This book offers a reassessment of the political philosophy of the British Idealists, a group of once influential and now neglected nineteenth-century Hegelian philosophers, whose work has been much misunderstood. Peter Nicholson focuses on F. H. Bradley's idea of morality and moral philosophy; T. H. Green's theory of the Common Good, of the social nature of rights, of freedom, and of state interference; and Bernard Bosanquet's notorious theory of the General Will. By examining the arguments offered by the Idealists (...) and by their critics the author is able to penetrate the deep layers of hostile comment laid down by several generations of later writers and to show that these ideas, once properly understood, are not only defensible but interesting and important. (shrink)

Using national opinion survey data, this research addressed claims in political science that the American electorate is either poorly informed or dependent on party label cues. The results suggested that in situations with missing information, American voters can use their knowledge to successfully infer political party membership of candidates and vote their own party interests.

This book offers a reassessment of the political philosophy of the British Idealists, a group of once influential and now neglected nineteenth-century Hegelian philosophers, whose work has been much misunderstood. Peter Nicholson focuses on F. H. Bradley's idea of morality and moral philosophy; T. H. Green's theory of the Common Good, of the social nature of rights, of freedom, and of state interference; and Bernard Bosanquet's notorious theory of the General Will. By examining the arguments offered by the Idealists (...) and by their critics the author is able to penetrate the deep layers of hostile comment laid down by several generations of later writers and to show that these ideas, once properly understood, are not only defensible but interesting and important. (shrink)

Two experiments examined the typicality structure of contrasting political categories. In Experiment 1, two separate groups of participants rated the typicality of 15 individuals, including political figures and media personalities, with respect to the categories Democrat or Republican. The relation between the two sets of ratings was negative, linear, and extremely strong, r = −.9957. Essentially, one category was treated as a mirror image of the other. Experiment 2 replicated this result, showing some boundary conditions, and extending the result to (...) liberal and conservative categories. The same method was applied to two other pairs of contrasting categories, healthy and junk foods, and male and female jobs. For those categories, the relation between contrasting pairs was weaker and there was less of a direct trade-off between typicality in one category versus typicality in its opposite. The results are discussed in terms of implications for political decision making and reasoning, and conceptual representation. (shrink)

Bosanquet was one of the most Hegelian of the British Idealist philosophers, and also one of the most prolific and wide ranging in his writings. This bibliography lists: I. books, pamphlets, contributions to books, articles, discussions, letters to th etc.; II. book reviews and critical notices; III. private letters which have been published; and IV. unpublished private letters. Certain other material, less easy to classify, is mentioned here.

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

In spite of the recent surge of publication on Hegel’s social and political thought, the political ideas of the Phenomenology have remained relatively neglected. A volume devoted to them is thus welcome, especially from Professor Shklar, whose earlier books were exceptionally clear, able, and stimulating.

The nine papers and two comments in this collection, unobtrusively edited by Merold Westphal, were presented to the Hegel Society of America in 1978. Although they follow no overall plan, and do not cover the Phenomenology systematically or comprehensively, they raise many of the most significant questions. It is helpful to find some of these issues tackled by several of the contributors from different angles though with complementary emphases. All the papers are clearly argued, free of unexplained Hegelian terminology, commendably (...) concise, and extend our understanding of Hegel. They constitute a good collection to be warmly welcomed. (shrink)

To write any kind of commentary on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is a daunting undertaking. Although the book’s overall plan appears to be clear in a general way, some of Hegel’s moves and conclusions are not; his philosophical premises often need to be made explicit and call for elucidation; and the development of his ideas in detail is uneven, throwing up many problems of interpretation, including passages which may easily be understood incompletely or even completely misunderstood. The result is that (...) the reader can get lost. In particular one’s attention can be distracted from Hegel’s essential point. This is one reason why anyone grappling with the Philosophy of Right will welcome the assistance to be gained from Michael Mitias. His book sets out to make visible the basic structure of the Philosophy of Right and to provide a clear guide to the main line of its argument. Mitias is largely successful. His outline and analysis help one to move about Hegel’s argument with greater confidence and to understand better its various parts both in themselves and in relation to the whole. (shrink)

This paper continues the study of the metric topology on $2^{\mathbb {N}}$ that was introduced by S. Binns. This topology is induced by a directional metric where the distance from $Y\in2^{\mathbb {N}}$ to $X\in2^{\mathbb {N}}$ is given by \[\limsup_{n}\frac{C(X\upharpoonright n|Y\upharpoonright n)}{n}.\] This definition is closely related to the notions of effective Hausdorff and packing dimensions. Here we establish that this is a path-connected topology on $2^{\mathbb {N}}$ and that under it the functions $X\mapsto\operatorname{dim}_{\mathcal{H}}X$ and $X\mapsto\operatorname{dim}_{p}X$ are continuous. We also investigate (...) the scalar multiplication operation that was introduced by Binns. The multiplication of a real $X\in2^{\mathbb {N}}$ by an element $\alpha\in[0,1]$ represents a dilution of the information in $X$ by a factor of $\alpha$ . Our main result is to show that every regular real is the dilution of a real of Hausdorff dimension 1. That is, that the information in every regular real can be maximally compressed. (shrink)

An Enquiry into the Nature of Liberation: Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s Paramokṣanirāsakārikāvṛtti, a Commentary on Sadyojyotiḥ’s Refutation of Twenty Conceptions of the Liberated State. Edited and translated by Alex Watson, Dominic Goodall, and S. L. P. Anjaneya Sarma. Collection Indologie, vol. 122. Pondicherry: Institut Français de Pondichéry, École française d’Extrême-Orient, 2013. Pp. 508. €38.

This essay, by the editor of Common Knowledge, introduces the sixth and final installment of “Fuzzy Studies,” the journal's “Symposium on the Consequence of Blur.” Suggesting that “Fuzzy Studies” should be understood in the context of a desultory campaign against zeal conducted in the journal for almost twenty years, he explains that the editors' assumption has been that any authentic case for the less adamant modes of thinking, or the less focused ways of seeing, needs to be unenthusiastic and carefully (...) ramified. To establish the distinction between overenthused and unemphatic approaches to blur, he contrasts the ecstatically amorphous “Blur building” with examples of classical Chinese landscape painting. Elizabeth Diller and Richard Scofidio, in their book blur: the making of nothing, chronicle the development of their plans for the Blur building and, in the process, inadvertently show that, to overbear various negative associations of blur and fog, the authors/architects grew self-contradictorily emphatic about the need to produce de-emphasis in architecture and in modern life. Perl shows how this self-contradiction appears also in phenomenology-inflected writings on blur by T. J. Clark, Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Kraus, J.-P. Sartre, and Georges Bataille, but not in the work of the phenomenologist François Jullien, whose book The Great Image Has No Form analyzes the role of blur in classical Chinese art theory and practice. Where traditional Western painting, Jullien argues, calls for voyeuristically intense focus, traditional Chinese painting stimulates “dé-tente, relaxation or ‘untensing’.” Intense focus on a blur is still, Perl observes, an intense focus. In describing a painting by the Yuan Dynasty master Ni Zan, Perl concludes that the only way to be un-self-contradictorily positive about fuzziness, whether in logic or aesthetics, is to de-reify and de-differentiate with the aim of achieving blandness. (shrink)

In recent years "British" Idealism has been subject to sweeping re-evaluation and rehabilitation. The essays collected here by Will Sweet compare Bernard Bosanquet's ideas and arguments with those of Idealists and non-Idealists alike, and establish that Bosanquet was far more clear-headed and insightful than denunciations of the "Idealist school" by Moore, Russell, C. D. Broad, Harold Prichard, and A. J. Ayer suggest. Sweet observes in his introduction that Bosanquet has long remained in the shadows of T. H. Green and F. (...) H. Bradley, that Bosanquet was a prolific writer who shaped philosophical debates across the English-speaking world for decades, and that estimations of his social theory and political philosophy, and to a lesser extent his metaphysics, have diverted attention from his contributions to logic and aesthetics.Essays by Sandra M. den Otter, Peter Nicholson, and Kevin Sullivan deal directly with Bosanquet's social philosophy. Bosanquet was engaged from the 1880s in work with the Charity Organisation Society, an association that set the tone of late Victorian and Edwardian debates over British poverty. He and his wife served on the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws , against whose majority statement—cautioning against such direct assistance to the poor as. (shrink)

It has become customary to conceptualize the living cell as an intricate piece of machinery, different to a man-made machine only in terms of its superior complexity. This familiar understanding grounds the conviction that a cell's organization can be explained reductionistically, as well as the idea that its molecular pathways can be construed as deterministic circuits. The machine conception of the cell owes a great deal of its success to the methods traditionally used in molecular biology. However, the recent introduction (...) of novel experimental techniques capable of tracking individual molecules within cells in real time is leading to the rapid accumulation of data that are inconsistent with an engineering view of the cell. This paper examines four major domains of current research in which the challenges to the machine conception of the cell are particularly pronounced: cellular architecture, protein complexes, intracellular transport, and cellular behaviour. It argues that a new theoretical understanding of the cell is emerging from the study of these phenomena which emphasizes the dynamic, self-organizing nature of its constitution, the fluidity and plasticity of its components, and the stochasticity and non-linearity of its underlying processes. (shrink)

Examines the women's movement, discusses feminist theories, and considers the writings of Locke and Marx concerning the separation of family and state.

Some postcolonial theorists argue that the idea of a single system of belief known as "Hinduism" is a creation of nineteenth-century British imperialists. Andrew J. Nicholson introduces another perspective: although a unified Hindu identity is not as ancient as some Hindus claim, it has its roots in innovations within South Asian philosophy from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. During this time, thinkers treated the philosophies of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva, and Sakti, as (...) belonging to a single system of belief and practice. Instead of seeing such groups as separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned them as separate rivers leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate reality. Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts—like monism and dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy—have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy. (shrink)

Although the field of surgical ethics focuses primarily on informed consent, surgical decision‐making, and research ethics, some surgeons have started to consider ethical questions regarding justice and solidarity with poor and minoritized populations. To date, those calling for social justice in surgical care have emphasized increased diversity within the ranks of the surgical profession. This article, in contrast, foregrounds the agency of those most affected by injustice by bringing to bear an ethic of accompaniment. The ethic of accompaniment is born (...) from a theological tradition that has motivated work to improve health outcomes in those at the margins through its emphasis on listening, solidarity against systemic drivers of disease, and proximity to individuals and communities. Through a review of surgical ethics and exploration of a central patient case, we argue for applying an ethic of accompaniment to the care of surgical patients and their communities. (shrink)

This article explores the substitution and complementary effects between political and social strategies on firm performance in the context of an emerging market (EM). Using in‐depth, historical case‐study approach, the article investigates how companies integrate political and social resources in this market. Corporate performance includes traditional measures, such as accounting performance and nonfinancial measures like the ease of doing business. The study finds that social strategies are stronger enablers of firm long‐term performance than political strategies. The latter have a short‐term (...) impact on performance, but their success over time is limited. The main drawback of reliance on political resources in EMs is the lack of political stability, fragmented polity, and weak political coalitions. We identify rather limited evidence of firms using these two strategies as complements. Thus, we suggest that firms should employ both these strategies in the EM. (shrink)

Describes how the author became an on-call substitute teacher in pursuit of the realities of American public education, describing his complex difficulties with helping educate today's students in spite of flawed curriculums and interpersonal challenges.

This chapter argues that scientific and philosophical progress in our understanding of the living world requires that we abandon a metaphysics of things in favour of one centred on processes. We identify three main empirical motivations for adopting a process ontology in biology: metabolic turnover, life cycles, and ecological interdependence. We show how taking a processual stance in the philosophy of biology enables us to ground existing critiques of essentialism, reductionism, and mechanicism, all of which have traditionally been associated with (...) substance ontology. We illustrate the consequences of embracing an ontology of processes in biology by considering some of its implications for physiology, genetics, evolution, and medicine. And we attempt to locate the subsequent chapters of the book in relation to the position we defend. (shrink)

In 1926, Haldane published an essay titled 'On Being the Right Size' in which he argued that the structure, function, and behavior of an organism are strongly conditioned by the physical forces that exert the greatest impact at the scale at which it exists. This chapter puts Haldane’s insight to work in the context of contemporary cell and molecular biology. Owing to their minuscule size, cells and molecules are subject to very different forces than macroscopic organisms. In a sense, macroscopic (...) and microscopic entities inhabit different “worlds”: the former is ruled by gravity and inertia, whereas the latter is governed by Brownian motion. One implication is that we should be extremely skeptical of models and analogies that seek to explain properties of microscopic entities by appealing to properties of macroscopic ones. Unfortunately, this is precisely what the appeal to engineering metaphors in molecular biology attempts to do. Molecular biologists routinely resort to such metaphors because they are familiar and intuitively intelligible. But if our machines were the size of molecules it would be impossible for them to function the way they do. It follows that we should avoid distorting biological reality by construing it in engineering terms. In this chapter I examine four key metaphors in molecular biology – “genetic program,” “cellular circuitry,” “molecular machine,” and “molecular motor” – and I argue that their deficiencies derive from their neglect of scale. I also try to explain why many biologists today appear to have forgotten the importance of scale that Haldane drew attention to in his essay. I suggest that the reason has to do with the influence of Schrödinger’s argument in 'What is Life?' regarding the stability of the gene. (shrink)