This Handbook addresses Chaucer's poetry in the context of several disciplines, including late medieval philosophy and science, Mediterranean culture, comparative European literature, vernacular theology, and popular devotion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Imagining the Moor in Medieval PortugalJosiah Blackmore (bio)For medieval Portugal, Africa was familiar and strange, a known place across the modest parcel of the Mediterranean between the Algarve and Ceuta, and, farther south, an unknown expanse of land that glimmered black under the equatorial sun. And for Portugal, like for Spain, Africa was part of the demographics and history of Iberian culture in the figure of the Moor, at (...) once an “other” and a closer, more intimate presence. Jeffrey J. Cohen reminds us of the “cultural work” of the Saracen (one of the medieval terminological possibilities for “Moor”), “whose dark skin and diabolical physiognomy were the western Middle Ages’ most familiar, most exorbitant embodiment of racial alterity” [189]. Cohen argues, therefore, that the Saracen (grosso modo) existed in a network of literary and ideological productions of western Europe; in the case of Iberia, the Moor was sometimes but not always a Saracen and was both a figure of alterity and of familiarity and sameness, less an aprioristic other and more of a figure that could be variously othered as a marker of boundaries including “race,” spirituality, and sexuality. While this essay does not take on the idea of racial alterity per se, it does assume the notion that in the literary culture of Portugal blackness, in some manner, informed constructions of the Moor. My purpose here is to delineate an understanding of the Moor in medieval Portugal as a construct that resists easy categorizations as an undifferentiated figure of otherness, a consideration that culminates with the work of Gomes Eanes de Zurara (1410?–1474?), the first chronicler of Portuguese exploration into (west) Africa. To this end, I will briefly consider the Moor in representative examples from the livros de linhagens (genealogical books) and the cantigas d’escarnho e de mal dizer (poetry of mockery and insult, hereafter abbreviated CEM), not so much in order to trace a direct influence between these texts and the work of Zurara but to provide an idea of how the Moor was variously fashioned in earlier texts. The analysis here is not exhaustive nor conclusive but suggestive, and is meant to indicate how the Moor—and the idea of the Moor—in Portugal can add to critical conversations on the imaginative and ideological constructions of the Moor and of Africa and its inhabitants.The formulations of national and cultural identities in European texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance1 that in some way engage Africa and the African have increasingly [End Page 27] and understandably become an object of interest among literary and cultural theorists. One of the advances in recent years of this critical work is the freeing of the Moor from the strictures of the “self/other” binary that permeated earlier scholarly work on Europeans and their others, especially in the field of imperial/colonial studies or in the study of the conflictive representations of Moors and Europeans in genres such as medieval epic.2 In the medieval field, Cohen’s work on the Saracen is one good example of this more theoretically suggestive approach, since Cohen explores the work of representation as it dovetails with the universalizing claims of psychoanalysis. Suzanne Conklin Akbari’s essay usefully reminds us that the medieval world considered itself as existing in three parts, thus making problematic modern applications of binaries as supposedly informing a medieval perception of “Asian Orient and European Occident” [20]. Other studies, though concerned with postmedieval literatures and histories, also explore the cultural work of the Moor. Such, for instance, is the case with Emily C. Bartels’s articles on the Moor in Shakespeare. Bartels charts the flexibilities and inconsistencies of the term “Moor” in Renaissance England [“Making More” 434], noting especially its “racial” claims. In analyzing the place of postcolonialism as it might inform critical work on Africa in the Renaissance, Bartels questions the model that postcolonial studies assumes as underlying its own practice by arguing that “[postcolonial critiques] continue … to recreate the history of silenced voices through only one model of cultural exchange: one in which European domination is both the motivating force and the inevitable outcome” [“Othello and Africa” 46].These representative studies of the Moor tag... (shrink)

While artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly applied for decision-making processes, ethical decisions pose challenges for AI applications. Given that humans cannot always agree on the right thing to do, how would ethical decision-making by AI systems be perceived and how would responsibility be ascribed in human-AI collaboration? In this study, we investigate how the expert type (human vs. AI) and level of expert autonomy (adviser vs. decider) influence trust, perceived responsibility, and reliance. We find that participants consider humans to be (...) more morally trustworthy but less capable than their AI equivalent. This shows in participants’ reliance on AI: AI recommendations and decisions are accepted more often than the human expert’s. However, AI team experts are perceived to be less responsible than humans, while programmers and sellers of AI systems are deemed partially responsible instead. (shrink)

John Hick’s theory concerning plurality of religions is an ontologic pluralism according to which all religions are authentic ways for man to attain the "real an sich". Gods of religions are real as perceived and veridical hallucinations; while the “real an sich” has ineffable substantial and trans-categorical properties. Hick’s view suffers from several problems. As a second order analysis of religions, Hick’s view is not a correct one. To reject naturalism, it falls into an epistemological circle, where distinction between formal (...) and substantial properties fades away. It seems that Hick is captured by a category mistake in the presentation of his own theory concerning authenticity of all religions to attain the "real an sich". (shrink)

There is a quotation in the Holly Quran from the book of Psalms in 21:105: “The righteous shall inherit the earth”. A similar sentence can be found in Psalm37:29: צַדִּיקִים יִֽירְשׁוּ־אָרֶץ וְיִשְׁכְּנוּ לָעַד עָלֶֽיהָ. A comparison between these verses would illustrate that “صالح” is the Quranic equivalent of the Hebrew word “צַדִּיקִ”. This equivalence would allow us to compare usages of “صالح” in Quran and “צַדִּיקִ” in the book of Psalms. This comparative study will show that: (a) on the one (...) hand, “צַדִּיקִ” has been used in Psalms either as an attribute of God or as a description of some peoples and on the other, “صالح” has been used in Quran for describing either some peoples or their acts, (b) These two words have similar usages in Psalms and Quran to the extent that they have been used for the description of some peoples and (c) the Quranopsalmic use of this notion can be linked with the concept of “divine selection(istifā)”. (shrink)

Translator's Preface LA LOGIQUE DE HUSSERL, etude sur "Logique for- melle et logique transcendentale" the original of the present translation, was published ...

This Article argues that a particular political theory underlies the judicial interpretation of ‘equality before the law’. The Canadian Courts at the date of writing have elaborated two tests for the signification of ‘equality before the law’. The Article traces the two tests to the utilitarian political theory outlined by John Stuart Mill. The one test sets out the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ or ‘social interests’ as the criterion for adjudicating equality. The second test identifies the reasonable relationship (...) of an alleged statutory classification vis-à-vis the statutory purpose. The Article offers an alternative approach based upon democratic theory. Examples of the two tests and the alternative approach are drawn from judicial constitutional interpretations in the USA and Canada. (shrink)

Abstract: William Conklin takes on Hegel’s interpretation of Sophocles’ Antigone in this essay. Hegel asked what makes human laws human and what makes divine laws divine? After outlining Hegel’s interpretation of Antigone in the light of this issue, Conklin argues that we must address what makes human law law? and what makes divine law law? Taking his cue from Michel Foucault’s “What is an Author?”, the key to understanding Sophocles’ Antigone and Hegel’s interpretation to it, according to (...) class='Hi'>Conklin, is the relationship between legal authority and an author. Antigone’s divine law opposes Creon’s human law in terms of whether the sense of legal authority presupposes an author. Antigone’s tribe recognises divine laws as nested in an impersonal Fate or Moira common to the Helenes as experienced through rituals and other personal experiences. Such an unwritten law lacks an author “whose origin we know not when”. The city-state’s citizens recognize authority in terms of whether a law has a source in a juridical representer of an invisible author. The invisible author is the city-state external to the representers. The representers interpret human laws in a manner which tries to access the invisible author. What becomes important is that philosophical consciousness observes how the characteristics of the two senses of legal authority clash. (shrink)

This paper presents new data on the representation of women who publish in 25 top philosophy journals as ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report for the years 2004, 2014, and 2015. It also provides a new analysis of Schwitzgebel’s 1955–2015 journal data. The paper makes four points while providing an overview of the current state of women authors in philosophy. In all years and for all journals, the percentage of female authors was extremely low, in the range of 14–16%. The (...) percentage of women authors is less than the percentage of women faculty in different ranks and at different kinds of institutions. In addition, there is great variation across individual journals, and the discrepancy between women authors and women faculty appears to be different in different subfields. Interestingly, journals which do not practice anonymous review seem to have a higher percentage of women authors than journals which practice double anonymous or triple anonymous review. This paper also argues that we need more data on academic publishing to better understand whether this can explain why there are so few full-time female faculty in philosophy, since full-time hiring and tenuring practices presumably depend on a candidate’s academic publishing. (shrink)

The Notion of ‘civilisation’ in European and post-Enlightenment writings has recently been reassessed. Critics have especially reread the works of Immanuel Kant by highlighting his racial categories. However, this Paper argues that something is missing in this contemporary literature: namely, the role of the European legal culture in the development of a racial and ethnic hierarchy of societies. The clue to this missing element rests in how ‘civilisation’ has been understood. This Paper examines how one of the leading jurists of (...) the 19th and 20th centuries, George W. Hegel (1770-1831), took for granted a sense of a legal culture that excluded indigenous inhabitants of the Americas as legal persons worthy of legal protection. -/- Such an exclusionary legal culture represented a crucial feature of ‘civilisation’ according to Hegel. This Paper identifies a series of factors which Hegel highlighted as instrumental in constituting a civilised society: Bildung, an ethos, a written legal culture, a self-creative author (the state), territorial knowledge, and a hierarchy of societies. Hegel emphasized the need of jurists to analytically “leap” from a traditional society to a legal culture before the jurist could identify a law. The traditional societies of the Americas, according to Hegel, were considered lawless because they lacked a European sense of a legal culture. Why Hegel characterised traditional communities as lacking a legal culture is then explained. The Paper ends by suggesting that the features of a legal culture that Hegel highlights remain with us today. (shrink)

Connects the work of Merleau-Ponty to environmental studies.

_Philosophically explores the topic of emotional depth._.

Amidst increasing concerns about harmful ecological change brought about by human actions upon the earth, environmental thinkers and activists attempt to envision human relations with the earth in new ways. Such thinking, however, frequently comes up against an inability to conceive of the more-than-human world as something towards which we can empathize or sympathize or to which we owe justice. As such, a powerful force in environmental discourse sees this problem as intractable and sees ecological change as a problem to (...) be solved and the future of the earth as something to be managed rather than to explore new forms of relations with. This chapter explores Robert Waters’ art project uncover RECOVER in terms of this problem. His project activates a reflection on human life and social relations that fosters social healing and transformation. Is there a way to activate a similar process, but in terms of a natural healing of the earth and a social transformation of our relations to the earth? In considering this question, I explore Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel’s concept of “reparation ecology” and analyse how the idea of the Anthropocene blocks our capacities to think the reparation of human relations with the more-than-human world. I suggest that that Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concepts of becoming and sympathy offer a way of thinking human relations with earth others that could generate ethical and political responses to ecological change where the more-than-human world is considered as a co-participant and collaborator in human action and a subject to whom justice is owed. Sympathy with the non- human world acknowledges that human capacities are constituted by non-human materials and affects that do not respect the boundaries that tend to frame our thinking. Rather than continuing to allow our traditional assumptions about the separation of humans and nature to shape our relations to non-human world, imagining the human in new ways makes possible new forms of relations with the earth. I argue that attending to the ways that humans co-become with the non-human world affords opportunities for transforming human relations with the more-than-human world by fostering spaces for the emergence of new ecological sensibilities and potentials for social-ecological justice. (shrink)

This research aims to explore the relationship between corporate governance and CSR: What are the major factors that play a direct role in the establishment of this relationship? How does context and institutional background impact upon the relationship between CSR and Governance? Using in-depth semi-structured interviews from two types of governance systems in three countries over three years, this study has demonstrated that in practice, within different settings, CSR is being used both as a strategy as well as a reaction (...) to different drivers. We call this adaptive governance where governance can be defined as a flexible system of action incorporating strategic and monitoring activities that determines the way a company enacts its responsibilities to its shareholders and stakeholders and which is determined at any given time by the interrelationship of institutional drivers and behavioural norms. Governance systems and their interrelationships with CSR are demonstrated as fluid according to the national and institutional context, economic situation and industry impact. In the eyes of practitioners corporate governance includes both structural and behavioural factors as well as responsibilities and actions towards shareholders and stakeholders. Contextual factors that this research highlights to be important to the incorporation of CSR into governance include the economic environment, national governance system, regulation and soft law, shareholders, national culture, behavioural norms and industry impacts. Hypotheses on the impact of institutional contexts, industry impacts and economic situations on different types of CSR actions are proposed for further research. (shrink)

"In recent years, we have grown accustomed to philosophical language that is intensely self-conscious and rhetorically thick, often tragic in tone. It is enlivening to read Bergson, who exerts so little rhetorical pressure while exacting such a substantial effort of thought.... Bergson's texts teach the reader to let go of entrenched intellectual habits and to begin to think differently—to think in time.... Too much and too little have been said about Bergson. Too much, because of the various appropriations of his (...) thought. Too little, because the work itself has not been carefully studied in recent decades."—from Thinking in Time Henri Bergson, whose philosophical works emphasized motion, time, and change, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. His work remains influential, particularly in the realms of philosophy, cultural studies, and new media studies. In Thinking in Time, Suzanne Guerlac provides readers with the conceptual and contextual tools necessary for informed appreciation of Bergson's work. Guerlac's straightforward philosophical expositions of two Bergson texts, Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory, focus on the notions of duration and memory—concepts that are central to the philosopher's work. Thinking in Time makes plain that it is well worth learning how to read Bergson effectively: his era and our own share important concerns. Bergson's insistence on the opposition between the automatic and the voluntary and his engagement with the notions of "the living," affect, and embodiment are especially germane to discussions of electronic culture. (shrink)

This article provides the first large-scale, longitudinal study examining publication rates by gender in philosophy journals. We find that from 1900 to 1990 the proportion of women authorships in philosophy increased, but it has plateaued since the 1990s. Top Philosophy journals publish the lowest proportion of women, and anonymous review does not increase the proportion publishing in these journals. Value Theory journals do not publish articles by women in proportion to their presence in the subdiscipline. Although the proportion of women (...) authorships in philosophy has increased over time, measurable disparities persist. (shrink)

After invention of writing, this new innovation jointed images, and writing together with painting became able to transfer human’s information and ideas. During the Islamic period, simultaneously with the widespread use of paper in painting and calligraphy, a kind of painting developed that is called as miniature.The illustrated inscription of Iran in Islamic period have different type of political,cultural historical and etc information .The informations are important to historians ,archaeologists and other scientists. The Purpose of writing this essay is to (...) introduce the pictorial inscription “Shahname of Baysongor Merza” as a historical, archaeological source of taymourid period. In addition, importance of this pictorial inscription in Archaeology and History interpretions will be expressed. (shrink)

The aim of the present study is to propose an approach to legal translation quality so as to address the idiosyncrasies in legal studies and to confront the challenges and flaws of previous paradigms and models of translation quality assessment. The present approach is associated with the micro-macro textual, contextual, and legal components/variables in the pursuit of an adequate strategy through elaborating the decision making process for translation. The elements of the decision making process remain constant between translation relevancy/brief, and (...) the translation product in the source text analysis, reformulation and revision stages. Translation competence, translation product, and the translation decision making process are all the evaluative standards for both quality controllers and translators. Also, this study scrutinizes the impact of translation quality assessment involving professional and training contexts besides managerial quality. In the upshot, this approach has the potential to reduce subjectivity in the quality of legal translation based on particular methodologies. The proposed framework assists the need for the evaluation of the quality of legal translation to boost the quality benchmarks in the professional environment. (shrink)

At the time of his premature death at the age of forty-three, the written output of Ali Shariati was remarkable. He wrote in a variety of styles and forms and read extensively from vastly distinct literary traditions. While in recent years, Anglophone scholarship on his work has situated him rightfully among critical anticolonial thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, his contribution to a worldly reimagining of comparative literature has not received the same attention. This essay offers a framing of his work (...) within the field of comparative literature, with a particular focus on his adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. By studying his mode of engagement with this canonical text, this essay provides an introductory analysis to the comparative literary practice of a towering Iranian intellectual. It can also serve as a model for a comparative literature practicum that privileges the work of a writer from the Global South. (shrink)

Ethical choice paralysis is a major barrier to the implementation of ethical design materials into the technology design process. Choice paralysis seems to result from tacit background assumptions propagated by humanistic modes of critical inquiry. I propose that one way of obviating choice paralysis at the professional level is to educate STEM students on how to select ethical design materials for a project. In order to advance that endeavor, I propose some obligations especially for humanistically trained STEM ethics educators. Specifically, (...) I propose that these include obligations to affirm that students can indeed select workable ethical design materials for their projects, to avoid using humanistic modes of critical ethical inquiry when instructing on how to make those selections, and to note that maximizing for ideally ethical results may not be a primary selection criterion. (shrink)

Throughout his life, German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) recorded his experiences and reflections in diaries and correspondence. This comprehensive biography is the first to explore these extensive and candid private writings that illuminate not only Jaspers’ life and relationships but also the ideas he proposed in Way to Wisdom, The Question of German Guilt, and many other published works. Suzanne Kirkbright provides a sensitive and intimate portrait of the philosopher whose work on truth, personal integrity, and the capacity for (...) communication contrasted acutely with the erosion of such values in Germany in his lifetime. She describes how Jaspers’ Jewish wife, Gertrud, influenced his thinking, the loss in 1937 of his professorship at Heidelberg University, and his relationship with such celebrated colleagues as Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. Kirkbright examines the unshakeable ethical content of Jaspers’ philosophy and demonstrates his unique and scrupulous personal adherence to the philosophical principles he espoused. (shrink)

Has exclusion of Darwin's views on evolution distorted 20c philosophy? Cunningham suggests a reappraisal.

: This essay examines the increasing commodification of the body with respect to tissues, gametes, and embryos. Such commodification contributes to a diminishing sense of human personhood on an individual level, even as it erodes commitments to human flourishing at the societal level. After the case for social harm resulting from the increasing commodification of the body is made, the question becomes whether that harm is best remedied by following any of three approaches by which government traditionally seeks to promote (...) the flourishing of its citizens. The author concludes that it is not, and that what is needed is a pragmatic and somewhat casuistic approach to the regulation of contested commodities--that which legal scholar Margaret Jane Radin calls "incomplete commodification.". (shrink)

Nature, a topic central to art history, is concurrently a dominant concept in contemporary art, art theory and its related disciplines such as cultural theory, philosophy, aesthetic theory and environmental studies. The project Naturally Hypernatural questions lines of tradition and predetermined categories that coexist with the topic of nature. Currently, nature in art surpasses the simple depiction of art as a material or object. To clarify and analyze the interrelations between nature and art is the aim of the project Naturally (...) Hypernatural. Concepts of Nature - the first volume of this project - argues that contemporary art is predominantly concerned with concepts of nature regarding the depth of their implications in order to reveal and analyze their internal structure. (shrink)

This article examines questions of trust in cinema through the lens of Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010). With its self-referential allusion to the mechanical “eye” of a camera, a stage-managed fantasy embedded within its plot and image of a dark lighthouse, Shutter Island explores its spectators' and its own cinematic sense of suspicion. The plot revolves around a protagonist who has locked himself out of certain memories and into a fantasy world. The article links pathological and therapeutic aspects of trust (...) with interpersonal and institutional trust issues in ways that blur distinctions between trusting others and trusting oneself, and shows how reliant each is on the other. Construing trust as a type of participant attitude and highlighting techniques used to render it cinematically, the article tracks its emergence and erosion, both in terms of the diegesis and its bearing on film spectatorship. As a post-classical commentary on film-making, Shutter Island is viewed as intricately exemplifying what Robert Sinnerbrink (2016) describes as an action-driven film with “a highly reflective consciousness of cinematic spectatorship” (p. 70), as well as what Thomas Elsaesser (2009) describes as a “mind-game film”. To make sense of its ending, which may strike viewers as baffling and unnerving, and show how the protagonist's seemingly irrational decision is part of its film-philosophical point, traumatic disturbances in subjectivity and “monstrosities” depicted in the film are linked to Jean Epstein's notion of “something monstrous” in cinematic imagery. The protagonist's deliberately chosen fate is interpreted as a reparative gesture, expressing a desire for psychological healing and a way of helping him to marshal and recover a semblance of moral order and integrity under demoralizing circumstances. (shrink)

BackgroundExisting clinical ethics support (CES) instruments are considered useful. However, users report obstacles in using them in daily practice. Including end users and other stakeholders in developing CES instruments might help to overcome these limitations. This study describes the development process of a new ethics support instrument called CURA, a low-threshold four-step instrument focused on nurses and nurse assistants working in palliative care. MethodWe used a participatory development design. We worked together with stakeholders in a Community of Practice throughout the (...) study. Potential end users (nurses and nurse assistants in palliative care) used CURA in several pilots and provided us with feedback which we used to improve CURA.ResultsWe distinguished three phases in the development process. Phase one, Identifying Needs, focused on identifying stakeholder and end user needs and preferences, learning from existing CES instruments, their development and evaluation, and identify gaps. Phase two, Development, focused on designing, developing, refining and tailoring the instrument on the basis of iterative co-creation. Phase three, Dissemination, focused on implementation and dissemination. The instrument, CURA, is a four-step low-threshold instrument that fosters ethical reflection.ConclusionsParticipatory development is a valuable approach for developing clinical ethics support instruments. Collaborating with end users and other stakeholders in our development study has helped to meet the needs and preferences of end users, to come up with strategies to refine the instrument in order to enhance its feasibility, and to overcome reported limitations of existing clinical ethics instruments. (shrink)

This paper presents data on the representation of women at 98 philosophy departments in the United States, which were ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) in 2015 as well as all of those schools on which data from 2004 exist. The paper makes four points in providing an overview of the state of the field. First, all programs reveal a statistically significant increase in the percentage of women tenured/tenure-track faculty, since 2004. Second, out of the 98 US philosophy departments (...) selected for evaluation by Julie Van Camp in 2004, none in 2015 has 50% women philosophy faculty overall, while one has 50% women who are tenured/tenure track. Third, as of 2015, there is a clear pyramidal shape to the discipline: Women are better represented as Assistant than Associate and as Associate than Full professors. Fourth, women philosophy faculty, especially those who are tenured/tenure track, are better represented at Non-PGR ranked programs than at PGR ranked and PGR Top-20 programs in 2015. (shrink)