The text of each poem is given in letterpress on the page facing the beautiful color reproductions of the plate. The book is printed on vellum.

Mimesis, conflict, and crisis -- Plato's victimary culture -- Aristophanic Socrates: ready victim -- Foundation murder.

It was William Blake's insight that the Christian churches, by inverting the Incarnation and the dialectical vision of Paul, have repressed the body, divided God from creation, substituted judgment for grace, and repudiated imagination, compassion, and the original apocalyptic faith of early Christianity. Blake's prophetic poetry thus contributes to the renewal of Christian ethics by a process of subversion and negation of Christian moral, ecclesiastical, and theological traditions, which are recognized precisely as inversions of Jesus, and therefore (...) as instances of the forms of evil that God-in-Christ overcomes through Incarnation, reversing the Fall. Blake's great epic poems, particularly Milton (1804–08) and Jerusalem (1804–20), embody his heterodox representation of the final coincidence of Christ and Satan through which, at last, all things are made new. (shrink)

Zizek insisted on the ‘temporal gap between the production of value and its actualization’ (Zizek, 2009b [2006], p. 52): ‘the temporality here is that of the futur antérieur: value “is” not immediately, it only “will have been,” it is retroactively actualized, performatively enacted’ (ibid.). His use of the word ‘gap’ calls to mind the psychoanalytic literature on which Zizek draws, which provides a way to understand the 2007 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and its aftermath. This paper presents three key ideas (...) about the GFC. First, the GFC was a traumatic encounter with lack, in which global capitalism confronted a gap at the centre of its chain of signifiers. Whether the financial system is seen as a series of promises or a system for allocating and hedging risk, a gap or lack remained at the origin of its chain of signifiers. Secondly, many explanations of the crisis focus on ‘getting back to fundamentals’, which can be read as an attempt to paper over the lack. Finally, in the panic to re-establish the master signifier, global finance tossed aside core justifications for capitalism, and it is not yet clear what the results will be: re-establishment of the old regime, a return to a Primal Father, or a turn to the analyst’s discourse. (shrink)

Cross-cultural scholarship in ritual studies on women's laments provides us with a fresh vantage point from which to consider the function of women and women's complaining voices in the epic poems of William Blake. In this essay, I interpret Thel, Oothoon, and Enitharmon as strong voices of experience that unleash some of Blake's most profound meditations on social, sexual, individual, and institutional forms of violence and injustice, offering what might aptly be called an ethics of witness. (...) Tracing the performative function of Enion, Jerusalem, Vala, and Erin in Blake's later epics, The Four Zoas and Jerusalem , I argue for the close connection between the female laments and the possibility of redemption, though in Blake such "redemption" comes at the cost of the very voices of witness themselves. (shrink)

This vivid facsimile of Blake's romantic and revolutionary publication offers a concise expression of his essential wisdom and philosophy. His distinctive hand-lettered text is accompanied by 27 color plates of his stirring illustrations.

Empirical studies have suggested that language-capable robots have the persuasive power to shape the shared moral norms based on how they respond to human norm violations. This persuasive power presents cause for concern, but also the opportunity to persuade humans to cultivate their own moral development. We argue that a truly socially integrated and morally competent robot must be willing to communicate its objection to humans’ proposed violations of shared norms by using strategies such as blame-laden rebukes, even if doing (...) so may violate other standing norms, such as politeness. By drawing on Confucian ethics, we argue that a robot’s ability to employ blame-laden moral rebukes to respond to unethical human requests is crucial for cultivating a flourishing “moral ecology” of human–robot interaction. Such positive moral ecology allows human teammates to develop their own moral reflection skills and grow their own virtues. Furthermore, this ability can and should be considered as one criterion for assessing artificial moral agency. Finally, this paper discusses potential implications of the Confucian theories for designing socially integrated and morally competent robots. (shrink)

Supported decision-making has been promoted at a policy level and within international human rights treaties as a way of ensuring that people with disabilities enjoy the right to legal capacity on an equal basis with others. However, little is known about the practical issues associated with implementing supported decision-making, particularly in the context of dementia. This study aimed to understand the experiences of people with dementia and their family members with respect to decision-making and their views on supported decision-making. Thirty-six (...) interviews were undertaken with fifty-seven participants across three states in Australia. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used as the methodological approach, with relational autonomy as a theoretical perspective. We identified two overarching themes relating to participants’ experiences with decision-making: “the person in relationship over time” and “maintaining involvement.” Participant views on the practical issues associated with supported decision-making are addressed under the themes of “facilitating decision-making,” “supported decision-making arrangements,” “constraints on decision-making,” and “safeguarding decision-making.” While participants endorsed the principles of supported decision-making as part of their overarching strategy of “maintaining involvement” in decision-making, they recognized that progressive cognitive impairment meant that there was an inevitable transition toward greater involvement of, and reliance upon, others in decision-making. Social and contextual “constraints on decision-making” also impacted on the ability of people with dementia to maintain involvement. These themes inform our proposal for a “spectrum approach” to decision-making involvement among people living with dementia, along with recommendations for policy and practice to assist in the implementation of supported decision-making within this population. (shrink)

Supported decision-making has been promoted at a policy level and within international human rights treaties as a way of ensuring that people with disabilities enjoy the right to legal capacity on an equal basis with others. However, little is known about the practical issues associated with implementing supported decision-making, particularly in the context of dementia. This study aimed to understand the experiences of people with dementia and their family members with respect to decision-making and their views on supported decision-making. Thirty-six (...) interviews were undertaken with fifty-seven participants across three states in Australia. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used as the methodological approach, with relational autonomy as a theoretical perspective. We identified two overarching themes relating to participants’ experiences with decision-making: “the person in relationship over time” and “maintaining involvement.” Participant views on the practical issues associated with supported decision-making are addressed under the themes of “facilitating decision-making,” “supported decision-making arrangements,” “constraints on decision-making,” and “safeguarding decision-making.” While participants endorsed the principles of supported decision-making as part of their overarching strategy of “maintaining involvement” in decision-making, they recognized that progressive cognitive impairment meant that there was an inevitable transition toward greater involvement of, and reliance upon, others in decision-making. Social and contextual “constraints on decision-making” also impacted on the ability of people with dementia to maintain involvement. These themes inform our proposal for a “spectrum approach” to decision-making involvement among people living with dementia, along with recommendations for policy and practice to assist in the implementation of supported decision-making within this population. (shrink)

The development and deployment of medical devices, along with most areas of healthcare, has been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This has had variable ethical implications, two of which we will focus on here. First, medical device regulations have been rapidly amended to expedite approvals of devices ranging from face masks to ventilators. Although some regulators have issued cessation dates, there is inadequate discussion of triggers for exiting these crisis standards, and evidence that this may not be feasible. Given (...) the relatively low evidence standards currently required for regulatory approval of devices, this further indefinite reduction in standards raises serious ethical issues. Second, the pandemic has disrupted the usual operations of device representatives in hospitals, providing an opportunity to examine and refine this potentially ethically problematic practice. In this paper we explain and critically analyse the ethical implications of these two pandemic-related impacts on medical devices and propose suggestions for their management. These include an endpoint for pandemic-related adjustments to device regulation or a mechanism for continued refinement over time, together with a review of device research conducted under crisis conditions, support for the removal and replacement of emergency approved devices, and a review of device representative credentialling. (shrink)

The problem of evil is broadly considered to be one of the greatest intellectual threats to traditional brands of theism. And William Rowe’s 1979 formulation of the problem in “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism” is the most cited formulation in the contemporary philosophical literature. In this paper, we explore how the tools and resources of experimental philosophy might be brought to bear on Rowe’s seminal formulation, arguing that our empirical findings raise significant questions regarding the (...) ultimate success of Rowe’s argument. Such a result would be quite notable within philosophy of religion, since this is considered one of the most formidable arguments against theism. However, further testing is needed before any firm conclusions can be drawn. -/- In section 1, we elucidate Rowe’s formulation of the problem of evil and the intuitions that seem to underwrite it. In section 2, we explore how the tools and resources of experimental philosophy might be brought to bear on Rowe’s formulation, outlining our hypotheses and our methods for testing them before showcasing our results. In section 3, we discuss the philosophical import of our results–arguing that our results, when taken together, pose an initial challenge to Rowe’s seminal argument. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 118-119 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Cambridge Companion to Augustine Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, editors. The Cambridge Companion to Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xv + 307. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $21.95. Given the immeasurable influence of Augustine upon the Western tradition, a volume devoted to him in the Cambridge Companion Series has been long overdue. Fortunately, (...) the lacuna has been filled by a work that exhibits the quality of scholarship and clarity of presentation that has become a hallmark of this series. Ably edited by Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, it will serve admirably as a guide for students and professionals alike, with much that is of interest to seasoned Augustine scholars.As Stump tells us in her introduction, the eighteen essays of the volume are loosely grouped according to eight topics. These are philosophy of religion, metaphysics and theology, philosophy of mind, theory of knowledge, philosophy of language, ethics, political philosophy, and Augustine's influence. As is apparent from this list, the essays cut a vast swath through Augustine's corpus, though they focus on what is of greatest interest to philosophers. In addition, since Augustine did not recognize a clean division between philosophy and theology, much that we now classify as theology gets attention as well.In keeping with the aim of the series, the character of the essays is, for the most part, expository. Each author takes pains to explain the outlines of Augustine's position on the particular topic under consideration, and most do so with considerable attention to the evolution of his thought and the context in which he wrote. Christopher Kirwan's essay, for example, not only traces the development of Augustine's philosophy of language from his early De magistro and De dialectica through his mature De doctrina Christiana, but highlights those areas in which the influence of Stoic dialectic can be detected. Similarly, John Rist's essay on faith and reason includes a discussion of the relation of Augustine's views on credibilia to the Platonic tradition, and Paul Weithman's essay on political theory examines Augustine's critique of Ciceronian ideals of political society. Thus, while systematic in their exposition, the essays give due recognition to the fact that Augustine's views evolved through continual reassessment of the antique heritage in light of changing concerns and circumstances, particularly an increasing concern to articulate the foundations of a new, scripturally inspired, vision of God, humanity, and society. [End Page 118]In addition to exposition and historical analysis, many of the authors use their essays as occasions for constructive philosophical engagement. Perhaps the best of these is Stump's essay. Noting the pervasive disagreement among interpreters over Augustine's doctrine of free will, she distinguishes three positions available to defenders of free will--compatiblism, common libertarianism, and modified libertarianism--in order to bring greater conceptual clarity to the interpretive task. She then shows that in his early work, De libero arbitrio, Augustine develops an essentially libertarian position (though which form he is committed to remains ambiguous), but that this account comes into tension with his views concerning the action of grace on the will as they were later developed in opposition to the Pelagians. In itself this is not a startling claim, but Stump's analytical skills enable her to identify precisely where the tension lies, and she suggests a way that Augustine could have resolved this tension without compromising his basic commitments.If there is any quibble to be had with the volume, it is that several of the essays are too compressed. Roland Teske's essay on the soul and William Mann's essay on evil, for example, run a mere seven and nine pages each. Though informative, given the centrality of these topics to Augustine's thought, they would have been more useful had they been expanded. Because of this, the most satisfying essays are those in which the authors stretch out. Scott MacDonald's piece on the divine nature is particularly good in this regard. In... (shrink)

Why focus on the work of William Blake in a journal dedicated to religious ethics? The question is neither trivial nor rhetorical. Blake's work is certainly not in anyone's canon of significant texts for the study of Christian or, more broadly, religious ethics. Yet Blake, however subversive his views, sought to lay out a Christian vision of the good, alternated between prophetic denunciations of the world's folly and harrowing laments over the wreck of the world's promise, (...) and wrote poetry as if poetry might mend the world. Setting imagination against the calculations of reason and the comfort of custom, Blake's poems inspire questions about the relationship of ethics to prophecy, and open the possibility that ethics itself would be markedly enriched could it find a place for what Thomas J. J. Altizer has called Christian epic poetry. (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)

Readers of the poems of Dracontius as edited and expounded by F. Vollmer may well receive the impression that the poet was incapable of the Latin tongue and was given to turns and expressions intelligible only to himself and such painstaking students as his editor. The language of the true Drac., though often stiff and artificial, does not, however, call for superhuman powers of interpretation, and the bewilderment of his readers is occasioned largely by the faulty tradition of the (...) text and the conservatism of an editor who either refuses to recognize the corruptions which confront him, or is content with superficial corrections sufficient to restore some semblance of grammar whether or not accompanied by sense. To the text of Drac. Vollm. certainly made a valuable contribution, but his unshakable faith in the integrity of scribes led to a frequent acceptance of the false as the true; that the transmission of the text may have been left to the heedless or the ignorant is not a possibility which appears to have occurred to him. There can be no doubt that the manuscripts on which the text depends are full of corruptions, and many of these have received either inadequate attention or none at all; where convincing remedies have been proposed by previous scholars, Vollm. has shown all too often a blind indifference. The poems of Drac. deserve, indeed, more sympathetic treatment, for they are by no means without merit. The Christian works at least, written during his imprisonment, contain flashes of real poetry and are characterized by a warmth of feeling inspired by the poet's personal miseries and genuine belief in the goodness of God; that they were read and imitated in the most diverse lands of the Christian world is not surprising. The following notes represent for the most part an attempt to improve on Vollm.'s text of the De laudibus dei and the Satisfactio in certain passages where the manuscript reading appears to me to have been either improperly retained or imperfectly emended. I have already dealt with a number of other unsatisfactory passages in C.Q., vol. xxxiii, pp. 157–62, and vol. xl, pp. 92–100. The text quoted is in each case that of Vollm.'s P.L.M. edition. (shrink)

Originally published in 1991, this book focuses on the concept of virtue, and in particular on the virtue of wisdom or knowledge, as it is found in the epic poems of Homer, some tragedies of Sophocles, selected writings of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers. The key questions discussed are the nature of the virtues, their relation to each other, and the relation between the virtues and happiness or well-being. This book provides the background and interpretative framework (...) to make classical works on Ethics, such as Plato’s _Republic_ and Aristotle’s _Nicomachean Ethics_, accessible to readers with no training in the classics. (shrink)

In his prophetic poems Blake conceives a perfection of humanity defined in part by the complete mutuality of its interdependent genders. Yet throughout the same poems he represents one of those mutual, contrary, equal genders as inferior and dependent , or as unnaturally and disastrously dominant. Indeed, females are not only represented as weak or power-hungry, they come to represent weakness and power-hunger . Blake's philosophical principle of mutuality is thus undermined by stereotypical metaphors of femaleness (...) which I believe he adopted automatically in his early poems and then tried to redress but found himself trapped by in his late works. Susan Fox is currently working on a book of poems and has written articles on Spenser and Blake as well as Poetic Forms in Blake's Milton. She is an associate professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York. (shrink)

Bertolt Brecht’s poem “A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor” is frequently cited as a means to raise awareness among health workers of the health effects of living and working conditions. Less cited is his Call to Arms trilogy of poems, which calls for class-based action to transform the capitalist economic system that sickens and kills so many. In this article, we show how “A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor,” with its plea for empathy for the ill, contrasts with the (...) more activist and often militant tone of the Call to Arms trilogy: “Call to a Sick Communist,” “The Sick Communist’s Answer to the Comrades,” and “Call to the Doctors and Nurses.” We also show that, while “A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor” has been applied in the training of health workers, its accusatorial tone towards health workers’ complicity in the system the poem is critiquing risks alienating such workers. In contrast, the Call to Arms trilogy seeks common ground, inviting these same workers into the broader political and social fight against injustice. While we contend that the description of the sick worker as a “Communist” risks estranging these health workers, our analysis of the Call to Arms poems nevertheless indicates that their use can contribute to moving health workers’ educational discourse beyond a laudable but fleeting elicitation of empathy for the ill towards a structural critique and deeper systemic understanding in order to prompt action by health workers to reform or even replace the capitalist economic system that sickens and kills so many. (shrink)

The distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. Du Bois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually nearly 80 years ago in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. This volume has long inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reforms for black Americans.

As one of the least common, yet predictable astronomical occurrences, the transits of Venus were to become among the most keenly anticipated events for early modern cosmologists. Basing himself on Johannes Kepler’s Tabulae Rudolphinae (1627), former Cambridge student Jeremiah Horrocks (1616–1641) made the first recorded observation of a transit from Much Hoole, Lancashire in 1639. Alongside the description of his observations, Horrocks’ Venus in sole visa contains four poems alongside the work’s prose descriptions, figures, and tables. His verses call (...) on the long tradition of Latin scientific poetry employed for the predictable purposes of eulogy and homage, but they also serve to justify and clarify the author’s position on scientific issues of his time. Despite the long-recognized importance of Horrocks’ observations, his hexameter compositions have been largely ignored in later scholarship. In the latest translation of the Venus in sole visa (2012), one poem—the longest and arguably the best—is omitted altogether. This paper offers a study of Horrocks’ Latin poetry, his models and engagement with its subject matter. It reveals Horrocks’ efforts to promote his predecessors’ achievements, his position on questions central to the debates of his time, and the claims for authority he made for the work of others, as well as for his own. The present article also includes a new, modern translation of Horrocks’ longest, and recently forgotten poem as an appendix. (shrink)

Speaking of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, F. R. Leavis says, “The unity the poem aims at is that of an inclusive consciousness: the organization it achieves as a work of art is of the kind that … may, by analogy, be called musical.” Speaking of the same poem, Karl Shapiro says, “That it is lacking in unity is obvious. Any part of The Waste Land can be switched with any other part without changing the sense of the poem.”.

Jorge Luis Borges is acknowledged as one of the great Spanish writers of the twentieth century. On the broader literary scene, he is recognized as a modern master. His fascination with philosophy - especially metaphysics - sets him apart from his contemporaries. Borges appreciated and formulated rigorous philosophical arguments, but also possessed the unique ability to present the most abstract ideas imaginatively in metaphors and symbols. Borges wandered among the great masters seeking a firm purchase that he could not find, (...) and therefore expressed a nostalgia for metaphysics as he lost himself in his labyrinths. Borges and Philosophy traces Borges' philosophical concerns in his tales, essays, and poems and argues that despite his apparent skepticism in philosophical matters, a careful reading of Borges' texts reveals a coherent philosophical path that underlies his work. (shrink)

In his recent second supplement to his invaluable catalogue of manuscripts of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Munari reports two manuscripts from the Bibliotheca Vallicelliana in Rome. The second of these, number 405 in his cumulative list, is Bibl. Vallicelliana F 25. According to the description supplied to Munari and so quoted, the manuscript is a miscellany, 23Ox 142 mm., membr. fourteenth century, and the Ovidian material is the last or number 7 of the miscellaneous pieces, fols. 117–34. So far, the information is (...) correct. However, on a crucial point, namely the exact contents of the Ovidian poem preserved, the data are in error. (shrink)