As the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on health service delivery, health providers are modifying care pathways and staffing models in ways that require health professionals to be reallocated to work in critical care settings. Many of the roles that staff are being allocated to in the intensive care unit and emergency department pose additional risks to themselves, and new policies for staff reallocation are causing distress and uncertainty to the professionals concerned. In this paper, we analyse a range of ethical issues (...) associated with changes to staff allocation processes in the face of COVID-19. In line with a dominant view in the medical ethics literature, we claim, first, that no individual health professional has a specific, positive obligation to treat a patient when doing so places that professional at risk of harm, and so there is a clear ethical tension in any reallocation process in this context. Next, we argue that the changing asymmetries of health needs in hospitals means that careful consideration needs to be given to a stepwise process for deallocating staff from their usual duties. We conclude by considering how a justifiable process of reallocating professionals to high-risk clinical roles should be configured once those who are ‘fit for reallocation’ have been identified. We claim that this process needs to attend to three questions that we consider in detail: (1) how the choice to make reallocation decisions is made, (2) what justifiable models for reallocation might look like and (3) what is owed to those who are reallocated. (shrink)

This chapter examines Chomsky's influence on the modeling of linguistic variation, focusing specifically on the notion of parameter. It begins by examining the different conceptualizations of “parameter” in Chomsky's work, from the Government and Binding era, through early Minimalism to more recent approaches which locate variation in phonological form. The idea that grammatical variation should be modeled by abstract parameters is arguably one of Chomsky's most important contributions to linguistic theory, and one which has had significant influence. Two domains of (...) variation (word order and argument expression) are used as case studies to illustrate how Chomsky's ideas have given rise to different kinds of parametric models. Finally, the chapter discusses some of the potential objections to the concept of parameters before concluding. (shrink)

Much work performed under the banner of social epistemology still centers the problems of the individual cognitive agent. AU distinguishes multiple senses of "social," some of which are more social than others, and argues that different senses are at work in various contributions to social epistemology. Drawing on work in history and philosophy of science and addressing the literature on testimony and disagreement in particular, this paper argues for a more thoroughgoing approach in social epistemology.

To the age-old debate over what it means to be human, the relatively new fields of sociobiology and artificial intelligence bring new, if not necessarily compatible, insights. What have these two fields in common? Have they affected the way we define humanity? These and other timely questions are addressed with colorful individuality by the authors of _The Boundaries of Humanity_. Leading researchers in both sociobiology and artificial intelligence combine their reflections with those of philosophers, historians, and social scientists, while the (...) editors explore the historical and contemporary contexts of the debate in their introductions. The implications of their individual arguments, and the often heated controversies generated by biological determinism or by mechanical models of mind, go to the heart of contemporary scientific, philosophical, and humanistic studies. (shrink)

An examination of the evidence for and the theoretical implications of a universal word order constraint, with data from a wide range of languages. This book presents evidence for a universal word order constraint, the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), and discusses the theoretical implications of this phenomenon. FOFC is a syntactic condition that disallows structures where a head-initial phrase is contained in a head-final phrase in the same extended projection/domain. The authors argue that FOFC is a linguistic universal, not just a (...) strong tendency, and not a constraint on processing. They discuss the effects of the universal in various domains, including the noun phrase, the adjective phrase, the verb phrase, and the clause. The book draws on data from a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Turkish, Basque, Finnish, Afrikaans, German, Hungarian, French, English, Italian, Romanian, Arabic, Hebrew, Mandarin, Pontic Greek, Bagirmi, Dholuo, and Thai. FOFC, the authors argue, is important because it is the only known example of a word order asymmetry pertaining to the order of heads. As such, it has significant repercussions for theories connecting the narrow syntax to linear order. (shrink)

"Dissecting Bioethics," edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics. The section is dedicated to the idea that words defined by bioethicists and others should not be allowed to imprison people's actual concerns, emotions, and thoughts. Papers that expose the many meanings of a concept, describe the different readings of a moral doctrine, or provide an alternative angle to seemingly self-evident issues are therefore particularly appreciated. The themes covered in the section (...) so far include dignity, naturalness, public interest, community, disability, autonomy, parity of reasoning, symbolic appeals, and toleration. (shrink)

Currently, research ethics committees in the UK meet behind closed doors—their workings and most of the content of their decisions are unavailable to the general public. There is a significant tension between this current practice and a broader societal presumption of openness. As a form of public institution, the REC system exists to oversee research from the perspective of society generally.An important part of this tension turns on the kind of justification that might be offered for the REC system. In (...) this paper I adapt Daniels and Sabin’s accountability for reasonableness model for just resource allocation to the research ethics context to provide some structural legitimacy and to enable progress on the question of openness. After considering the consequences of adopting this model for open REC meetings, I then examine some reasons that might be offered against open meetings. These arguments do not overwhelm the core intuitions behind the presumption of openness but they do, I suggest, give us reason to retreat from fully public meetings. I conclude that there should be important adjustments to the system towards public accountability and that there are grounds for stopping short of fully public meetings. (shrink)

Can films philosophize rather than simply represent philosophical ideas developed outside of the cinematic medium? Taking up this question crucial to the emergent field of film philosophy, this book argues that the films of the American avant-garde do "do" philosophy and illuminates the ethical and political stakes of their aesthetic interventions. The book traces the avant-garde's philosophy by developing a history and theory of its investment in dimensional, conceptual, and material in-betweens, clarifying how this cinema's reflections on the creation and (...) reception of images construct an ethics of perception itself, a responsibility to perpetuate thought in an enduring re-encounter with the world and with meaning's unfinished production. This entails the avant-garde's locating of cinema's-and thought's-ends or meanings in their means, and their advancement of an image of truth that is made rather than found that unites their films with the philosophies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson who believed the "journey's end is found in every step of the road" (Cavell). Rectifying film-philosophy's neglect of the American avant-garde, the book demonstrates how rather than showing their interest in the revelation of authoritative truths, the avant-garde's interest in the re-encounter and review of the seen and known emerges from an American Transcendentalist tradition that opposes such notions. Sheehan reads the avant-garde's interest in the contingencies of spectatorial experience as also an extension of Pragmatism's commitment to replacing the authority of a priori knowledge with that of individual experience. She also shows how Emerson's influence on Friedrich Nietzsche connects the American avant-garde's philosophies to Deleuze's time-image, premised largely upon Nietzsche's "powers of the false.". (shrink)

In Invisible Hands, the historians Jonathan Sheehan and Dror Wahrman identify a defining feature of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: the decline of God as a source of order in favor of a new model of self-organization.” Sheehan and Warhman provide a novel account of how people on the threshold of modernity understood the continuing presence in the world of apparent disorder, randomness, and chance. If God no longer actively guaranteed that order will always prevail, what or whom did? The (...) answer, the authors argue, was a new appreciation for complexity, new understandings of causality, and new functions for the divine hand. At the foundation of this novel way of thinking was the ability to imagine complex systems--be they natural or human--asself-organizing. Invisible Hands maps and explains the intensifying presence of the languages of self-organization throughout the eighteenth century, proliferating as they did with ever greater sophistication across numerous intellectual domains and cultural arenas. For self-organization was less a theory than a field of new insights: insights into the dynamics of chance and randomness, into the relationship between agency and determinism, into the role of God in a world without hands-on providence. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is an urgent need for more empirical research into everyday experiences of living with datafication, something that has not been prioritised in the emerging field of data studies to date. As a result of this absence, the knowledge produced within data studies is not as aligned to the aims of data activism as it might be. Data activism seeks to challenge existing, unequal data power relations and to mobilise data in order to enhance (...) social justice, yet data studies has focused primarily on identifying the former and not on imagining the latter. To build a picture of what more just conditions of datafication might look like, I argue that it is important to take account of everyday experiences of datafication, of what people themselves say would enable them to live better with data and would constitute more just data arrangements, based on their experiences. I explore two possible approaches to this endeavour, both of which suggest the need for a vocabulary of emotions in researching everyday living with data. (shrink)

Women most fully experience the consequences of human reproductive technologies. Men who convene to evaluate such technologies discuss "them": the women who must accept, avoid, or even resist these technologies; the women who consume technologies they did not devise; the women who are the objects of policies made by men. So often the input of women is neither sought nor listened to. The privileged insights and perspectives that women bring to the consideration of technologies in human reproduction are the subject (...) of these volumes, which constitute the revised and edited record of a Workshop on "Ethical Issues in Human Reproduction Technology: Analysis by Women" (EIRTAW), held in June, 1979, at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Some 80 members of the workshop, 90 percent of them women (from 24 states), represented diverse occupations and personal histories, different races and classes, varied political commitments. They included doctors, nurses, and scientists, lay midwives, consumer advocates, historians, and sociologists, lawyers, policy analysts, and ethicists. Each session, however, made plain that ethics is an everyday concern for women in general, as well as an academic profession for some. (shrink)

Cooperation in evil or wrongdoing is one of the most perplexing areas in bioethics, both for those working in the field and those seeking their advice. The papers collected in this book are written by philosophers, theologians and lawyers who have studied these problems and / or by those who have faced these problems in their own work in law, healthcare and research, and political campaigning. The volume includes both general treatments of the subject of cooperation and conscientious objection, and (...) more specific treatments of topics such as voting to improve unjust laws, research on fetal / embryonic cells, and care of suicidal patients. The book is offered as a guide to a field which is both of academic interest and of personal concern to those who face cooperation problems in their own life and work. Contributors include: Bishop Donal Murray, Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, Jane Adolphe, Mike Delany, John Finnis, Luke Gormally, Colin Harte, Cathleen Kaveny, Richard Myers, Charlie O'Donnell, Alexander Pruss, Neil Scolding and Helen Watt. (shrink)

Nation and liberty: two ideas that in spite of the innumerable works that have been devoted to them are still open to new approaches, indeed, to new definitions. They pose a problem whose essence is to remain without a definitive answer, to be always actual, because it concerns man of all times, all countries and all conditions. This apparently-simple remark raises a question: is it possible to put nation and liberty on the same level? It is permissible to consider liberty (...) and nation as a pair forming a new concept, or do we simply have a relationship located in a precise time at a given place? (shrink)

The relationship between education and democratic development has been a growing theme in debates focussed upon public education, but there has been little work that has directly related educational leadership to wider issues of freedom, politics and practice. Engaging with ELMA through the work of Hannah Arendt enables these issues of power to be directly confronted. Arendt produced texts that challenged notions of freedom and politics, and notably examined the lives of people, ideas and historical events in ways that are (...) pertinent to the purposes and practices of education. This significant volume examines the main texts in the Arendt library and explains each of the key ideas and how they can enable critical thinking about knowledge production and practice in educational leadership. The analysis draws upon a range of exemplars and empirical projects from the field of educational leadership, investigating utility issues regarding Arendt's ideas, and engaging with the debates concerning her insights and contribution. Included in the book: -using Arendt to think about ELMA -the relationship between policy and practice, and organisation and leadership -critiques of the Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa -thinking with and against Arendt. Gunter uses the work of Arendt to challenge the purposes and practices of intellectual work, with a view to developing perspectives on the responsibility for research and ideas. The book will be of value to all those working and researching in the field of Educational Leadership, Management and Administration. (shrink)

Introduction This paper defends the moral significance of the distinction between killing and letting die. In the first part of the paper, I consider and reject Michael Tooley’s argument that initiating a causal process is morally equivalent to refraining from interfering in that process. The second part disputes Tooley’s suggestion it is merely external factors that make killing appear to be worse than letting die, when in reality the distinction is morally neutral. Tooley is mistaken to claim that we are (...) permitted to kill bystanders who had no fair chance to avoid being at risk of harm. We can support the significance of the killing / letting die distinction by considering the difference between what we are permitted to do in self-defence against those who are going to kill us, and what we can do against those who are going to let us die. I also suggest that we are less responsible for the deaths we allow than for the deaths that we cause, since we do not make people worse off for our presence in cases where we fail to save them. (shrink)

Net Work provides a detailed study of the work of web designers. It draws on empirical research carried out from the birth of web design as an area of work in the 1990s to its professionalization in the twenty-first century and addresses the politics of building an inclusive WWW for people of diverse abilities.

How We Fight: Ethics in War contains ten groundbreaking essays by some of the leading philosophers of war. The essays offer new perspectives on key debates including pacifism, punitive justifications for war, the distribution of risk between combatants and non-combatants, the structure of 'just war theory', and bases of individual liability in war.

For the past 3 years, since acquiring formal training in healthcare ethics and philosophy, I have been one of those physicians who “does” ethics. I teach medical students and residents, write articles, speak at conferences, chair an ethics committee, and informally consult with colleagues on cases where they request advice related to ethical issues in the care of patients. These activities have been a rewarding and challenging part of my practice. There has also been a fair amount of frustration. Unfortunately, (...) both in teaching and patient care, it has been a frequent experience to finish a discussion with physicians only to be told that what I said was nice but had no bearing in the real world. In the words of a medical resident: 'You know, this ethics stuff is really a lot of crap, isn't it?'. (shrink)

It is shown here that injustices due to racial discrimination are best identified in light of the deleterious effects they have upon their victims, rather than the beliefs and attitudes of their perpetrators. For among participants who cooperate clandestinely to bring about racial injustice there may be broad disagreement about what it is they are doing collectively, and why; or they may disagree in principle about whether what they are doing is morally right. I employ the notion of ‘nomotropic’ behaviour (...) to replace the oversimplified notion of ‘rule-following’ in order to explain how duplicity and hypocrisy fall shy of being regarded as irrational in social climates where implicit norms reinforce racial privileging while explicit norms denounce it. Further, examining the ‘collective utility’ of dogmatic beliefs and norms comprising part of the social architecture that covertly reinforces racial injustice may help to explain why it often seems to make so little diffe... (shrink)

The picture of classical antiquity most of us learned in school is framed in certain ways -- glossing over misogyny while omitting the seeds of feminist resistance. Many of today's harmful practices, like school dress codes, exploitation of the environment, and rape culture, have their roots in the ancient world. But in Antigone Rising, classicist Helen Morales reminds us that the myths have subversive power because they are told -- and read -- in different ways. Through these stories, whether (...) it's Antigone's courageous stand against tyranny or the indestructible Caeneus, who inspires trans and gender queer people today, Morales uncovers hidden truths about solidarity, empowerment, and catharsis. Antigone Rising offers a fresh understanding of the stories we take for granted, showing how we can reclaim them to challenge the status quo, spark resistance, and rail against unjust regimes. (shrink)

ROOTS OF WISDOM, Seventh Edition, invites students to explore universal and current philosophical issues through a rich tapestry of perspectives including the ideas and traditions of men and women from the West, Asia, the Americas, and Africa. No other book offers such breadth of multicultural coverage coupled with a clear, concise, and approachable writing style. Mitchell presents striking images to illustrate our diverse cultural inheritance, using fine art, cartoons, poetry, movies, current events, and popular music to bring the issues of (...) philosophy to life for students. This edition includes a new discussion of logos and mythos as laid out by Karen Armstrong, material on calculative vs. meditative thinking from Heidegger, expanded treatment of sovereignty and citizenship with new discussion on the so-called Arab Spring, and more. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

In the Early Modern era of encyclopedias, the Bible functioned as a tool for managing and organizing the superabundance of information. From Johann Alsted to Johann Scheuchzer, this paper traces the use of the Biblical encyclopedia and the ways that the Bible was deployed to control the data that flooded the world of Early Modern scholarship. In a variety of contexts, the Bible served as a structure for generating meaningful statements from informational noise. In turn, the use of the Bible (...) as a principle of organization would have profound implications for the status of the Bible in Early Modern scholarly culture. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes.

This contribution explores correctives to several errors that Thomas Nagel seems to presuppose in his seminal defence of scepticism about global justice. I rely on lessons learned and conventions surviving in West African contemporary social and moral contexts, where people engage as a matter of course in divergent, historically antagonistic cultural and political traditions. On this view, global justice is a work in progress—not a fixed univocal formula but an on-going collaborative effort, a project in perpetual renovation and inter-cultural reconsideration (...) by successive generations which presupposes a diversity of values and ways of sanctifying human life. I consider ways in which an ethics of care, as suggested by Virginia Held, might have been anticipated by the time-honoured norms of governance and political culture surviving in complex African polities, cultures which have withstood the corrosion of external colonialism since early modernity. How might iconically African, universally fundamental moral notions of decency and fairness find their way back into the global marketplace of diplomatic discourse and economic policy design?To demonstrate the need to navigate towards some consensus within the diversity of indigenous concepts associated with justice and good governance in Africa, I discuss the fiasco displayed in a widely celebrated proposal for exercising globally principles of justice in the Western liberal political tradition applied to remedy Africans’ notorious resource curse. (shrink)

Mix & Stir', this book's aim is an endeavour to understand art as being a panhuman phenomenon of all times and cultures; to steer away from the persistent Eurocentric/Western-centric viewpoint towards a transcultural and transnational interconnected model of exchange and processes of interculturalization. Mix & Stir wants to expand this landscape by bringing to the fore new, recalcitrant, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods and concerns that open up ways to approach art from a global perspective. Analogous (...) to a cookery book filled with recipes and instruction, Mix & Stir explores new outlooks on contemporary art from global perspectives. It intends to encourage studying art beyond national constraints, cultural dominances, and hierarchies: a voyage similar to that of culinary discovery. The book brings a variety of tastes and flavours to the table, and breaks new ground by allowing innovative, contrary, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods, and concerns to access art in its global dimensions. Researchers, curators and artists with a special interest in this topical issue were invited to present, develop, outline, and contemplate compelling frames of reference, both theoretical and artistic, in order to arrive at a true 'world art studies'. Their contributions are structured in seven thematic fields: Undecidability and Spectatorship, Collectives, Circulations, Exhibitions, Artists at Work, Postcolonial Perspectives, and Deep Art History. The reader is invited to explore the vast supply of dishes, to taste and test the aromas and to feast. (shrink)

Helen Steward argues that determinism is incompatible with agency itself--not only the special human variety of agency, but also powers which can be accorded to animal agents. She offers a distinctive, non-dualistic version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom.

This essay is an attempt to think through some of the problems of idolatry and sacrifice for the early modern period and more generally, for the constitution of religious and political community. In particular, it argues that the altars of the idols condensed two problems: first, the problem of communion, and specifically the Protestant ability to communicate with God; and second, the problem of distinction. At a time when the nature of the religious polity was in question, the analysis of (...) idolatry and sacrifice produced a conceptual structure for understanding, in anthropological fashion, the very constitution of religious and political community. In fact, this essay will suggest, this structure lives on, alive and well, among modern theorists seeking to diagnose the ailments of modernity. (shrink)

Helen Longino seeks to break the current deadlock in the ongoing wars between philosophers of science and sociologists of science--academic battles founded on disagreement about the role of social forces in constructing scientific knowledge. While many philosophers of science downplay social forces, claiming that scientific knowledge is best considered as a product of cognitive processes, sociologists tend to argue that numerous noncognitive factors influence what scientists learn, how they package it, and how readily it is accepted. Underlying this disagreement, (...) however, is a common assumption that social forces are a source of bias and irrationality. Longino challenges this assumption, arguing that social interaction actually assists us in securing firm, rationally based knowledge. This important insight allows her to develop a durable and novel account of scientific knowledge that integrates the social and cognitive. Longino begins with a detailed discussion of a wide range of contemporary thinkers who write on scientific knowledge, clarifying the philosophical points at issue. She then critically analyzes the dichotomous understanding of the rational and the social that characterizes both sides of the science studies stalemate and the social account that she sees as necessary for an epistemology of science that includes the full spectrum of cognitive processes. Throughout, her account is responsive both to the normative uses of the term knowledge and to the social conditions in which scientific knowledge is produced. Building on ideas first advanced in her influential book Science as Social Knowledge, Longino brings her account into dialogue with current work in social epistemology and science studies and shows how her critical social approach can help solve a variety of stubborn problems. While the book focuses on epistemological concerns related to the sociality of inquiry, Longino also takes up its implications for scientific pluralism. The social approach, she concludes, best allows us to retain a meaningful concept of knowledge in the face of theoretical plurality and uncertainty. (shrink)

Kindergarten Narratives on Froebelian Education showcases the latest scholarship and historical understandings concerning the casting of the kindergarten idea abroad: across cultures, continents and centuries. Each chapter reveals previously unknown narratives of intrepid endeavour, political pragmatism and pedagogical innovation that collectively provide insight into the transformation of Froebel's ideas on early education into a global phenomenon. Across global contexts, each chapter will present a case study of the ideas scattering abroad, illustrative of the movement of ideas, curricula and pedagogical change; (...) in effect taking the kindergarten beyond the geographies and pedagogies of its German beginnings and borders. Chapters draw on historical examples of Froebelian education from The Netherlands, New Zealand, Japan, Sweden, the UK and the USA. In the journal History of Education in 2006, Froebelian history scholar Professor Kevin J. Brehony (1948-2013) lamented the 'relative neglect' of the history of early years education at the same time there was a heightened global social and political interest in educating the young child. In this book, an international team of contributors respond to Brehony's challenge that historical perspectives can play a role in current debates and suggest ways historical narratives might inform policies and practices in twenty-first century early childhood education, care settings and contexts. Reconnecting past lessons and insights with present and future concerns for early education, young children and their place in society, this important collection also includes an historical timeline charting the spread of Frobelian education ideas and kindergartens across the world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.4 (2006) 561-569 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Introduction: Thinking about Idols in Early Modern EuropeJonathan Sheehan University of MichiganAbstractThis essay is an introduction to a collection of six articles on early modern debates about idolatry. If the debates started in religion, however, they quickly generated political, philosophical, anthropological, and even scientific corollaries. These may appear to be abstract and theoretical questions, but (...) they produced a complex set of answers with important consequences for many people. To see what was at stake, we need look no further than the New World and its missions. If the most frequently cited texts in the collection of articles are Bartolomé de las Casas and José de Acosta, it is because the New World forced the reality of idolatry onto the wider European stage.When does an image become a god? The early Christian apologist Minucius Felix had an answer. A log "is cut, is hewn, is planed," and is still no god. A stone "is sculptured, and is polished by some abandoned man" and still is no god. A sculpture "is set up, and even yet it is not a god." But, "lo, it is adorned, it is consecrated, it is prayed to—then at length it is a god, when man has chosen it to be so, and for the purpose has dedicated it." 1If only it were that easy. Felix offered just half of the story as David Freedberg has argued. Veneration does not produce that unhealthy power that idols exert over the attentive viewer. Rather, the opposite is true: idols are venerated because they exert this power. All images seem to contain at least traces of it. They draw our eye with ineluctable command, and force themselves on our attention. The image is just a representation, of course. It has been made by humans and can only ever gesture to an absent presence. And yet, images are also effective. Their ability to move us depends on "the possibility of fusion" between image and prototype. The crucifix is always only wood or stone, but its power comes from what might be called, with Freedberg, a "sacred contagion" that penetrates from behind the veil of representation. Indeed, its value as a religious object depends on this [End Page 561] contagion. Worshipers know that those tears shed by the Virgin in anguish at Christ's broken body are, in reality, just paint over mute stone and wood. Nevertheless, they are moved by those specks of material. If not, why have a statue in the first place? "The miraculous object has an effectiveness that proceeds as if the original body were present," Freedberg notes, "but the difficulty lies in cognitively grasping that 'as if.'" 2 Men do not choose to invest images with power over their imaginations and intellects. Even before images are prayed to, before they are consecrated, they already have that power.Whatever one thinks of the phenomenology of images, there is no doubt that this super-human power of idols obsessed many people in the early modern period. An object that had no power to inspire attention and devotion was hardly a threat, after all. The enormous waves of iconoclasm that swept across Europe—Germany in the 1520s, Scotland in the late 1550s, the Netherlands in the 1560s, England in the 1640s—were not directed at decorative tiles, pews, or doorstops. They were directed exactly at those things that made the devout feel the presence of the divine. And no one was quicker to identify these powerful images than the breakers themselves, who, in their extreme acts of rage, confirmed the effects that these supposedly dead bits of wood and stone exerted over them. The man in Ulm in 1534 who defecated into "the mouth of an effigy of Christ" demonstrated his extreme revulsion at what was, in reality, merely a lump of brute material. 3 Perhaps, if asked, he would have insisted that his scatological exuberance was designed to show definitively the impotence of the... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Gorgias presents us with a mystery and an enigma: Who was Callicles? And, what was Plato trying to accomplish in this dialogue? While searching for the identity of Callicles, we gain a better understanding of Plato's purpose for this dialogue, which is to use justice as a means for staking out the boundaries of four types of rhetoric. This article argues that Plato uses the Gorgias to reveal the deficiencies of sophistic nomos-centered rhetorics and an unjust sophistic phusis-centered (...) rhetoric, opening the door for a “true” rhetoric that he articulates in the Phaedrus and a universal justice based on virtue that he describes in the Republic. (shrink)