For a hundred years up to the middle of the twentieth century, when utilitarianism, empiricism, and logical positivism ruled over studies of Burke, and the great authorities on his thought and politics were Henry T. Buckle, John Morley, Sir Leslie Stephen, Charles E. Vaughan, John MacCunn, Elie Halévy, and George Sabine, it was unthinkable to approach Burke as anything but a secular Whig politician, a mere political party activist with great literary skills. Burke's statement that the true (...) statesman is "the philosopher in action," and all of his many explicit appeals to moral natural law and to God as the Divine origin of civil society, were dismissed by these scholars as so much hot air and empty or meaningless rhetoric. All of the writers in the tradition of Morley assumed that Burke was a nominalist, that his philosophical roots were in keeping with William of Occam by way of his seventeenth-century heirs, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and in the liberal Whig tradition of the eighteenth century. These scholars interpreted Burke's politics on such subjects as the "state of nature," the social contract, political sovereignty, the moral nature of man, and his view of history, as strictly in accordance with the nominalist theory of reality, which denied any universal truths. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Eighteenth-Century Hermeneutics: Philosophy of Interpretation in England from Locke to BurkePaul J. KorshinEighteenth-Century Hermeneutics: Philosophy of Interpretation in England from Locke to Burke, by Joel Weinsheimer; xiii & 275 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993, $30.00.Hermeneutics has until the present study had little application to eighteenth-century England. The omission is curious for, although there were few advances in biblical scholarship during the Restoration and eighteenth century, (...) modern literary criticism begins in this century with Dryden and Johnson, modern aesthetics with Shaftesbury and the Scottish school of taste, and modern theories of art with Reynolds and writers on the picturesque. Joel Weinsheimer’s treatment of this topic, then, instantly possesses originality, not only from a lack of serious competition but because of its approach to [End Page 365] hermeneutics. He “does not offer a historical narrative” of what happened in hermeneutics in eighteenth-century England (p. xi). Rather, Weinsheimer prefers to see hermeneutics as a series of snapshots of how various writers, of whom only a few are conventional exegetes, deal with matters of interpreting texts. In all, the book treats eight major figures (Swift, Locke, Toland, Bolingbroke, Hume, Reid, Blackstone, and Burke), devoting a chapter to each.The method in each one is approximately the same: Weinsheimer produces a reading not of a single work alone but of all, or almost all that an author writes about interpretation. In the case of Swift, for instance, his principal contribution on exegesis, A Tale of a Tub, is a satire on styles of exegesis Swift considered ridiculous. This chapter adds little to what we know of Swift but, in relation to Weinsheimer’s analysis of Sir William Blackstone, we can see that there is a legal background to parts of the debate among the three brothers on the meaning of Scripture. Locke (pp. 23–45) also dealt with the Bible extensively, but his tendency to prefer the doctrine of “sola scriptura” limits what an author can say about his hermeneutics. John Toland (pp. 46–71), in his Christianity Not Mysterious, proposes radical notions of biblical exegesis, and Weinsheimer gives us a lucid reading of the first English skeptical exegete. All the other figures he studies, however, had little interest in traditional literary exegesis. Weinsheimer sees Bolingbroke (pp. 72–102) as a philosopher of history who tried to generate a theory of decoding the past, but he does not clearly distinguish Bolingbroke’s rules for writing history. Hume (pp. 103–34) wrote extensively on exegetical topics without actually being an exegete; although this is one of Weinsheimer’s more opaque chapters, it does succeed in showing the diversity of Hume and his inability to reason conclusively on matters of interpretation. Hume basically did not think that there is any problem in understanding others, so his theories of exegesis are not coherent. So, too, Thomas Reid (pp. 135–65) considered language, properly used, as lacking in opacity; hence elaborate theories of interpretation have little use for him.However, with Blackstone and Edmund Burke, Weinsheimer contributes his two most interesting chapters. The law, as Blackstone conceived of it, is extremely difficult to understand, so his Commentaries on the Laws of England is an attempt to read legal texts “in the context of general literacy” (p. 168); Bentham would later imitate him. Burke, Weinsheimer argues, started as an aesthetician and ended applying principles of good and bad taste to political behavior, always one of the weaknesses of reactionary politics.In a brief epilogue (pp. 226–33), Weinsheimer speculates on the effort of eighteenth-century hermeneutics to understand historical reason, but he does not comment on the failure of the period to produce a single important hermeneuticist. His own choice to avoid major exegetes such as Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds abridges his results dramatically, but a study based on scholarly snapshots always courts this risk. Hermeneutics is a [End Page 366] recondite concept, yet Weinsheimer renders his topic more difficult than it need be by frequent shifts in its definition and a complex, often unclear, style. Eighteenth-Century Hermeneutics provides a start, if not a definitive treatment, for later students of exegesis in the English Enlightenment.Paul... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THOMISTIC PRIDE AND LIBERAL VICE 1 PAUL J. WEITHMAN University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana L IBERALISM IS often portrayed, and sometimes portrays itself, as a moral and political view that rejects the claims of tradition. Thus liberals characteristically claim that the traditional standing of a social arrangement contributes little or nothing to its political legitimacy. Whether an arrangement is legitimate depends upon whether or not those who (...) currently live under it can understand and accept its rationale. Members of each generation must be able to examine arrangements as if they themselves were signatories of the social contract; the justification of regimes must, as it were, be susceptible of renewal in every age and to every citizen. Jefferson gave this view its most extreme expression when he claimed that each generation has the right to begin its nation's political life anew, and that national constitutions should be rewritten every two decades.2 Liberals often seem no kinder to intellectual than to political traditions. As they think political life can periodically begin anew, so they sometimes seem to think that political and moral philosophy can begin anew. Hobbes famously castigated the obscurities of scholasticism and argued that political philosophy could achieve firm footing only if the rubble of the past were swept away.3 Liberal contract theorists have followed Hobbes's lead, developing political theories that rely not at all upon classi1 Thanks to Alasdair Macintyre, David O'Connor, Michael Pakaluk, David Solomon, Eleonore Stump, and Allen Wood for helpful comments on earlier drafts. This paper is dedicated to the memory of my teacher and friend, Prof. Judith Shklar. 2 See Jefferson's famous letter to Madison of September 6, 1789 (The Portable Jefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson [New York: Viking, 1977], 444ff.), as well as his lesser known missive to Samuel Kercheval of July 12, 1816 (ibid., SS2ff.). 3 See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. MacPherson (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 727, for an especially pungent expression of a view that runs throughout the Leviathan. 241 242 PAUL J. WEITHMAN cal and medieval moral philosophy. To take but one example of this neglect of the past, the ethical writings of scholasticism are dominated by richly detailed analyses of the virtues and vices, yet liberal writers roundly ignore these discussions. Liberals have been quick to defend their suspicions of the thought and politics of the past, but critics of liberalism have been equally quick to seize upon them. Champions of virtue ethics have been among the most vocal critics of liberalism in recent years, arguing that liberals court philosophical peril by neglecting the insights of earlier moral theories. Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century opponent of liberalism, had an additional complaint. Burke discerned an arrogance in the liberal rejection of intellectual and political tradition. It was mere pride, Burke thought, to suppose that politics and political theory could be made transparent to the reason of every individual in the way that liberals sometimes claim.4 Burke's allegation that the liberal rejection of tradition reflects pride is ironic, for pride is a central element of one of the traditions of moral thought that liberals seem determined to reject. During a lengthy period of philosophy's history, pride was thought to be a motive of all wrong action. The biblical book of Sirach says that pride is the beginning of all evil5 and a long line of medieval moralists labored to explain how this might be so. Yet the tradition of moral thought that accorded pride so central a role now suffers from neglect at the hands of many philosophers. And pride itself is a vice that many philosophers now consider unworthy of attention. Most fail to consider it seriously as a motive for any wrong action at all. I have three aims in this paper. One is to examine pride's neglect more closely. I shall argue that pride suffers this neglect because of its centrality to a religiously based tradition of moral thought that many philosophers no longer accept. The alleged connection between pride and religion is, I shall argue, suggestive. It suggests what an account of pride would have to include 4 See Edmund Burke, Reflections on... (shrink)

Recourse to a being’s moral status is the ‘nuclear option’ of moral theorising—it tells us not only what obligations we have and to what degree, but whether we have obligations to them in the first place and whether their moral concern trumps concern for other beings simply in virtue of the kind of being they are. As such, we should only explain obligations in terms of a being’s moral status if doing so is principled and necessary to defend that obligation. (...) In ‘Pregnancy and Superior Moral Status: A Proposal for Two Thresholds of Personhood’, Robinson1 argues that pregnant women achieve a second and therefore superior threshold of moral status to ‘mere persons’. She insists that this is not a view about the woman and the fetus together but that ‘the pregnant woman herself is more than one individual’. This gives us strong reason to re-balance the imbalanced burdens experienced by women due to pregnancy. I will argue her proposal is neither principled nor necessary. We can explain special obligations to pregnant women without appealing to a distinct moral status, without reaching for the ‘nuclear option’. First, consider Robinson’s1 claim that pregnant women ‘are performing a role which is of supreme importance: that of creating new human life, and maintaining the survival of the human species’. …. (shrink)

Countless academic books have been written about how to interpret literary texts. From reader response criticism to Marxist hermeneutics and beyond, the scholarship on interpretive methods is vast. Yet all these books fail to address a more fundamental question: Why should we read in the first place? Or, to put it another way, why is reading an important thing to do? In order to answer these questions, Thomas J. Millay turns to the wisdom of Danish philosopher-theologian Søren Kierkegaard. In (...) this the first book to be written on Kierkegaard's philosophy of reading, Millay finds that reading does have a specific purpose: it is supposed to change your life. With lucid, nontechnical prose, Millay both establishes the definitive interpretation of Kierkegaard's philosophy of reading and explores the various concrete practices Kierkegaard recommended for its implementation"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

The concept of identity has become widespread within the social and behavioral sciences in recent years, cutting across disciplines from psychiatry and psychology to political science and sociology. All individuals claim particular identities given their roles in society, groups they belong to, and characteristics that describe themselves. Introduced almost 30 years ago, identity theory is a social psychological theory that attempts to understand identities, their sources in interaction and society, their processes of operation, and their consequences for interaction and society (...) from a sociological perspective. This book describes identity theory, its origins, the research that supports it, and its future direction. It covers the relation between identity theory and other related theories, as well as the nature and operation of identities. In addition, the book discusses the multiple identities individuals hold from their multiple positions in society and organizations as well as the multiple identities activated by many people interacting in groups and organizations. And, it covers the manner in which identities offer both stability and change to individuals. Written in an accessible style, Identity Theory makes, step by step, the full range of this powerful new theory understandable to readers at all levels. (shrink)

The term “globalization” was popularized by Marshall McLuhan in War and Peace in the Global Village. In the book, McLuhan described how the global media shaped current events surrounding the Vietnam War [1] and also predicted how modern information and communication technologies would accelerate world progress through trade and knowledge development. Globalization now refers to a broad range of issues regarding the movement of goods and services through trade liberalization, and the movement of people through migration. Much has also been (...) written on the global effects of environmental degradation, population growth, and economic disparities. In addition, the pace of scientific development has accelerated, with both negative and positive implications for global health. Concerns for national health transcend borders, with a need for shared human security and an enhanced role for international cooperation and development [2]. These issues have significant bioethical implications, and thus a renewed academic focus on the ethical dimensions of public health is needed. Future developments in science and health policy also require a firm grounding in bioethical principles. These core principles include beneficence; nonmaleficence ; respect for persons and human dignity ; and attention to equity and social justice. According to the World Health Organization [3], global ethical approaches should monitor and update ethical norms for research, as necessary; anticipate ethical implications of advances in science and technology for health; apply internationally accepted codes of ethics; ensure that agreed standards guide future work on the human genome; and ensure that quality in health systems and services is assessed and promoted. (shrink)

Drawing on aspects of Foucauldian feminist theory Thomas Hardy, Femininity and Dissent offers original and detailed readings of six critically under-valued novels: Desperate Remedies, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Hand of Ethelberta, A Laodicean, Two on a Tower and The Well-Beloved, demonstrating Hardy's peculiarly modern appreciation of how individuals negotiate the forces which shape their sense of self. Tracing his interest in the evolutionary debate and the woman question this book reveals a new politically engaged rather than a (...) grimly pessimistic Hardy. (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)

Plural predication is a pervasive part of ordinary language. We can say that some people are fifty in number, are surrounding a building, come from many countries, and are classmates. These predicates can be true of some people without being true of any one of them; they are non-distributive predications. However, the apparatus of modern logic does not allow a place for them. Thomas McKay here explores the enrichment of logic with non-distributive plural predication and quantification. His book will (...) be of great interest to philosophers of language, linguists, metaphysicians, and logicians. (shrink)

Labeling theory as ideology and as science: Scheff, T. J. Schizophrenia as ideology. Scheff, T. J. On reason and sanity. Scheff, T. J. The labeling theory of mental illness. Greenley, J. R. Alternate views of the psychiatrist's role. Temerlin, M. K. Suggestion effects in psychiatric diagnosis. Rosenhan, D. L. On being sane in insane places.--Changing the system: Scheff, T. J. Labeling, emotion, and individual change. Schatzman, M. Paranoia or persecution: the case of Schreber. Sidel, R. Mental diseases in China and (...) their treatment. Obeysekere, G. The idiom of demonic possession. (shrink)

This compact collection of philosophical texts from the _Summa Theologica_--on God, creation, the soul, human acts, moral good and evil, love, habits, virtue, and law--is presented newly translated in abridged form and cast in a modified version of the medieval _quaestio_. Included are only the most important objections and Aquinas’ replies; appeals to scriptural, theological, and philosophical authorities have been omitted. Unlike the ordering of the originals, questions and answers are here presented prior to objections and replies; the result is (...) a sharp, rich, topically organized question-answer presentation of Aquinas' major philosophical arguments within a brief compass. A general Introduction, headnotes, a glossary, an index, and a select bibliography offer expert guidance to the work of this major philosopher. (shrink)

Presents an innovative, constructive alternative to Christian involvement in the "culture wars" Church leaders and scholars have long wrestled with what should provide a guiding vision for Christian engagement in culture and politics. In this book Thomas Bushlack argues that a retrieval of Thomas Aquinas's understanding of civic virtue provides important resources for guiding this engagement today. Bushlack suggests that Aquinas's vision of the pilgrim church provides a fitting model for seeking the earthly common good of the political (...) community, and he notes the features of a Thomistic account of justice and civic virtue that remain particularly salient for the twenty-first century. The book concludes with suggestions for cultivating a Christian rhetoric of the common good as an alternative to the predominant forms of discourse fostered within the culture wars that have been so divisive. (shrink)

In two experiments, subjects’ task was to decide whether a binocularly viewed target word was evaluatively good (e.g., fame, comedy, rescue) or bad (e.g., stress, detest, malaria) in meaning. Just prior to this target word, a priming word was presented to the nondominant eye, and masked by an immediately following presentation of a letter—fragment pattern to the dominant eye. (Masking effectiveness was demonstrated by subjects’ failure to discriminate the left vs. right position of a test series of words.) In Experiment (...) 1, which used evaluatively positive or negative words as priming stimuli, judgment latency for the evaluative decision task was facilitated by primes that agreed in evaluation with targets, and was retarded by primes that disagreed in evaluation with targets. This result demonstrated that the evaluative meaning of priming stimuli was processed under conditions that prevented subjects from detecting their presence. Primes in Experiment 2 were 2-word strings for which the evaluative meaning of individual words was orthogonal to the evaluative sentence meaning (e.g., the two evaluatively negative words, "enemy fails,“ make up an evaluatively positive sentence). Results of Experiment 2 indicated that masked priming effects were influenced by the evaluative meanings of individual words, but not by their sentence meanings. This result supported the conclusion that the processing of undetected, dichoptically masked words is limited to analyses that are not powerful enough to extract sentence meanings. (shrink)

Here I suggest that Virginia Woolf was a great artist who has provided descriptions of concrete sequences of events in consciousness and perhaps insights into its nature. Of course, we can never be completely sure of the accuracy of her descriptions. But they at least offer instances with which theories of consciousness can be grounded, and inspiration for models of consciousness. For this purpose I use an incident that occurs near the beginning of To The Lighthouse by Woolf , and (...) the commentary on it by Auerbach . Auerbach's commentary is important in itself, and has also figured in two substantial traditions in the development of literary criticism. Auerbach was the first to analyse the ‘interior monologue’ of Mrs Ramsay, the protagonist of the novel, and to comment on its significance. The problem that concerns me is identifying and understanding the multipersonal voices that figure in the interior monologue during the incident. (shrink)

Since the publication of my "Are Theories of Imagery Theories of Imagination? An _Active Perception_ Approach to Conscious Mental Content,", a good deal of published material has appeared or has come to my attention that either provides additional support for the Perceptual Activity Theory PA theory) of mental imagery presented in ATOITOI, or that throws further doubt on the rival theories that are criticized there. Other relevant evidence was not mentioned in ATOITOI because I lacked the space for a proper (...) explanation of its relevance. I hope eventually to write and publish a new account of " PA " theory, that will make use of much of this material. In the meantime this page provides citations to the "new" support, and discussion sections that briefly explain the relevance of the cited material. Quite apart from presenting new lines of supporting evidence and argument, I hope this page will help to clarify many aspects of. (shrink)

To this end, I propose to follow a somewhat unusual pattern, in that there will be no point-by-point consideration of issues raised by Taylor and Kullman. Instead, I intend to outline Merleau-Ponty's position on language, speech, and meaning as presented in the Phénoménologie de la Perception, and proceed from there to a discussion of the pre-objective.

The present work is a study of the method of contemporary Soviet philosophy. By "Soviet philosophy" we mean philosophy as published in the Soviet Union. For practical purposes we have limited our attention to Soviet sources in Russian in spite of the fact that Soviet philosophical works are also published in other languages (see B 2029(21)(38». The term "method" is taken in the sense usual in Western books on methodology .1 In view of the content of the first chapter it (...) will be useful to explain the last term a little more fully. By method we mean a procedure and it is obvious that the principles according to which a procedure is carried out are rules, i.e. imperatives, which tell us not what is but what should be done. Such imperatives mayor may not be connected with and founded on certain descriptive statements (the fact that every rule of formal logic is based on a corresponding law has been well-known since Husserl's "Logische Unter suchungen" and is generally accepted in contemporary logic), but such a foundation is irrelevant to a methodological study. The object of such a study is to find out what these rules are, why they are accepted and how they are inter-connected and applied. This is how methodology - the science of method - is conceived in Western treatises on the subject and this is also the standpoint assumed here. (shrink)

There are historically three main trends in understanding Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The first is the interpretation offered by the Vienna Circle. They read Wittgenstein as arguing that neither metaphysical nor normative propositions have any cognitive meaning, and thus are to be considered nonsense. This interpretation understands Wittgenstein as setting the limits of sense, and prescribing that nothing of substantive philosophical importance lies beyond that line. The second way of reading the Tractatus, which has became popular since the 1950s, is the interpretation (...) which most currently accept as the early Wittgenstein's view; for this reason I refer to it as the 'standard reading.' According to this interpretation, Wittgenstein did not consider metaphysical and ethical discourse as nonsense. Rather, relying upon the distinction between saying [sagen] and showing [zeigen], he meant that these truths cannot be uttered, but instead are only shown. The standard reading can perhaps be best understood in contrast with the third interpretation, dubbed the "resolute reading." The resolute reading takes seriously Wittgenstein's remark at 6.54 that "[m]y propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsense [unsinnig]." According to the resolute interpretation, Wittgenstein is not advancing a series of philosophical theses in the Tractatus. Rejecting the distinction characteristic of standard readings, between propositions without sense [sinnlos] and just plain nonsense [unsinnig], these interpreters read Wittgenstein as treating ethical and metaphysical inquiry, as well as a bulk of the doctrines in the text, as nonsense. To them, Wittgenstein did not intend to put forth any theses in the the text. Instead his methodology is therapeutic, similar to the later philosophy. It In this essay I explain each interpretation, and evaluate them in terms of textual and philosophical viability. I conclude by arguing that the biases which exist in the tradition of analytic philosophy substantively temper the interpretation of historical texts, which ultimately leads to the fundamental distinction between these three interpretations. (shrink)

Students of culture have been increasingly concerned with the ways in which cultural values are 'inscribed' on the body. These essays go beyond this passive construal of the body to a position in which embodiment is understood as the existential condition of cultural life. From this standpoint embodiment is reducible neither to representations of the body, to the body as an objectification of power, to the body as a physical entity or biological organism, nor to the body as an inalienable (...) centre of individual consciousness. This more sensate and dynamic view is applied by the contributors to a variety of topics, including the expression of emotion, the experience of pain, ritual healing, dietary customs, and political violence. Their purpose is to contribute to a phenomenological theory of culture and self - an anthropology that is not merely about the body, but from the body. (shrink)

There is a close conceptual relation between the notions of religious disenchantment and scientific naturalism. One way of resisting philosophical and cultural implications of the scientific image and the subsequent process of disenchantment can be found in attempts at sketching a reenchanted worldview. The main issue of accounts of reenchantment can be a rejection of scientific results in a way that flies in the face of good reason. Opposed to such reenchantment is scientific naturalism which implies an entirely disenchanted worldview. (...) However, one of the main problems of scientific naturalism are placement problems. A reenchanted worldview does have the conceptual resources to avoid placement problems, yet seems to throw out the baby with the bathwater. A dilemma results: the Scylla of an undesirable scientific naturalism and the Charybdis of a rampant, seemingly prescientific reenchanted worldview. In this article I argue that there is a safe middle passage between these two options, i.e. the recently proposed liberal naturalism which allows for a moderate normative reenchantment. Liberal naturalism lets us have it both ways: avoiding the placement problems while retaining a necessary and reasonable adherence to science, thereby avoiding both an all-too restrictive scientific naturalism. (shrink)

High quality images sell products. Here's how you do it. From cereal boxes to billboards to photos on Amazon, product photos have a strong impact on viewers. Now you can master the secrets of effective product photography with this essential guide. Author J. Dennis Thomas guides you through the basics, from selecting the right equipment and practicing different lighting techniques to controlling exposure, using backgrounds and props, and much more. Whether it's jewelry, food, fashion, or other products, learn how (...) to photograph for effective selling, while building the skills and tools you need for a career. Explains how to produce quality photos for product or commercial photography, including fashion, food, jewelry, technology, and more The author is a professional photographer whose work has been published in major U.S. magazines including Rolling Stone, Elle, W Magazine, and US Weekly Covers choosing the right equipment, practicing different lighting techniques, controlling exposure, using backgrounds and props, and more Gives new and even experienced photographers the tools they need to build careers in product photography Take photographs that impress, intrigue, dazzle, and sell with The Art and Style of Product Photography. (shrink)