The Spartan Rhetra quoted by Plutarch in Lyc. vi. 2 consists of some thirty-seven words in an archaic Dorian or near-Dorian dialect: Plutarch says it was an oracle, and that later an extra clause was added by the kings Polydoros and Theopompos; he quotes this ‘added clause’ in vi. 8. I believe this Rhetra was not an oracle but an act of the Spartan Ekklesia; and I suspect that the ‘added clause’ was not added, but is an integral part of (...) the original act. But for our first objective this opinion matters less than Plutarch's opinion. Our first objective must be to recover Plutarch's text : and to do that, we must understand his interpretation. (shrink)

Plutarch concludes his chapter on the Rhetra with six lines of Tyrtaios: φοβου κοςσαντες Πυθωνθεν οκαδ' νεικαν1 μαντεας τε θεο κα τελεντ' πεα ρχειν μν βουλῦς θεοτιμτους βασιλας οσι μλει Σπρτας μερεσσα πλις πρεσβτας τε γροντας, πειτα δ δημτας νδρας πθεαις τραις ντααπαμειβομνους. These lines are quoted to confirm Plutarch's statement, that the Kings who added the last clause to the Rhetra ‘persuaded the city [to accept this addition] on the grounds that it was part of the God's command'. On (...) Plutarch's view, the two Kings added an extra clause to an oracle, and justified their action by alleging that Delphi had authorized the clause. It is not immediately obvious how Tyrtaios’ lines confirm this view. The Delphic utterance whose substance is given in lines 3–6 approximately paraphrases parts of Clauses I and I I , but where is Clause III ? The burden has to be borne by the one word εθεαις: ‘the Kings and gerontes shall initiate business, the demos shall reply with undistorted rhetrai’ or ‘shall respond to the rhetrai without distorting them’ . If εθεαις is given enough weight, the oracle which Tyrtaios quotes may be held to forbid the ‘excessive amendment’ against which Clause III was aimed. (shrink)

T H McLaughlin; Parental Rights and the Religious Upbringing of Children, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 75–83, http.

T H McLaughlin; Parental Rights and the Religious Upbringing of Children, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 75–83, http.

T H McLaughlin; Religion, Upbringing and Liberal Values: a rejoinder to Eamonn Callan, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Page.

T H McLaughlin; Religion, Upbringing and Liberal Values: a rejoinder to Eamonn Callan, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Page.

T H Mclaughlin; Peter Gardner on Religious Upbringing and the Liberal Ideal of Religious Autonomy, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 1, 30 Ma.

T H Mclaughlin; Peter Gardner on Religious Upbringing and the Liberal Ideal of Religious Autonomy, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 1, 30 Ma.

Hanshan, which means Cold Mountain, was the pseudonym adopted by an unknown poet who lived in China as a hermit twelve hundred years ago. The poems collected under his name have had an immense impact worldwide, especially among Zen Buddhists, and have been translated into many languages. Peter Hobson's translation of more than a hundred of the poems, almost all of which are published for the first time in this volume, brings those qualities of timelessness, poetic diction and engaging rhythm (...) that do justice to the concepts and language of the original. This edition includes not only a clear and succinct introduction for the general reader but also highly informative sections on Hanshan's place in history and on issues involved in translating Hanshan. (shrink)

This study takes up a portion of the early hagiography of a Japanese prince who was reputedly a reincarnated Chinese monk, and uses a peculiarity in a colophon dated 718 to argue that though the text may have been composed in China, it must in that case derive from the writing of a Japanese visitor. A possible identification of the visitor is made, and some attention is given to the likely sources he used.

The Koan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism. Edited by Steve Heine and Dale Wright. Oxford University Press, New York 2000. xii, 322 pp. £30.00, 13.95. ISBN 0-19-511748-4, 0-19-511749-2.

The Skill in Means Sutra. Mark Tatz. Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1994. 128 pp. Rs 150.

We describe an approach that enables a more complete evaluation of the validity of emotional intelligence measures. We argue that a source of evidence for validity is often overlooked by researchers and test developers, namely, evidence based on response processes. This evidence can be obtained through a definition of the ability, a description of the mental processes that operate when a person uses the ability, the development of a theory of response behaviour that links variation in the construct with variation (...) on the responses to the items of a measure, and a test of the theory of response behaviour through one or more strategies that we describe. (shrink)

Both Plato and Aristotle have something to say about admiration. But in order to know where to look, and in order to appreciate the force of their remarks, we need to sketch a little of the ethical background that they presuppose. I begin, therefore, with ancient Greek ethics in the wider sense, and discuss the treatment of admiration and related attitudes by Homer, Herodotus, and other pre-Platonic sources. Then I turn to the views of Plato, Adam Smith, Aristotle and Cicero. (...) This order of discussion allows us to see why admiration is both morally significant and, in some respects, morally unreliable. (shrink)

Many Greek moralists are eudaemonists; they assume that happiness is the ultimate end of rational human action. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and most of their successors treat this assumption as the basis of their ethical argument. But not all Greek moralists agree; and since the eudaemonist assumption may not seem as obviously correct to us as it seems to many Greek moralists, it is worth considering the views of those Greeks who dissent from it.

Students of the history of ethics sometimes find themselves tempted by moderate or extreme versions of an approach that might roughly be called ‘historicist’. This temptation may result from the difficulties of approaching historical texts from a ‘narrowly philosophical’ point of view. We may begin, for instance, by wanting to know what Aristotle has to say about ‘the problems of ethics’, so that we can compare his views with those of Aquinas, Hume, Kant, Sidgwick, and Rawls, and then decide what (...) is true or false in each theorist's position. But this narrowly philosophical attitude soon runs into difficulties, and writers on the history of ethics often warn us against it. (shrink)

To compare a novel to a work of philosophy is, admittedly, a risky exercise in analogy. When the novelist is Lawrence and the philosophical text is the ponderous and dialectical Being and Nothingness, such a comparison may seem willfully perverse and peculiarly open, insofar as it deals with Lawrence's great theme of sexuality, to his anathema of "sex in the head." Furthermore, modern criticism, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, has tended to be wary of critical approaches that lean on notions (...) that are not derived from literature itself - a tendency that is being reinforced these days by the structuralist insistence on the "literariness" of the Text. Now, despite its metaphorical statement as a form of dramatic "gesture," Sartre's book is very definitely not a work of literature. T.H. Adamowski, associate professor of English at Erindale College, the University of Toronto, has written articles on English, American, and French literature. This essay is part of a larger study on progress on Lawrence's "sexual poetics.". (shrink)

Why should Aristotle reject his own criteria for a science to admit this puzzling science of being? Or does he really reject them? Perhaps the science of being is not intended to be a universal science of the type rejected elsewhere. The Metaphysics and the Organon are not concerned with exactly the same questions; and verbal differences may not reflect real or important doctrinal conflicts.