The scholiast is clearly busy glossing a rare word. Here, as elsewhere in the scholia, Homer is cited for just that purpose. There is also an effective tendency to build judgements on a writer's style around the label ‘Oμηρικς. Curiously, in our case the scholiast seems to have hit upon the right reading of the passage. The detail about decaying timbers in the context of Nicias' letter could not help striking educated Greek readers, who, like Thucydides himself, had (...) Homer at their fingertips, as an echo of Agamemnon's words in Il. 2.135.1 argue that Thucydides intends the reminiscence to be perceived, and moreover, uses it to trigger off our understanding that the figure of Nicias should be read against that of the Homeric Agamemnon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Influence of Personalism on Harkness and King, Their Pacifism, and Their PersistenceNatalya A. Cherry (bio)I. IntroductionAs it is the hallmark of liberal theologies to take their critics seriously and learn from the criticisms offered, it is important to acknowledge a valid potential criticism of this article at its outset. Rufus Burrow, in God and Human Dignity: The Personalism, Theology, and Ethics of Martin Luther King, Jr., observed that (...) scholarship on King demonstrates a tendency on the part of white scholars to try to use the work of Boston Personalists to claim outsized influence on King.1 Perhaps these tendencies reflect an effort by white scholars to cling to the coattails of King’s massive popularity or to mask our own complicity in white supremacy. This paper therefore refrains from claiming that Georgia Harkness, the first woman appointed a theology professor in an American theological school, had a major, direct influence on King. Rather it identifies Personalist-influenced models of God common to Harkness and King—as a result of their both having studied under Borden Parker Bowne’s student Edgar S. Brightman—that appear to undergird their commitments to nonviolence. It respectfully considers their influences and their models of God, the confluences of their commitments, and the outlook for nonviolence at the ends of their lives, as well as for the present and future, over 55 and 49 years since their respective deaths.II. Evidences of InfluencesTwo pieces of textual evidence demonstrate Harkness’s and King’s mutual respect for one another and offer some insight into their experiences with Boston Personalism. One is an epistolary exchange between the two that includes a letter from King, in which he acknowledged his familiarity with Harkness’s [End Page 57] work.2 Though he did not mention it in this letter, the other piece of textual evidence is his brief reference to an article by Harkness in the third chapter of his doctoral dissertation3 completed at Boston University.4 [End Page 58]The first, epistolary evidence results from the fact that King had received a letter from Harkness as he recuperated from a very nearly successful, apparent assassination attempt carried out on September 20, 1958. The letter from Harkness was dated ten days later, incidentally the same day he publicly forgave his attacker, who was later found to be criminally insane. In her letter, Harkness wished him well, expressed admiration for his work in the civil rights movement and specifically offered her appreciation for his recently published book about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Stride Toward Freedom. A book-signing for it, in fact, had put him in the path of his attacker in Harlem that September day. In the opening of her letter, Harkness had taken pains to identify herself to him, to which King replied,You needed not take the extra paragraph to introduce yourself to me. I have known you for several years through your writings. When I was a student in theological seminary...I had the great privilege of reading some of your books and articles. When I went to Boston University for my doctoral studies, I naturally heard your name many times, for Boston University, as you know, is very proud of you and never forgets to mention that you are one of its graduates. I have long admired your Christian witness and your sound theology. I hope it will be possible for us to meet personally in the not-too-distant future.5While there does not appear to be a record of whether this hope of meeting in person was ever fulfilled, nor of which of Harkness’s “books and articles” King had read in seminary, there is clear record—in the other textual evidence mentioned above—of his encounter with her work while he studied at Boston.There, his dissertation, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” referred his readers to an article Harkness had published in 1938, entitled “The Abyss and the Given.”6 The reference emerges in King’s third chapter, on “Tillich’s conception of God,” where he eventually would describe love and justice as inextricably... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:130 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY To establish the chronology of the posthumous fragments of 1875-1879 in IV, 4 was of no crucial significance and presented few difficulties. The fragments of 18871888 in VIII, 2 are another matter. When Nietzsche's sister Elizabeth first published them she simply disregarded chronology in favor of a topical arrangement. Karl Schlechta proceeded more methodically. But in eliminating everything he felt Nietzsche had not intended to (...) publish, he also withdrew from scrutiny much of Nietzsche's late thinking. What to do? The editors examined the manuscripts and hit upon a new and eminently sensible arrangement. In The Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche had mentioned that he was planning a philosophical treatise entitled Will to Power. An outline of 1888 bearing the same title organized 372 of the late aphorisms both by number and key-word. Although Nietzsche in a letter to Peter Gast clearly stated that this outline was not intended for publication, the editors determined to let it serve as their guide, in the justifiable assumption that here, nonetheless, was an arrangement that was truly Nietzsche's, one that came as close as one could come to arranging the fragments as Nietzsche himself might ultimately have done. As for the remaining 100-odd fragments in the pertinent notebooks, which Nietzsche had not included in his outline, the editors decided to include them also, since their chronology was easy to establish and they were of interest despite their unpolished and incomplete form. But does not such publication do Nietzsche a real injustice as Schleehta asserted? Are not the earlier selective editions superior? Although the editors obviously don't think so, they have given the reader the opportunity to draw his own conclusions. To this end, they have compiled a concordance relating Nietzsche's outline and their own edition with the other major editions of the late fragments, showing in each case which fragments were published and in what order. The last 140 pages of VIII, 2 present unpublished fragments of the same period containing quotations and excerpts which Nietzsche had taken from his readings. Although again the principle of completeness was no doubt paramount in the decision to include these fragments, the editors feel that the excerpts from Tolstoi and Dostoyevski throw new light on the genesis of the Antichrist. It is difficult in a few paragraphs to do justice to an edition containing thousands of pages. We have said nothing about the content or the attractive and functional format. We trust, however, that our limited comments have made it clear that this edition, whether in the original German or in the Italian, French, or Japanese translations, should be in every major library and in the hands of every Nietzsche scholar. It is to be hoped that the edition will soon be completed and that translations into English and Spanish will be undertaken also. HERBERT W. REICHERT University of North Carolina Russell and Moore: The Analytical Heritage. By A. J. Ayer. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. Pp. x+254. $8.75) It would be easy to take the view, on reading this book, that philosophical problems are never solved, people just tire of them. Ayer is at great pains to re-capture the sense of what philosophers in the earlier half of this century regarded as important issues, significant arguments and proper method. And indeed, he is so successful that one cannot help thinking from time to time that his book must have been written no later than the 1940's. Perhaps that was his intent--to relive the philosophical atmosphere BOOK REVIEWS 131 of pre-war English philosophy by recounting the views on logic and language, epistemology and metaphysics of the two major figures of that era. This is not mere recounting, nor would it be so successful a reliving if it were. Ayer offers his own counterarguments, and extensions of themes and theses propounded by Russell and Moore, but the curious thing is how of a piece these critical comments are with the expository passages. No doubt this is because Ayer is himself a relic of that age. This is not intended to be superior or sneering; in the spirit of the opening remark... (shrink)

This study investigates the ethical implications of American newspaper policies that call for the automatic rejection of anonymous submissions to "letters to the editor" forums. The investigation is a qualitative analysis of more than 30 practitioner essays printed in journalism trade journals in the mid-to-late 20th century and interviews conducted with editors from 16 U.S. newspapers. The analysis found that contemporary American editors exhibited a blind spot toward anonymous commentary that seems to be in contention with certain tenets of codes (...) of ethics. Although editors took some steps toward making ethical arguments in favor of those policies, they either truncated or skipped some steps-such as considering all of the facts, considering journalistic principles, and acknowledging their personal biases toward anonymity-in making ethical decisions. The study concludes that editors who make ethical arguments in favor of "must-sign" policies should reconsider either their ethical justifications for those policies or the utility of the policies themselves. (shrink)

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a (...) compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

Deir el-Medina, the village of the workmen who built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, is a uniquely rich source of information about life in Egypt between 1539 and 1075 BC. The abundant archaeological remains are complemented by tens of thousands of texts documenting the thoughts and activities of the villagers. Many of the texts are written on papyrus but most are on flakes of limestone which, being free and readily available, were used for even the most (...) casual and temporary of records. They include private letters, administrative accounts, magic spells, records of purchases, last wills and testaments, laundry lists, and love songs. The value of these rare glimpses of daily life is greatly enhanced by the concentration of texts in one time and place. This book combines translations of over 200 of these texts spanning the entire range of preserved genres with stunning illustrations. The reader will, therefore, be able to experience the life of the villagers through their own words whilst viewing places known to each individual writer. Each text is introduced by a commentary that provides the context and explains the contribution each text makes to our understanding of Egyptian society at this period. (shrink)

In our philosophical tradition and our wider culture, we tend to think of persons as agents. This agential conception is flattering, but in this paper I will argue that it conceals a more complex truth about what persons are. In 1. I set the issues in context. In 2. I critically explore four features commonly presented as fundamental to personhood in versions of the agential conception: action, capability, choice and independence. In 3. I argue that each of these agential features (...) presupposes a non-agential feature: agency presupposes patiency, capability presupposes incapability, choice presupposes necessity and independence presupposes dependency. In 4. I argue that such non-agential features, as well as being implicit within the agential conception, are as apt to be constitutive of personhood as agential features, and in 5. I conclude. (shrink)

The editors welcome letters from readers, although we cannot guarantee that all will be published. To ensure timeliness, correspondents must respond to an article within seven weeks and not exceed two double‐spaced pages. Letters become the property of the editors and may be edited and shortened at our discretion.

One of the most striking contributions of particularism to moral philosophy has been its emphasis on the relative opacity of the moral scene to the tools of rational analysis traditionally used by philosophers. Particularism changes the place of the philosopher in relation to the moral life, pointing up the limits to what philosophy can do here. The modern moral philosopher who takes particularism seriously no longer has the luxury, endemic in our tradition, of imagining that moral philosophy can be done (...) with only passing illustrative reference to experience, or that the truth about the whole of our moral life may be read of a list of a priori moral principles, whose rationality is underwritten by the mechanistic account of what it is to follow a rule that pre-Wittgensteinian philosophers took for granted. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 263-265 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Silent Dialogue: Zen Letters to a Trappist Monk Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit: The Place of Zen in Christian Life The Silent Dialogue: Zen Letters to a Trappist Monk. By David G. Hackett. New York: Continuum, 1996. 157 pp. Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit: The Place of Zen in Christian Life. By Robert E. Kennedy. New York: Continuum, 1997. (...) 144 pp. Two very different books recently published by Continuum seem to complement each other in unexpected ways. Father Kennedy, Catholic Zen Teacher, Jesuit Priest, openly shares with us his own journey into unknowing and self-emptying. As he notes in his preface, "what I looked for in Zen was not a new faith, but a new way of being Catholic that grew out of my own lived experience..." (p. 13). David Hackett, now an associate professor of religion, freely shares his youthful search for genuine spiritual experience. His book is drawn from correspondence from the 1970s with Father Thomas Keating and the monks of the St. Joseph's Abbey during his two-year stay in Japan. Hackett says in his Prologue, "I became a Catholic through Zen meditation..." (p. 17). In both cases, rather than threaten or diminish their Christian faith, Zen practice served as a wonderful "can-opener," prying off lids of rigid ideas and concepts, allowing the depth of the spirit to be more deeply experienced.Part I of Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit, addressed primarily to the Christian reader, offers an excellent introduction into Buddhism, Zen, and the essential elements of practice. In this section Kennedy has reflected the questions Christians have asked during the years he taught at the Zen Community of New York. His teacher there, Bernard Tetsugen Glassman Roshi, clarifies in the foreword Father Kennedy's position as a lay Zen Teacher who remains a Catholic priest. Kennedy weaves a consistent thread of Christian contemplative teachings side by side with the Zen teachings, making very visible the fact that Zen reminds us, as do Eckhart, Merton, and many other contemplatives, that the highest point of our Christian mysticism is reached not in the experience that I know God or that I love God--not in any I-Thou experience--but in the experience that God lives in us (p. 36).The book has been structured according to the four stages of human growth: knowledge, love, purification, and union. These stages have been likened to the stages of alchemy: lead, quicksilver, sulphur, and gold--these four elements provide Kennedy with his titles for the four parts of his book. This very structure makes clear that the goal of both Christian mysticism and Zen practice is transformation of being. With a firm foundation of knowledge and teachings from both traditions, then it is time to actually enter the fire of practice itself. I am reminded of the stages of practice outlined in the ancient Chinese Zen ox-herding pictures. The herdsman sets out with some knowledge, longing for his True Nature. He sees traces--footprints in the sand--and a deep yearning, the quicksilver of desire and inspiration, begins to ache in his heart. As he begins to see and experience his own True Nature, he must pass through the fire of struggle, surrender, deep letting go, until finally both herdsman [End Page 263] and ox disappear, self-emptying is complete in Union. There are no shortcuts. Jesus and Buddha both have invited us to practice radical poverty. Kennedy states, "The poverty of not clinging, not projecting, not finding shelter, and not seeking parallel lives, can lead us to the deepest intimacy of all" (p. 114).Kennedy received his early formative Zen training under Koun Yamada Roshi, a beloved and deeply appreciated teacher, in Kamakura. His Roshi offered a style of practice which utilized the koan (rationally unsolvable question or paradox) to provoke the student into a direct experience rather than an explanation or idea about it. Kennedy Sensei has shared his insight into many... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 121-122 [Access article in PDF] Harold Tarrant. Plato's First Interpreters. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. viii + 263. Cloth, $55.00. This is Tarrant's third book on the ancient Platonist tradition, following his Scepticism or Platonism? (1985) and Thrasyllan Platonism (1993). In those earlier volumes his focus was on the first centuries bc and ad. Here his scope is much (...) wider. Stating that "Platonic interpretation is today at a crossroads," he has written a book that explores "ancient attempts to wrestle with this corpus," with the ultimate objective "to encourage a fresh, almost primitive reading of Plato himself" (vii).He begins engagingly by confronting the ancients with questions any modern reader of Plato must ask: What kind of text is this? Are there doctrines here? Where do I look for Plato's doctrines? The second part of his book is a historical survey, taking us from Plato, the early Academy and Aristotle, through the Hellenistic and early Roman Imperial period, and concluding with the principal Neoplatonist interpreters. In the third and longest part, he focuses on the interpretation of specific dialogues, giving most space to the Gorgias and Theaetetus, but also dealing in particular detail with the Meno, Parmenides, and Philebus. Something is said about every dialogue, but Tarrant writes only briefly about such major works as the Republic and Timaeus. He explains his selectivity (not very convincingly) as due to his wish to "discuss issues of meta-interpretation, with emphasis on the period before Plotinus" (198).Taking his book as a whole, one realizes that few strands of modern interpretation were not prefigured to quite a large extent in antiquity. The two most obvious exceptions are the chronological and developmental approach (Early, Middle, and Late), at present under strong attack from some quarters, and the theological, numerological, and allegorical readings practiced by Neoplatonists. Plato's ancient interpreters were doctrinal unitarians, but they implicitly anticipated our tendency to distinguish "Socratic dialogues," which some of them called "gymnastic" and "inquisitive," from such "canonical" works as the Phaedo,Republic, Symposium, and Timaeus, to which they applied the labels "dogmatic" and "expository." And they recognized that both types of characteristics could be found in the same dialogue, as in the Meno and Theaetetus. Plato himself, they proposed, spoke primarily through the voices of Socrates, Timaeus, and the Eleatic and Athenian strangers; but other characters, such as Pausanias in the Symposium, or Protagoras in the dialogue of that name, utter thoughts with some philosophical value. In explaining difficult passages of one dialogue, they would typically refer to passages from other parts of the corpus. An especially intriguing instance is the strategy of the Anonymous Commentator on the Theaetetus, who reads the Meno into the dialogue on which he is officially commenting.Ancient scholars, just like ourselves, asked questions about the unifying themes of complex dialogues. Hence the sub-titles given to certain works: "On the soul" for the Phaedo, and "On justice" for the Republic, etc. For Olympiodorus (whose commentary on the Gorgias Tarrant has recently co-edited [Leiden, 1998]), earlier interpreters have seriously erred by giving too limited an account of that dialogue's scope. It is not, he says, simply about rhetoric, nor about justice and injustice; nor is its theme the divine demiurge (as some Neoplatonists had strangely proposed, on the basis of the concluding myth). Rather, the subject of the Gorgias is "the ethical principles that lead to constitutional well-being" (125). [End Page 121] However, Olympiodorus's eminently "sensible" reading (as Tarrant calls it) is deeply embedded in the Neoplatonic contrast between the "purificatory virtues" of the Phaedo and the "constitutional virtues" of Republic4.Strong or weak scepticism, esotericism, unwritten doctrines, spurious versus genuine, a canon of central dialogues, dramatic considerations, and the philosophical importance or non-importance of the dialogues' prologues—all of these are interpretive approaches that Tarrant surveys in this immensely learned book, and all of them continue to resonate for us. Modern scholars, who emphasize the literary and philosophical unity of each dialogue, are walking... (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we (...) made. It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

The editors welcome letters from readers, although we cannot guarantee that all will be published. To ensure timeliness, correspondents must respond to an article within seven weeks and not exceed two double‐spaced pages. Letters become the property of the editors and may be edited and shortened at our discretion.

This new edition brings Farquharson's authoritative 1944 translation up to date and includes a helpful introduction and notes for the student and general reader. Rutherford includes a selection of letters from Marcus to his tutor Fronto--most of which date from his earlier years--that offer personal detail and help to fill out the somber portrait of the emperor that is found in the Meditations.

1st English translation: "The Philosophy of Inequality" is a significiant and passionately intense work by the eminent Russian religious philosopher, Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948), written in the early months following the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia. It was published only later in 1923 in Berlin, following his expulsion from Russia. With his perspective of a personalist existentialism and philosophy of freedom, Berdyaev voices a powerful critique of societal myths and mentalities that lead to a crushing totalitarian control over life, not only (...) Russia then, but now also for our contemporary world. The present volume also includes the 1st English translation of Berdyaev's 1918 article, "Spirits of the Russian Revolution: Gogol/Dostoevsky/L. Tolstoy," which traces the prophetic literary motifs reflected in the Soviet Communist Russian Revolution. The present volume likewise includes the addition of an intensive chapter by the translator, addressing Berdyaev's Religio-Philosophic thought in its connection to aspects of Orthodox Christian theological insights, in an attempt to validate N. A. Berdyaev as indeed verymost an Orthodox Christian philosopher. (shrink)

In its concern to evoke in its readership an appropriate response to the challenge posed by the contemporary environmental crisis, the recent papal encyclical Laudato Si': On Care for our Common Home differentiates between the task of human education, on the one hand, and the deeper and more abstract task of motivating the human will for change and action, on the other. What must take place, it asserts, is the creation of nothing less than an ‘ecological citizenship’. To describe how (...) this might be brought about, the encyclical employs the theological language of ‘conversion’. However, the rationale for this suggestion, and the implications it would entail for the way in which educational programmes on the environment might be pursued, is developed only minimally in the encyclical itself. The objective of this article is to take up and develop this hint by offering some philosophical and theological perspectives on the idea of human motivation towards care for the environment, and by exploring the current state of affairs in environmental education in light of it. The article therefore aims to develop the encyclical's brief and unthematized suggestion regarding an ‘ecological citizenship’ in a practical and applied direction.© 2018 Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered. (shrink)

"A distinctive voice somewhere between Mark Twain and Michel Montaigne" is how Psychology Today described A.C. Grayling. In Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, readers have the pleasure of hearing this distinctive voice address some of the most serious topics in philosophy--and in our daily lives--including reflections on guns, anger, conflict, war; monsters, madness, decay; liberty, justice, utopia; suicide, loss, and remembrance. A civilized society, says Grayling, is one which never ceases having a discussion with itself (...) about what human life should best be. In this book, Grayling adds to this discussion a series of short informal essays about ethics, ideas, and culture. A recurring theme is religion, of which he writes "there is no greater social evil." He argues, for instance, that liberal education is better than religion for inculcating moral values. "Education in literature, history, and appreciation of the arts," he says, "opens the possibility for us to live more reflectively and knowledgeably, especially about the nature and variety of human experience. That in turn increases our capacity for understanding others better, so that we can treat them with respect and sympathy, however different their outlook on life." Thought provoking rather than definitive, these essays don't tell readers what to think, but only note what has been thought about how it is best to live. A person who does not think about life, the author reminds us, is like a stranger mapless in a foreign land. These brief and suggestive essays offer us the outlines of a map, with avenues of thought that are a pleasure to wander down. (shrink)

This marvelous volume takes the reader on a journey across the centuries as it explores eponymous physical laws—from Archimedes' Law of Buoyancy and Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion—whose ramifications have profoundly altered our everyday lives and our understanding of the universe.

Our journal is now a half century old. ... For those who have been associated with Voprosy filosofii all these years the time, it seems, has passed quickly. I remember how we celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the journal and the plans we made then. It seems that all this happened quite recently. But if one now recalls what happened with our journal and our philosophy in general during these years, one gets the uncanny feeling that we have lived through (...) several lives with Voprosy filosofii, very intense and dramatic lives, each continuing the preceding one and at the same time somehow quite different from it. (shrink)

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens easily could have been describing our time and the dilemma in which victims of nonmalignant chronic pain find themselves.I am a forty-six-year-old registered nurse who specializes in oncology care and education. I am also a patient who suffers from chronic nonmalignant pain, and this malady has been the most frightening, the most humiliating, and the most difficult ordeal of my life.The morning of February 1983 severed my (...) life into “before” and “after,” as clearly as if it has been cut by a sharp knife. The “before” included my career as an oncology nurse, a college nursing professor, and a writer; but that was abruptly ended by the catastrophic rupture of a deep cerebral aneurysm. Surgery saved my life, but something unforeseen occurred during the procedure; and so, in the “after,” I have had to live with a serious seizure disorder and memory loss. (shrink)

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens easily could have been describing our time and the dilemma in which victims of nonmalignant chronic pain find themselves.I am a forty-six-year-old registered nurse who specializes in oncology care and education. I am also a patient who suffers from chronic nonmalignant pain, and this malady has been the most frightening, the most humiliating, and the most difficult ordeal of my life.The morning of February 1983 severed my (...) life into “before” and “after,” as clearly as if it has been cut by a sharp knife. The “before” included my career as an oncology nurse, a college nursing professor, and a writer; but that was abruptly ended by the catastrophic rupture of a deep cerebral aneurysm. Surgery saved my life, but something unforeseen occurred during the procedure; and so, in the “after,” I have had to live with a serious seizure disorder and memory loss. (shrink)

Identity Economics provides an important and compelling new way to understand human behavior, revealing how our identities--and not just economic incentives--influence our decisions. In 1995, economist Rachel Kranton wrote future Nobel Prize-winner George Akerlof a letter insisting that his most recent paper was wrong. Identity, she argued, was the missing element that would help to explain why people--facing the same economic circumstances--would make different choices. This was the beginning of a fourteen-year collaboration--and of Identity Economics. The authors explain how (...) our conception of who we are and who we want to be may shape our economic lives more than any other factor, affecting how hard we work, and how we learn, spend, and save. Identity economics is a new way to understand people's decisions--at work, at school, and at home. With it, we can better appreciate why incentives like stock options work or don't; why some schools succeed and others don't; why some cities and towns don't invest in their futures--and much, much more. Identity Economics bridges a critical gap in the social sciences. It brings identity and norms to economics. People's notions of what is proper, and what is forbidden, and for whom, are fundamental to how hard they work, and how they learn, spend, and save. Thus people's identity--their conception of who they are, and of who they choose to be--may be the most important factor affecting their economic lives. And the limits placed by society on people's identity can also be crucial determinants of their economic well-being. (shrink)

Cutting across boundaries of art and science, evolution is a fundamental process that has beguiled thinkers through the ages. This collection draws together world renowned thinkers and communicators with their own intriguing insights. In these essays they offer a feast of dazzling thoughts and ideas to challenge and enthrall the reader. Why and how do civilisations and societies change over time? Why do our cells develop the way they do? Why are some villages still villages while others have grown into (...) vast cities? Can we learn from our evolutionary past to plan a better future for our health and society? Tracing a line from the history of biological evolution, through the evolution of cultures, society, science and the universe, Evolution brings together intriguing parallels from all levels of life. From the evolution of the developing embryo to the evolution of a developing star, common threads develop into a fascinating story. (shrink)

AimsThis preliminary study aimed to investigate therapy-induced electrophysiological changes in persons with primary progressive aphasia. The investigated event-related potential components associated with language processing were the mismatch negativity, P300, N400, and P600.MethodsA linguistic ERP test battery and standardized language assessment were administered in four patients with PPA of which two received speech-language therapy and two did not receive therapy. The battery was administered twice with approximately 6 months in between in each patient. The results of the follow-up assessments were compared (...) to the results of the initial assessments.ResultsAlthough the results of the behavioral language assessment remained relatively stable between the initial and follow-up assessments, changes in the mean amplitudes, onset latencies, and duration of the ERP components were found in the four patients. In the two patients that did not receive SLT, an increased delay in 50% and a decreased mean amplitude in 25% of the measured ERP components were found. The electrophysiological changes found in the patients that received SLT were variable. Interestingly, the mismatch negativity and the N400 effect elicited by the categorical priming paradigm were less delayed and had an increased mean amplitude at the follow-up assessment in the patient with the non-fluent variant who received SLT. In this patient, the P600 component was absent at the initial assessment but present at the follow-up assessment.ConclusionAlthough no clear patterns in electrophysiological changes between patients who received SLT and patients who did not receive SLT were found by our preliminary study, it seems like the SLT induced improvements or compensation mechanisms in some specific language comprehension processes in the patient with the NFV. The results of this study are still preliminary because only four heterogeneous patients were included. Future studies should include larger patient groups of the three clinical variants because the therapy-induced electrophysiological changes might differ depending on the clinical variant and the underlying pathology. (shrink)

Moving beyond identity politics while continuing to respect diverse entities and concerns, Whitney A. Bauman builds a planetary politics that better responds to the realities of a pluralistic world. Calling attention to the historical, political, and ecological influences shaping our understanding of nature, religion, humanity, and identity, Bauman collapses the boundaries separating male from female, biology from machine, human from more than human, and religion from science, encouraging readers to embrace hybridity and the inherent fluctuations of an open, evolving (...) global community. As he outlines his planetary ethic, Bauman concurrently develops an environmental ethic of movement that relies not on place but on the daily connections we make across the planet. He shows how both identity politics and environmental ethics fail to realize planetary politics and action, limited as they are by foundational modes of thought that create entire worlds out of their own logic. Introducing a postfoundational vision not rooted in the formal principles of "nature" or "God" and not based in the idea of human exceptionalism, Bauman draws on cutting-edge insights from queer, poststructural, and deconstructive theory and makes a major contribution to the study of religion, science, politics, and ecology. (shrink)

Identity Economics provides an important and compelling new way to understand human behavior, revealing how our identities--and not just economic incentives--influence our decisions. In 1995, economist Rachel Kranton wrote future Nobel Prize-winner George Akerlof a letter insisting that his most recent paper was wrong. Identity, she argued, was the missing element that would help to explain why people--facing the same economic circumstances--would make different choices. This was the beginning of a fourteen-year collaboration--and of Identity Economics. The authors explain how (...) our conception of who we are and who we want to be may shape our economic lives more than any other factor, affecting how hard we work, and how we learn, spend, and save. Identity economics is a new way to understand people's decisions--at work, at school, and at home. With it, we can better appreciate why incentives like stock options work or don't; why some schools succeed and others don't; why some cities and towns don't invest in their futures--and much, much more. Identity Economics bridges a critical gap in the social sciences. It brings identity and norms to economics. People's notions of what is proper, and what is forbidden, and for whom, are fundamental to how hard they work, and how they learn, spend, and save. Thus people's identity--their conception of who they are, and of who they choose to be--may be the most important factor affecting their economic lives. And the limits placed by society on people's identity can also be crucial determinants of their economic well-being. (shrink)

★ Publishers Weekly starred review One of the Top 100 Books and One of the 5 Best Books in Religion for 2019, Publishers Weekly Christianity Today 2020 Book Award Winner (Spiritual Formation) Outreach 2020 Resource of the Year (Spiritual Growth) Foreword INDIES 2019 Honorable Mention for Religion This is not a book about Saint Augustine. In a way, it's a book Augustine has written about each of us. Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith has spent time on (...) the road with Augustine, and he invites us to take this journey too, for this ancient African thinker knows far more about us than we might expect. Following Smith's successful You Are What You Love, this book shows how Augustine can be a pilgrim guide to a spirituality that meets the complicated world we live in. Augustine, says Smith, is the patron saint of restless hearts--a guide who has been there, asked our questions, and knows our frustrations and failed pursuits. Augustine spent a lifetime searching for his heart's true home and he can help us find our way. "What makes Augustine a guide worth considering," says Smith, "is that he knows where home is, where rest can be found, what peace feels like, even if it is sometimes ephemeral and elusive along the way." Addressing believers and skeptics alike, this book shows how Augustine's timeless wisdom speaks to the worries and struggles of contemporary life, covering topics such as ambition, sex, friendship, freedom, parenthood, and death. As Smith vividly and colorfully brings Augustine to life for 21st-century readers, he also offers a fresh articulation of Christianity that speaks to our deepest hungers, fears, and hopes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Three Probes into St. Francis of Assisi's Second Letter to the Faithful1Robert J. Karris, OFMFrancis' Second Letter to the Faithful2 is so rich that it would take a lengthy book to probe most of its treasures. My goal is to make three probes: 1) from a literary analysis of this letter of exhortation, 2) from the results of a more thorough search for the biblical sources (...) behind its eighty-eight lines, and 3) from the insights achieved through literary and theological parallels to its contents.3 I accomplish my goals by going systematically through this letter, which I contend has introduction, positive exhortations, conclusion to positive exhortations and bridge to second part of the letter, negative exhortations, aka polemic, the example story of the unrepentant rich man, and ending.4 At the very beginning, I remind myself and my readers of something that we might take for granted: The dominant figure of this letter is "our Lord Jesus Christ," an expression and reality that pulses through its eighty-eight lines. Take, as [End Page 79] an example, n. 49–50, which are staggering in scope: "And they (who persevere in penance) will be children of the heavenly Father, whose works they are doing. And they are spouses, brothers, and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ."Methodology: Search for Literary and Theological ParallelsEarly on in my doctoral studies, I learned the importance and value of investigating New Testament texts by means of their literary parallels.5 For example, there were significant interpretive payoffs to be gained by comparing St. Paul's use of polemic in the Pastoral Epistles (1–2 Timothy and Titus) to that employed by the Stoics.6 Paul probably never met a Stoic philosopher in his life, but their means of no-holds-barred polemic was "in the air" he breathed. Daniel J. Harrington expresses well this common methodology in New Testament Studies: "In literature a parallel involves some point or points of similarity between two texts where literary dependence is unlikely or not proved. Parallels to New Testament texts can be taken from any body of literature and from any period of history…"7So what parallels do I suggest as background for the interpretation of Francis' 2LtF? There may be many, since Francis' letter is dealing with fundamental human and Christian realities: sin and virtue. I have selected what I call The Big Three:In his De Virtutibus et Vitiis Liber,8 Alcuin of York (d. 800) wrote a letter to Count Guy, who is engaged in martial activities. Alcuin has followed Guy's request for paternal admonition and prays that his writing may help Guy to perpetual salvation (n. 6). Alcuin writes briefly about 35 topics: wisdom, faith, charity, hope, zeal of reading, peace, mercy, remission, patience, humility, compunction of the heart, confession, repentance, not delaying conversion to God, fear of God, fasting, almsgiving, chastity, avoiding fraud, judges, false witnesses, envy, pride, proneness to anger, not seeking human praise, perseverance in good works, eight principal vices, greed, fornication, avarice, anger, [End Page 80] weariness (acedia), sorrow, cenodoxia (vainglory), and the four virtues.9 It is abundantly clear that Francis does not engage in 35 topics, but his exhortations do overlap with a number of Alcuin's, e.g., almsgiving, judges, perseverance in good works.In his Liber exhortationis,10 Archbishop St. Paulinus of Aquileia (d. 802) wrote to Count or Duke Henry of Fruilli. His treatise has 66 chapters and covers virtually all spiritual and moral topics. Of singular interest is Chapter 8, "On Friendship with God and Keeping God's Commandments." His final chapter is a long prayer to resist the wiles of the devil and to persevere in virtue. Saints Paulinus of Aquileia and Francis of Assisi's 2LtF have numerous points in common.11Archbishop Hincmar of Reims (d. 882) wrote a very polished and regarded letter, De cavendis vitiis et virtutibus exercendis to King Charles the Bald.12 It has ten chapters. The first seven deal chiefly with vices such as avarice, pride, voluptuousness, gluttony, envy, anger, and jealousy. They also encourage virtuous deeds such as almsgiving, works of mercy, fidelity, and prayer. Chapters 8... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"And Her Substance Would Be Mine":Envy, Hate, and Ontological Evacuation in Josephine Hart's SinA. Samuel Kimball (bio)Envy involuntarily testifies to a lack of being that puts the envious to shame.—René Girard, A Theatre of EnvySin, offspring of snt-ya, "that which is," in Germanic sun(d)jo, "it is true," "the sin is real," and ultimately from es-, "to be," source of am, is, sooth, soothe; of the Sanskrit roots sat- and (...) sant-, "existing, true, virtuous"; of the Latin, esse, "to be," from which is derived such words as essence, presence, absence, and represent; of the Greek roots einei, "to be" as well as ont-, "being," which provides the name for the philosophical study of being itself, ontology.—Adapted from The American Heritage Dictionaryof Indo-European RootsI: Ruth Garton's Envious NarrationThe etymology of sin suggests that the evil it names reveals something fundamental about being, something ruinous and yet unavoidable, something that endangers or even nullifies being and yet is inseparable from it, even essential to it. In Josephine Hart's second novel, Sin, this something is a species of Girardian desire in the form of a monstrous envy, which impels the first-person narrator, Ruth Garton, to a lifelong hatred of her cousin and stepsister, Elizabeth. The focus of Ruth's confessional narrative, envy, drives Ruth to take covert and increasingly virulent revenge against her quasi-sibling in a self-deluding attempt to appropriate not only the objects of Elizabeth's desire but ultimately Elizabeth's desire itself and the apparent ontological fullness that Ruth attributes to it. Over the course of her life, then, Ruth loses the promise [End Page 239] of her name in her ruthless pursuit of her enemy. As she becomes increasingly frustrated in her efforts to destroy her sister's life, Ruth finally turns her hatred of her nemesis against herself as well as the readers to whom she appeals for understanding. If envy heightens Ruth's consciousness to the point where she can perceive that her desire signals her ontological emptiness, nevertheless, it so captures her, so dominates her emotional and cognitive life, that she is unable to find a way to affirm her own—or anyone else's—being in the world. The result is a spectacular narrative record of the cost of recognizing but being unable to resist the mimeticism of desire.1II. The Girardian Dynamic of SinAs Girard has demonstrated, one of the most difficult existential challenges is to understand that desire is mimetically mediated. The result is that we come into our desire only through someone else's and always want something more and other than we think we want. Behind every move to possess a particular object is a largely unrecognized and in principle unsatisfiable desire for absolute satisfaction in the form of ontological completeness, self-sufficiency, intactness. On the one hand, Girard writes, "by the example of his own desire…the model conveys to the subject the supreme desirability of the object" (1977, 146). On the other hand, since to desire mimetically means to come into desire through the other rather than through oneself, by this same example the model conveys to the subject the contingency, the dependency, the secondariness, hence the emptiness of the subject's desire, even the subject's lack of desire, the lack that, paradoxically, constitutes his or her desire. Therefore, to be subjected to the other's want ultimately has the effect of signaling the seeming priority, fullness, and self-origination of this other person's desire. For this reason Girard asserts that "man... desires being, something he himself lacks and which some other person seems to possess" (146).If at first the other person models the desire that the subject lacks, it is in the logic of mimesis that the other will become a rival and, unless the rivalry is somehow interrupted or abrogated, inevitably an enemy to be destroyed. The subject will become locked into a potentially deadly game of trying to obtain the same object that the model desires, so as to experience the satisfactions—ultimately, the sense of being—that the object in question seems to provide... (shrink)

Dear Mother Nature: Sorry to disturb you, but we humans – your offspring – come to you with some things to say. (Perhaps you could pass this on to Father, since we never seem to see him around.).

This guide leads readers systematically through the arguments of Mary Shepherd's two books. Chapters 1-4 cover the arguments in the Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824), where Shepherd argues that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary truths and that causal inferences can be rationally justified. Shepherd's primary target in this work is Hume, but she also addresses the views of Thomas Brown and William Lawrence. Shepherd considered her second book, Essays on the (...) Perception of an External Universe, and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (1827), to be an extension of the earlier project on causation; here she appeals to the causal principles established in the first book to argue that we can know through reason that an external world of continually-existing objects must exist independently of us, as the causes of our sensations. Chapter 5 of this Guide addresses Shepherd's accounts of sensation and reasoning; Chapters 6-9 lead the reader through the arguments of the Essays, as well laying out Shepherd's views on skepticism and Berkeleyan idealism, her accounts of mind and body, her philosophy of religion, and the solutions she offers to two puzzles about vision. (shrink)

In a recent article Professor Brunt has made an eloquent plea for greater rigour in handling the remains of non-extant authors. When the original is lost and we depend I upon quotation, paraphrase or mere citation by later authorities, we must first establish the reliability of the source which supplies the fragment. There is obviously a world of difference between the long verbal quotations in Athenaeus and the disjointed epitomes provided by the periochae of Livy. As a general rule, the (...) fuller and more explicit the reproduction in the secondary source, the more confident we can be that it approximates to the original. Our doubts should increase as the references become less precise and resort to paraphrase rather than direct quotation. The wider context is also important. One always needs to know why the secondary author is making his citation and what interest he has in a strictly literal reproduction. These principles are unexceptionable, but they are difficult to maintain in practice. One rarely has the opportunity to make a sustained experiment, checking an author's techniques' of quotation and digest against sources which are now extant. As a result the historian all too often feels constrained to squeeze the last drop of meaning out of testimonia which are by their very nature imprecise. The standard work, Jacoby's Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, is a pitfall for the unwary. It presents all citations, whether full quotations or the vaguest of references, on the same status as ‘fragments’; and the context is necessarily reduced to the barest minimum, so that the reader's attention is focussed directly upon the lost original and diverted from the machinery of transmission. (shrink)

The nature and consequences of readers’ affective engagement with literature has, in recent years, captured the attention of experimental psychologists and philosophers alike. Psychological studies have focused principally on the causal mechanisms explaining our affective interactions with fictions, prescinding from questions concerning their rational justifiability. Transportation Theory, for instance, has sought to map out the mechanisms the reader tracks the narrative experientially, mirroring its descriptions through first-personal perceptual imaginings, affective and motor responses and even evaluative beliefs. Analytical philosophers, by (...) contrast, have largely focussed on the problems fiction poses for traditional theories of rationality (as in the ‘Paradox of Fiction), challenging fiction’s wider epistemic value. The result has been a theoretical impasse in which the power of fiction to affectively ‘transport’ a reader is at once often lauded (by psychologists) as a privileged route to interpersonal understanding, and condemned (by philosophers) as an abdication of the authority of reason. This chapter surveys some of the central claims on both sides, tracing the source of the debate to competing conceptions of rationality. (shrink)

I argue that naturalistic pictures provide a guide and a justification for our concept of colour. The crucial relation between pictures and colours is to be brought out, not by reference to the ‘internal’ relations between colours (for example, what differentiates green from red), but by considering how colours are differentiated from the wider range of visually discriminable qualities. Naturalistic pictures effect such a differentiation by simulating colour-like qualities such as gold, amber, and blond, while requiring nothing beyond the three-dimensional (...) manifold of colour space. The seeming simplicity and salience of colour in our visual experience should be recognized as depending on our familiarity with this reductive power of naturalistic pictures. While some sense of these issues has been given expression by many thinkers, the idea is significantly articulated in remarks of Wittgenstein's that were prompted by his reading of a letter the painter Runge wrote to Goethe. (shrink)

At the risk of proving myself such a caviller, I want to ask a question which I have seldom heard raised, and which I have never seen discussed in anything that I have read about Berkeley. If I am right, it poses a problem for his immaterialism, not only different, but coming from a different direction, from those objections that are commonly levelled against him. If I am wrong, it will show how right Berkeley was to stress the difficulty of (...) using for one purpose our language which has become fashioned for another. At least, I hope that I shall not fail to be the ‘fair and ingenuous reader’for whom he asked. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 177-188 [Access article in PDF] Chaïm Perelman's "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy":Commentary and Translation David A. Frank Michelle K. Bolduc Chaïm Perelman's 1949 article, "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy," has remained unavailable to readers unable to read French. Our commentary and translation is intended to provide English readers access to the context, influences, and themes that make the article an extraordinarily important (...) work in the history of twentieth-century rhetoric. In this article, Perelman offers a powerful critique of first philosophies and anticipates the problems of radical postmodernity. "First Philosophies" remains a strikingly elegant attempt to foil what Foucault (1984, 41-42) has called the "Enlightenment blackmail of reason," the assumption held by logical positivists and radical skeptics that if reason does not yield absolute and eternal Enlightenment knowledge, there can be no knowledge.Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric project avoids Enlightenment blackmail by charting a third way between logical positivism and radical relativism, and "First Philosophies" sets forth the project's philosophical blueprint. Commencing in 1947 and culminating in 1958 with the publication of Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca sought, discovered, and developed a philosophical system designed as a rapprochement between dialectic (reason and logic) and rhetoric (the art of adapting arguments to audiences). Historians of rhetoric judge the work a "grand revolution" (Meyer 1999, 259), believing it marks a rhetorical renaissance in Europe, and suggest nothing like it will appear for another 100 years after its publication (Johnstone 1971). The New Rhetoric project influenced Gadamer and a host of post-war European and American thinkers (Mootz 1998). Michael Leff calls the 1970 English translation of Traité a "bombshell" (1994, 510). Beyond its historical importance, Crosswhite suggests that the New Rhetoric project is "the single most important event in contemporary rhetorical theory" (1996, 35)and "First Philosophies" marks Perelman's turn from logical [End Page 177] positivism to rhetoric, offering prescient answers to the post-World War II crises of reason, and the ideas in the article provide the Traité'sphilosophical glue (see in particular the English translation, 62).Perelman joined many post-war theorists, including Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), in the resistance to the reign of a disembodied Enlightenment rationality. However, Perelman identified what Habermas (1987, 119) would later call the "performative contradiction" in the conclusion that radical skepticism was the only alternative to Enlightenment rationality. In "First Philosophies," Perelman responds directly to Sartre's 1943 Being and Nothingness (198; see translation below) by exposing the failure of radical skeptics to see that they had been held hostage by Enlightenment blackmail in accepting the Enlightenment criterion for truth, rejecting it, and then making skepticism an absolute. Indeed, "First Philosophies" navigates from this performative contradiction to chart a third way between Enlightenment rationality and radical skepticism with an approach that he labels regressive philosophy. Regressive philosophy, Perelman argues, provides the human community with a mode of philosophical reasoning located between the extremes of Enlightenment rationality and radical skepticism. In this space between extremes, Perelman identifies contingent truths and values dependent on a rhetorical mode of reasoning, one making moral judgments possible.To best understand "First Philosophies," we recognize the importance of historical context in the development of social theories of knowledge (see Delacampagne 1999; Kennedy 1999). The intellectual networks in which philosophers operate also influence the development of philosophical systems, as Randall Collins has aptly documented. In addition to historical context and intellectual networks, Frederick Beiser has recently noted: "[t] he best introduction to any philosophy is the biography of the person who created it" (1999, 5). He argues that textual analysis alone cannot illuminate the motivation or meaning of a philosophy. A sense of Perelman's biography and the cultural influences that gave rise to "First Philosophies" are necessary for a proper understanding of its themes. For Perelman, the primary intellectual exigencies of the post-war period were the interrelated crises of justice, philosophical reasoning, and responsibility to which "First Philosophies" is a... (shrink)

A few weeks ago I received a copy of the PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, containing a review of my book John Henry Newman, Our Way to Certitude, written by Fr. Boekraad. It was very unfavourable so that anybody reading it is sure to make up his mind never to buy the book.

As its subtitle indicates, Democracy’s Discontent is a study of the political philosophies that have guided America’s public life. The “search” Michael Sandel describes has, in his view, temporarily come to a disappointing resolution in America’s acceptance of a liberal “public philosophy” that “cannot secure the liberty it promises” and has left Americans “discontented” with their “loss of self-government and the erosion of community”. This theme is unlikely to surprise readers familiar with Sandel’s earlier work. What may surprise them (...) is how little of Sandel’s second book is devoted to his critique of liberal theory or to his defense of his favored “republican” alternative. Far less than 10 percent of the book is devoted to characterizing liberal and republican political philosophy and to argument concerning their relative theoretical virtues. The body of Democracy’s Discontent is a history of American Constitutional law and political/economic debate, from pre-Revolutionary times to the Clinton presidency, all designed to show that the republican vision that has animated so much of that history has been recently abandoned to our detriment, replaced by a liberal public philosophy whose dramatic failure in practice “recapitulates” its “poverty in theory”. Sandel’s history is lively and engaging, and many of his analyses are insightful and persuasive. But the looseness in his treatment of theory regularly infects the conclusions he draws from this history and undermines his efforts to show that American political practice indicts liberal political philosophy. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

New technologies are changing our lives radically and quickly. New biotechnologies are moving to commercial uses faster than government regulators or private citizens can monitor. This tension manifests itself in the current debates over xenotransplantation technologies in medicine. The possibility of removing cells, tissues, and organs from animals and transplanting them into human beings is startling and unnerving. Natural immunesystem barriers between species, and even between individuals within a species, are formidable. Typically, transplantation results in violent rejection and death of (...) the grafted organ. But despite the natural barriers to transplantation, xenotransplantation aims specifically to overcome them.In this paper, I will discuss applications of xenograft technology, which raises clinical risks, ethical concerns, and policy issues. I conclude with a set of specific recommendations. As a recent letter to the journal Nature puts it, there is a “split between those who want to get it right, and those who want to get it right now.” No one knows what all the risks, benefits, and unintended consequences of xenotransplantation will be. (shrink)

New technologies are changing our lives radically and quickly. New biotechnologies are moving to commercial uses faster than government regulators or private citizens can monitor. This tension manifests itself in the current debates over xenotransplantation technologies in medicine. The possibility of removing cells, tissues, and organs from animals and transplanting them into human beings is startling and unnerving. Natural immunesystem barriers between species, and even between individuals within a species, are formidable. Typically, transplantation results in violent rejection and death of (...) the grafted organ. But despite the natural barriers to transplantation, xenotransplantation aims specifically to overcome them.In this paper, I will discuss applications of xenograft technology, which raises clinical risks, ethical concerns, and policy issues. I conclude with a set of specific recommendations. As a recent letter to the journal Nature puts it, there is a “split between those who want to get it right, and those who want to get it right now.” No one knows what all the risks, benefits, and unintended consequences of xenotransplantation will be. (shrink)

This paper attempts to shed light on three sets of issues that bear directly on our understanding of Locke and Kant. The first is whether Kant believes Locke merely anticipates his distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments or also believes Locke anticipates his notion of synthetic a priori cognition. The second is what should we as readers of Kant and Locke should think about Kant’s view whatever it turns out to be, and the third is the nature of Kant’s (...) justification for the comparison he draws between his philosophy and Locke’s. I argue (1) that Kant believes Locke anticipates both the analytic-synthetic distinction and Kant’s notion of synthetic a priori cognition, (2) that the best justification for Kant’s claim draws on Locke’s distinction between trifling and instructive knowledge, (3) that the arguments against this claim developed by Carson, Allison, and Newman fail to undermine it, and (4) that Kant’s own justification for his claim is quite different from what many commentators have thought it was (or should have been). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Princess and the Philosopher: Letters of Elisabeth of the Palatine to Rene DescartesRichard A. WatsonAndrea Nye. The Princess and the Philosopher: Letters of Elisabeth of the Palatine to Rene Descartes. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Pp. xiii + 187. Cloth, $57.95. Paper, $18.95.Princess Elisabeth was an acute, persistent critic of Descartes's philosophy. Because he liked her and she was a princess, Descartes did not dismiss her (...) criticisms as he did those of Gassendi and Hobbes. How can an immaterial mind interact with a material body? How can God determine all our actions and yet give us free will? Elisabeth was dissatisfied with Descartes's answer that an all-powerful God can do anything even if we cannot understand how.Andrea Nye analyzes the correspondence between Elisabeth and Descartes to support the thesis that Elisabeth developed and defended a worldly philosophy of life in opposition to the unworldly rules Descartes offered for living a tranquil and happy life. Descartes said she should focus on the separation of the mind from the body to avoid disturbing the intellect with sensory matters. Think positively about such nice things as birds and flowers and not of bad things that happen to one. Descartes told Elisabeth that "there are no events so dreadful, nor so absolutely bad in the judgments of people, that a person of spirit cannot look on them with a bias that makes them appear favorable" (48). If we do our best to find out the right course of action and act accordingly, then even if the results are bad, we have no reason for remorse or recrimination, but can be happy that we have done the best we can. Descartes even says that a person who follows his rules can view everything that happens to him, even the worst, as though these events were taking place in a theatre, for in the end they do not impinge upon the ultimate happiness of one's immortal soul.Elisabeth, earnestly. sardonically, and sometimes with annoyance responds that this is perhaps possible for a single man of independent means with few civil and personal relationships, but for someone engaged in family affairs, royal politics, and social interaction with other human beings, Descartes's philosophy of life is both impossible and wrong. One never knows what is best; even if one did know, it is difficult to carry it out; and finally, if the results are bad, then one is after all responsible. One would be inhuman to deny fault, monstrous to deny moral responsibility. Above all, Elisabeth says, one should not view one's own life as theatre. One must be responsible for oneself and others.Nye casts this as a difference between Descartes's abstract and Elisabeth's particularist approaches to life, but also as a contrast between those who can live a disengaged life and those who cannot. Some of the amusement in Nye's perceptive discussions comes from her showing how Descartes's passions often run away with him, and how Elisabeth gently turns his own rules back onto him. [End Page 277]Nye's analyses of the correspondence are excellent, but she makes some mistakes about the lives of Descartes and Elisabeth. Nye explains Descartes's coolness by his having suffered from a "motherless infancy" (129), even speaking of "the mother's milk denied him as a child" and calling him an "orphan" (156), which he was not. His mother died thirteen months after his birth, but he had a wet nurse. Descartes may never have tasted his own mother's milk, but he was never deprived of nursing. Children were often sent to live with wet nurses for as long as four years, although Descartes is traditionally said to have been raised by his grandmother. In any event, such psychoanalyzing is off the mark.Nye also says that Descartes was asked by Queen Christina to write a ballet. She cites the wrong ballet and attributes a verse from the right ballet incorrectly, but beyond that, there is no evidence either that Descartes wrote verses for a ballet or that Christina asked him to.Then Nye speaks of Descartes's daughter Francine... (shrink)

The moral doctrine of Hobbes, in many ways the most interesting of our major British philosophers, is, I think, commonly seen in a false perspective which has seriously obscured its real affinities. This is, no doubt, largely due to the fact that most modern readers begin and end their study of Hobbes's ethics with the Leviathan , a rhetorical and, in many ways, a popular Streitschrift published in the very culmination of what looked at the time to be a (...) permanent revolution, and do not pay such attention to the more calmly argued statements of the same doctrine contained in the Elements of Law , circulated before the outbreak of the Civil War, or the De Cive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 29, Number 2, November 2003, pp. 223-266 A Diplomatic Transcription of Hume's "volunteer pamphlet" for Archibald Stewart: Political Whigs, Religious Whigs, and Jacobites M. A. BOX, DAVID HARVEY, AND MICHAEL SILVERTHORNE Many scholars interested in David Hume will have encountered his defense of the beleaguered Archibald Stewart as it appears in an appendix in John Valdimir Price's The Ironic Hume (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965). (...) Additionally they might know of Price's discussion for The Biblioteck of 1973 of a copy with manuscript markings. A reason for revisiting this pamphlet is that the National Library of Scotland has graciously given permission to reproduce a copy (shelfmark NE.10.e.4) featuring a preface and significant markings in manuscript not in the copy that Price reproduced in his book. As Hume assumes considerable familiarity with the events to which he alludes, we have annotated the text to make it fully intelligible to readers two and half centuries after its composition. The rudimentary bibliographic facts and mysteries are as follows. Two editions survive to us, an octavo (in fours) and a rare duodecimo. Although there is no reason to regard the duodecimo as a second edition correcting or augmenting a first edition, it probably was manufactured after, and was textually derivative from, the octavo. We know nothing of the publishing of M. A. Box is Associate Professor of English, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, PO Box 755720, Fairbanks, AK 99775-5720, USA. David Harvey is at the Classics Department, University of Exeter, Queen's Building, Queen's Drive, Exeter EX4 4QH, UK. Michael Silverthorne is Associate Professor of History, McGiIl University, Stephen Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal H3A 2T7, Canada, e-mail: [email protected] 224 M. A. Box, David Harvey, and Michael Silverthorne the duodecimo, and doubtless that is as its producers intended. Its title page indicates, like that of the octavo, that the printing was done "for M. Cooper" in 1748, but William Strahan's ledgers register the printing in December 1747 of only the octavo in an edition of 1000 copies.1 The job is listed under bookseller Andrew Millar's account, not Mary Cooper's, probably for the reason that Cooper was a front whose role was to screen the true producers. It is possible that Millar hired someone other than Strahan to print the duodecimo, but it is also possible that someone other than Millar had it printed to mimic the octavo and take the opportunity it offered for concealment.2 A different editorial judgment is evinced in the duodecimo in that cosmetic measures are taken in it to obscure the identities of two military men ridiculed. For example, "Fowke" is rendered as "F—" and "John Cope" as "J-C-----." A digression on Mary Cooper is in order. This remarkable woman (died 1761) took over her husband Thomas's business upon his death 9 February 1743. That business had a history of "publishing" pamphlets and therefore made a plausible front for Millar, who in at least thirty-six other instances, none requiring courage, was willing to have his name appear on a title page with "M. Cooper." (This figure derives from a search by imprints using the English Short-Title Catalogue.) Until Thomas Cooper died, his name appeared on editions of John Armstrong's The Oeconomy of Love (1736 and thereafter) though only Millar's name is listed in the Stationers' Register (Foxon, English Verse A303-A311), and Mary's name is on the title page of the 1753 edition for which Strahan charged Millar (Strahan Papers, Add. MS 48800, s.v. August 1753). It was perhaps in this pattern that the second edition of Hume's heterodox Philosophical Essays (1750) would be reissued in 1751 with a new title page replacing Millar's name with Cooper's. That book was made temporarily a more alarming property by the superstitious panic of the London populace following the winter earthquakes in 1750, presaged by a bloody cloud. Within that year Bishop Thomas Sherlock caused a stir with a pastoral letter (A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London) blaming the earthquakes on several iniquities, "particularly heretical books" (Walpole, Correspondence 20... (shrink)