What were Shakespeare's final thoughts on history, tragedy, and comedy? Shakespeare's Last Plays focuses much needed scholarly attention on Shakespeare's "Late Romances." The work--a collection of newly commissioned essays by leading scholars of classical political philosophy and literature--offers careful textual analysis of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, All is True, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The essays reveal how Shakespeare's thought in these final works compliments, challenges, fulfills, or transforms previously held conceptions of the playwright (...) and his political-philosophical views. (shrink)

As John Henry Newman reflected on 'The Idea of a University' more than a century and a half ago, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together some of the nation's most eminent thinkers on higher education to reflect on the nature and purposes of the American university today. Their mordant reflections paint a picture of the American university in crisis. This book is essential reading for thoughtful citizens, scholars, and educational policymakers.

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

Expounds on the relationship between theory and practice as applied, adjusted, and inaugurated in health care.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:242 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY asks questions like these: What is there in favor of calling green a primary color, and not a blend of blue and yellow? (1, 6) or, Why can something be transparent green but not transparent white? (1, 19). The effect of such questions is to force us to realize that our concept of color is more complex than we might have realized, or would want (...) it to be if we are committed to epistemologicaI theories in which color experience counts as basic. Other questions make us aware that the simple contrast of conceptual and empirical turns out to be hopelessly inadequate, and that this immensely complicates, if it does not vitiate, the task of drawing a comprehensive map of knowledge. We understand, in a way, what Wittgenstein is doing, but come to think we do not, since the effect of reading these remarks is to unsettle us about beliefs we had thought we could safely assume. The difficulties of Wittgenstein's questions pass over into the Companion, as was the case with Max Black's Companion to the "Tractatus" as well. Both works fortify standard ventures at interpretation, and both frustrate by leaving untouched one's worst perplexities. But perhaps one sweeping thought can be ventured. Wittgenstein once remarked that the present age is a time for popular science, and therefore not a time for philosophy. 6 Reading Wittgenstein, or his Companion, restores vitality to ways of thought and speech more primitive, and more basic, than science. Surely the typical object of his therapy is the muddle we get into by borrowing the language and method of science to describe and explain the relation of the perceiver to the world, or the agent to influences on his conduct. Moreover, the language of thought, act, and agency is presupposed in a description of how scientists can and do proceed. The temptations of a religious picture of the world for this point of view are strong--and reflected in the positive interest Wittgenstein evinced for religious thinkers. For religion expresses the limits of science by means of imagery that is not alien to a description of the world in terms of things and processes. But to say this is to come to a halt before the apparatus of language games and deep grammar as one comes to exegetical dead ends before Plato's Forms or Spinoza's infinite attributes. They are the imperfect means of communicating essentially private visions. One final cavil: The reader is sometimes teased rather than appeased by numbered citations referring to unpublished manuscripts. To quote them in full would of course have made the Companion impossibly tong. But for many readers Hallett's citations wilt be, at best, promissory notes to be cashed only when it suits Wittgenstein's executors to publish this material. It is to be hoped that when that day arrives it will be possible to correlate the manuscripts with Hallett's citations. As the Remarks on Colour show, however, we cannot be too sanguine. Would it not be wiser to publish the manuscripts as they were written, rather than to select passages which in the editor's judgment are related by theme? Such a policy would better serve future students of Wittgenstein, who from now on will go to the texts Hallett in hand. ALFRED LOUCH Clarement Graduate School Martin Heidegger. The Piety of Thinking: Essays by Martin Heidegger. Translated, with notes and commentary, by James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976. Pp. xi + 212. The possible significance of Martin Heidegger's works for theology and for religious faith has long been a question as intriguing as it is complex. Since the first appearance of Being and Time about life," which, Professor Anscombe promises, "will appear elsewhere." The translation, by Linda L. McAlister and Margaret Schuttle, is up to the expected standard of accuracy and lucidity. Normal Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein:A Memoir (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 73. BOOK REVIEWS 243 in 1927 Catholic and Protestant theologians have sought to appropriate Heidegger for their own understandingof Christianity. With the publicationof his many later works over the last fifty years, the controversy over Heidegger's... (shrink)

This essay is about the ethical propriety and practical efficacy of a range of policy undertakings which, in the last twenty years, has come to be referred to as “affirmative action.” These policies have been contentious and problematic, and a variety of arguments have been advanced in their support. Here I try to close a gap, as I see it, in this “literature of justification” which has grown up around the practice of preferential treatment. My principal argument along these lines (...) is offered in the next section. I then consider how some forms of argument in support of preferential treatment, distinctly different from that offered here, not only fail to justify the practice but, even worse, work to undermine the basis for cooperation among different ethnic groups in the American democracy. Finally, I observe that as a practical matter the use of group preference can, under circumstances detailed in the sequel, produce results far different from the egalitarian objectives which most often motivate their adoption. It may seem fatuous in the extreme to raise as a serious matter, in the contemporary United States, the question “Why should we care about group inequality?” Is not the historical and moral imperative of such concern self-evident? Must not those who value the pursuit of justice be intensely concerned about economic disparities among groups of persons? The most obvious answer to the title question would seem, then, to be: “We should care because such inequality is the external manifestation of the oppression of individuals on the basis of their group identity.”. (shrink)

We, the faculty of this great university, are all specialists of one kind or another –economists, physicists, historians, philosophers, poets. Necessarily then, we are the masters of rarefied techniques of inquiry and expression peculiar to our disciplines. But if we were no more than that, we should have failed our students, and ourselves. We are also intellectuals, and citizens. We bear the citizen's duty to engage the problems of this society, and the intellectual's responsibility to speak what truth he is (...) given to know about them. (shrink)

This paper outlines the development and implementation of a new course in Engineering Ethics at the University of Tennessee. This is a three-semester-hour course and is jointly taught by an engineering professor and a philosophy professor. While traditional pedagogical techniques such as case studies, position papers, and classroom discussions are used, additional activities such as developing a code of ethics and student-developed scenarios are employed to encourage critical thinking. Among the topics addressed in the course are engineering as a profession (...) and its role in society; ethical successes and failures; risk, safety, and the environment; professional responsibilities; credit and intellectual property; and international concerns. (shrink)

On the basis of the characterization of autonomy set out by Beauchamp and Childress in Principles of Biomedical Ethics, we first explore some of the parameters along which autonomy may vary in degree through a series of hypothetical examples drawn from various settings; and, second and in more detail, we examine how the range of autonomy is affected through informed consent to various medical diagnostic tests. Our conclusions are (1) that there are significant implications for patient autonomy inherent in new (...) and forthcoming diagnostic modalities, and (2) that attention should be paid to these implications in formulating policies for both clinical practice and research. We close with (a) some specific policy recommendations for clinical practice and research, and (b) some metaphysical speculations raised by our explorations. (shrink)

This textbook in Medical Ethics covers most of the standard issues. Each chapter begins with detailed comments by the editors, followed by the best available articles on each topic covered.

This paper offers a listing of references to religious ethics in recent Anglo-American philosophical literature, organized in terms of a critical analysis of the main lines of argument to be found there. The principal focus is on metaethics, although references are included to other aspects of religious ethics. The author maintains that the case for a logical and/or a linguistic relation between religion and ethics is much stronger than is generally recognized in the philosophical discussions of these issues.

The patient we call Danny was a mildly mentally retarded male in his mid-thirties who adamantly refused kidney dialysis when it was offered as the only therapeutic option for his progressive kidney failure. It was uncertain how fully Danny understood the implications of his refusal. To complicate the case still further, several “advocates” emerged to speak on Danny's behalf — each with a somewhat different interpretation of the situation and different sets of value presuppositions and ethical principles to apply to (...) the choice. We chronicle the development of this situation through a series of scenes; and in each scene we also attempt to clarify the ethical and medico-legal issues involved at that point. Danny was finally permitted to make this decision for himself — though more by default than by an agreement by all parties to honor his autonomy. Our hope is that this presentation will lead to further discussion and clarification of these important issues. (shrink)

Animals depleting one patch of resources must decide when to leave and switch to a fresh patch. Foraging theory has predicted various decision mechanisms; which is best depends on environmental variation in patch quality. Previously we tested whether these mechanisms underlie human decision making when foraging for external resources; here we test whether humans behave similarly in a cognitive task seeking internally generated solutions. Subjects searched for meaningful words made from random letter sequences, and as their success rate declined, they (...) could opt to switch to a fresh sequence. As in the external foraging context, time since the previous success and the interval preceding it had a major influence on when subjects switched. Subjects also used the commonness of sequence letters as a proximal cue to patch quality that influenced when to switch. Contrary to optimality predictions, switching decisions were independent of whether sequences differed little or widely in quality. (shrink)

As a way of contributing to bioethics' understanding of itself, and, more particularly, to invigorate conversation about how we can best educate future colleagues, we present here a sketch of the quarter-century-old graduate concentration in medical ethics housed in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Our hope is to incite other programs to share their histories, strategies, problems, and aspirations, so as to help the field as a whole get a clearer sense of how we are (...) putting together our future, and of how we might best go about this important job. (shrink)