‘voice’ of God.

The purpose of this essay is two-fold. The first aim is to introduce the reader to Semantic Originalism - a version of the New Originalism that is fully articulated in a long article of that name. The reader's guide in Part II provides a very short summary and accessible guide to the argument of Semantic Originalism. The second aim is to provide access to an exchange between Stephen Griffin and myself in the Blogosphere. Griffin's eight questions and comments about (...) Semantic Originalism and my replies are reproduced in lightly edited form in Part III. My concluding remarks about Griffin's questions included a three dimensional model of the space of theoretical argument about originalism: that model is presented in Part IV. This version of "A Reader's Guide to Semantic Originalism and a Reply to Professor Griffin" was uploaded on June 19, 2008, and it replaces all prior versions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking by Stephen CritesLawrence S. StepelevichStephen Crites. Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Pp. xvii + 572. Cloth, $65.00Unlike either Wittgenstein or Heidegger, or his contemporary, Schelling, there is really no “Early” or “Later” Hegel. The fundamentals of his system were, if not always fully articulated, nevertheless present from (...) the very beginning of his career. There is, in Hegel, a remarkable consistency in the development of his thought, in which the elements that comprised his final system can be detected in his earliest efforts—and it is only in this sense that one can speak of an “Early” or a “Later” Hegel. That his final expression was indeed the result of an effort, a struggle to fuse and clarify seemingly disparate elements, is the thesis of Professor Crites. In this case, the specific disparate elements that are considered are those which confronted Hegel from his earliest days as a student of theology, those elements expressed in the “Christian Drama.” Crites sets out the eight revered acts of this drama: the creation, the fall, God’s covenant with Israel, the incarnation, the death and resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the mission of the Church, and the last judgment. It is his contention that Hegel “critically engaged the claims of this mythos and the social practices associated with it.” And so, the essence of Crites’s well-written and well-researched study is to set out how this drama served as a “template that affected the way he framed other topics in the ever-widening range of his philosophical inquiry.” It is to his credit that Crites does not consider his own explication of Hegel’s preoccupation with the gospels as some sort of a “secret” key that could unlock the full meaning of Hegel’s philosophy, but nevertheless, as he rightly stresses, this preoccupation cannot be ignored—for it ultimately exercised a crucial role in the formation of that which is now taken as Hegel’s mature thought.Unlike most studies of Hegel’s development—and there are more than a few—Crites avoids taking a retrospective posture, a concluding a priori stance which would allow him to point out where and why this or that particular element was rejected or retained by Hegel, His method is historical, intent upon following Hegel’s own sometimes tortured development, until, finally in this course, we reach a point where we suddenly see that Hegel “shows clear signs of becoming what we can only call a Hegelian—or better still, he shows signs of being Hegel!”The source of this inner development begins, and is traced from, Hegel’s initial appearance as “The Model Pupil of Stuttgart” to that moment in when he stands revealed as embodying that Absolute Knowledge which concludes the Phenomenology. This path from Stuttgart to Jena, which Hegel himself might have had in mind when he spoke of the philosophical “highway of despair” is detailed by Crites with a sure hand. Every stumbling block is noted, and every new resolution ıs marked, from those first essays composed during the bitter days as Hauslehrer, through the steady advances [End Page 540] of “the Jena ‘Philosophy’ ” until the passage completes itself in the Phenomenology and its termination in the “Recollection and the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit.”More than half of Crites’ extensive study is devoted to explicating how the subject of religion is dealtwith in the course of the Phenomenology. In this survey of Hegel’s most well-known work, its fundamental leitmotif emerges clearly into focus: the identification of the “portentous power of the negative” with the Death of God. This death, which is philosophically reflected in dialectical negativity, is the central moment of the gospel drama. In this act, Absolute Spirit must itself suffer and die, for “Not only the Christian God incarnate, but the absolute spirit suffers, suffers its Golgotha and dies.” It is only from this sacrifice that new life can arise—for out of it comes “the resurrection of a new human-divine totality.” What Hegel has retained of the gospel... (shrink)

These are hard days for globalism. A major candidate for the United States presidency ran on an anti-immigration, anti-free-trade platform and denounced such venerable international institutions as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations. The European Union is under threat after the vote for Brexit; the Euro is under strain. China is denouncing and ignoring the result of an international arbitration over its claims to the South China Sea. Nationalist, xenophobic political parties are in the ascendency around the (...) world, buoyed by the fears and pains of populations for whom global trade has been no boon and to whom waves of new immigrants seem threatening both economically and socially. So it is both strange and uplifting, in this atmosphere, to encounter the ambitious and enthusiastic globalism of Lawrence Gostin's important, field-founding work, Global Health Law. Equal parts encyclopedia and manifesto, the book seeks both to provide exhaustive and up-to-date descriptions of the already-substantial body of international health law and of its implementing institutions and to chart Gostin's vision for their vigorous expansion. And that vision is nothing if not expansive. (shrink)

Several recent contextualist theorists (e.g. David Lewis, Michael Williams, andKeith DeRose) have proposed contextualizing the skeptic. Their claim is that oneshould view satisfactory answers to global doubts regarding such subjects as theexternal world, other minds, and induction as requirements for justification incertain philosophical contexts, but not in everyday and scientific contexts. Incontrast, the skeptic claims that a satisfactory answer to a global doubt in eachof these areas is a context-invariant requirement for justified belief. In this paper,I consider and reject (...) the arguments Michael Williams develops in his bookUnnatural Doubts that are intended to show that the skeptic's interpretationof the significance of global doubts is mistaken. In addition, I argue that Williams'general strategy in opposing the skeptic is extremely interesting and worth furtherinvestigation, even if his particular execution of it is unsuccessful. To this end, Iclarify the general strategy, distinguish it from a variety of others, and discuss itsprospects as an answer to the skeptic. (shrink)

This compelling study of the origins of all that exists, including explanations of the entire material world, traces the responses of philosophers and scientists to the most elemental and haunting question of all: why is _anything_ here—or anything _anywhere_? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why not nothing? It includes the thoughts of dozens of luminaries from Plato and Aristotle to Aquinas and Leibniz to modern thinkers such as physicists Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg, philosophers Robert Nozick and (...) Derek Parfit, philosophers of religion Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne, and the Dalai Lama. The first accessible volume to cover a wide range of possible reasons for the existence of all reality, from over 50 renowned thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, John Polkinghorne, Paul Davies, and the Dalai Lama Features insights by scientists, philosophers, and theologians Includes informative and helpful editorial introductions to each section Provides a wealth of suggestions for further reading and research Presents material that is both comprehensive and comprehensible. (shrink)

Before I respond to the four essays that have each offered valuable feedback on my Comprehensive Commentary on Kant’s ‘Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason‘ (hereafter CCKR), [1] a meta-critical question calls for an answer: Why was yet another commentary on Kant’s book, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (hereafter RGV), needed in 2015, [2] given the unprecedented fact that each of the three previous years had seen the publication of a commentary on the same book? The short (...) answer is that work on my commentary began several years before James DiCenso (2012), Lawrence Pasternack (2013), or Eddis Miller (2014) embarked on their own versions of such a project. After completing work on Kant’s Critical Religion in 2000 (Palmquist 2000), I initially planned to move directly into full-time work on Kant’s Critical Science, volume three in my planned Kant’s System of Perspectives series. However, I put that plan on hold a few years later, after I realised that Kant’s Critical Religion, despite its length, only scratched the surface of numerous issues relating to Kant’s theory of religion—especially various textual complexities in RGV. Moreover, some critics of Kant’s Critical Religion, even among those who agreed with my overall claim—namely, that Kant was attempting to affirm and even bolster Christianity (albeit in a significantly reformed interpretation)—tended to misconstrue and therefore reject key arguments I had sketched. Clearly, more work needed to be done if the scholarly community was to be convinced that anything like the position I defended there was accurate. (shrink)

Michael Williams e Keith DeRose defendem suas diferentes versões de contextualismo com base em que o contextualismo fornece uma explicação melhor do uso ordinário de termos epistêmicos que competidores invariantistas. Um objetivo deste trabalho é explicar por que seus argumentos não têm sucesso. Um objetivo adicional é mostrar que a disputa entre contextualistas e invariantistas tal como apresentada por Williams e DeRose é uma interpretação limitada da disputa: há importantes posições contextualistas e invariantistas que estão fora do alcance (...) de seus argumentos e que deveriam ser consideradas em uma defesa abrangente do contextualismo. DOI:10.5007/1808-1711.2010v14n3p375. (shrink)

Michael Williams and Keith DeRose defend their different versions of contextualism on the grounds that contextualism gives a better account of the ordinary use of epistemic terms than invariantist competitors. One aim of this paper is to explain why their arguments do not succeed. A further aim is to show that the dispute between contextualists and invariantists portrayed by Williams and DeRose is a narrow interpretation of the dispute: there are important contextualist and invariantist positions which fall outside (...) the scope of their arguments and which a full defense of contextualism should consider. (shrink)

Review of Lawrence Hatab's *Myth and Philosophy*.

This teaching case study poses classic questions about following orders versus serving one's conscience. It tracks the actions of Captain Lawrence Rockwood, an intelligence officer with the Tenth Mountain Division of the United States Army, who was sent to Haiti in September 1994 as part of the mission to oust the dictator Cedras and put the elected Aristide in power. Captain Rockwood felt that his conscience, his humanitarian duty and international law all required that he inspect the National Penitentiary (...) where, intelligence reports showed, political prisoners were being tortured and murdered. His chain of command was unanimous in refusing him permission to inspect the prison and in directing that he do nothing that would endanger fragile relations with the peacefully departing Cedras regime. The case is intended for use in courses on force and justice, for ethics and leadership classes at military academies, at chaplaincy schools and seminaries or in classes on law of war and international law, civil-military relations, peacekeeping and new missions for the military. (shrink)

Throughout the 20th century, an enormous amount of intellectual fuel was spent debating the merits of a class of skeptical arguments which purport to show that knowledge of the external world is not possible. These arguments, whose origins can be traced back to Descartes, played an important role in the work of some of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, including Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, and they continue to engage the interest of contemporary philosophers. (e.g., Cohen 1999, DeRose (...) 1995, Hill 1996, Klein 1981, Lewis 1996, McGinn 1993, Nozick 1981, Schiffer 1996, Unger 1975, Williams 1996) Typically, these arguments make use of one or more premises which the philosophers proposing them take to be intuitively obvious. Beyond an appeal to intuition, little or no defense is offered, and in many cases it is hard to see what else could be said in support of these premises. A number of authors have suggested that the intuitions undergirding these skeptical arguments are universal – shared by everyone (or almost everyone) who thinks reflectively about knowledge. In this paper we will offer some evidence indicating that they are far from universal. Rather, the evidence suggests that many of the intuitions epistemologists invoke vary with the cultural background, socioeconomic status and educational background of the person offering the intuition. And this, we will argue, is bad news for the skeptical arguments that rely on those intuitions. The evidence may also be bad news for skepticism itself – not because it shows that skepticism is false, but rather because, if we accept one prominent account of the link between epistemic intuitions and epistemic concepts, it indicates that skepticism may be much less interesting and much less worrisome than philosophers have taken it to be. (shrink)

Lawrence Kohlberg's writings on moral education remain the greatest influ-- ence on moral education today in the United States. His student, Carol Gilligan, is one of the most influential writers on feminist ethics and on the idea that there are gender differences in morals. In a remarkable passage, Kohlberg described Emile Durkheim's conception as 'the most philosophi-- cally and scientifically comprehensive, clear and workable approach to moral education extant'. He went on to say that the workability of the system (...) has been demonstrated in Soviet Russia, and describes what he calls the 'logical but to us rather horrifying innovations' suggested by Durkheim's ideas. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 3 Seiten: 467-471.

In his study of this neglected tradition, Stephen Gersh presents a thorough analysis of early medieval Platonism. His central interest is the transmission of Greek philosophy to the West. He argues against any significant direct transmission of Platonic texts; for instance, the translations by Aristippus are late and uninfluential, and even the partial translation of the Timaeus by Calcidius is so overwhelmed by the accompanying commentary that one cannot truly speak of an unmediated, "direct" transmission. Thus, Gersh focuses on (...) the various indirect routes by which knowledge of Plato and his thought journeyed to the West. (shrink)

Epistemological contextualism states that propositions about knowledge, expressed in sentences like “S knows that P,” are context-sensitive. Schaffer (2005) examines whether one of Lewis’ (1996), Cohen’s (1988) and DeRose’s (1995) influential contextualist accounts is preferable to the others. According to Schaffer, Lewis’ theory of relevant alternatives succeeds as a linguistic basis for contextualism and as an explanation of what the parameter that shifts with context is, while Cohen’s theory of thresholds and DeRose’s theory of standards fail. This paper (...) argues that Schaffer’s analysis is unsatisfactory since it fails to show that thresholds and standards cannot cope with skepticism, as it is ultimately the conversation participants who control how the conversation plays out. Moreover, Schaffer fails to show that gradability is of no importance in inquiries. (shrink)

This book review, published in Kant Studien 108.3 (Sept. 2017), pp.467-471, summarizes and assesses Lawrence R. Pasternack's book, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant on Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: An Interpretation and Defense (London and New York: Routledge, 2014).

LetSbe the group of finitely supported permutations of a countably infinite set. Let$K[S]$be the group algebra ofSover a fieldKof characteristic 0. According to a theorem of Formanek and Lawrence,$K[S]$satisfies the ascending chain condition for two-sided ideals. We study the reverse mathematics of this theorem, proving its equivalence over$RC{A_0}$ to the statement that${\omega ^\omega }$is well ordered. Our equivalence proof proceeds via the statement that the Young diagrams form a well partial ordering.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:F. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists)Stephen OgdenF. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists), by Anne Samson; x & 196 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992, $45.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.If it is an overstatement to say that the waves of change currently disturbing the teaching of English in universities originated from the splash made by F. R. Leavis at Cambridge beginning in 1933, Anne Samson’s account of the (...) theorist’s influence scarcely admits it. Her chapter titles—“Leavis and the Growth of English Studies,” “English as a University Subject,” “Literary ‘Theory’ and Constituting the Canon”—indicate not only the range of issues connected with F. R. Leavis’s name but also his significant involvement in their genesis.Samson’s book portrays Leavis as the efficient cause in the establishment of university English as a critical, or more accurately a diagnostic, enterprise. At an early professional cost (he was denied faculty appointment at Cambridge for five years), Leavis helped cut English curricula free from philology, languages, and classical studies; a responsibility Samson partially excuses by connecting Leavis’s motivating principles back through Matthew Arnold to Dickens and Carlyle and even to one “Reverend H. J. Rose, a leading figure in the founding of King’s College, London... declaring in a sermon delivered in 1826 that literature teaches ‘the wisdom of men better and wiser than ourselves’ and prepares for the ‘examination of those moral and intellectual truths which are not only the worthiest exercise of our reason, but most concern our future destiny’” (p. 12).This moralism Samson sees as the central and redeeming principle in Leavis’s system. Specifically, she identifies the Condition of England debate—over the state of culture and economics in a “‘technologico-Benthamite world’” (p. 63)—as the key to Leavis’s literary criticism, his influential journal Scrutiny, and his wide-ranging reform endeavors. “Literature mattered to Leavis because he believed it to be the means, above all others, of combating the ills of a mechanised, constantly changing world and of restoring the heritage of those dispossessed by the machine” (p. 3).Professionally asserting the primacy of criticism over scholarship, then in his writings making no distinction between the literary and the social, Leavis ultimately refused any separation between literature and life. Samson carefully [End Page 360] traces this development in Leavis’s general theory in order to bring out its easily-overlooked implication for the social position of a literary academic. She quotes this crucial passage from Leavis: “The critic... is as much concerned with the health of the mind as any doctor with the health of the body. To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values... For the arts are inevitably and quite apart from any intentions of the artist an appraisal of existence” (pp. 15–16). No longer a mere scholar, or the type of irrelevant empiric Leavis so hated in the person of C. P. Snow, the Leavisite theorist is the grand physician diagnosing all society’s ills. Literary artists and their writings, so far from forming the most important part of literature, become perfectly irrelevant—“quite apart”—with the medicocritic prescribing universally “of existence.”Samson’s treatment of Leavis is analytical, though enjoyably and consistently biographical. For instance, her final, and largest, chapter shows the moralist model of the literary critic (the “judge of values”) in action by detailing the history of Leavis’s complete reversal of estimation between T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Leavis originally gave Eliot “hero-worship” (p. 162) and dismissed Lawrence as “mechanical” (p. 157). But concurrent with Eliot’s progress to Anglo-Catholicism, Leavis’s moral judgments overturned and, true to type, he increasingly censured Eliot’s writings by diagnosing problems in the man, while he grew to idolize Lawrence; ironically for “rescuing life from... inner mechanisation” (p. 169).Such inconstancy, here expressed in every word, Samson sees as an historical mark of character which places Leavis among the “Great Men of Ideas” (p. 172).Stephen OgdenSimon Fraser UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Contextualism has been hotly debated in recent epistemology and philosophy of language. The Case for Contextualism is a state-of-the-art exposition and defense of the contextualist position, presenting and advancing the most powerful arguments in favor of the view and responding to the most pressing objections facing it.