Current theories suggest that the brain is the sole source of mental illness. However, affective disorders, and major depressive disorder (MDD) in particular, may be better conceptualized as brain-body disorders that involve peripheral systems as well. This perspective emphasizes the embodied, multifaceted physiology of well-being, and suggests that afferent signals from the body may contribute to cognitive and emotional states. In this review, we focus on evidence from preclinical and clinical studies suggesting that afferent thermosensory signals contribute to well-being and (...) depression. Although thermoregulatory systems have traditionally been conceptualized as serving primarily homeostatic functions, increasing evidence suggests neural pathways responsible for regulating body temperature may be linked more closely with emotional states than previously recognized, an affective warmth hypothesis. Human studies indicate that increasing physical warmth activates brain circuits associated with cognitive and affective functions, promotes interpersonal warmth and prosocial behavior, and has antidepressant effects. Consistent with these effects, preclinical studies in rodents demonstrate that physical warmth activates brain serotonergic neurons implicated in antidepressant-like effects. Together, these studies suggest that (1) thermosensory pathways interact with brain systems that control affective function, (2) these pathways are dysregulated in affective disorders, and (3) activating warm thermosensory pathways promotes a sense of well-being and has therapeutic potential in the treatment of affective disorders. (shrink)

In this award-winning study of the _Phaedrus_, Charles Griswold focuses on the theme of "self-knowledge." Relying on the principle that form and content are equally important to the dialogue's meaning, Griswold shows how the concept of self-knowledge unifies the profusion of issues set forth by Plato. Included are a new preface and an updated comprehensive bibliography of works on the _Phaedrus_.

Originally published by Routledge in 1988, this pioneering collection of essays now features a new preface and updated bibliography by the editor, reflecting the most significant developments in Plato scholarship during the past decade.

Philosophers have debated whether the advance directives of Alzheimer’s patients should be enforced, even if patients seem content in their demented state. The debate raises deep questions about the nature of human autonomy and personal identity. But it tends to proceed on the assumption that the advance directive’s terms are clear, whereas in practice they are often vague or ambiguous, requiring the patient’s healthcare proxy to make difficult judgment calls. This practical wrinkle raises its own, distinct but related, philosophical question: (...) what criteria may the proxy bring to bear when making such interpretive judgments on which the patient’s life may depend? After defending a general policy of enforcing advance directives on normative (rather than metaphysical) grounds, I argue that when advance directives are vague, a patient’s proxy may permissibly make her own fresh evaluation of the patient’s life as a whole and, in so doing, consider how the patient’s character as a demented person contributes or fails to contribute to that life. (shrink)

A biography of the foremost Christian humanist of the Renaissance who devoted his life to uplifting man's condition through faith, reason, and education.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith are giants of eighteenth century thought. The heated controversy provoked by their competing visions of human nature and society still resonates today. Smith himself reviewed Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, and his perceptive remarks raise an intriguing question: what would a conversation between these two great thinkers look like? In this outstanding book Charles Griswold analyses, compares and evaluates some of the key ways in which Rousseau and Smith address what could be termed "the question (...) of the self." Both thinkers discuss what we are by nature, who we have become, whether we can know ourselves or each other, how best to articulate the human condition, what it would mean to be free, and whether there is anything that can be done to remedy our deeply imperfect condition. In the course of examining their rich and contrasting views, Griswold puts Rousseau and Smith in dialogue by imagining what they might say in reply to one another. Griswold's wide-ranging exploration includes discussion of issues such as narcissism, self-falsification, sympathy, the scope of philosophy, and the relation between liberty, religion and civic order. A superb exploration of two major philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith: A Philosophical Encounter is essential reading for students and scholars of these two figures, eighteenth century philosophy, the Enlightenment, moral philosophy, the history of ideas. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as political theory, economics, and religion. (shrink)

Features the full text of "Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard: Religion, Individuality and Philosophical Method," by Charles L. Creegan. Discusses the works and theories of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).

In hospital rooms across the country, doctors, nurses, patients, and their families grapple with questions of life and death. Recently, they have been joined at the bedside by a new group of professional experts, bioethicists, whose presence raises a host of urgent questions. How has bioethics evolved into a legitimate specialty? When is such expertise necessary? How do bioethicists make their decisions? And whose interests do they serve? Renowned sociologist Charles L. Bosk has been observing medical care for thirty-five (...) years. In What Would You Do? he brings his extensive experience to bear on these questions while reflecting on the ethical dilemmas that his own ethnographic research among surgeons and genetic counselors has provoked. Bosk considers whether the consent given to ethnographers by their subjects can ever be fully voluntary and informed. He questions whether promises of confidentiality and anonymity can or should be made. And he wonders if social scientists overestimate the benefits of their work while downplaying the risks. Vital for practitioners of both the newly prominent field of bioethics and the long-established craft of ethnography, What Would You Do? will also engross anyone concerned with how our society addresses difficult health care issues. (shrink)

Charles L. Stevenson; V—Reflections on John Dewey's Ethics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 June 1962, Pages 77–98, https://doi.o.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 84-106 [Access article in PDF] Irony in the Platonic Dialogues Charles L. Griswold, Jr. I INTERPRETERS OF PLATO have arrived at a general consensus to the effect that there exists a problem of interpretation when we read Plato, and that the solution to the problem must in some way incorporate what has tendentiously been called the "literary" and the "philosophical" sides of Plato's (...) writing. The problem is created by the fact that Plato wrote in dialogue form, indeed a specific type of dialogue form. The solution must somehow combine into a coherent theory of the "meaning" of the dialogues, the ways in which these texts work (such as the use of imagery, metaphor, myth, allusion, irony, as well as argument). At the same time, there exists enormous disagreement about how one ought to move from these general observations to interpretation of a particular text. 1The problem of interpretation lies not merely in the fact that Plato wrote dialogues. That alone would not necessarily present any hermeneutical issues of unusual difficulty. Plato's distinctive use of the dialogue form creates the difficulties. The genre that we might call "the Platonic dialogue" is distinguished by several relevant characteristics.First, there is no character called "Plato" who speaks in any of the dialogues; indeed, "Plato" is mentioned twice in the entire corpus, once as being absent (Pho. 59b10), and once as being present (Apol. 38b6). Authorial anonymity is thus an important feature of the dialogues. 2 At least ab initio, we are not justified in identifying Plato with any one of his characters. Indeed, there are positive reasons why he cannot be identified even with Socrates, as I will discuss below. 3 Plato is absent from his own texts; no simple act of reading them will allow us to ascertain what his views are. 4 It does not follow that Plato's views are [End Page 84] entirely absent from the dialogues—say, in the form of some mysterious "esoteric teaching"—and that they cannot be elicited by a complex act of reading. Just how Plato's views are to be extracted has been, again, the subject of a very long debate. 5 I myself think that Plato's views can be so elicited. 6 But the fact of his anonymity as author means that "Plato's meaning" is not ascertainable in the way that, say, "Kant's meaning" may be ascertainable in the Critique of Pure Reason.A second feature of Plato's dialogues contributes to the interpretive puzzle. The dialogues are clearly fictional in character. They are not—they could not be—transcriptions of conversations which took place. Some dialogues could not have taken place even when the interlocutors were historical figures (for example, at the Phaedrus' ostensible dramatic date the real Phaedrus was not in Athens). Not only are many of the characters entirely fictional, there is clear evidence that even "Socrates" is very much a fictionalized version of the historical character. I am referring not just to the famous statement in the (possibly inauthentic) Second Letter, 7 but to the fact that the Socrates of Plato's dialogues is presented as being a super-human character. This is evident from Alcibiades' description of him in the Symposium as well as from a number of subtle fictions. For example, Plato has Socrates narrate the entirety of the Republic from memory, without a single moment of hesitation or (so far as the reader can tell) any lapse of memory. This fantastic feat is complemented by Socrates' equally fantastic stamina in conversation. The lengthy Protagoras, for example, is narrated in its entirety by Socrates immediately after the dialogue itself has occurred. Socrates never shows any fatigue of any sort. It is not just hyperbole to say that Plato's Socrates is heroic; he is carefully compared, in passages I cannot examine here, to both Achilles and Odysseus. Socrates' absolute calm and self-control before death also evidence his superhuman character. The relation between the historical Socrates and the Platonic Socrates is the source of much fruitful controversy. It suffices for... (shrink)

The discrepancy between English if's and the horseshoe is far from being negligible. That is not a reason for distrusting the horseshoe, which is useful so long as it is taken to mean just what it is defined to mean; and it is not a reason for distrusting our English if's, which in spite of their ambiguities are indispensable to our daily discourse. But it is a reason for distrusting the current logical pedagogy that leads students to take the two (...) as being intertranslatable. So if symbolic logic is to help us in our English arguments (and that should surely be one of its functions) it needs to be supplemented: it needs to be provided with additional symbols (presumably with the introduction of one or more primitive concepts) that will preserve the meaning of our various if's with greater accuracy. In the present paper I shall point in the direction of such a logic. I cannot undertake to develop it in a complete postulational form; but I can at least call attention to certain English locutions by which the required postulates should be guided. And I can venture to state some of the postulates using appropriate symbols. (shrink)

My reflections on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial were provoked some time ago in a quite natural way, by a visit to the memorial itself. I happened upon it almost by accident, a fact that is due at least in part to the design of the Memorial itself . I found myself reduced to awed silence, and I resolved to attend the dedication ceremony on November 13, 1982. It was an extraordinary event, without question the most moving public ceremony I have (...) ever attended. But my own experience of the Memorial on that and other occasions is far from unique. It is almost commonplace among the many visitors to the VVM—now the most visited of all the memorials in Washington—a fact so striking as to have compelled journalists, art historians, and architects to write countless articles about the monument. And although philosophers traditionally have had little to say about architecture in general or about that of memorials in particular, there is much in the VVM and its iconography worthy of philosophical reflection. Self-knowledge includes, I hazard to say, knowledge of ourselves as members of the larger social and political context, and so includes knowledge of that context.Architecture need not memorialize or symbolize anything; or it may symbolize, but not in a memorializing way, let alone in a way that is tied to a nation’s history. The structures on the Washington Mall belong to a particular species of recollective architecture, a species whose symbolic and normative content is prominent. After all, war memorials by their very nature recall struggles to the death over values. Still further, the architecture by which a people memorializes itself is a species of pedagogy. It therefore seeks to instruct posterity about the past and, in so doing, necessarily reaches a decision about what is worth recovering. It would thus be a mistake to try to view such memorials merely “aesthetically,” in abstraction from all judgments about the noble and the base. To reflect philosophically on specific monuments, as I propose to do here, necessarily requires something more than a simply technical discussion of the theory of architecture or of the history of a given species of architecture. We must also understand the monument’s symbolism, social context, and the effects its architecture works on those who participate in it. That is, we must understand the political iconography which shapes and is shaped y the public structure in question. To do less than this—if I may state a complex argument in hopelessly few words—is to fall short of the demands of true objectivity, of an understanding of the whole which the object is. To understand the meaning of the VVM requires that we understand, among other things, what the memorial means to those who visit it. This is why my observations about the dedication of the VVM and about the Memorial’s continuing power over people play an important role in this essay. Charles L. Griswold, associate professor of philosophy at Howard University, is the author of Self-Knowledge in Plat’s “Phaedrus” and has published widely in the areas of Greek philosophy, German Idealism, hermeneutics, and political philosophy. He is an editor of the Independent Journal of Philosophy and a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. Currently he is working on a project which centers on Adam Smith’s notion of the “self” and Smith’s relationship to Stoicism and to the American Founding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging by Gilbert MeilaenderCharles L. Kammer IIIShould We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging Gilbert Meilaender grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2013. 135 pp. $18.00.Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging provides a helpful focus on both aging and research being done to extend human life expectancy. As Gilbert Meilaender notes, human beings have always longed for an (...) extended as well as a more generative life span. He raises the question, however, of whether these two desires stand in opposition. Built into our very biology is the “survival instinct,” along with the imaginative ability to transcend our biological limits. Together they generate a religious legacy of imagining life after death. But Meilaender believes we have moved into a different time. Citing John Gray, he asserts that “the hope of life after death has been replaced by the faith that death can be defeated” (xi).Meilaender presents scientific research on antiaging while observing that there is little cultural reflection on its impacts or desirability. This book steps in to provide a reflection on these larger questions from the perspective of the virtues, or what constitutes a truly “good and human” life. As the author notes, our reflections on aging and immortality are tied to our assumptions of what it means to be human. This is evident, for example, among members of the transhumanist movement, which envisions a human brain freed from dependence on a biological body. He surmises that our scientific quest for immortality may have its roots in the human quest to overcome contingency and its associated anxiety; it is in many ways the embodiment of our wish to be “gods” who have total control over our destinies.Meilaender uses classic and modern Western philosophers and theologians (including Aristotle, Augustine, Søren Kierkegaard, and Karl Barth) as well as the work of life-stage theorists (Erik Erikson and Bernard Williams) who contribute to the discussion of what constitutes a “fully human life.” Would biological immortality make a life more fully human, or is it rooted in a crass form of narcissism that makes our own survival more important than the needs and perhaps even the possibility of future generations?The book closes with a brief conversation between three friends who represent different perspectives, a useful discussion tool for raising the deeper issues presented in the book. According to the first view, we are biological organisms with prescribed natural limits; fulfillment therefore comes through accepting and finding provisional fulfillment in each of our life stages. The [End Page 216] second perspective sees human freedom and reason as the fundamental characteristics of being human and so advocates expanding life expectancy and following wherever human creativity leads. The third observes that we are constrained by our biology and yet are also free, both bound and transcendent. This perspective, however, notes that what we truly desire is not an indefinite extension of life but something richer and fuller that transcends any possibility that humans can create. Our longing is not actually a desire for more but a desire for something other than what continued existence can provide.Meilaender’s engagement of the deeper questions presented by the scientific attempt to “cure” aging and extend life indefinitely is, finally, a powerful Christian apologetic that is nevertheless respectful of other positions. If the book has a limitation, it lies in the failure to engage non-Western traditions that perceive and address the issues from much different frameworks. It also does not address the possibility that perhaps being human is to live with the awareness and resignation that, while we have a deep desire for something qualitatively fuller and richer, this is a longing that can never be fulfilled.Charles L. Kammer IIIThe College of WoosterCopyright © 2016 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In this book, eminent scholars of classical antiquity and ancient and medieval Judaism and Christianity explore the nature and place of forgiveness in the pre-modern Western world. They discuss whether the concept of forgiveness, as it is often understood today, was absent, or at all events more restricted in scope than has been commonly supposed, and what related ideas may have taken the place of forgiveness. An introductory chapter reviews the conceptual territory of forgiveness and illuminates the potential breadth of (...) the idea, enumerating the important questions a theory of the subject should explore. The following chapters examine forgiveness in the contexts of classical Greece and Rome; the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and Moses Maimonides; and the New Testament, the Church Fathers, and Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading and Writing PlatoCharles L. GriswoldThe Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues, by Ruby Blondell; 452 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, $55.00Plato's Dialectic at Play: Argument, Structure, and Myth in theSymposium, by Kevin Corrigan and Elena Glazov-Corrigan; 266 pp. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004, $25.00Questioning Platonism: Continental Interpretations of Plato, by Drew Hyland; ix & 202 pp. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004, $44.00The (...) People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics, by Debra Nails; 414 pp. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002, $75.00.Why did Plato write dialogues? How should his dialogues be read (does the literary form matter, for example, to our getting at the heart of what Plato is saying)? These questions are now familiar in contemporary Plato scholarship, and their answers—which undoubtedly are interconnected—are the subject of lively and fascinating exploration. Any doubt that Platonic studies flourishes would quickly be put to rest by the four books under review here.It was once thought that attention to the "dramatic dimension" of Plato's literary-philosophical productions was the province of two much despised schools of thought: "the Straussians," and "the Continentals." The first of these was viewed as advocating a dangerous combination of esotericism (the idea that somehow Plato's meaning is not on the surface of the dialogues, but concealed in them, as though they were a cryptogram), elitism (the idea that the true Plato is only available to [End Page 205] "the few"—such as the Straussians, according to themselves anyhow), and unphilosophical and dilettantish meanderings about this or that literarily cast "teaching." Straussian hermeneutics was thought to open the way to unprincipled appeals to irony whenever it suited the interpreter, so that any text could end up saying pretty much whatever the interpreter wished for it to say, including the opposite of what the surface of the dialogue appeared to say. And further, it was thought (perhaps in a manner at odds with the "unprincipled interpretation" charge) that the Straussians' mode of "taking into account" the dramatic context—and in particular their contextualization of claims made in the dialogues such that this or that claim gets "explained" as a rhetorical gesture addressed by character X to character Y in context Z, a gesture whose content and validity, so to speak, are limited to that exchange—robs the dialogue of its philosophical content. Hence the worry that Straussian hermeneutics leads to skepticism about the possibility of philosophy itself—philosophy understood precisely in the way that it is regularly spoken of in the Platonic dialogues, namely as the effort to transcend perspective and partiality and to grasp through argument the essence of the matter as such. To cap it off, there is the background suspicion that Straussians are politically conservative, in a way that is somehow connected with their interpretation of Plato.There is more than a kernel of truth in the view that Straussians have insisted on the hermeneutic importance of the dialogue form, taking their cue from Strauss's own remarks in such texts as The City and Man. He did argue that Plato's meaning is not on the surface (and thus in some sense is esoteric), that it was intended by Plato to be available to "the few" while not debunking the beliefs of "the many," and that Plato is an ironist. There is also warrant for the worries about unprincipled interpretation, as well as about the reduction of philosophy to a sort of literary sensibility substituting for genuine philosophical argument (where, after all, are Strauss's arguments for any philosophical position, whether or not about a Platonic "teaching"?). And it is by and large true, so far as I can tell, that his self-identified followers are politically conservative (in the contemporary American sense), and in a way somehow tied to their interpretation of Plato.I myself find Strauss's interpretation of Plato to be deeply problematic both in its substance and its method (I put aside the issue of the political conservatism of Strauss's followers, a "teaching" I also find objectionable). And while I join the authors of the four... (shrink)