This essay explores how economic theory and historical inquiry were brought together for one of the first times in modern political thought in Books II and III of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It shows how the theory of capital found in Book II provides a perspective for thinking about historical development and political institutions that is in sharp contrast with the historical record traced out in Book III. Smith's solution to the problem of reconciling economic theory and history lies (...) in a complex understanding of the nature of rational economic behaviour and how it has been affected by uncertainty and institutional development in human history. Embedded in Smith's political economy is not only a new theory of economic life, but a new political understanding of the importance of history to contemporary political life. (shrink)

In this bold interdisciplinary work, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that asceticism has played a major role in shaping Western ideas of the body, writing, ethics, ...

In a critical scene deeply troubled by questions of justice and responsibility, and beset by political and moral scandals, no issue in recent years has been more urgent or more unsettled than the question of ethics. Geoffrey Galt Harpham, whose previous book, The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism, was one of the first to announce the critical renewal of ethics, attempts in this new book to explain why ethical questions resist settlement. He urges a new account of ethics (...) not as a stable set of principles, values, or prescriptions, but as a variable factor of "imperativity" immanent in language, analysis, narrative, and creation. (shrink)

In this volume Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues for a deeply original view of the relations among ethics, literary study, and critical theory. In thirteen lucid, provocative and often witty essays, Harpham rejects both the optimism of those who see ethics as a way of solving problems about values or principles and the pessimism of those who regard ethics as primarily a cover story for politics. Ethics, he claims, has been seen by its most powerful theorists as a discourse (...) of “shadows,” a characteristic disturbance of thought in the presence of the other, a source of doubts rather than certainty. At the same time, however, ethics includes an element of violence, even blindness and “fundamentalism,” a crushing drive to clarity and resolution. Contemporary thinkers, Harpham argues, have been unwilling to accept this account of ethics and the obligations it would impose, and have, as a consequence, cultivated social and intellectual marginality as the only site of virtue, the only position in which critical intelligence is at home. They have, he contends, failed to “imagine the center,” to take up the true intellectual and worldly challenge of ethics. Tracking these issues and energies in debates about enlightenment, the politics of the aesthetic, the nature of rationality, and the worldly contexts of theory, Harpham demonstrates in compelling detail the ubiquity and true difficulty of ethics. _Shadows of Ethics_ also revives a neglected genre, the intellectual portrait, with extended meditations on Jacques Derrida, Martha Nussbaum, Fredric Jameson, Geoffrey Hartman, and Noam Chomsky. The book will interest literary critics, philosophers, cultural critics, and all those interested in the ethical character of intellectual work. (shrink)

The Western tradition has been in part defined by a characteristic bargain in which pain is "traded" for knowledge. An ascetic resistance to temptation, or renunciation of desire, is the condition for achieving the truth. This paper examines how the exchange is negotiated in three texts, including The Life of Antony by St. Athanasius , The Future of Science by Ernest Renan , and That the World May Know by James Dawes . In each, an act of voluntary renunciation produces (...) an increase in knowledge and in moral stature. (shrink)

How did the concept of language come to dominate modern intellectual history? In Language Alone , Geoffrey Galt Harpham provides at once the most comprehensive survey and most telling critique of the pervasive role of language in modern thought. He shows how thinkers in such diverse fields as philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and literary theory have made progress by referring their most difficult theoretical problems to what they presumed were the facts of language. Through a provocative reassessment of major thinkers (...) on the idea of language-Saussure, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Rorty, and Chomsky, among them-and detailed accounts of the discourses of ethics and ideology in particular, Harpham demonstrates a remarkable consensus among intellectuals of the past century and beyond that philosophical and other problems can best be understood as linguistic problems. And furthermore, that a science of language can therefore illuminate them. Conspicuously absent from this consensus, he shows, is any consideration of contemporary linguistics, or any awareness of the growing agreement among linguists that the nature of language as such cannot be known. Ultimately, Harpham argues, the thought of language has dominated modern intellectual history because of its singular capacity to serve as a proxy for a host of concerns, questions, and anxieties-our place in the order of things, our rights and obligations, our nature or essence-that resist a strictly rational formulation. Language Alone will interest literary critics, philosophers, and anyone with an interest in the uses of language in contemporary thought. (shrink)

Steven Pinker argues that rationality represents both a “patrimony,” a human endowment exhibited even in the behaviors of “primitive” societies, and a powerful force for good. At the same time, Pinker describes rationality as a “scarce” resource in the contemporary world, one that must be defined, defended, and deployed against the many destructive forms of irrationality to which we are prone. In order to avert a looming “Tragedy of the Commons,” Pinker proposes that rationality should be considered not just a (...) cognitive benefit but a moral imperative. In doing so, however, he argues against the Enlightenment tradition in which the individual, rather than the “Commons,” is the final arbiter. The fundamental tension in Pinker’s argument is between a “primitive” process of collective reasoning that produces a stable but nonprogressive society and a “modern” orientation toward the individual that has brought us to the brink of political chaos and ecological disaster. (shrink)

Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now makes a powerful argument that by every measure, the conditions of human life have been improving steadily for the past 200 years. This improvement can be attributed not just to the spread of the principles of enlightenment announced in the eighteenth century but also to the evolved properties of the human mind, which have been liberated by modernity. Pinker writes in support of this development and in opposition to the ideological and academic resistances to it. His (...) book has itself generated resistance among those he criticizes, and while many of these criticisms are unwarranted, Pinker's book raises serious questions that it does not fully address. (shrink)

The connection between literature and ethical pedagogy, intuited by many, is notoriously difficult to describe. In this essay, I discuss three ways that literature connects with ethics. The first is through form, which involves a passage or transition from “is” to “ought”; through literary language, which disturbs the habitual connections between words and things and reveals fissures over by custom and ideology; and third, through the representation of life in its contingencies, which reveals the limitations of theories, precepts, and abstractions.

Michael Tomasello's “natural histories” of thinking and human morality argue for strong connections between advanced human attributes and the capabilities of nonhuman primates, even as they establish profound differences between them. The core of his argument, the “shared intentionality hypothesis,” asserts that what is unique to the human species is the capacity for collaborative behaviors involving mutualism and reciprocity. This hypothesis has serious implications not only for the understanding of the human species but also for such apparently unrelated fields as (...) literary studies. (shrink)

The subject of the imagination represents a challenge to all disciplines, but especially to philosophy and anthropology, which take human cognition and behavior as their subjects. The ubiquity of imagination in all human activities suggests that this faculty is at the core of human species identity, but such ubiquity may also indicate that the term is insufficiently precise to be useful as a description of some particular feature of the human mind.

Before the establishment in the early 1800s of France's Sûreté Nationale and England's Scotland Yard, the detection of crimes was generally regarded as supernatural work, but the rise of modern science allowed mere mortals to systematize and categorize events—and thus to solve crimes. Reducing the amount of crime, however, did not reduce the fear of crime, which actually grew in the late-nineteenth century as the result of globalization and media sensationalism. Literary detectives offered an imaginary cure for an imaginary disease. (...) Sherlock Holmes, the most famous literary detective, retained many of the characteristics that earlier ages had attributed to superhuman “detectives”; a wondrous and a social being, he nonetheless was able to reassure an anxious public that even the most heinous crimes could be solved. His ability to calm the fears of the globalizing Victorian era was an early version of what later became a proliferation of imaginary characters serving similar public functions. (shrink)

Before the establishment in the early 1800s of France's Sûreté Nationale and England's Scotland Yard, the detection of crimes was generally regarded as supernatural work, but the rise of modern science allowed mere mortals to systematize and categorize events—and thus to solve crimes. Reducing the amount of crime, however, did not reduce the fear of crime, which actually grew in the late-nineteenth century as the result of globalization and media sensationalism. Literary detectives offered an imaginary cure for an imaginary disease. (...) Sherlock Holmes, the most famous literary detective, retained many of the characteristics that earlier ages had attributed to superhuman “detectives”; a wondrous and a social being, he nonetheless was able to reassure an anxious public that even the most heinous crimes could be solved. His ability to calm the fears of the globalizing Victorian era was an early version of what later became a proliferation of imaginary characters serving similar public functions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ornament, Fantasy, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century French LiteratureGeoffrey Galt HarphamOrnament, Fantasy, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century French Literature, by Rae Beth Gordon; xvii & 288pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, $42.50.As Rae Beth Gordon notes in the introduction to her stimulating and original book, ornament, which is devoted to grace, charm, and attractiveness, becomes the object of suspicion and moralizing disdain when it exceeds what numerous commentators refer to (...) as “its proper limits.” The limits are set low by those who wish to maintain the integrity of the center—the melodic line, the text, the main image, the literal sense, the consensual meaning—against the disruptive and excessive forces of the margin. Transgress the margin to which ornament is properly confined, as artists in virtually every medium available in nineteenth-century France did, and a series of crucial binary distinctions collapses, threatening not only the center, but ornament itself, which is defined by its limits, its position on a well-defined edge.What distinguished nineteenth-century French literature was, from Gordon’s point of view, a sustained interest, among critics as well as artists, in cultivating the creative possibilities opened up by compromising the boundary between ornament and its other. So fertile and successful has this project proven to be that today’s postmodernity has not come to an end of it, continuing to discover its most interesting possibilities on the margin. And within the field of art history, we see that ornament, once widely denigrated as the source of confusion, has become virtually orthodox; as the title of Ernst Gombrich’s book on the subject indicates, ornament is now held to appeal to and gratify The Sense of Order.Gordon takes advantage of the posthistory of her subject, applying to studies of Nerval, Mallarmé, Gautier, Huysmans a theoretical armature drawn from the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Winnicott, and Lacan. Drawing attention to a dimension of meaning or intention that has been “suppressed or excluded from the central field,” ornament, she argues, “anticipates the way psychiatry, perceptual psychology, and aesthetics converge in the fin de siècle.” Ornament, in other words, is cognate with the unconscious, and its prevalence in fin de siècle art and literature may be considered a sign of a certain cultural receptivity to the discoveries Freud was about to make, the “French” modality of a phenomenon to which Freud would give a “Viennese” formulation. [End Page 364]It is fashionable, especially in medieval studies, to focus on the disruptively counter-doctrinal potential of marginal elements such as gargoyles or textual illuminations. But Gordon generally argues another kind of case altogether, one that has, perhaps, even greater contemporary interest. Ornament, she claims, discloses the essential principles of aesthetic production. The expressive power of line, the “sense of order” to which it appeals, the subordination of literal depiction to design, the primacy of relationships over individual figures—all these reflect, as Wilhelm Worringer was explicitly to claim in 1908, energies deriving from the very beginnings of art itself.Thus, when principles and figures of ornament began to invade the “sense” or “business” of the text itself, as they did in nineteenth-century French literature, what is happening is not only a radical adjustment of a certain conception of ornament, but a large movement of return. Art becomes under these circumstances both decadent and primordial, devoting itself to both meaningless proliferation and to “pure art.” Gordon tracks this ambivalent movement with very considerable assurance and learning in an argument as sinuous as the ornamental line itself. The chapters on Nerval (“Lace as Textual Metaphor”) and Gautier (“Trills, Frills, and Decorative Frames for the Object of Desire”) are particularly illuminating, inspired by a kind of theoretical wit that does justice to their objects. Gordon is somewhat less successful in communicating the relevance to Mallarmé of Lacan, the exposition of whom—of which?—is laborious. But the responsibility probably lies more heavily with Lacan than with Gordon. Labored accounts of Lacan may even be considered as a species of ornament, a refinement and a new barbarism, peculiar to critical discourse in the fin of our own siècle.Geoffrey Galt HarphamTulane UniversityCopyright... (shrink)

We have identified a sample of 53 societies outside of the classical Himalayan and Marquesean area that permit polyandrous unions. Our goal is to broadly describe the demographic, social, marital, and economic characteristics of these societies and to evaluate some hypotheses of the causes of polyandry. We demonstrate that although polyandry is rare it is not as rare as commonly believed, is found worldwide, and is most common in egalitarian societies. We also argue that polyandry likely existed during early human (...) history and should be examined from an evolutionary perspective. Our analysis reveals that it may be a predictable response to a high operational sex ratio favoring males and may also be a response to high rates of male mortality and, possibly, male absenteeism. Other factors may contribute, but our within-polyandry sample limits analysis. (shrink)

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore how nurses perceive patient participations of patients over 75 years old undergoing hemodialysis treatment in dialysis units, and of their next of kin. Ten nurses told stories about what happened in the dialysis units. These stories were analyzed with critical discourse analysis. Three discursive practices are found: (1) the nurses’ power and control; (2) sharing power with the patient; and (3) transferring power to the next of kin. The first and the predominant (...) discursive practice can be explained with an ideology of paternalism, in which the nurses used biomedical explanations and the ethical principle of benefice to justify their actions. The second can be explained with an ideology of participation, in which the nurses used ethical narratives as a way to let the patients participate in the treatment. The third seemed to involve autonomous decision-making and the ethical principle of autonomy for the next of kin in the difficult end-of-life decisions. (shrink)

Pedagogies for the Future: A Critical Reimagining of Education provides a number of alternative approaches to education and pedagogy that helps the reader better understand the current educational...

A dialogue between a foreign philosopher and a powerful statesman outline Plato's reflections on the family, the status of women, property rights, and criminal law.

В статье философия характеризуется на основе дискурсной парадигмы анализа: как текст, интеллектуальная деятельность и коммуникация. Характеризуются два равнозначных аспекта философского дискурса - когнитивный и коммуникативный. Обсуждается феномен философских контроверз, специфика философского спора, выразительные (знаковые) средства философского дискурса, роль мировоззренческого дискурса в современной общественно-политической ситуации в стране.

Many writers in various fields--philosophy, religion, literature, and psychology--believe that the question of the meaning of life is one of the most significant problems that an individual faces. In The Meaning of Life, Second Edition, E.D. Klemke collects some of the best writings on this topic, primarily works by philosophers but also selections from literary figures and religious thinkers. The twenty-seven cogent, readable essays are organized around three different perspectives on the meaning of life. In Part I, the readings assert (...) and defend the theistic view that without the existence of God--or faith in God--life has no significance or purpose. In Part II the selections deny this thesis, defending instead the humanistic alternative--that life has or can have meaning and worth without any theistic beliefs or commitment. In the final group of readings, contributors ask if the question of the meaning of life is in itself legitimate and significant. The volume also includes an introduction by the editor and a selected bibliography. This new edition adds essays by A. J. Ayer, Hazel Barnes, William Lane Craig, Owen Flanagan, Antony Flew, Thomas Nagel, Kai Nielsen, Philip L. Quinn, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Walter T. Stace. The only anthology of its kind, The Meaning of Life, Second Edition, is ideal for courses in introduction to philosophy and human nature. It also provides an accessible and stimulating introduction to the subject for general readers. (shrink)

Because factory-farmed meat production inflicts gratuitous suffering upon animals and wreaks havoc on the environment, there are morally compelling reasons to become vegetarian. Yet industrial plant agriculture causes the death of many field animals, and this leads some to question whether consumers ought to get some of their protein from certain kinds of non factory-farmed meat. Donald Bruckner, for instance, boldly argues that the harm principle implies an obligation to collect and consume roadkill and that strict vegetarianism is thus immoral. (...) But this argument works only if the following claims are true: all humans have access to roadkill, roadkill would go to waste if those who happen upon it don’t themselves consume it, it’s impossible to harvest vegetables without killing animals, the animals who are killed in plant production are all-things-considered harmed by crop farming, and the best arguments for vegetarianism all endorse the harm principle. As I will argue in this paper, each claim is deeply problematic. Consequently, in most cases, humans ought to strictly eat plants and save the roadkill for cats. (shrink)

This chapter introduces and defends a pragmatist model of aesthetic disagreement that avoids many of the philosophical puzzles generated by the traditional, semantic, approach. Mainstream philosophical inquiry into aesthetic disagreement begins with a rather innocuous assumption: to understand what’s going on we must first explain what disputants are saying, which involves identifying the meaning of the relevant expressions or determining how aesthetic claims could be true. However, this task brings with it a new host of semantic and epistemic puzzles and (...) fails to vindicate the central role aesthetic disagreements occupy in our aesthetic lives more generally. Further, it isn’t clear how settling the meaning of aesthetic expressions bears on everyday aesthetic disagreements. Paying attention to what we do in an aesthetic disagreement will give us a better chance at identifying what matters for determining what we say. (shrink)

An adequate theory of rights ought to forbid the harming of animals to promote trivial interests of humans, as is often done in the animal-user industries. But what should the rights view say about situations in which harming some animals is necessary to prevent intolerable injustices to other animals? I develop an account of respectful treatment on which, under certain conditions, it’s justified to intentionally harm some individuals to prevent serious harm to others. This can be compatible with recognizing the (...) inherent value of the ones who are harmed. My theory has important implications for contemporary moral issues in nonhuman animal ethics, such as the development of cultured meat and animal research. (shrink)

In recent discussions, it has been argued that a theory of animal rights is at odds with a liberal abortion policy. In response, Francione (1995) argues that the principles used in the animal rights discourse do not have implications for the abortion debate. I challenge Francione’s conclusion by illustrating that his own framework of animal rights, supplemented by a relational account of moral obligation, can address the moral issue of abortion. I first demonstrate that Francione’s animal rights position, which grounds (...) moral consideration in sentience, is committed to the claim that a sentient fetus has a right to life. I then illustrate that a fully developed account of animal rights that recognizes the special obligations humans have to assist animals when we cause them to be dependent and vulnerable through our voluntary actions or omissions is committed to the following: a woman also has a special obligation to assist a sentient fetus when she causes it to be dependent and vulnerable through her voluntary actions or omissions. From these considerations, it will become evident that a fully developed and consistent animal rights ethic does in fact have implications for the abortion discussion. (shrink)

In The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan argues that although all subjects-of-a-life have equal inherent value, there are often differences in the value of lives. According to Regan, lives that have the highest value are lives which have more possible sources of satisfaction. Regan claims that the highest source of satisfaction, which is available to only rational beings, is the satisfaction associated with thinking impartially about moral choices. Since rational beings can bring impartial reasons to bear on decision making, (...) Regan maintains that they have an additional possible source of satisfaction that nonrational beings do not have and, consequently, the lives of rational beings turn out to have greater value.. (shrink)