"A collection of essays on the early modern English writer, proto-feminist, and rhetorician Mary Astell. Includes discussions on human nature, equality, rationality, power, freedom, friendship, marriage, and education"--Provided by publisher.

The tragedies of the past decade have led to an identity crisis among humanitarians. Respecting traditional principles of neutrality and impartiality and operating procedures based on consent has created as many problems as it has solved.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Over the last decade, the international media has devoted increasing attention to operations that separate conjoined twins. Despite the fairly low odds that a child or adult will survive the operation with all of their vital organs intact, most people fail to question the urgency of being physically separated from one’s identical twin. The drive to surgically tear asunder that which was originally joined, I suggest, is motivated in part by a refusal to acknowledge intercorporeality as a basic condition of (...) human existence that doesn’t undermine identity but makes it possible in the first place. (shrink)

This essay analyzes one of Germany's former premier research institutions for biomedical research, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (KWIA) as a test case for the way in which politics and human heredity served as resources for each other during the Third Reich. Examining the KWIA from this perspective brings us a step closer to answering the questions at the heart of most recent scholarship concerning the biomedical community under the swastika: (1) How do we explain (...) why the vast majority of German human geneticists and eugenicists were willing to work for the National Socialist state and, at the very least, legitimized its exterminationist racial policy; and (2) what accounts for at least some of Germany's most renowned medically trained professionals' involvement in forms of morally compromised science that wholly transcend the bounds of normal scientific practice? Although a complete answer to this question must await an examination of other German biological research centers, the present study suggests that during the Nazi period the symbiotic relationship between human genetics and politics served to radicalize both. The dynamic between the science of human heredity and Nazi politics changed the research practice of some of the biomedical sciences housed at the KWIA. It also simultaneously made it easier for the Nazi state to carry out its barbaric racial program leading, finally, to the extermination of millions of so-called racial undesirables. (shrink)

Our task in this study, then, is to see what Hegel makes of Aristotle in unifying and interpreting his doctrine, to see how far ... some of the questions that are continually being raised about Hegel's purpose and meaning in the philosophy of mind.

As a philosophic work should, it attempts to articulate a vision of the whole of things. This means that it must run counter to the temper not only of ...

This essay explores classical rabbinic literature's understanding of the prohibition of bloodshed alongside its understanding that "the image of God" corresponds to the physically embodied individual. This conception generates radical implications so that, apart from the narrow instance of a direct aggressor with intent to kill or rape, it is never legitimate to cause the death of any person, even in pursuit of a supposed "greater good." While notions of war and execution are retained in principle, the requirement of direct (...) divine sanction for such actions neutralizes them in practice, removing them from the domain of human judgment and justification. (shrink)

Book written to preserve the wisdom of the ancient healing sages of China, and to provide the conceptual tools needed for its practical application in healing diseases of the modern world.

The Executive Council of the HSA has engaged Darrel E. Christensen to serve as Chairman of a Committee for Arrangements for the symposium on "Hegel and the Sciences" being planned for December 4-6, 1970. Professor George L. Kline is serving as a member of this Committee. A third member will be announced shortly, when the site of the meeting has been determined. Persons interested in contributing to the program are invited to submit papers, proposals for papers, or indications of the (...) type of paper to which they might wish to direct a prepared commentary. The theme is construed to embrace the following four areas of investigation: Hegel's philosophies of nature and the sciences within the context of his philosophy as a hole and the thought of his time, implications of Hegel's philosophies of nature and the sciences for understanding other aspects of his philosophy, the relation of Hegel's thought and method of relating to the sciences to developments and issues in the sciences and the philosophy of science since his time, and the contributions of philosophers who in some identifiable way have practiced Hegel's method or style of doing philosophy as these relate to the sciences or to the philosophy of science since his time. The scope of the theme may be modified, et the discretion of the Committee on Arrangements, to accommodate a promising paper. The deadline for completed papers to be submitted is September 1, after which they will be mimeographed and copies sent to commentators and, a little later, to persons who register to attend the meeting. The plan is to have mimeographed copies of commentaries in the hands of authors of principal papers by early November. Papers are to be 5,000 to 12,500 words in length, but the oral presentation should not exceed 30 minutes. Commentaries and replies may run 2,000 words each, but the oral presentation should not take longer than about 12 minutes. The Hegel Society of America will retain copyright on the material presented to the Symposium, which copyright will automatically revert to the respective authors of material not placed for publication by the Committee on Arrangements of the Society by February 1, 1972. Correspondence regarding the program should be addressed to: Darrel E. Christensen, Department of Philosophy, Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina 29301. (shrink)

Firstly, we are immortal metaphysically. Each of us is an individual, an ultimate reality, unavoidably referred to by all the others as that which is other than, rejected by them. I am possessed by all the others as the terminus of a rebuff, as what they are not. The rest of the universe holds itself apart from me and thus refers to me as that which it opposes, negates, puts aside. Because it is part of the essence of this shoe (...) not to be me, I must be a constituent of the shoe, of course not substantially but as a meaning, and then only as qualified by a negation, as that which is rejected, cancelled. Each of us is part of the essence of every other in the guise of a meaning necessarily negated. Our natures are ingredient in all that is; in abstraction from us, as negated parts of them, all the rest would be other than what they now are. (shrink)

Cicero’s De Finibus contains a debate about whether practical knowledge should be compared to theoretical knowledge (theôreia/sapientia), or to technical knowledge (technê/ars). The way in which practical knowledge is conceived by the Stoics on the one hand, and Peripatetics on the other, lies behind and explains, for Cicero, the tendency of Peripatetics to place greater priority upon harmony with the external world, and that of the Stoics to seek inner harmony at the cost of harmony with that external world. The (...) dialogue ends in aporia because, for Cicero, practical knowledge either comes to bear an excessive resemblance to technê, as in the case of the Peripatetics, or to theoretical knowledge, as in the case of the Stoics; for him, it must fall neither to one nor the other extreme. (shrink)

The paper is sympathetic to the idea that speakers have implicit knowledge of the semantics of sub-sentential elements of language, loosely, of words. Implicit knowledge is knowledge which the subject need not be capable of articulating yet which is a genuine propositional attitude and it is to be contrasted with tacit knowledge which refers to an information-bearing state which, however, is not a genuine propositional attitude. I begin by defending the implicit knowledge conception of speakers' knowledge of the meanings of (...) words from a challenge articulated by Evans and then go on the offensive against positions which attempt to replace the notion of implicit knowledge in semantic theory by that of tacit knowledge. (shrink)

An investigation of the nature of truth, ethics, and deception.