Detection of deception and confirmation of truth telling with conventional polygraphy raised a host of technical and ethical issues. Recently, newer methods of recording electromagnetic signals from the brain show promise in permitting the detection of deception or truth telling. Some are even being promoted as more accurate than conventional polygraphy. While the new technologies raise issues of personal privacy, acceptable forensic application, and other social issues, the focus of this paper is the technical limitations of the developing technology. Those (...) limitations include the measurement validity of the new technologies, which remains largely unknown. Another set of questions pertains to the psychological paradigms used to model or constrain the target behavior. Finally, there is little standardization in the field, and the vulnerability of the techniques to countermeasures is unknown. Premature application of these technologies outside of research settings should be resisted, and the social conversation about the appropriate parameters of its civil, forensic, and security use should begin. (shrink)

It was a hot summer night, the kind where the air is so thick it seems to ooze into your lungs. I heard a knock on the door. I complained.

The eye may be window to the soul, but neuroscientists aim to get inside and measure the interior directly. There's also talk about moving some walls.

: With the advent of the Genetic Age comes a unique new set of problems and ethical decisions. There is a tendency to take the scientific developments presented by modern genetics at face value, as if the science itself were value-neutral and not influenced by cultural and religious images. One example of the fallout of the Genetic Age is the development of a "genetic self," the idea that our essential selfhood lies in our genes. It is important to understand the (...) assumptions of the Genetic Age, the development of genetic selfhood, and the broader cultural trends and assumptions that underlie modern genetic thinking. It is equally important, however, to shape a reaction to the concept of a genetic self. Judaism has long carried on a unique discussion about the nature of selfhood in different times and places and about the relation of the corporeal self to the essential self. Insights from Judaism therefore may help to craft a reaction to the modern genetic self that incorporates the best of modern genetics as well as the integrity of a more transcendent selfhood. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gifts and Obligations: The Living Donor as StorytellerPaul Root WolpeThe Illness NarrativeEach of us lives with an inner biographical narrative, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, the story that becomes our account of who we are. It is the story we have constructed about our life and its meaning, built from memories of our past—our childhood, our parents, our friends, our experiences. We construct that story through (...) our subjective experience and memories of our past, bringing together the disparate parts of our lives and weaving them into a coherent whole by which we make sense of ourselves.Under the pressures of the advent of sudden illness, or in the face of chronic illness that becomes a dominant status, “individuals often feel a pressing need to re-examine and re–fashion their personal narratives in an attempt to maintain a sense of identity” (Bury, 2001, p.264). Illness forces us to re–imagine our life in the face of often sudden new circumstances. Illness narratives about chronic or lifelong illness are not necessarily about suddenly needing to recast one’s life due to new circumstances, but about the need to understand the way chronic illness positions and defines us in the web of social and institutional relationships.The narratives in this collection might be thought of as a peculiar type of illness narrative. The people who populate these stories are not themselves sick (or at least were not when their stories began); yet they are bound up in the medical world, have had their bodies cut open and pieces removed, have had, at times, problematic recoveries and lasting physical and mental challenges. For that reason, the stories of living donors are particularly interesting in the illness narrative literature, and they raise a unique set of questions. Living donors have not discovered a sudden illness that requires re–imagining their lives, nor are they coping with a long illness that has become a thematic frame for how they conceptualize their world. The key aspect that differentiates the living donors’ narratives from the usual illness narratives is volition; the donors have chosen to enter the world of the infirm, have chosen to subject themselves to surgery and medical management, and have chosen to join their stories to someone else’s—and in so doing to become allied to, and yet never fully a part of, the illness narratives of the recipients.Gifting and OwnershipIf it is true that we tell our stories informed by the other stories of our culture, that we must fit our own stories into the narrative resources available in our particular society, then the living donors need to find a cultural frame to make sense of this strange position they find themselves in: joining the world of the sick and infirm not because of intrinsic illness but, to the contrary, because of their relative health. Almost thirty years ago, Renée Fox and Judith Swazey began their ground-breaking work The Courage to Fail (1974) with a clear [End Page 39] statement of the way in which the donor’s role is understood:The donor who offers a part of his body for transplantation is making an inestimably precious gift. The acutely ill patient who receives the organ accepts a priceless gift. The giving and receiving of a gift of enormous value, we believe, is the most significant meaning of human organ transplantation. The extraordinary gift exchange, moreover, is not a private transaction between the donor and the recipient. Rather, it takes place within the complex network of personal relationships that extends to the families, the physicians, and all the members of the medical team who are involved in the operation. Within the network of these relations, a complex exchange occurs through which considerably more than the organ itself is transferred(p. 5).It is the sociological and psychological power of the idea of the gift that makes transplantation an especially evocative case. Eighteen years later, in their second book about organ transplantation, Spare Parts (1992), Fox and Swazey cite their own quote above and comment about it that “Despite all the biomedical and social changes that have ensued within and around the... (shrink)

Over time, ethical judgments evolve, but so do the phenomena they are applied to. For example, plagiarism is a modern concept. Before the early eighteenth century, works did not generally have references or acknowledgments, and ideas were freely exchanged. As writing became an occupation, copying others' words became “unethical.” As cut and paste, music mash‐up, and other technological forms of exchange make copying the works of others simple, the idea of plagiarism is eroding, and perhaps will eventually even be discarded. (...) The same may be true with privacy. As with plagiarism, it was not really until the eighteenth century that our modern idea of privacy was established. To younger generations, raised on social media, online life is predicated on trading personal information for access. The undermining of former standards of privacy may suggest that privacy may also eventually become an outmoded concept. (shrink)

: The response of Barbara Pfeffer Billauer to my article "If I Am Only My Genes, What Am I? Genetic Essentialism and a Jewish Response" highlights the conflict between a sociological understanding of religion and the resistance to such analysis from within a faith tradition. Ms. Billauer makes three main points; the first strangely credits to me, and then attacks, an argument the article takes great pains to refute, but does so to emphasize the faith's prescient guidance in matters scientific. (...) The second attempts to rebut my critical analysis of the tensions inherent in Jewish views of the body with an insistence that Judaism so perfectly balances the relation between the sacred and profane that there is not now, and never was, the slightest tension between corporeality and divinity in the Jewish corpus. The third uses my article as vehicle for her to expound on an interesting but tangential formulation of three Jewish terms. In all, the need to defend her interpretation of Judaism's solutions to the problems the article raises results in un-self-critical and ahistorical theorizing, making the utility of her arguments in a discussion of the sociology of religion unsatisfactory. (shrink)

Detection of deception and confirmation of truth telling with conventional polygraphy raised a host of technical and ethical issues. Recently, newer methods of recording electromagnetic signals from the brain show promise in permitting the detection of deception or truth telling. Some are even being promoted as more accurate than conventional polygraphy. While the new technologies raise issues of personal privacy, acceptable forensic application, and other social issues, the focus of this paper is the technical limitations of the developing technology. Those (...) limitations include the measurement validity of the new technologies, which remains largely unknown. Another set of questions pertains to the psychological paradigms used to model or constrain the target behavior. Finally, there is little standardization in the field, and the vulnerability of the techniques to countermeasures is unknown. Premature application of these technologies outside of research settings should be resisted, and the social conversation about the appropriate parameters of its civil, forensic, and security use should begin. (shrink)

Detection of deception and confirmation of truth telling with conventional polygraphy raised a host of technical and ethical issues. Recently, newer methods of recording electromagnetic signals from the brain show promise in permitting the detection of deception or truth telling. Some are even being promoted as more accurate than conventional polygraphy. While the new technologies raise issues of personal privacy, acceptable forensic application, and other social issues, the focus of this paper is the technical limitations of the developing technology. Those (...) limitations include the measurement validity of the new technologies, which remains largely unknown. Another set of questions pertains to the psychological paradigms used to model or constrain the target behavior. Finally, there is little standardization in the field, and the vulnerability of the techniques to countermeasures is unknown. Premature application of these technologies outside of research settings should be resisted, and the social conversation about the appropriate parameters of its civil, forensic, and security use should begin. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a host of ethical challenges, but key among these has been the possibility that health care systems might need to ration scarce critical care resources. Rationing p...

Detection of deception and confirmation of truth telling with conventional polygraphy raised a host of technical and ethical issues. Recently, newer methods of recording electromagnetic signals from the brain show promise in permitting the detection of deception or truth telling. Some are even being promoted as more accurate than conventional polygraphy. While the new technologies raise issues of personal privacy, acceptable forensic application, and other social issues, the focus of this paper is the technical limitations of the developing technology. Those (...) limitations include the measurement validity of the new technologies, which remains largely unknown. Another set of questions pertains to the psychological paradigms used to model or constrain the target behavior. Finally, there is little standardization in the field, and the vulnerability of the techniques to countermeasures is unknown. Premature application of these technologies outside of research settings should be resisted, and the social conversation about the appropriate parameters of its civil, forensic, and security use should begin. (shrink)

Research involving recently deceased humans that are physiologically maintained following declaration of death by neurologic criteria—or ‘research involving the recently deceased’—can fill a translational research gap while reducing harm to animals and living human subjects. It also creates new challenges for honouring the donor’s legacy, respecting the rights of donor loved ones, resource allocation and public health. As this research model gains traction, new empirical ethics questions must be answered to preserve public trust in all forms of tissue donation and (...) in the practice of medicine while respecting the legacy of the deceased and the rights of donor loved ones. This article suggests several topics for immediate investigation to understand the attitudes and experiences of researchers, clinical collaborators, donor loved ones and the public to ensure research involving the recently deceased advances ethically. (shrink)

: The following comments on Paul Root Wolpe's article "If I Am Only My Genes, What Am I? Genetic Essentialism and a Jewish Response" address (1) his presentation of the relationship between science and culture or religion as unimodal; (2) his misconception of the Jewish view of the physical corpus; and (3) his essential question of genetic determinism by examining the traditional Jewish view of the spiritual aspects of the human.

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY PRIZE for the best published book in the history of philosophy [Awarded in 2010] _______________ -/- Although it is widely recognized that David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) belongs among the greatest works of philosophy, there is little agreement about the correct way to interpret his fundamental intentions. It is an established orthodoxy among almost all commentators that skepticism and naturalism are the two dominant themes in this work. The difficulty has been, (...) however, that Hume's skeptical arguments and commitments appear to undermine and discredit his naturalistic ambition to contribute to "the science of man". This schism appears to leave his entire project broken-backed. The solution to this riddle depends on challenging another, closely related, point of orthodoxy: namely, that before Hume published the Treatise he removed almost all material concerned with problems of religion. Russell argues, contrary to this view, that irreligious aims and objectives are fundamental to the Treatise and account for its underlying unity and coherence. It is Hume's basic anti-Christian aims and objectives that serve to shape and direct both his skeptical and naturalistic commitments. When Hume's arguments are viewed from this perspective we can solve, not only puzzles arising from his discussion of various specific issues, we can also explain the intimate and intricate connections that hold his entire project together. This "irreligious" interpretation provides a comprehensive fresh account of the nature of Hume's fundamental aims and ambitions in the Treatise. It also presents a radically different picture of the way in which Hume's project was rooted in the debates and controversies of his own time, placing the Treatise in an irreligious or anti-Chrisitan philosophical tradition that includes Hobbes, Spinoza and freethinking followers. Considered in these terms, Hume's Treatise constitutes the crowning achievement of the Radical Enlightenment. (shrink)

This chapter outlines an alternative interpretation of Hume’s philosophy, one that aims, among other things, to explain some of the most perplexing puzzles concerning the relationship between Hume’s skepticism and his naturalism. The key to solving these puzzles, it is argued, rests with recognizing Hume’s fundamental irreligious aims and objectives, beginning with his first and greatest work, A Treatise of Human Nature. The irreligious interpretation not only reconfigures our understanding of the unity and structure of Hume’s thought, it also provides (...) a radically different picture of the way in which Hume’s philosophy is rooted in its historical context. By altering our understanding of the fundamentals of Hume’s philosophy in this way, the irreligious interpretation also challenges the adequacy of the familiar and entrenched framework of “British Empiricism.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy: Reading the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit by Andrew Alexander DavisPaul T. WilfordDAVIS, Andrew Alexander. Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy: Reading the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. ix + 214 pp. Cloth, $125In Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy, Andrew Davis makes a convincing argument that just as the problem of how to distinguish sophistry from philosophy is a recurrent theme of Plato's dialogues, so (...) too is the problem of sophistry or "pseudo-philosophy" central to the preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Indeed, the problem of how to recognize and guard against pseudo-philosophy is the common theme linking the prefaces to the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Science of Logic, the Encyclopedia, and the Philosophy of Right, each of which endeavors "to reveal something about the essence of philosophy... by highlighting the ways pseudo-philosophy fails to do justice to philosophical content." Such an undertaking is especially important to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, however, because the subject matter [End Page 543] of the work is nothing but the logos of the appearances of spirit. To arrive at knowledge of spirit requires attending to all the various ways in which spirit (or Geist) can appear, but, as Davis remarks, "like life, Geist may be thought as a source of appearances, but not as an appearance itself. It is always 'behind' what appears." As a result, the Phenomenology is an exercise in trying "to grasp what does not appear through appearances alone." Thus, just as the Phenomenology approaches the truth of spirit by considering spirit's partial, abstract, and one-sided modes of appearing, so too does the preface to the Phenomenology approach the truth of philosophy by investigating forms of pseudo-philosophy.As Hegel himself states, there are two principal tasks pursued in the preface: (1) to offer a preliminary sketch of what it would mean for "the cognition of absolute actuality to become perfectly lucid about its own nature;" and (2) to eliminate some "habitually accepted forms of thought" that prove obstacles to philosophic cognition. While most commentators take their bearings from the former, Davis's approach to the preface is unique (to my knowledge) in foregrounding the latter. Yet, as his book unfolds, it becomes clear that the latter is the route into the former. Indeed, one of the central lessons of the book is that, although the elimination of erroneous habits of thought may seem to be merely negative and therefore principally propaedeutic to the positive task of leading the reader toward "absolute knowing," the examination of error is an integral component of grasping the true. If the Phenomenology as a whole is a "highway of despair"—a comprehensive refutation of natural consciousness's pretensions to knowledge that is simultaneously a dialectical ascent to conceptually comprehending knowing (begreifende Wissen)—the preface initiates the reader into the via negativa that philosophic cognition must travel to attain self-knowledge.Davis's book is structured around seven forms of pseudo-philosophy, each of which is treated as a discrete, distinguishable problem in its own right and also as emblematic of the common failure to recognize that the form of philosophy is inseparable from the content of philosophy. As Davis argues, this failure lies at the root of the attempt (common to much of modern philosophy since Descartes) to establish a priori a universal method for thinking (what Leibniz called a mathesis universalis) that will secure certain and indubitable knowledge. But this effort proves self-undermining, always ultimately engendering the very skepticism it seeks to master. Through observing the aporiai generated by forms of pseudo-philosophy, we learn that "the method of philosophy is inseparable from the subject matter of philosophy. Method cannot be isolated and discussed on its own. Philosophy is thinking (form) about thinking (content)."Davis thus gradually discloses Hegel's positive answer to the question "what is philosophy?" through a series of determinate negations of philosophy's imitations. We learn that philosophy is the recollective, self-comprehending, self-moving thinking of thinking by attending to a set of tendencies that impede philosophy: "a tendency to explain rather than [End Page 544] present (chapter 1), a... (shrink)

It is said that reality is stronger than any description we can make of it, and we must admit that atrocities, when we see them, go beyond any idea we may have had of them. On the other hand, when it is a question of values and beliefs, the contrary is true: reality is much less than its representation and the ideas it professes. This loss of energy is called indifference. Madame Bovary believed that in Naples happiness was as firmly (...) rooted as the orange trees and as strong as stone. The wisdom of nations knows that that is not the case: “We hope for Paradise but as late as possible,” affirms a Christian proverb. This indifference poses a problem or an entire series of problems (Georg Simmel's work could be considered from that point of view) unless it arises from all our errors, spontaneous or scientific, concerning man and society. I do not know where I read, or dreamed, the story of a young ethnologist who went to study a tribe that was said to believe that the world would come to an end if the priests let the sacred fire go out. He assumed that the priests were as anxious as though they controlled the detonator of an atomic bomb. Admitted into the temple of the fire, he saw the peaceful religious going about routine tasks. Reality is rarely emphatic. Rites and customs, for example, reflect the beliefs of a society. Paintings and sculptures show what the society believes or serve to make it believe what it sees. Sculpture in cathedrals were the bible of the illiterate. Is that really certain? We notice that most often people perform the rites without believing in their significance and, in any case, without interest in them, because the liturgy is not a means of communication giving information. They do not look at the images. (How many Parisians have looked at the Napoleonic bas-reliefs on the Vendôme column?) and if they tried to do so, they would not be able to decipher their iconography or even see them: placed too high, the images are often undecipherable. So it is necessary to sketch out a sociology of art in which the art work, far from conveying an iconography and an ideology, is a decor that we do not even look at, that we can hardly see and that is however very important. The study of all these insufficiencies would be a vast program. Here we will confine ourselves to art. (shrink)

In Acquiring Modernity, Paul B. Paolucci, updating classical theory, examines the nature of modern society. Investigated from a sociological perspective but written in accessible everyday language, this book provides a multifaceted account of what makes modern society what it is, from its historical roots to its current conditions. Neither traditional classroom text nor a work of detailed erudition for the specialist few, Acquiring Modernity draws on material from known historical events, scholarly research, and recent global developments to tell modernity's (...) story through topics such as the modern classes, religious practice, relations of gender and race, politics, environmental issues, and economic crises. Valuable reading for anyone interested in understanding contemporary life and society. (shrink)

This clear, readable introduction to philosophy presents a traditional theistic view of the existence of God.There are many fine introductions to philosophy, but few are written for students of faith by a teacher who is sensitive to the intellectual challenges they face studying in an environment that is often hostile to religious belief. Many introductory texts present short, easy-to-refute synopses of the traditional arguments for God's existence, the soul, free will, and objective moral value rooted in God's nature, usually followed (...) by strong objections stated as if they are the last word. This formula may make philosophy easier to digest, but it gives many students the impression that there are no longer any good reasons to accept the beliefs just mentioned.Philosophy, Reasoned Belief, and Faith is written for philosophy instructors who want their students to take a deeper look at the classic theistic arguments and who believe that many traditional views can be rigorously defended against the strongest objections. The book is divided into four sections, focusing on philosophy of religion, an introduction to epistemology, philosophy of the human person, and philosophical ethics. The text challenges naturalism, the predominant outlook in the academic world today, while postmodernist relativism and skepticism are also examined and rejected. Students of faith--and students without faith--will deepen their worldviews by thoughtfully examining the philosophical arguments that are presented in this book. Philosophy, Reasoned Belief, and Faith will appeal to Christian teachers, analytic theists, home educators, and general readers interested in the classic arguments supporting a theistic worldview. (shrink)

The Archaic takes as its major reference points C.G. Jung's classic essay, 'Archaic Man' (1930), and Ernesto Grassi's paper on 'Archaic theories of history' (1990). Moving beyond the confines of a Jungian framework to include other methodological approaches, this book explores the concept of the archaic. Defined as meaning 'old-fashioned', 'primitive', 'antiquated', the archaic is, in fact, much more than something very, very old: it is timeless, inasmuch as it is before time itself. Arch,̇ Urgrund, Ungrund, 'primordial darkness', 'eternal nothing' (...) are names for something essentially nameless, yet whose presence we nevertheless intuit. This book focuses on the reception of myth in the tradition of German Idealism or Romanticism (Creuzer, Schelling, Nietzsche), which not only looked back to earlier thinkers (such as Jacob Boehme) but also laid down roots for developments in twentieth-century thought (Ludwig Klages, Martin Heidegger). The Archaic also includes: - studies of the Germanic dimension of the archaic (Charles Bambach, Alan Cardew) - a discussion of the mytho-phenomenological approach to the archaic (Robert Josef Kozljani)̈ - a series of articles on Jung's understanding of the archaic (Paul Bishop, Susan Rowland, Robert Segal). This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, anthropologists and phenomenologists, as well as students of psychology, cultural studies, religious studies, and philosophy, as it seeks to rehabilitate a concept of demonstrable and urgent relevance for our time. (shrink)

The Archaic takes as its major reference points C.G. Jung's classic essay, 'Archaic Man' (1930), and Ernesto Grassi's paper on 'Archaic theories of history' (1990). Moving beyond the confines of a Jungian framework to include other methodological approaches, this book explores the concept of the archaic. Defined as meaning 'old-fashioned', 'primitive', 'antiquated', the archaic is, in fact, much more than something very, very old: it is timeless, inasmuch as it is before time itself. Arch,̇ Urgrund, Ungrund, 'primordial darkness', 'eternal nothing' (...) are names for something essentially nameless, yet whose presence we nevertheless intuit. This book focuses on the reception of myth in the tradition of German Idealism or Romanticism (Creuzer, Schelling, Nietzsche), which not only looked back to earlier thinkers (such as Jacob Boehme) but also laid down roots for developments in twentieth-century thought (Ludwig Klages, Martin Heidegger). The Archaic also includes: - studies of the Germanic dimension of the archaic (Charles Bambach, Alan Cardew) - a discussion of the mytho-phenomenological approach to the archaic (Robert Josef Kozljani)̈ - a series of articles on Jung's understanding of the archaic (Paul Bishop, Susan Rowland, Robert Segal). This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, anthropologists and phenomenologists, as well as students of psychology, cultural studies, religious studies, and philosophy, as it seeks to rehabilitate a concept of demonstrable and urgent relevance for our time. (shrink)

This comprehensive anthology offers over 40 readings that are critical to the understanding of anthropological theory and the development of anthropology as an academic discipline. The fourth edition maintains a strong focus on the "four-field" roots of the discipline in North America but has been reorganized with a new section on twenty-first-century theory, including coverage of postcolonial and public anthropology. New key terms and introductions accompany each reading and a revamped glossary makes the book more student-friendly. Used on its own, (...) or together with the overview text A History of Anthropological Theory, Fourth Edition, this anthology offers a flexible and unrivaled introduction to anthropological theory that reflects not only the history but also the changing nature of the discipline today. For additional resources, visit the "Teaching Theory" page at www.utpteachingculture.com. (shrink)

The Limits of Free Will presents influential articles by Paul Russell concerning free will and moral responsibility. The problems arising in this field of philosophy, which are deeply rooted in the history of the subject, are also intimately related to a wide range of other fields, such as law and criminology, moral psychology, theology, and, more recently, neuroscience. These articles were written and published over a period of three decades, although most have appeared in the past decade. Among the (...) topics covered: the challenge of skepticism; moral sentiment and moral capacity; necessity and the metaphysics of causation; practical reason; free will and art; fatalism and the limits of agency; moral luck, and our metaphysical attitudes of optimism and pessimism. (shrink)

The hatchet and the seed -- A tree with deep roots -- The critical tools -- A field crystallizes -- Destruction of nature -- Construction of nature -- Degradation and marginalization -- Conservation and control -- Environmental conflict -- Environmental identity and social movement -- Where to now?

Critically analyzes and revitalizes agrarian philosophy by tracing its evolution. Today, most historians, philosophers, political theorists, and scholars of rural America take a dim view of the agrarian ideal that farmers and farming occupy a special moral and political status in society. Agrarian rhetoric is generally seen as special pleading on the part of farmers seeking protection from labor reform and environmental regulation while continuing to receive direct payments and subsidies from the public till. Agrarianism should not be viewed as (...) a set of immutable claims about farming and political order, but as a tradition of moral and political philosophy that has evolved and deepened over the centuries. Agrarian naturalism--the belief that culture and conduct are conditioned by nature because they are of a piece with nature--becomes pragmatic naturalism, giving way to a new set of puzzles about how we are to understand the rural landscape and our responsibilities for its use. The agrarian idea that personality and sociability are integrated with the material transformation of the landscape can serve as the basis for a new, pragmatically grounded ethic of natural resources and rural development. The essays in this volume critically analyze and revitalize agrarian philosophy by tracing its evolution in the classical American philosophy of key figures such as Franklin, Jefferson, Emerson, Thoreau, Dewey, and Royce. Three chapters address the belief that farming peoples develop moral virtue and a taste for democracy as it evolved in the American context, and four examine how a reconstitution of agrarian themes might invigorate our nation's thinking on environment, food, and rural development policy. The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism will be of broad interest to scholars of American philosophy, rural history, history of ideas, geography, and agricultural or natural resource policy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Tolle, LegeCommencement Address at the Dominican House of Studies, May 13, 2022Michael RootTolle, lege. Tolle, lege. "Take up, read." Few such simple words have had such a crucial impact on the history of Christian theology. In the summer of 386, Augustine of Hippo was a torn man. He had come to believe the Gospel, but he could not bring himself to break with sinful habits, habits so ingrained he (...) called them "necessities." His soul was torn between two wills within him, he said, each pointing in a different direction. Nothing seemed able to be able to break the interior logjam. He says that he willed that he would will the good, but not with a complete will, and so he remained paralyzed. After hearing a friend and mentor describe the conversion of Victorinus, a famous Roman teacher of rhetoric, and another friend speak of the monastic retreat of St. Anthony, the spiritual conflict within Augustine reached a fever pitch and he retreated to a corner of the garden in the house he was staying at. Suddenly, from over the wall, he heard a child chanting the words tolle, lege: "take up, read." He could not think of any childhood rhyme or chant that involved those words—they must be a sign from God. So, he rushed over to where a copy of St. Paul's letters was lying, opened it, and read at random. His eye fell on Romans 13:13: "Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy." As he himself puts in his Confessions: "No further wished I to read, nor was there need to do so. Instantly, in truth, at the end of this sentence, as if before a peaceful light streaming into my heart, all the dark shadows of doubt fled away" (8.12.29). [End Page 9]You who are graduating are now coming to the end of a process that has involved a great deal of taking up and reading. I trust that the taking up and reading has not been to cure you of reveling and drunkenness, not to mention the rest of St. Paul's list, but rather to form you, most immediately within the discipline of theology and for many of you, within the vocation of the priesthood and the Dominican Order. Some of what you have taken up and read has, I hope, been inspiring. I hope that at least on occasion you felt as if a peaceful light was streaming into your hearts. Some of what you read, I would guess, you found mind-numbingly boring. But it is all part of the process.Of course you did more than just take up and read. You thought about what you were reading. You compared it with other things you had read. You related it to your own experience. You discussed it with other students. You wrote about it in papers and on exams. The medieval university master had three tasks: legere, disputare, praedicare—read, dispute, and (in this context) present. You have done much the same thing—reading, arguing, presenting.Reading with this kind of attention does not leave us unaffected. We do not just learn new information; we come to inhabit a different world, with a different landscape and a different population. It makes a difference whether one's effective world includes only places like Washington, New York, and Elizabeth, New Jersey, or also Jerusalem, the old Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem, the North Africa of Augustine, and the Paris of Thomas Aquinas. The person whose imaginative world is mostly populated by characters from Friends and Game of Thrones will be a different sort of person from the one whose imaginative world includes Abraham, David, St. Paul, Dominic, and Alyosha Karamazov. It is as much an exaggeration to say you are what you read as to say you are what you eat. But at least for some of us (and if you are graduating from Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, you are probably in this group), at least some of what we read changes not only what we... (shrink)

I claim that Mill has a theory of poetry which he uses to reconcile nineteenth century associationist psychology, the tendency of the intellect to dissolve associations, and the need for educated members of society to desire utilitarian ends. The heart of the argument is that Mill thinks reading poetry encourages us to feel the feelings of others, and thus to develop pleasurable associations with the pleasurable feelings of others and painful associations with the painful feelings of others. Once the associations (...) are developed, they are supported and maintained by our natural capacity for sympathy and by external elements in society, and provide motivation for the pursuit of utilitarian ends. Further, the additional support causes the associations to be strengthened to the extent that they come to be seen as ‘natural and necessary’, and as such are immune from the dissolving force of the intellect. (shrink)

A radical reinterpretation of Adam Smith that challenges economists, moral philosophers, political theorists, and intellectual historians to rethink him—and why he matters Adam Smith has long been recognized as the father of modern economics. More recently, scholars have emphasized his standing as a moral philosopher—one who was prepared to critique markets as well as to praise them. But Smith’s contributions to political theory are still underappreciated and relatively neglected. In this bold, revisionary book, Paul Sagar argues that not only (...) have the fundamentals of Smith’s political thought been widely misunderstood, but that once we understand them correctly, our estimations of Smith as economist and as moral philosopher must radically change. Rather than seeing Smith either as the prophet of the free market, or as a moralist who thought the dangers of commerce lay primarily in the corrupting effects of trade, Sagar shows why Smith is more thoroughly a political thinker who made major contributions to the history of political thought. Smith, Sagar argues, saw war, not commerce, as the engine of political change and he was centrally concerned with the political, not moral, dimensions of—and threats to—commercial societies. In this light, the true contours and power of Smith’s foundational contributions to western political thought emerge as never before. Offering major reinterpretations of Smith’s political, moral, and economic ideas, Adam Smith Reconsidered seeks to revolutionize how he is understood. In doing so, it recovers Smith’s original way of doing political theory, one rooted in the importance of history and the necessity of maintaining a realist sensibility, and from which we still have much to learn. (shrink)