Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

Chapter 14. Andrea Timár engages with literary representations of the experience of perpetrators of dehumanization. Her chapter focuses on perpetrators of dehumanization who do not violate laws of their society (i.e., they are not criminals) but exemplify what Simona Forti, inspired by Hannah Arendt, calls “the normality of evil.” Through the parallel examples of Dezső Kosztolányi’s Anna Édes (1926) and Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing (1950), Timár first explores a possible clash between criminals and perpetrators of dehumanization, showing (...) class='Hi'>literature’s exceptional ability to reveal the gap between ethics and law. Second, she examines novels focalized through perpetrators and the difficult narrative empathy they provoke, arguing that only the critical reading of these novels can make one engage with the potential perpetrator in oneself. As case studies, Timár examines Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), which may potentially turn its reader into an accomplice in the process of dehumanization, and J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986), which puts on critical display the dehumanizing potentials of both aesthetic representation and sympathy as imaginative violence. Third, she reads Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones [Les Bienveillantes, 2006], which can make the reader question, through the polyphony of the voice of its protagonist, the notions of narrative voice and readerly empathy, only to reveal that the difficulty involved in empathizing with perpetrator characters lies not so much in the characters’ being perpetrators, but rather in their being literary characters. Eventually, Timár briefly touches upon the problem of the aesthetic and the comic via Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) to ask whether one can avoid some necessarily dehumanizing aspects of humor. (shrink)

My aim, in this chapter, is to outline the key details of this particularly interesting aspect of Hume's philosophical system. My presentation will be threefold. In the first section of the paper, I will elucidate the nature of sympathy, drawing upon some of the more recent ways in which Hume's commentators have attempted to resolve the interpretive puzzles Hume's works present. In the second section, I will explicate some of the functions sympathy has in Hume's philosophy, including not (...) only three that have been particularly prominent in the secondary literature, but also two others that have received considerably less attention. In the final section, I will summarize Hume's account of the nature and functions of sympathy and briefly suggest some of the ways in which these aspects of Hume's moral psychology seem to be supported by contemporary psychological research. (shrink)

Objective Apeiron was founded in 1966 and has developed into one of the oldest and most distinguished journals dedicated to the study of ancient philosophy, ancient science, and, in particular, of problems that concern both fields. Apeiron is committed to publishing high-quality research papers in these areas of ancient Greco-Roman intellectual history; it also welcomes submission of articles dealing with the reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition. The journal appears quarterly. Articles are peer-reviewed on (...) a double-blind basis. Topics ancient philosophy ancient science reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition Article formats Original Articles. (shrink)

Diese Arbeit wählt eine postmoderne Paradigmenanalyse als methodischen Ansatz. Der reflexive Gehalt von Middlemarch wird auf dem Weg theoretischer Pluralität und Differenz ermittelt. Die genuin philosophische Dekonstruktion macht die unauflösbare Spannung eines Textes deutlich, die sich als Widerspruch zwischen dynamischen (Hegel) und statischen Denkmodellen (Schopenhauer) paradigmatisch beschreiben läßt. Abgesichert durch zahlreiche textimmanente Befunde gelangt diese Begriffsklärung schließlich zu einer präzisen Erfassung der Eliotschen Ironie, Melancholie und Sympathie in Middlemarch. In Gestalt prägnanter philosophischer Bewußtseinsformen werden sie als ästhetische Vermittlung reflexiven Erzählens (...) interpretiert. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

J.M. Coetzee’s book, 'Elizabeth Costello' is one of the stranger works to appear in recent years. Yet if we focus our attention on the book’s two chapters dealing with animals, two preoccupations emerge. The first sees Coetzee use animals to evoke a particular conception of ethics, one similar to that of the philosopher Mary Midgley. Coetzee’s second theme connects animals to the phenomena of scapegoating, as it has been characterized by the philosophical anthropologist René Girard. While both themes involve human (...) interactions with animals, each transcends application to that particular issue and raises deeper questions, respectively concerning the foundations of morality and the therapeutic allure of political violence. Making explicit these two preoccupations enhances our understanding of Coetzee’s fiction, particularly Disgrace. However, when Coetzee’s two philosophical strands are analyzed in their own terms, the ethics of sympathy is shown to be a more coherent notion than the understanding of politics he takes over from Girard. (shrink)

Our modern-day word for sympathy is derived from the classical Greek word for fellow-feeling. Both in the vernacular as well as in the various specialist literatures within philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, economics, and history, "sympathy" and "empathy" are routinely conflated. In practice, they are also used to refer to a large variety of complex, all-too-familiar social phenomena: for example, simultaneous yawning or the giggles. Moreover, sympathy is invoked to address problems associated with social dislocation and political conflict. It (...) is, then, turned into a vehicle toward generating harmony among otherwise isolated individuals and a way for them to fit into a larger whole, be it society and the universe.This volume offers a historical overview of some of the most significant attempts to come to grips with sympathy in Western thought from Plato to experimental economics. The contributors are leading scholars in philosophy, classics, history, economics, comparative literature, and political science. Sympathy is originally developed in Stoic thought. It was also taken up by Plotinus and Galen. There are original contributed chapters on each of these historical moments. Use for the concept was re-discovered in the Renaissance. And the volume has original chapters not just on medical and philosophical Renaissance interest in sympathy, but also on the role of antipathy in Shakespeare and the significance of sympathy in music theory. Inspired by the influence of Spinoza, sympathy plays a central role in the great moral psychologies of, say, Anne Conway, Leibniz, Hume, Adam Smith, and Sophie De Grouchy during the eighteenth century. The volume should offers an introduction to key background concept that is often overlooked in many of the most important philosophies of the early modern period.About a century ago the idea of Einfühlung was developed in theoretical philosophy, then applied in practical philosophy and the newly emerging scientific disciplines of psychology. Moreover, recent economists have rediscovered sympathy in part experimentally and, in part by careful re-reading of the classics of the field. (shrink)

Since the 2007 Vick dog-fighting case, much attention has been focused on cruelty against dogs. Cockfighting roosters, on the other hand, have been virtually ignored by scientists and laypeople alike. Accordingly, very little is known about our emotional reactions to roosters used for cockfighting. The present study attempts to fill this void in the scientific literature by examining the relationship between individual differences variables and sympathetic reactions to roosters used for cockfighting depicted in a video newscast. The results were (...) robust, with individual differences variables explaining 51% of the variability in sympathetic reactions to cockfighting roosters. Specifically, feelings toward roosters, extraversion, conscientiousness, and trait sympathy for animal suffering emerged as significant predictors, while belief in animal mind did not. The implications and limitations of these results are discussed. (shrink)

Through readings of works by Marivaux, Diderot, Rousseau, and Mary Shelley, David Marshall provides a new interpretation of the eighteenth-century preoccupation with theatricality and sympathy. Sympathy is seen not as an instance of sensibility or natural benevolence but rather as an aesthetic and epistemological problem that must be understood in relation to the problem of theatricality. Placing novels in the context of eighteenth-century writing about theater, fiction, and painting, Marshall argues that an unusual variety of authors and texts (...) were concerned with the possibility of entering into someone else's thoughts and feelings. He shows how key eighteenth-century works reflect on the problem of how to move, touch, and secure the sympathy of readers and beholders in the realm of both "art" and "life." Marshall discusses the demands placed upon novels to achieve certain effects, the ambivalence of writers and readers about those effects, and the ways in which these texts can be read as philosophical meditations on the differences and analogies between the experiences of reading a novel, watching a play, beholding a painting, and witnessing the spectacle of someone suffering. The Surprising Effects of Sympathy traces the interaction of sympathy and theater and the artistic and philosophical problems that these terms represent in dialogues about aesthetics, moral philosophy, epistemology, psychology, autobiography, the novel, and society. (shrink)

This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors, Méré, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender. Dr Moriarty shows that far from being timeless and universal, the term 'taste' is culture-specific, shifting according to the needs of a writer and his social group. The notion of (...) 'taste' not only helped to shape a new dominant culture, but also registered the conflicts within that culture between a view of taste that presupposted the values of 'polite society' as an exclusive (though not necessarily aristocratic) group, and a view that stressed the value of the classical-humanist tradition as a source of standards ratified by a broader public. this study sheds light not only on the central concept, but also on the individual authors discussed and on the norms of French classical literature in general. (shrink)

Through mystery, literature reveals to us the Great Unknown. While we are absorbed by the matters at hand with the present enactment of our life, groping for clues to handle them, it is through literature that we discover the hidden strings underlying their networks. Hence our fascination with literature. But there is more. The creative act of the human being, its proper focus, holds the key to the Sezam of life: to the great metaphysical/ontopoietic questions which (...) class='Hi'>literature may disclose. First, it leads us to the sublimal grounds of transformation in the human soul, source of the specifically human significance of life (Analecta Husserliana, Volume III, XIX, XXIII, XXVII) Second, it leads us to the unveiling of the hidden workings of life in the twilight of knowing in a dialectic between The Visible and the Invisible, (Volume LXXV, 2002, Analecta Husserliana) down to the ontopoietic truth. (Volume LXXVI, 2002, Analecta Husserliana) This prying into the unknown which provokes the human being as he or she attempts to conquer, step by step, a space of existence, finds its culmination in the phenomenon of mystery as the subject of the present collection. Its formulation brings us to the greatest question of all: the enigmatic solidarity -in-distinctiveness of human cognition and existence. Papers are written by: Tony E. Afejuku, Gary Backhaus, Paul G. Beidler, Matthew J. Duffy, Raffaela Giovagnoli, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Matti Itkonen, Lawrence Kimmel, Catherine Malloy, Vladimir L. Marchenkov, Nancy Mardas, Howard Pearce, Bernadette Prochaska, Victor Gerald Rivas, M.J. Sahlani, Dennis Skocz, Jadwiga S. Smith, Mara Stafecka, Max Statkiewicz, Mariola Sulkowska, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Leon U. Weinman, Tim Weiss. (shrink)

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.

The term “sympathy” has two meanings in philosophical literature. According to one conception, “sympathy” commonly means having care and concern for another whose well-being is under threat or is encountering some obstacle (Darwall 1998: 261). When I feel sympathy, I feel for the other (Darwall 1998: 261). The Confucian philosopher Mengzi (also known as Mencius), for example, writes that a person seeing a small child on the verge of falling into a well would be moved by (...) alarm and compassion (Darwall 1998: 261; Van Norden 2008: 46; see Confucian Ethics; Mencius). Here “compassion” seems to be used interchangeably with “sympathy.” When I feel sympathy or compassion, I show care and concern for another in her plight. (shrink)

This thesis explores how the problem of other minds arises in philosophy and literature of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The effort to imagine and establish the conditions, limits and possibilities of human knowledge of other human beings is common to works of empirical psychology, moral philosophy, political theory, autobiography and fiction. The ways in which literature, and specifically autobiographical writing, imagine the solitude and singularity of the human being are understood, in this dissertation, as contextualizations of (...) the skeptical moods which afflict the subjects of philosophical writing. The argument of the thesis, simply put, is that the human being and self conceived in this period is constructed in terms of dependence rather autonomy, and determined by the imagination of its relatedness to others, not its self-sufficiency. Rousseau's influence on English Romanticism provides a historical framework and principle of selection for the diverse set of texts brought together in the dissertation. Epistemological and ethical philosophies of the English Enlightenment serve as background for a study of the problems of human association that are central to all of Rousseau's work. The ineradicable doubts and insecurities which are constitutive of human relations in Rousseau are shown to be assimilated and transformed in the literature of English Romanticism. (shrink)

Summary In this article three dramas, quite subjectively picked out of the extensive literature, in which scientists play an important part and science constitutes a main subject, are analysed to find out, what are the underlying and implicit epistemological ideas.

An examination of the rise in prestige of the Bible as a literary and aesthetic model during the late eighteenth century.

In the Doctrine of Virtue Kant divides duties of love into three categories: beneficent activity , gratitude and Teilnehmung – commonly referred to as the duty of sympathy . In this paper I will argue that the content and scope of the third duty of love has been underestimated by both critics and defenders of Kant's ethical theory. The account which pervades the secondary literature maintains that the third duty of love includes only two components: an obligation to (...) make use of our natural receptivity to sympathetic feelings as a means to fulfilling other duties of love, and an indirect duty to cultivate these feelings. As a result, Kant's duty of sympathy has been widely regarded as a duty whose value is derived from the way in which it serves other duties, in particular, the duty of beneficent activity, which obliges agents ‘to promote according to one's means the happiness of others in need’ . Teilnehmung has thus assumed something of a second-class status among the duties to others. My aim in this paper is to demonstrate that the prevailing account of Kant's third duty of love is incomplete. (shrink)

In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites us to (...) reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

Disturbed by these acrimonious arguments, the authors - former colleagues and university-press board members - embarked on an ambitious project to reexamine a number of major literary and philosophical works dealing with the liberal arts and education. With their discussions ranging from Plato to Rousseau, from Cicero to Vico, from Erasmus to Matthew Arnold, Sousa and Weinsheimer offer not a history of education philosophy but an examination of the present.

Scandals involving celebrities’ moral transgressions are common in both Western and Eastern cultures. Existing literature, however, has been primarily based on Western cultures. We examine differences between South Korea and the United States in consumers’ support for celebrities engaged in moral transgressions and for the brands they endorse. Across six studies, we find that Korean consumers show lower support for celebrities who engaged in moral transgressions. This effect occurs because Korean consumers have a stronger belief that an individual’s competence (...) and morality are interconnected. Thus, Korean consumers are less likely to separate their judgments of celebrities’ morality and competence in professional performance, thereby lowering support for the celebrities. Building on the proposed mechanism, we identify the moderating role of transgression relevance. When a moral transgression is relevant to the domain of the celebrity’s professional competence, the difference in celebrity support between the two countries is attenuated. This difference extends to the support for a brand endorsed by the celebrity transgressor when the brand retains the celebrity endorser, but not when the brand dismisses the endorser. (shrink)

Organizational members are likely to harbor different allegiances, values, and identifications that can affect how they respond to their organization’s stigmatization. Drawing on the empirical case of a public broadcaster in South Korea initially stigmatized for its association with an authoritarian government, we focus on the responses of different intra-organizational groups to stigma and their interactions with each other and with external audiences. We find that faced with stigma, groups in the organization were divided about how to respond, with those (...) defying the stigma and advocating a close relationship with the government competing with those who shared the values of stigmatizing audiences. Both groups sought control over journalism work, the organizational attribute for which the broadcaster was stigmatized, allying with external audiences that shared their respective visions. The dominance of the group that defied the stigma led to increased stigmatization of the organization by existing audiences and additionally prompted the participation of initially passive audiences in its denigration, eventually leading to organizational decline. We contribute to the literature on stigma by promoting an understanding of heterogeneity among members in stigmatized organizations and its implications for the consequences of stigma. We also contribute to theorizing stigmatization as a relational process by demonstrating how the heterogeneity of organizational members’ experience of stigma interacted with audience heterogeneity and highlighting the relative roles played by active and passive audiences in bringing about the decline of a stigmatized organization. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume of contributed essays focuses on issues of gender in the British novel of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly Hardy and Trollope. Approaching the topic from a variety of backgrounds the contributors reinvigorate the law-and-literature movement by displaying a range of ways in which literature and law can illuminate one another, and in which the conversation between them can illuminate deeper human issues with which both disciplines are concerned.

On the basis of analysis of Russian and foreign scholars, the work is aimed at studying the specificity of the transformation of antique stories and images, which is the desired model in the art of the 20th century thanks to its fluidity and unlimited variability. Actualization of antique stories and images in the works of German-language writers account for life-changing moments of social life, the periods of losing of constant moral landmarks and the periods of looking for new moral and (...) aesthetic ideals. The analysis of the reception and transformation of mythological stories and images in the contemporary literature proves the conception of its polysemy. The built-in contradiction of myths is realized through the transformation of mythological stories and images in the literary works of contemporary writers and is explained by the individuality of writers and theirs aesthetic aims. On the one side, the absence de facto in German drama of the 20th century of interpretations of the story about Achilles and of the image of Achilles, and numerous variations on the topic of moral strivings of fearless and peccant Ulysses, on the other side, are proving the statements of classic aesthetic that the tragedy is based on the conflict, which is close to lofty and linked with the idea of dignity of the man, which is ready and capable of promoting the views of his own by the real acts that are often lead to suffer and death. According to Aristotle, the sympathy for the character leads to catharsis - the basis of education of real civic-mindedness and humanness. (shrink)

"Sympathetic Sentiments develops an innovative interdisciplinary framework to explore the implications of living in a 'culture of feeling' that seems ill at ease with itself, one in which 'sentiments' are frequently denounced for being 'sentimental' and self-indulgent. This is traced back to the inheritance of the eighteenth century, enabling us to identify a distinctive 'spectacle of sympathy' in which sympathy seems inherently to entail public forms of expression whereby being 'on show' is both a condition of the authenticity (...) of such affects and of their capacity to be masked and simulated -- hence stimulating controversy, but also the exploration of the vicarious dimensions of modern experience so central to modern literature, art and culture. The implications of all this are further explored in the context of current debates over the display of trauma as the language of sympathetic engagement, and the alleged prevalence of 'compassion fatigue' in the era of media sensationalism. Overall, the book uncovers the patterns that both reproduce our capacity for 'sympathetic sentiments' while revealing the inherent underlying tensions."--. (shrink)

This paper joins the conversation on the relationship between Spinoza and George Eliot. After critically examining Atkins’s claim that the novels of George Eliot, as exemplified by Adam Bede, are a presentation of Spinoza’s philosophy stripped of the geometrical method, the paper explores Eliot’s philosophical engagement with Spinoza’s views on sympathy and the imagination. Thus, Eliot is read as a philosopher engaging with the arguments of Spinoza, rather than as someone representing his views in novel form.

The Pāli tradition presents a diverse and often contradictory picture of women. This book examines women's roles as they are described in the Pāli canon and its commentaries. Taking into consideration the wider socio-religious context and drawing from early brahmanical literature and epigraphical findings, it contrasts these descriptions with the doctrinal account of women's spiritual abilities. The book explores gender in the Pāli texts in order to delineate what it means to be a woman both in the context in (...) which the texts were composed and in the context of their ultimate goal - that of achieving escape from the round of rebirths. The critical investigation focuses on the internal relationships and dynamics of one tradition and employs a novel methodology, which the author calls "critical sympathy". This assumes that the tradition's teaching is valid for all, in particular that its main goal, nibbāṇa, is accessible to all human beings. By considering whether and how women's roles fit within this path, the author examines whether women have spiritual agency not only as bhikkhunīs (Buddhist nuns), but also as wives and mothers. It offers a new understanding that focuses on how the tradition construes women's traditional roles within an interdependent community. It aims to understand how what many scholars have seen as contradictory and inconsistent characterizations of women in Buddhism have been accepted and endorsed by the Pāli tradition. With an aim to show that the Pāli canon offers an account of women that is doctrinally coherent and consistent with its sociological facts, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Buddhism and Asian Religion. (shrink)

The history of the concept of “religion” in Western tradition has intrigued scholars for years. This important collection of eighteen essays brings further light to the ongoing debate. Three of the invited participants, W.C. Smith, M. Despland and E. Feil, has each previously written impressive books treating this subject; the last two acknowledged the impact and continuing influence of Smith’s work, The Meaning and End of Religion. An introduction and a recapitulation of Smith’s contribution as a scholar set the stage (...) for a retrospective look at the published literature. Contributors then examine the transformation of words (the classical religio to the modern religion), particularities of religion in nineteenth-century France, Troeltsch’s concept of religion, the study of religion from an Asian point of view and the categorization of “World Religions.” The concluding essays elaborate contemporary anthropological, cross-disciplinary, semiological, deconstructive and psychoanalytical methodological approaches to the concept and study of “religion.” Exploring critically different aspects of the concept and study of religion, these provocative essays typically reflect the methodological pluralism currently existing in the field of Religious Studies. Of interest to scholars and students alike, this collection also contains a complete bibliography of W.C. Smith’s publications. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. Theoretical Views about Pity and Fear as Aesthetic Emotions: 1. Drama and the emotions: an Indo-European connection? 2. Gorgias: a strange trio, the poetic emotions; 3. Plato: from reality to tragedy and back; 4. Aristotle: the first 'theorist' of the aesthetic emotions; Part II. Pity and Fear within Tragedies: 5. An introduction; 6. Aeschylus: Persians; 7. Prometheus Bound; 8. Sophocles: Ajax; 9. Euripides: Orestes; Appendix: catharsis and the emotions in the definition of tragedy (...) in the Poetics. (shrink)

Many studies demonstrate that finding meaning in life reduces stress and promotes physical and psychological well-being. However, extant literature focuses on meaning in life among the general population in their daily lives. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the mechanisms of how individuals living in life-threatening and stressful situations obtain meaning in life, by investigating the mediating roles of leisure crafting and gratitude. A total of 465 Army soldiers from the Republic of Korea participated in two-wave surveys with a (...) 2-week interval. Structural equation modeling analyses indicated that the direct effects between the search for meaning, presence of meaning, leisure crafting, and gratitude were significant, except for the direct relationship between the search for meaning and the presence of meaning, and between leisure crafting and the presence of meaning. We tested indirect effects using a Monte Carlo approach and found that leisure crafting and gratitude sequentially mediated the relationship between the search for meaning and the presence of meaning. Our findings highlight the importance of the motivation behind searching for meaning, the proactive use of leisure time, and gratitude for individuals in stressful situations and controlled lifestyles. Finally, we discuss the implications and limitations of this research and future research directions. (shrink)

In classifications of vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary size and depth have often been separately conceptualized (Schmitt, 2014). Although size and depth are known to be substantially correlated, it is not clear whether they are a single construct or two separate components of vocabulary knowledge (Yanagisawa & Webb, 2020). This issue has not been addressed extensively in the literature and can be better examined using structural equation modeling (SEM), with measurement error modeled separately from the construct of interest. The current study (...) reports on conventional and Bayesian SEM approaches (e.g., Muthén & Asparouhov, 2012) to examine the factor structure of the size and depth of second language vocabulary knowledge of Japanese adult learners of English. A total of 255 participants took five vocabulary tests. One test was designed to measure vocabulary size in terms of the number of words known, while the remaining four were designed to measure vocabulary depth in terms of word association, polysemy, and collocation. All tests used a multiple-choice format. The size test was divided into three subtests according to word frequency. Results from conventional and Bayesian SEM show that a correlated two-factor model of size and depth with three and four indicators, respectively, fit better than a single-factor model of size and depth. In the two-factor model, vocabulary size and depth were strongly correlated (r =.945 for conventional SEM and.943 for Bayesian SEM with cross loadings), but they were distinct. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Robert C. Solomon IN DEFENSE OF SENTIMENTALITY "A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it." —Oscar Wilde, De Profundis. 66TA That's Wrong with Sentimentality?"1 That tide of Mark JefV V ferson's 1983 Mindessay already indicates a great deal notonly about the gist of his article but about a century-old prejudice that has been devastating to ethics and literature (...) alike. According to that prejudice, it goes without saying that there is something wrong with it, even if it is difficult to put one's finger on it. To be called "sentimental" is to be ridiculed, or dismissed. Sentimentality is a weakness, it suggests hypocrisy. Or, perhaps it is the fact that sentimental people are so... so embarrassing. (How awkward it is talking or sitting next to someone weeping or gushing, when one is dry-eyed and somber.) Or, perhaps it is the well-confirmed fact that sentimentalists have such poor taste, and sentimental literature is, above all, literature that is cheap, superficial, and manipulative—in other words, verbal kitsch. Such mawkish literature jerks tears from otherwise sensible readers, and sentimentalists are those who actually enjoy that humiliating experience. Perhaps that is why Oscar Wilde thought that sentimentalists were really cynics ("Sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism").2 Or, perhaps what bothers us is what bothered Michael Tanner, that sentimental people indulge themselves in their feelings instead of doing what should be done.3 It is often said that the problem is that sentimentality and sentimental literature alike give us a false view of the world, distort our thinking and substitute a "saccharine" portrait of the world in place ofwhat we all know to be the horrible realities. Moreover, as Jefferson more than merely suggests, the "simple-minded sympathies " ofsentimentality might actually promote fascism and racism. Mary Midgley similarly suggests that sentimentality leads to brutality.4 But Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 304-323 Robert C. Solomon305 even where sentimentality is a harmless diversion—a Daphne du Maurier novel on a sad Saturday afternoon—it seems to be all but agreed that sentimentality is no virtue even ifit is not, like cruelty and hypocrisy, intrinsically vicious. Something is wrong with sentimentality; the only question is, what is it that is wrong? In this essay, I will argue that there is nothing wrong with sentimentality. Of course, like any quasi-ethical category, it admits of unwarranted excesses and hypocritical abuses, and is prone to various pathological distortions. But the prejudice against sentimentality, I want to argue, is ill-founded and in fact is an extension ofthat all-too-familiar contempt for the passions in Western literature and philosophy. Our disdain for sentimentality is the rationalist's discomfort with any display of emotion, warranted as well as unwarranted, appropriate as well as inappropriate. It is as ifthe very word, "sentimentality," has been loaded with the connotations of "too much"—too much feeling and too litde common sense and rationality, as if these were opposed instead of mutually supportive. It is as if sentimentality and its sentiments are never warranted and always inappropriate. The word has come to be used as the name of a deficiency or a weakness if not, as some critics have written, a malaise. But I take sentimentality to be nothing more nor less than the "appeal to tender feelings," and though one can manipulate and abuse such feelings (including one's own), and though they can on occasion be misdirected or excessive, there is nothing wrong with them as such and hence nothing (in that respect) wrong with literature that provokes us, that "moves" us, to abstract affection or weeping. Sentimentality implies no deficiency in one's rational faculties and does not imply any inappropriateness, unwillingness, or lack of readiness to act. Sentimentality does not involve any distortion of the world and it does not impede but rather prepares and motivates us to react in "the real world." It is not an escape from reality or responsibility, but, quite to the contrary, provides the precondition for ethical engagement rather than an obstacle to it. Historically, I want to trace the fate of sentimentality to... (shrink)

'As an introduction to early modern thinking and the impact of past ideas on present lives, this book can find few equals and no superiors. Porter is a witty, humane writer with an extraordinary vocabulary and a sparkling sense of fun. Whether he is quoting from obscure medical texts or analysing scabrous diaries, dishing the dirt on long-dead bigwigs or evoking sympathy for human suffering, his grasp is masterly and his erudition appealing. I wish I could read it again (...) for the first time: you can.' Times Educational Supplement, Book of the Week In this startlingly brilliant sequel to the prize-winning ENLIGHTENMENT Roy Porter completes his lifetime's work, offering a magical, enthusiastic and charming account of the writings of some of the most attractive figures ever to write English. (shrink)

This is a book about the metaphysics of perception and discusses touch, audition, and vision. Though primarily concerned with the nature of perception, it draws heavily from the history of philosophy of perception, and connects the concerns of analytical and continental philosophers.

In Dialogues, Deleuze contrasts French and Anglo-American literatures, arguing that the French are tied to hierarchies, origins, manifestos and personal disputes, whereas the English and Americans discover a line of flight that escapes hierarchies, and abandons questions of origins, schools and personal alliances, instead discovering a collective process of ongoing invention, without beginning or determinate end. Deleuze especially appreciates American writers, and above all Herman Melville. What ultimately distinguishes American from English literature is its pragmatic, democratic commitment to (...) class='Hi'>sympathy and camaraderie on the open road. For Deleuze, the American literary line of flight is toward the West, but this orientation reflects his almost exclusive focus on writers of European origins. If one turns to Chinese-American literature, the questions of a literary geography become more complex. Through an examination of works by Maxine Hong Kingston and Tao Lin, some of these complexities are detailed. (shrink)

"Spanning many historical and literary contexts, Moral Imagination brings together a dozen recent essays by one of America's premier cultural critics. David Bromwich explores the importance of imagination and sympathy to suggest how these faculties may illuminate the motives of human action and the reality of justice. These wide-ranging essays address thinkers and topics from Gandhi and Martin Luther King on nonviolent resistance, to the dangers of identity politics, to the psychology of the heroes of classic American literature. (...) Bromwich demonstrates that moral imagination allows us to judge the right and wrong of actions apart from any benefit to ourselves, and he argues that this ability is an innate individual strength, rather than a socially conditioned habit. Political topics addressed here include Edmund Burke and Richard Price's efforts to define patriotism in the first year of the French Revolution, Abraham Lincoln's principled work of persuasion against slavery in the 1850s, the erosion of privacy in America under the influence of social media, and the use of euphemism to shade and anesthetize reactions to the global war on terror. Throughout, Bromwich considers the relationship between language and power, and the insights language may offer into the corruptions of power.Moral Imagination captures the singular voice of one of the most forceful thinkers working in America today"--. (shrink)

M'illumino/d'immenso - I'm lit/with immensity is Geoffrey Brock's translation of Giuseppe Ungaretti's poem Mattina. In the poem's minimalism, Ungaretti points to the maximal: the richness of poetry's expressive possibilities and the power of thinking in literature. This book addresses the fascination of readers to transcend the boundaries of their own in fiction, and literature's capacity, according to Kant, even to evoke, with the help of the development of aesthetic ideas, representations that exceed what is empirically and conceptually graspable (...) - in case studies about myths of creativity, images of death and the beyond after the 'death of God', of the soul, of melancholy as the dark ground of genius, of metamorphoses of both evil and good, of ecstasy, of the economy of self-sacrifice, of the art of resistance, and, among others, about figurations of biography and the portrait as approaches to singularity, what is particular and cannot be fully subsumed to any universality. (shrink)

Philosophy has as much to do with feelings as it does with thoughts and thinking. Philosophy, accordingly, requires not only emotional sensitivity but an understanding of the emotions, not as curious but marginal psychological phenomena but as the very substance of life. In this, the second book in a series devoted to his work on the emotions, Robert Solomon presents a defense of the emotions and of sentimentality against the background of what he perceives as a long history of abuse (...) in philosophy and social thought and art and literary criticism. The title piece reopens a classic debate about the role of sentimentality in art and literature. In subsequent chapters, Solomon discusses not only such "moral sentiments" as sympathy and compassion but also grief, gratitude, love, horror, and even vengeance. He also defends, with appropriate caution, the "seven deadly sins." The emotions, at least some emotions--are essential to a well-lived life. They are or can be virtues, features of the human condition without which civilized life would be unimaginable. (shrink)