In Literature and Truth Richard Lansdown continues a discussion concerning the truth-bearing status of imaginative literature that pre-dates Plato. The book opens with a general survey of contemporary approaches in philosophical aesthetics, and a discussion of the contribution to the question made by British philosopher R. G. Collingwood in particular, in his Speculum Mentis. It then offers six case-studies from the Romantic era to the contemporary one as to how imaginative authors have variously dealt with bodies of discursive thought (...) such as Stoicism, Christianity, evolution, humanism, and socialism. It concludes with a reading going in the other direction, in which the diary of Bronislaw Malinowski is seen in terms of the anthropologist's reading habits during his legendary Trobriander fieldwork. (shrink)

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child is among the most comprehensive of all international human rights covenants. It was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1989, following a decade of discussion and debate relating to its content, and has now been ratified by every nation in the world except the United States. This level of endorsement and broad acceptance of its provisions establishes the articles of the CRC as global norms for the treatment of children and (...) standards for the dignity and respect that is due them. The CRC provides a global agenda for children and childhood and has been described as “an authoritative, universal definition of the rights of children and young people” (Hammarberg.. (shrink)

Despite the progress made in pediatrics over the past decades, nearly every metric of children’s health and well-being in the United States has deteriorated relative to other high-income Western democracies. This is in part due to American pediatricians’ slow response to the impact of social and environmental determinants on children’s health. It is well established that social and environmental determinants of health—the social, economic, political, environmental, and cultural conditions that influence the health and well-being of individuals and communities—are the primary (...) drivers of contemporary child and adult health and health disparities (ACE Study 2015; CDC 2015; Marmot.. (shrink)

An unresolved debate in Bentham scholarship concerns the question of the timing and circumstances which led to Bentham's ‘conversion’ to democracy, and thus to political radicalism. In the early stages of the French Revolution, Bentham composed material which appeared to justify equality of suffrage on utilitarian grounds, but there are differing interpretations concerning the extent and depth of Bentham's commitment to democracy at this time. The appearance of Rights, Representation, and Reform: Nonsense upon Stilts and other essays on the French (...) Revolution, a new volume in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, containing definitive texts of Bentham's writings at this crucial period, offers an opportunity to reassess this debate. First, Bentham's most radical proposals for political reform came not in the so-called ‘Essay on Representation’ composed in late 1788 and early 1789, as has traditionally been assumed, but in his ‘Projet of a Constitutional Code for France’ composed in the autumn of 1789, where he advocated universal adult suffrage, subject to a literacy test. Second, it may be doubted if the very question as to whether Bentham was or was not a sincere convert to democracy is particularly helpful. Rather, it may be better to see Bentham as a ‘projector’ during this period of his life. Third, the nature of Bentham's radicalism was very different at this period from what it would become in the 1810s and 1820s, for instance in relation to his commitment to the traditional structures of the British Constitution. Having said that, his attitude to the British Constitution remained complex and ambivalent. At his most radical phase, in the autumn of 1789, he advocated wide-ranging measures of electoral reform while at the same time harbouring aspirations to be returned to Parliament for one of the Marquis of Lansdowne's pocket boroughs. To conclude, it was, arguably, the internal dynamic of Bentham's critical utilitarianism, rather than the events of the French Revolution, which was ultimately responsible for pushing him into a novel form of radical politics. (shrink)

Animals as Legal Beings is a new and important monograph-length treatment on the inadequacies of both a property and a personhood approach to the legal status of nonhuman animals. In line with decades of literature arguing for the abolishment of the property status of animals, Professor Maneesha Deckha, Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, adds a novel twist: personhood, the typically preferred alternative to a property status for nonhuman animals, is not a (...) good option. Why? Deckha argues that personhood is too anthropocentric and too embedded in problematic Western liberal humanist traditions to work for nonhuman animals. Drawing on a truly impressive... (shrink)

This twelfth volume of Correspondence contains authoritative and fully annotated texts of all known letters sent both to and from Bentham between July 1824 and June 1828. The 301 letters, most of which have never before been published, have been collected from archives, public and private, in Britain, the United States of America, Switzerland, France, Japan, and elsewhere, as well as from the major collections of Bentham Papers at University College London Library and the British Library.In mid-1824 Bentham was still (...) preoccupied with the Greek struggle for independence against Turkey, though his active involvement waned as he became disenchanted with the behaviour of the deputies sent to London by the Greek National Assembly. His international reputation was reflected in his continuing contact with Simón Bolívar and Bernardino Rivadavia in South America, and with John Quincy Adams, John Neal, Henry Wheaton, and others in the United States, and his forging of new contacts in Guatemala, India, and Egypt. In the autumn of 1825 he visited France, where he stayed with Jean Baptiste Say and La Fayette, and was fêted by the French liberals.Bentham made considerable progress drafting material for his pannomion, or complete code of laws, and in particular for his Constitutional and Procedure Codes, while John Stuart Mill edited the massive Rationale of Judicial Evidence. Bentham became increasingly active in the cause of law reform, and exchanged a series of letters on the subject with Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, and Henry Brougham. He maintained his friendships with John and Sarah Austin, George and Harriet Grote, James and John Stuart Mill, John Bowring, Joseph Hume, Francis Burdett, Francis Place, and Joseph Parkes, re-established contact with the third Marquis of Lansdowne, son of his old friend the first Marquis, and made new acquaintances in James Humphreys, Sutton Sharpe, and Albany Fonblanque. (shrink)

International child rights law has the potential to change the way children are viewed and engaged by all social actors. It provides a child-centered perspective on all areas of children’s lives, including research with neonates. It differs from some bioethical perspectives by clearly articulating affirmative obligations owed to children and requiring rigorous monitoring mechanisms. The CRC’s focus on affirmative obligations and establishment of monitoring mechanisms provide additional useful elements that are not present in the dominant form of American pediatric bioethics.An (...) in-depth introduction to child rights and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child is presented by Lansdown.. (shrink)

This chapter explains how an Irish documentary program presenting the vistas of Derreen, County Kerry recalls the aesthetics of the sublime, which is described by Edmund Burke as a sense of awed exhilaration. However, the program’s aim is to remind viewers that this landscape must be regarded as an alien insult, since Derreen was part of the land acquired by Sir William Petty, a significant beneficiary of the Cromwellian confiscation of Ireland. Petty’s descendants, earls of Shelburne and marquises of Lansdowne, (...) presided over centuries of hardship, emigration, and famine as a product of the “Anglo-Saxon mindset.” This was reinforced by a new scientific spirit that treated land as a commodity to be appropriated, mapped, secured, and exploited for immediate profit. (shrink)