Le philosophe canadien Charles Taylor est un des penseurs contemporains qui jouit d’une reconnaissance mondiale : il a initié et participé à plusieurs débats relatifs au libéralisme, au communautarisme et au multiculturalisme. Son œuvre est pluridimensionnelle puisque ses travaux portant, entre autres, sur la théorie de science, la théorie du langage, la théorie de l’action et de la personne, la théorie de la modernité.La pensée de Charles Taylor s’est élaborée non seulement en se nourrissant des traditions aussi bien phénoménologique qu’analytique, (...) mais, très concrètement, en prise directe avec les problèmes soulevés dans la société canadienne par la très grande diversité des immigrations. Sa pensée mérite d’autant plus à être méditée que les tentations de repli communautaire, si ce n’est de purification ethnique, semblent aujourd’hui croissantes. Les contributions – pour moitié en anglais – de ce colloque organisé à Budapest en 2012 en l’honneur et en présence de Charles Taylor invitent au contraire à interroger et à poursuivre son analyse des conditions qui permettraient l’avènement d’un monde véritablement pluriel. (shrink)

ASD VI,7 comprises Erasmus's Annotations on Paul's Epistole to the Romans. Many subjects with respect to, for instance, justification by faith and the relation between Jews and Christians are treated. Hovingh comments on Erasmus's commentary, identifying his sources and his stilistic and grammatical peculiarities.

While a knowledge of Wordsworth's philosophical outlook would be quite helpful in understanding his poetry, it has proved difficult to re-construct this outlook from the fragmentary hints given in the poetry itself. Hirsch has found an adequate substitute in Schelling's early philosophy, notwithstanding the fact that neither was influenced by the other. The justification for linking Wordsworth with Schelling must be sought in the unity and inner coherence of the romantic perspective itself. Ignoring the vicissitudes in its development as extraneous (...) to his purpose, Hirsch presents a clear and vigorous outline accurately portraying the basic features of Schelling's philosophy up to 1806. The application of insights gleaned from this study of Schelling to the interpretation of specific poems is both instructive and convincing.--L. S. F. (shrink)

This edition of one of Heidegger's minor essays--Was ist das--die Philosophie?--contains the German text and a translation,, on facing pages.--L. S. F.

The Vestal Virgins are one of the most famous elements of Roman religion, yet despite their perennial appeal and the importance of some smaller scale studies of the priesthood, the priestesses have not received a monograph-length study since F. Giuzzi, Aspetti giuridici del sacerdozio romano. II sacerdozio di Vesta (Naples, 1968). Now we have books by R.L. Wildfang and M.C. Martini that could not be more different. The former offers a thorough survey of what the sources can tell us (...) about the priesthood in the period from the end of the Second Carthaginian War to the first century C.E. The latter is an analysis of early Roman historiography and the role the Vestals, in particular their periodic unchastity, played in the creation of the traditional account of the development of Rome. W's book puts forward two main arguments: (1) the Vestals were charged with the ritual purification of the city and with the storage and preparation of ritual materials, and (2) many aspects of the priesthood that have long puzzled scholars are tied to the Vestals' status as Roman citizens, but citizens who existed outside the traditional family structure. The book will be accessible to those new to the topic, but the notes will repay specialists. Ancient sources are quoted in translation, with original texts provided in an appendix. A second appendix provides a list of known Vestals. This slender volume could have been even thinner if the frequent repetitions were cut down. W's work might have been better as a hefty article, so little is there to know about the Vestals. The Classical Review vol. 58 no. 1 C The Classical Association 2008; all rights reserved This content downloaded from 204.235.148.90 on Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:47:09 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 213 In the Introduction, W makes a welcome distinction among types of rituals often lumped together in discussions of 'fertility' rituals, with which the Vestals are often associated (p. 4). W reserves 'fertility' to describe only those rites that deal with the reproduction of people, livestock and the growth of crops. Harvest rituals are linked to the harvesting of crops, while another set of rites, 'storage rites', are tied to the preservation of the harvest. The final group, purification rituals, aim at the cleansing of an individual, place or object of 'all forms of pollution that would render it or them unfit to come into contact with the religious sphere'. The book is arranged thematically. The first two chapters lay out all we can know about the priestesses' ritual obligations performed in the seclusion of the temple and out amongst the people. While a reader may not find W's interpretation of each of the Vestals' actions equally persuasive, the overall argument that the priestesses' activities were, by and large, purificatory is convincing. Two of the more interesting aspects of W.'s discussion are her considerations of Vesta's fire and of the water required for some of her rituals (pp. 8-11). Fire was seen by the Romans as both a fertile and a sterile force, and scholars have emphasised one or the other, or the contrast between them, in their interpretation of the Vestals. W points out that fertile fire is always described in masculine terms and is associated with Vulcan. Vesta's fire, however, is always associated with sterility and purity, and so should be understood as having a purificatory significance. W points out that Vesta's fire was used only in the manufacture of ritually necessary items: roasting spelt for mola salsa, baking brine for muries and burning ashes from the fetal cow from the Fordicidia and the tail of the October horse, both of which were used at the Parilia. For other rituals, the Vestals were required to use water, the purificatory substance par excellence, drawn only from the spring of Juturna and carried only in vessels that could not be set down. These restrictions ensured that the water was always fresh, running water that never touched profane earth. Chapters 3-5 trace out the unique position the Vestals occupied in Roman society, arguing that they existed outside the standard Roman familial and other social structures, yet remained fully part of the Roman state. W suggests that the initiation rite of captio removed the new priestess not only from her family but, more importantly, from her family cult, thus avoiding any potential contamination of familial and public cult. Virginity was required for multiple reasons, the most significant being that such a status allowed the priestess to remain a full member of the Roman state, but prevented her from being a member of a traditional family structure. Throughout the book, W makes much of the idea of Vestals as represen tatives of Roman citizen women without ever really dealing with the question to what extent any Roman woman, priestess or not, was a ciuis. Though W is probably correct, it is not entirely certain to what extent women were citizens in the Republic, and at least a reference to some key ancient sources and to recent scholarship on this question should be made (e.g. L. Peppe, Posizione giuridica e ruolo sociale della donna romana in eta repubblicana [Milan, 1984]). The sixth chapter, 'The Vestals in the Romans' History', looks at the appearance of Vestals in the early history of Rome, refining the common assumption that accusations of, and convictions for, incestum arose only in periods of great stress and danger. W adds that a priestess's involvement, or her family's involvement, in one of the groups taking part in the conflict or struggle of the moment also played a role. This chapter traces changes over the course of 300 years in the attitudes of the priestesses and the Romans more generally toward the priesthood, its role in society This content downloaded from 204.235.148.90 on Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:47:09 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 214 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW and its requirement of 30 years of chastity. The argument hangs on even less evidence than other sections of the work. In contrast to their central place in W's book, the Vestals play only a small (though crucial, in her interpretation) role in M.'s work. The basic argument of the book is that episodes of Vestal incestum are linked in the historiographic tradition to key moments in the development of the Roman state: the separation of augurium from regnum, the development of a mixed patrician-plebeian aristocracy, the creation of a monetary system and the expansion of the colonial system outside Italy. The history of Rome can be seen as alternating phases of stasis and transformation; instances of Vestal incestum mark the transitions (p. 95). The work falls into two parts that are not well integrated. The first is a useful discussion of the historiography of the Roman Republic, taking in turn each element of the story of the founding of Rome from the arrival of Aeneas to the death of Remus. M. traces how early Roman writers, especially Fabius Pictor, reshaped the tradition already present in some Greek authors, distancing Rome from the Greek world and adding an Italic element to the tale. This detailed analysis is well worth consulting and will be of interest to those working on many aspects of cultural life in the Republic. The second, larger, section of the book comprises a series of studies of the Vestals known to have been convicted of incestum during the Republic. After dealing with issues of dating and sources, M. links each case of incestum to a major event in Roman history. Not all the events are equally important for the creation of the Rome of the middle and late Republic. One wonders why M. chose to tie the conviction of Minucia, somewhere between 339 and 332, to the admission of plebeians to the praetorship in 337 rather than to the conclusion of the Latin War in 338. Some explanation is warranted. The connection M. draws is often very vague, as in the case of Sextilia (pp. 144-54), convicted and interred alive in either 275 or 274. M. sees this as marking the end of any meaningful distinction between patricians and plebeians, following as it does the first time a plebeian censor completed a lustrum. The gap of five or six years between Sextilia's conviction and Cn. Domitius Calvinus Maximus' censorship in 280 passes unremarked. Similarly, in discussing the three Vestals accused of incestum in 114-113 (pp. 188-210), M. steps away from the commonly accepted interpretation of the event as part of the continuing struggle between Gracchan and senatorial forces, arguing instead that it is tied to the establishment in 118 of the colony of Narbo Martius, Rome's first colony in Gaul. Here, as elsewhere, there is no evidence that any ancient author linked the founding of the colony and Vestal unchastity; the temporal gap makes an association even more unlikely. Ultimately, it is not possible to accept M.'s argument that Vestal incestum punctuated key stages in the development of the 'cosmo Romano' in the way she imagines. Even so, M.'s effort to reintegrate the Vestals into the larger narrative of Rome's history is thought-provoking, and it is to be hoped that it will spark further work in the same vein. The field is perhaps in a better position to undertake work on this scale now that we have W's careful and comprehensive collection and interpre tation of what there is to know about the Vestals. Yale University CELIA E. SCHULTZ celia.schultz(yale.edu This content downloaded from 204.235.148.90 on Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:47:09 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions. (shrink)

In his writings, Edmund Pellegrino analyzes four deficiencies in the humanity of those who fall ill: the loss of (1) freedom of action, (2) freedom to make rational choices, (3) freedom from the power of others, and (4) a sense of the integrity of the self. Since Pellegrino's analysis and commitment to virtuebased ethics preceded much of the attention later given by philosophers to the importance of the moral principle of autonomy (in contrast to beneficence) in patient care, it is (...) helpful to trace the source of his commitment to virtue-based ethics and his account of freedom to Aristotle's analysis of the human soul, as an entelechy of an intact and healthy living organism that, unimpeded by illness, moves itself to act, to actualize its intellectual potential in the form of making rational choices, and to free itself from the power of others by remaining independent and without need of continuous assistance, while at the same time retaining the integrity of a unified self that can act, think, and choose for itself autonomously. (shrink)

Critics of the computational connectionism of the last decade suggest that it shares undesirable features with earlier empiricist or associationist approaches, and with behaviourist theories of learning. To assess the accuracy of this charge the works of earlier writers are examined for the presence of such features, and brief accounts of those found are given for Herbert Spencer, William James and the learning theorists Thorndike, Pavlov and Hull. The idea that cognition depends on associative connections among large networks of neurons (...) is indeed one with precedents, although the implications of this for psychological issues have been interpreted variously — not all versions of connectionism are alike. (shrink)

In research employing animals we commonly do things to them which would be grossly immoral to do to humans. This paper discusses three possible justifications for so treating animals: (a) it is violating the autonomy of rational beings which makes actions immoral, and animals are not autonomous; (b) due to our participation in the human community, we have special obligations to humans that we do not have to animals; and (c) human life is morally more worthy than animal life. The (...) conclusion of this discussion is that none of these three propositions justifies the routine sacrifice of animal interests for human benefit. Particular attention is paid to the idea that human life is morally more worthy than animal life, because I believe that to be the most common justification for our sacrifice of animal interests in research. The claim of greater worth is considered and criticized from both utilitarian and Kantian perspectives, and the inference from superior worth to being entitled to exploit one's inferiors is also criticized. The paper concludes by recommending a governing principle for research with animals which would bring that research into line with the rejection of hierarchical worldviews, social orders, and value systems which characterizes modern moral progress. Keywords: animal rights, animal research, moral worth, moral superiority, moral community, fairness CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

During the early 19th century, a peculiarly systematic way of organizing books emerged in Germany. This systematization, which purported to be a rational organization of subject matter, was an outgrowth of the philosophy of Hegel. This article attempts to outline Hegel's organizational practice. It argues that Hegel's encyclopedia was a reaction against the Enlightenment encyclopedia, and that it attempted to restore the systematic mindset of pre-modern reference books. Yet it did this, not in a straightforward fashion, but by developing a (...) method for organizing material that both stresses the interconnectedness of knowledge and promises to be highly scalable. In its attempt to trace the Hegelian organizational method, this article revisits and calls attention to a forgotten work in Hegel scholarship by Michael John Petry, who was the first writer to seriously stress the importance of classification in Hegel's work. This article is an attempt to demonstrate that Hegelianism and information organization can be brought into fruitful and mutually beneficial dialogue. (shrink)

The title of this symposium, “Formal Simplicity as a Weight in the Acceptability of Scientific Theories,” to some people might seem to suggest that we are to be making positive proposals about how the concept of simplicity could be defined for formalized languages, defined so as to figure in a formalized theory of confirmation. I must confess at the start that I do not have any such ambitious object in view. I now feel, indeed, that premature formalizations have little power (...) to illuminate the philosophically interesting questions which cluster round the problem of the role of simplicity in scientific thinking. So in this short paper I wish merely to present some elementary considerations, not very novel ones, concerning the role which simplicity seems to me to play in our non-demonstrative reasoning about matters of empirical fact. Although many writers have sought to analyze the logical character of such reasoning, little unanimity has been attained in their over-all views; thus it is that though the considerations which I wish to present are elementary, they are not wholly uncontroversial. But because these matters are elementary in nature, I do feel it appropriate in discussing them to use homely examples of uncomplicated kinds, rather than elaborate examples drawn from the more sophisticated reaches of scientific theory; in doing so, I am taking it for granted that scientific inference as regards its logical character is fundamentally a refinement of everyday thinking, rather than a procedure of some essentially different nature. (shrink)