Sustainable development (SD) has contested meanings, and perspectives vary within and across societies. Emphases can range dramatically from recycling advocacy to eradication of poverty. Assumptions and approaches to sustainable development inherently contain many ethical considerations, yet U.S. students often have a limited understanding of ethical considerations in non-Western and global contexts. This paper describes an academic program on sustainable development we ran to Morocco and Spain. We describe the program’s pedagogy and assess learning related to ethics. The largest impact on (...) students’ awareness of ethics resulted from their observations and experiences with socioeconomic inequities and unequal access to infrastructure. However, without explicitly teaching ethical frameworks to sustainability students, they tend to equate sustainability with morality, imputing their own normative presuppositions of right versus wrong onto the concept of sustainable development. Therefore, we conclude with a discussion on how ethics could be more systematically integrated into education for sustainable development abroad. (shrink)

Sustainable development (SD) has contested meanings, and perspectives vary within and across societies. Emphases can range dramatically from recycling advocacy to eradication of poverty. Assumptions and approaches to sustainable development inherently contain many ethical considerations, yet U.S. students often have a limited understanding of ethical considerations in non-Western and global contexts. This paper describes an academic program on sustainable development we ran to Morocco and Spain. We describe the program’s pedagogy and assess learning related to ethics. The largest impact on (...) students’ awareness of ethics resulted from their observations and experiences with socioeconomic inequities and unequal access to infrastructure. However, without explicitly teaching ethical frameworks to sustainability students, they tend to equate sustainability with morality, imputing their own normative presuppositions of right versus wrong onto the concept of sustainable development. Therefore, we conclude with a discussion on how ethics could be more systematically integrated into education for sustainable development abroad. (shrink)

This paper develops a set of 16 criteria, divided into four groupings, for responsible business practice (RBP) in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) drawn from the existing SME/RBP literature. The current lack of a general set of criteria against which such activity can be judged is noted and this deficit is redressed. In order to make an initial assessment in support of the criteria so derived, an exploratory feasibility study of RBP in U.K. Fair Trade organisations was conducted. The findings (...) from this study show that most but not all of the RBP criteria seem to be applicable to U.K. Fair Trade organisations but it is recommended that the complete set of criteria continues to be used in further research until such time as there is a general consensus as to which criteria are appropriate. Implications for RBP in small businesses in general, and for Fair Trade organisations in particular, are drawn out and suggestions for further research are identified. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary selection of essays represents the explosion of scholarly interest since the 1960s in the pioneering feminist, philosopher, novelist and political theorist, Mary Wollstonecraft. Organized by theme and genre, the collection deals with the full range of her work, reproduces the most important modern Wollstonecraft scholarship, tracks the development of the author's reputation from the nineteenth century and demonstrates Wollstonecraft's importance in contemporary social, political and sexual theory and in Romantic studies.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 32-39 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetics, Epistemics, and Feminist Theory Jane Duran Recent feminist analysts of aesthetics and analytic aesthetics in particular seem to have come to the conclusion that the redemption of formulated aesthetic theory from the feminist point of view is a difficult and recondite task. 1 If analytic aesthetics now looks problematic, qua fruitful philosophical enterprise, its future (...) appears bleaker still when the intersection of the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy and the larger feminist project, frequently articulated in other than analytic terms, is examined.In this essay I will assume that there is some future for analytic aesthetics, and I will not dispute the basic assumption that any portion of analytic theory is somewhat immiscible with feminist points of view. My concern, rather, will be to try to show what it is specifically in the nature of analytic theory, both aesthetic and otherwise, which renders it of dubious value to the feminist critique (at least on first blush). Although in the past feminist theorists have tried to characterize the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy on the whole in rather striking terms,it is not clear that these terms have been precise enough. 2 Further, it is not clear that analytic modes are obviously unusable for feminist theory or for the development of a still nascent feminist aesthetics, although what one wants to say here is that this task is a terribly danger-fraught one. 3My goal here is twofold: first, to articulate what precisely it is aboutanalytic aesthetics (or any portion of analytic theory, for that matter) thatmakes it a hindrance — at least preliminarily — to the development of feminist views. In order to do this I will need to examine a relatively uncharted area in the literature, that is the parallel between much of analytic aesthetic theory and analytic epistemology. The second portion of my task will runsomewhat contrary to conventional wisdom: having delineated the mostmasculinist parts of analytic endeavors, I inquire if there is, indeed, anypart of rigorously articulated analytic theory that could lend itself to the development of a feminist aesthetic. [End Page 32] Analytic Philosophy and Aesthetics Analytic aesthetics, like analytic philosophy taken as a whole, has often proceeded as if the development of conceptual clarification and theoretical rigor could do much to "solve" or dissolve aesthetic problems. George Dickie's introductory work, for example, presents the student with a number of difficult areas in aesthetics, and then proceeds to address these areas in much the same manner that other contemporary texts employ for the discussion of issues in ethics, epistemology, or metaphysics.In discussing symbolism, Dickie first attempts to clarify the use of theterm, and then notes that there are problematic areas with regard to whether or not a work of art can both contain a symbol and serve itself as a symbol simultaneously. A symbol "stands for" in some establishable way that which it symbolizes. A symbol serves to transfer someone's thought to something other than itself, and the transfer is not a random association. The transfer depends upon certain features of the symbol which give it a place in a certain meaning system. 4I cite this material as exemplary because the flavor of analytic aesthetics is remarkably similar to the flavor of analytic philosophy as a whole. We sometimes need to remind ourselves that the techniques of analysis developed in the earlier part of this century relied on breakthroughs in logic and formal representation which allowed for a certain precision in matching symbol to thing signified. The original hope of philosophers working at the time of Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore had been to develop something close to a logically perfect language with a one-to-one relationship between signifier and signified. However without merit this somewhat arcane task, its goals infused much of the philosophizing that followed it, and even the ordinary language school was, of course, indirectly an offshoot of this work. Nicholas Wolterstorff, for example, notes that "analytic philosophy was to be 'scientific philosophy'....The goal of the analytic philosopher... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 32-39 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetics, Epistemics, and Feminist Theory Jane Duran Recent feminist analysts of aesthetics and analytic aesthetics in particular seem to have come to the conclusion that the redemption of formulated aesthetic theory from the feminist point of view is a difficult and recondite task. 1 If analytic aesthetics now looks problematic, qua fruitful philosophical enterprise, its future (...) appears bleaker still when the intersection of the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy and the larger feminist project, frequently articulated in other than analytic terms, is examined.In this essay I will assume that there is some future for analytic aesthetics, and I will not dispute the basic assumption that any portion of analytic theory is somewhat immiscible with feminist points of view. My concern, rather, will be to try to show what it is specifically in the nature of analytic theory, both aesthetic and otherwise, which renders it of dubious value to the feminist critique (at least on first blush). Although in the past feminist theorists have tried to characterize the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy on the whole in rather striking terms,it is not clear that these terms have been precise enough. 2 Further, it is not clear that analytic modes are obviously unusable for feminist theory or for the development of a still nascent feminist aesthetics, although what one wants to say here is that this task is a terribly danger-fraught one. 3My goal here is twofold: first, to articulate what precisely it is aboutanalytic aesthetics (or any portion of analytic theory, for that matter) thatmakes it a hindrance — at least preliminarily — to the development of feminist views. In order to do this I will need to examine a relatively uncharted area in the literature, that is the parallel between much of analytic aesthetic theory and analytic epistemology. The second portion of my task will runsomewhat contrary to conventional wisdom: having delineated the mostmasculinist parts of analytic endeavors, I inquire if there is, indeed, anypart of rigorously articulated analytic theory that could lend itself to the development of a feminist aesthetic. [End Page 32] Analytic Philosophy and Aesthetics Analytic aesthetics, like analytic philosophy taken as a whole, has often proceeded as if the development of conceptual clarification and theoretical rigor could do much to "solve" or dissolve aesthetic problems. George Dickie's introductory work, for example, presents the student with a number of difficult areas in aesthetics, and then proceeds to address these areas in much the same manner that other contemporary texts employ for the discussion of issues in ethics, epistemology, or metaphysics.In discussing symbolism, Dickie first attempts to clarify the use of theterm, and then notes that there are problematic areas with regard to whether or not a work of art can both contain a symbol and serve itself as a symbol simultaneously. A symbol "stands for" in some establishable way that which it symbolizes. A symbol serves to transfer someone's thought to something other than itself, and the transfer is not a random association. The transfer depends upon certain features of the symbol which give it a place in a certain meaning system. 4I cite this material as exemplary because the flavor of analytic aesthetics is remarkably similar to the flavor of analytic philosophy as a whole. We sometimes need to remind ourselves that the techniques of analysis developed in the earlier part of this century relied on breakthroughs in logic and formal representation which allowed for a certain precision in matching symbol to thing signified. The original hope of philosophers working at the time of Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore had been to develop something close to a logically perfect language with a one-to-one relationship between signifier and signified. However without merit this somewhat arcane task, its goals infused much of the philosophizing that followed it, and even the ordinary language school was, of course, indirectly an offshoot of this work. Nicholas Wolterstorff, for example, notes that "analytic philosophy was to be 'scientific philosophy'....The goal of the analytic philosopher... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Philosophy Pitfalls, and What Is Needed to Avoid Them Institutional History at Cambridge Cambridge Philosophy Reference.

In the face of land confiscations and other forms of imperialism characteristic of the 19th century in Aotearoa/new Zealand, the second Maori King Tawhiao devised a number of sayings that seem at first glance to be entirely mythical. Highly metaphorical and poetic, they appear to refer, as Bakhtin would have it in his discussion of the epic, to a language that is emotional, innately tied to a static mooring of pre-rational thought. Yet, in this paper we argue that a Maori (...) metaphysics complicates the delineations between primordial and novelistic language. Indeed, there is in a Maori worldview the notion that a term contains to it both postcolonial and mythical traces at once. Thus each apparently primordial term is tinged with the realities of colonised experience, even if they seem concrete and self-referential. In this paper we address those multiple voices in light of Bakhtin’s philosophies on heteroglossia, and argue that the accusation of ‘myth’ in relation to Tawhiao’s sayings is possible yet does not accommodate the metaphysics founding the sayings. We speculate that there is a form of freedom in Tawhiao’s words that exists regardless of our interpretation but that calls to be unearthed through an open reading. Sir Robert Mahuta, prominent Tainui leader, is one who has already indicated the need for a heteroglossic reading of Tawhiao. We then move to a description of the Waikato-Tainui College for Research and Development as it attempts to carry out this heteroglossic reading of Maori political and metaphysical text and utterance. (shrink)

Jane Campion’s work regularly revolves around women’s often complex relationship with socio-cultural discourses and their articulation in language, whether in familial and institutional structures or in cultural and creative practice. In this sense, Campion’s filmmaking continues a feminist tradition of exploration regarding female subjectivity, identity and desire as it is represented in language (cinematic or otherwise). In the Cut (2003), adapted from Susanna Moore’s novel of the same name, again places language and the (dis)articulation of the female voice (...) at its heart: the renewal of which is positioned within the film as crucial to women’s survival. In taking its cue from Hélène Cixous’s ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1976) and later writings such as ‘Castration or Decapitation?' (1981) and ‘Coming to Writing' (1991), this article frames its discussion of Campion’s interrogation of ‘Woman’s’ attempts at the articulation of the self as an exemplar (in both theme and form) of Cixousian strategies. The article will argue that techniques such as a cinematic écriture feminine, and the appropriation and adaptation of the language of Hollywood genre film, form part of Campion’s feminist inquiry into the discourses and legacies of a phallogocentric patriarchal culture which traditionally delimit Woman as a ‘speaking’ subject. In this way, In the Cut exposes the tensions between what Cixous calls the ‘Absolute Woman’ of culture (the aphonic hysteric) and attempts towards agency, thus challenging phallogocentric representations of women. In using these strategies, Campion’s adaptation creates a polyphonic artefact which not only revises Moore’s novel but also re-visits (in order to reclaim) female articulation; re-writing phallogocentric claims to agency and subjectivity, imagining women's ‘survival’ through language. In this sense, then, adaptation itself can be thought of as a feminist act of subversion. (shrink)

This paper examines how Charlotte Brontë's belief in phrenology influences the narration of her novel Jane Eyre. Phrenology was a nineteenth-century belief that the shape of the skull could give information about a person's temperament. Phrenologists speculated that the brain was split into separate parts, or faculties, that defined the individual's ability to feel a particular emotion. A bump on the skull implied that the faculty underneath that part of the skull was bigger, so the individual was more inclined (...) to feel that emotion. By placing Jane Eyre within the historical context of the rise of phrenology, I explore the ways in which Brontë's phrenological representation of Jane's mind informs and parallels the autodiegetic narration of Jane Eyre. My analysis focuses on moments when Jane draws attention to the fact that she is a first-person narrator telling the story of her own past experiences. I argue that these moments are comparable to those when Jane’s experiencing-self is fractured into phrenological faculties. Concomitantly, I seek to trace how Jane's narration changes as she moves between the locations of Thornfield, the Moor House, and Ferndean. I suggest that the shifts in narration draw attention to these locations as metaphors for varying degrees of restriction on Jane's faculties. Through an application of nineteenth-century psychological studies, I conclude that Brontë uses her narration style to criticize phrenologists who promote an unnaturally restrictive control of the faculties. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of mind has had a mistaken conception of the nature of psychological concepts. It has assumed too much similarity between psychological judgments and those of natural science and has thus overlooked the fact that other people are not just objects whose thoughts we may try to predict and control but fellow creatures with whom we talk and co-operate. In this collection of essays, Jane Heal argues that central to our ability to arrive at views about others' thoughts (...) is not knowledge of some theory of the mind but rather an ability to imagine alternative worlds and how things appear from another person's point of view. She then applies this view to questions of how we represent others' thoughts, the shape of psychological concepts, the nature of rationality and the possibility of first person authority. This book should appeal to students and professionals in philosophy of mind and language. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate the locus of believability effects in syllogistic reasoning. We identify three points in the reasoning process at which such effects could occur: the initial interpretation of premises, the examination of alternative representations of them (in all of which any valid conclusion must be true), and the “filtering” of putative conclusions. The effect of beliefs at the first of these loci is well established. In this paper we report three experiments that examine whether beliefs have an (...) effect at the other two loci. In experiments 1 and 2 subjects drew their own conclusions from syllogisms that suggested believable or unbelievable ones. In the third experiment they evaluated conclusions that were presented to them. The data show that beliefs both affect the examination of alternative models and act as a filter on putative conclusions. We conclude by showing how some types of problem and some problem contents make the existence of alternative models more obvious than others. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the normative foundations of the stakeholder and shareholder theories of the firm. It demonstrates how the shareholder theory of the firm appears to have at least as much normative support as stakeholder theory and suggests that a way forward may be for a variant of pure shareholder theory to emerge.

Criteria of ineffability are presented which, it is claimed, preclude the possibility of truths that are ineffable, but not the possibility of other things that are ineffable—not even the possibility of other things that are non-trivially ineffable. Specifically, they do not preclude the possibility of states of understanding that are ineffable. This, it is argued, allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and those who adopt the new reading recently championed (...) by Cora Diamond, James Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather than ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. (shrink)

Both Jacques and Raïssa Maritain produced large and diverse bodies of writing, and their creative lives spanned decades and encompassed the most turbulent periods of the twentieth century. Scholarly engagement with their work continues to reap new insights, and that includes engagement with the writings produced in the earlier portions of their respective careers. Those earlier portions were themselves remarkably productive, and issued not only in important writings but also in profoundly influential professional and personal relationships nurtured and developed with (...) a truly diverse array of scholars, clergy, and artists, including such figures as Henri Bergson, Leon Bloy, Ernest Psichari, and Georges Rouault. This new anthology of essays manages both to interact with the biographies and writings of the Maritains themselves (and to a degree their close early associates) and also to contribute to novel Thomistic reflection on themes from their early careers, among them war, suffering, politics, art, intuition, and foundational issues in moral theology. The essays are historically informed yet address perennial issues of vital significance for the life of the Church and the broader culture. The contributing authors are Prudence Allen, John Deely, Elizabeth Jane Doering, Heather Erb, Doug Flippen, Heidi Giebel, Ben Huff, James Jacobs, Florian Michel, Mark Moes, Brenna Moore, Bernadette OConnor, Matthew Pugh, James V. Schall, Joshua Schulz, Daniel Shields, Michael Torre, and John Wippel. (shrink)

“Gut issues” refers to any condition that affects our digestive systems and that causes pain or discomfort. The term points to the experience of our gut being an issue for us – interfering with our plans, undermining our bodily self-control, threatening our well-being. This paper aims to do three things: (1) to introduce and justify a disability theory approach to gut issues; (2) to use this lens to argue that the experience of gut issues has a social and relational dimension (...) that could be otherwise; and (3) to argue for a shared responsibility to ameliorate this dimension. (shrink)

This book introduces the experience and process of gestation into the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Derrida as a feminist project of maternal emancipation.

I cite areas of pragmatism and feminism that have an intersection with or an appeal to the other, including the notions of the universal and/or normative, and foundationalist lines in general. I deal with three areas from each perspective and develop the notion of their intersection. Finally, the paper discusses the importance of a pragmatic view for women's lives and the importance of psychoanalytic theory for finding another area where pragmatism and feminism mesh.

Overviews -- Hildegard of Bingen -- Anne Conway -- Mary Astell -- Mary Wollstonecraft -- Harriet Taylor Mill -- Edith Stein -- Simone Weil -- Simone de Beauvoir -- Conclusions.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis CarrollSusan ShererVictorian novels quiver with morbid secrets and threatening discoveries. Unseen rooms, concealed doors, hidden boxes, masked faces, buried letters, all appear (and disappear) with striking regularity in the fiction of Victorian England. So many of these secret spaces contain children, and especially little girls, little girls in hidden spaces. The young Jane Eyre sits behind a curtain in the hidden window seat, (...) escaping the vindictive wrath of John Reed. Repulsed by her angry brother, Maggie Tulliver flees to the house attic, fantasizing that her family will fear that she has died. Little Dorrit withdraws from the common space of the Marshalsea into her private room above the prison, and Little Nell hides behind trees and walls, silently observing clandestine meetings. Finally the seven-year-old Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a Wonderland, the dreamspace of her own psyche.Of these images, none can be more embedded in our cultural imagination than the child Alice dropping into the subterranean well of Wonderland. Indeed, of the many celebrated scenes in the Alice narratives, the most memorable, most potent, most quoted is Alice’s initial descent to the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The lastingness of this scene seems even greater when we realize that, although neither Carroll in Alice’s Adventures Underground nor Tenniel in the first edition of Wonderland illustrated the moment with a picture, it still became (along with the Mad Hatter’s tea party) one of the signature images of the Alice stories. Why, we must ask, did the Victorians retain, with a powerful tenacity, this vision of a little girl moving through a tight space toward the hidden world of Wonderland?The answer to this question is not—at least not wholly—that the scene simply represents a child’s metaphorical progress through the [End Page 1] birth canal 1 and that this, in turn, symbolizes some kind of rite of passage, a movement towards some deeper knowledge. For then how do we explain Alice’s conspicuous lack of internal development in both stories? Indeed, for a narrative that thematizes motion, Alice’s psychical growth remains disturbingly static. Throughout both narratives, Alice displays little emotional variation, for when she is not frustrated or anxious, she is, for the most part, vapid or expressionless. In fact, one is immediately struck by her coolness and indifference as she drops through the rabbit-hole. 2 Thus, because scene changes in Wonderland and Looking-Glass rarely betoken any emotional or intellectual modulations, Alice’s falling into Wonderland signals no internal transition.But the image does relocate her body and within this fictive world, location is everything. The scene gestures Alice’s departure, her separation, her movement towards an autonomy of which every child dreams when, in play, retreating to a hidden space. A child’s impulse to hide, to create a secret space, is one of the most compelling of all human wishes, the wish for autonomy and autarchy—“to be cut off from the word and yet owner of the world.” 3 Throughout Victorian literature, the fantasy of autonomy sets children dreaming of far-away worlds and hidden gardens. The young Cathy and Heathcliff flee to the isolated moors, filling the open, empty space with dreams of unrestricted freedom. Little Dorrit envisages the locked garden behind the Marshalsea as an alternative world to the foul prison atmosphere. And what are the Brontës’s Angria and Gondol but disconnected, self-governing realms imagined from the standpoint of childhood powerlessness? The image, then, of Alice’s fall begins to fulfill this powerful wish for autonomy, which culminates, finally, in Alice’s self-coronation at the end of Looking-Glass. Yet it is only within the child’s willing imagination that a secret space can encroach so closely upon autonomy, for as we shall see, secrecy and autonomy are irreconcilable not only in the demanding world of realism, but even in the more elastic world of Carrollian fantasy.IAlice’s descent into Wonderland and her entrance into the Looking-Glass kingdom would seem like ripe metaphors for Carroll to explore the thoughts and fantasies of Alice’s psyche. What could be more... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis CarrollSusan ShererVictorian novels quiver with morbid secrets and threatening discoveries. Unseen rooms, concealed doors, hidden boxes, masked faces, buried letters, all appear (and disappear) with striking regularity in the fiction of Victorian England. So many of these secret spaces contain children, and especially little girls, little girls in hidden spaces. The young Jane Eyre sits behind a curtain in the hidden window seat, (...) escaping the vindictive wrath of John Reed. Repulsed by her angry brother, Maggie Tulliver flees to the house attic, fantasizing that her family will fear that she has died. Little Dorrit withdraws from the common space of the Marshalsea into her private room above the prison, and Little Nell hides behind trees and walls, silently observing clandestine meetings. Finally the seven-year-old Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a Wonderland, the dreamspace of her own psyche.Of these images, none can be more embedded in our cultural imagination than the child Alice dropping into the subterranean well of Wonderland. Indeed, of the many celebrated scenes in the Alice narratives, the most memorable, most potent, most quoted is Alice’s initial descent to the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The lastingness of this scene seems even greater when we realize that, although neither Carroll in Alice’s Adventures Underground nor Tenniel in the first edition of Wonderland illustrated the moment with a picture, it still became (along with the Mad Hatter’s tea party) one of the signature images of the Alice stories. Why, we must ask, did the Victorians retain, with a powerful tenacity, this vision of a little girl moving through a tight space toward the hidden world of Wonderland?The answer to this question is not—at least not wholly—that the scene simply represents a child’s metaphorical progress through the [End Page 1] birth canal 1 and that this, in turn, symbolizes some kind of rite of passage, a movement towards some deeper knowledge. For then how do we explain Alice’s conspicuous lack of internal development in both stories? Indeed, for a narrative that thematizes motion, Alice’s psychical growth remains disturbingly static. Throughout both narratives, Alice displays little emotional variation, for when she is not frustrated or anxious, she is, for the most part, vapid or expressionless. In fact, one is immediately struck by her coolness and indifference as she drops through the rabbit-hole. 2 Thus, because scene changes in Wonderland and Looking-Glass rarely betoken any emotional or intellectual modulations, Alice’s falling into Wonderland signals no internal transition.But the image does relocate her body and within this fictive world, location is everything. The scene gestures Alice’s departure, her separation, her movement towards an autonomy of which every child dreams when, in play, retreating to a hidden space. A child’s impulse to hide, to create a secret space, is one of the most compelling of all human wishes, the wish for autonomy and autarchy—“to be cut off from the word and yet owner of the world.” 3 Throughout Victorian literature, the fantasy of autonomy sets children dreaming of far-away worlds and hidden gardens. The young Cathy and Heathcliff flee to the isolated moors, filling the open, empty space with dreams of unrestricted freedom. Little Dorrit envisages the locked garden behind the Marshalsea as an alternative world to the foul prison atmosphere. And what are the Brontës’s Angria and Gondol but disconnected, self-governing realms imagined from the standpoint of childhood powerlessness? The image, then, of Alice’s fall begins to fulfill this powerful wish for autonomy, which culminates, finally, in Alice’s self-coronation at the end of Looking-Glass. Yet it is only within the child’s willing imagination that a secret space can encroach so closely upon autonomy, for as we shall see, secrecy and autonomy are irreconcilable not only in the demanding world of realism, but even in the more elastic world of Carrollian fantasy.IAlice’s descent into Wonderland and her entrance into the Looking-Glass kingdom would seem like ripe metaphors for Carroll to explore the thoughts and fantasies of Alice’s psyche. What could be more... (shrink)

This article argues that Maria Stewart is an underappreciated abolitionist, and a worthy exponent of the Black views of the 1830s. Her work is compared with that of David Walker, Charlotte Forten, and Anna Julia Cooper. A focal point of much of her work is her exhortation to the high moral ground—she remains concerned, throughout her career, about the temptations faced by many during the nineteenth century that might lead them to a non-Christian path. As is the case with Charlotte (...) Forten, who frequently moved for more formal education, Stewart worked ceaselessly to impel Black Americans to a worthy and virtuous life. (shrink)

Susan Stebbing's Thinking to Some Purpose is analysed along the lines of contemporary efforts in critical thinking, and some of the problematized media material of her time. It is concluded that what Stebbing recommends is difficult to achieve, but worth the effort.Export citation.

Though John Stuart Mill's long employment by the East India Company did not limit him to drafting despatches on relations with the princely states, that activity must form the centrepiece of any satisfactory study of his Indian career. As yet the activity has scarcely been glimpsed. It produced, on average, about a draft a week, which he listed in his own hand. He subsequently struck out items that he sought to disown in consequence of substantial revisions made by the Company's (...) directors or the Board of Control. He also listed items that achieved publication as parliamentary papers and they amount to about ten per cent of his drafts. The two lists, published in the most recent volume of his Collected Works, reveal, at the least, the ‘political’ despatches from which he did not seek to dissociate himself. The despatches were not entirely his work and authorship in the conventional sense may not be assumed. They were the product of an elaborate process, in which many hands were engaged. At worst, they were his work in much the same way that an Act of Parliament is the work of the Crown Solicitor who drafts the bill. At best they were his as are the drafts of a civil servant who believes in policy statements that he prepares for his political masters. The greatest English philosopher and social scientist of the nineteenth century was, in his daily occupation, an employee. His Company was charged with initiating policies for the Indian states and they were subject to the control of a minister of the Crown. (shrink)

This paper seeks to highlight the benefits of prioritizing moderate African communitarian principles as partly demonstrated in the HIV prevention strategies implemented in Uganda in the late 1980s. Pertinent lessons could be drawn so as to achieve the HIV prevention targets envisioned in the post-2015 development era. Communitarianism emphasizes the importance of communities as part of healthy human existence. Its core ethical values include the virtues of generosity, compassion, and solidarity. Persuasion through communication, consensus through dialogue, and the awareness and (...) commitment to responsibilities towards other members of the community, are chief practices relied upon to achieve appropriate social behaviour. All these elements signify individual rootedness in communities and contribute to the healthy existence of its members. Communitarianism is usually classified as either authoritarian/radical or responsive/moderate, depending on the primacy given to either community interests or the individual will and rights. Moderate communitarianism recognizes the individual's capacity for moral reasoning, virtue and free choice. The ensuing form of society is deemed more ethical as it relies on education in the virtues, moral persuasion and informal social controls, without stifling individual identity, agency, and capacity for self-determination. If moderate African communitarianism, in particular, can to a certain extent be associated with the significant aspects of Uganda's HIV prevention strategies in the stated period, then its present-day relevance for HIV prevention and other public health interventions may be emphasized accordingly. This applies especially in view of the ongoing efforts to achieve a balance between individual and collective interests in bioethics. (shrink)

Psychological continuity theories have been the dominant theories of personal identity over time, and the phenomenal approach has largely been neglected because of the bridge problem. I propose a hybrid account of the persistence of the self that draws on both psychological and phenomenal influences while avoiding the problems that both theories face in their 'pure' form. Such a hybrid theory retains the benefits of a phenomenal account of intra-streamal unity, and provides a better account of inter-streamal unity with the (...) use of a psychological-continuity theory. (shrink)

While simulation has been a staple of Social Studies curricula since the 1960s, few current studies have sought to understand the mechanisms behind how simulations may influence students’ learning and behavior. Learning theories around student engagement – specifically interest development theory (Hidi & Renninger, 2006) – may help explain students’ commitment to future political action. To incorporate this theory into the democratic education literature, this study asks: Do situational interest and simulation frequency uniquely contribute to students’ commitment to vote in (...) the future? Data included 260 students from 19 classrooms, 9 teachers, in 9 schools, recruited as part of a larger mixed-methods study on Project Based Learning. Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) techniques were used to examine the relationship between individual outcomes and predictors across different classrooms and teachers. Analysis of data suggests both frequency of simulations and situational interest directly predict students’ commitment to vote but do not uniquely contribute to the outcome. Findings suggest situational interest may play an important role in influencing students’ learning and future political behavior. (shrink)

This book introduces the experience and process of gestation into the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Derrida as a feminist project of maternal emancipation.

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's practical reasoning theory has attracted a great deal of interest since its publication in 1969. Their most important assertion, however, that argument is the logical basis for practical decision-making, has been under-utilized, primarily because it was not sufficiently operationalized for research purposes. This essay presents an operationalization of practical reasoning for use in analyzing argument logics that emerge through group interaction. Particular elements of discourse and argument are identified as responding to principles put forward by Perelman and (...) Olbrechts-Tyteca, and are viewed as fitting together in a kind of logical argument structure that is well suited to the study of practical arguments in decision-making. Both the content elements and the logical argument structure are illustrated using examples from two studies examining decision logics in public participation and jury decision-making. Advantages of this approach and proposed recognition of a new `filtered' type of argument structure are discussed. (shrink)