The problem is focused on showing how fundamental knowledge arises from two dominances in opposition. Such fundamental knowledge gives structure to texts whose content is dedicated to the teaching.

En este artículo reconstruimos el sentido que asume el problema del orden social en la teoría de los medios de comunicación simbólicamente generalizados de Niklas Luhmann. La hipótesis de lectura que deseamos elaborar es que en esta teorización se evidencia una parcial subordinación del problema sociológico del orden social al de la inquietud por las inciertas condiciones de posibilidad del control y/o la regulación de la acción en contextos de contingencia. Esto es, el problema del poder adquiere una inadvertida (...) preeminencia. En lineamientos generales, consideramos que este desplazamiento se torna reconocible en el marco de las diversas valoraciones que hace Luhmann con respecto a la contingencia de la acción y de sus implicancias para la formulación de una teoría del orden social. La reconstrucción propuesta se torna significativa en tanto muestra una delimitación del problema que se encuentra en tensión con la tradición de reflexión sociológica para la cual el problema conceptual del orden refiere a los modos en que el mismo puede ser concebido o explicado y no a las dificultades ligadas a su formación. (shrink)

O percurso argumentativo do Discurso de Metafísica encontra um momento de tensão quando se atinge o artigo 13, pois, após abordar Deus e a substância individual com caracterizações que induzem ao fatalismo, Leibniz procura afirmar a contingência e a liberdade tanto divina quanto humana. O exame que se segue tem como objetivo a descrição dessa dificuldade, bem como a apresentação de tentativas de solucioná-la – articulando as noções e respostas dadas no Discurso de Metafísica e outros textos de Leibniz, e (...) buscando sempre manter uma coerência em relação à sua filosofia. (shrink)

Texto de la presentación del libro de Marc Richir La contingencia del déspota (Madrid, Brumaria) en la librería La Central de Callao, en Madrid, el día 7 de febrero de 2014.

La contingencia es para Leibniz, junto con la espontaneidad y la inteligencia, un componente esencial de la definición de la verdadera libertad, que nuestro pensador califica como uno de los problemas filosóficos por excelencia: “la cuestión de saber cómo se puede salir del laberinto, la gran cuestión de lo libre y lo necesario”. Leibniz, en diálogo con sus referentes polémicos diferenciará –siguiendo la herencia agustiniana- entre el “libre albedrío” y la “verdadera libertad” o determinación racional, a la que sitúa (...) en un camino intermedio entre el determinismo absoluto y la indiferencia de equilibrio. La libertad de los seres racionales será para Leibniz la condición sine qua non para entrar a formar parte del el reino de la gracia, un mundo moral dentro del mundo natural en el que impera el bien común. (shrink)

¿En qué medida la actividad política de Leibniz se apoya en unos principios metafísicos? Para responder a esta pregunta debemos entender que en Leibniz se da una práctica, es decir una actividad donde los elementos propiamente filosóficos se entremezclan con una visión de la coyuntura que posibilita, exige y limita la acción política. La Metafísica leibniziana es afín a la práctica política del propio Leibniz. Esto se estudia en el articulo atendiendo a los conceptos de contingencia y de libertad, (...) y a las dos formas en que las verdades de hecho remiten a las verdades de razón: En tanto que manifestaciones de la sustancia y en tanto que hechos o acontecimientos que se ajustan a leyes. En la medida en que el pensamiento leibniziano se atiene a la sustancia se perfila un concepto de acción que se ajusta a una visión ejemplarista del hombre como imagen de Dios mientras que desde el segundo punto de vista Leibniz reformula la noción de Ley de la naturaleza como fundamento del derecho. Desde este punto de vista hay que valorar los tres grados de la justicia que Leibniz distingue. (shrink)

La tesis que se defiende en este artículo es que a la dignidad humana le pertenece una libertad contingente. En primer lugar se acota la noción de libertad contingente frente a la noción voluntarista de libertas indifferentiae y a la noción intelectualista de voluntas ut natura. En segundo lugar se analizan las condiciones de posibilidad del pecado y de la mejora moral, y las paradojas que resultan cuando estos fenómenos se intentan explicar desde la libertad de indiferencia o desde la (...) visión intelectualista. La libertad contingente comparece entonces como la voluntad que introduce la contingencia en el obrar porque puede decidirse en pro y/o en contra de una y la misma cosa; puede relacionarse respecto al propio comportamiento. Para terminar, desde lo que se ha explicado se analiza un caso particular, a saber, si es posible decidirse a creer algo o creer en algo. (shrink)

Background: Textbooks are central for the education of professionals in the health field and a resource for practitioners already in the field. Objectives: This article focuses on how 12 textbooks in psychiatric nursing and psychiatry, published in Norway between 1877 and 2012, describe and present people with psychosis. Research design: We used qualitative content analysis. Ethical considerations: The topic is published textbooks, made available to be read by students, teachers and professionals, and no ethical approval was required. (...) Findings: The analysis shows that all 12 textbooks describe and present people who are considered as psychotic from a ‘perspective from above’. In this perspective, the readers are learning about psychosis in the professional’s language and from the author’s viewpoint. Most often the textbooks communicate a universal image of people with psychosis, a description that fits with the diagnostic criteria. The analysis also shows that two textbooks in psychiatric nursing combined this perspective with a ‘perspective from within’. Here, the readers are learning about psychosis from the patients’ own viewpoint. The authors communicate a personal, psychotic universe that differs from various people, even if they have the same diagnosis, and the descriptions are focusing on the patient as a whole person. Discussion and conclusion: Drawing partly on Rita Charon’s writings about narrative knowledge in the health field, and partly on insights from Martha Nussbaum and her concept of narrative imagination, we argue that mental health professionals need to learn about, understand and fathom what patients go through by reading, listening to and acknowledging the patients’ own stories and experiences. Cultivating the capacity for empathy and compassion are at the very heart of moral performance in the mental health field. A valuable moral resource in that regard is leading textbooks and how they describe and present people with severe mental illness. (shrink)

El presente artículo examina el concepto de necesidad causal y de contingencia en Roberto Kilwardby (ca. 1215-1279).Este autor, en su Comentario a los Segundos Analíticos de Aristóteles y en el De ortu scientiarum, parece particularmente interesado en el precario estatuto epistemológico de la ética y de la física en tanto que estas disciplinas versan sobre acontecimientos contingentes. Con el fin de reconciliar el conocimiento científico en sentido estricto con formas conjeturales de conocimiento, Kilwardby sitúa el problema de la (...) class='Hi'>contingencia en un contexto auténticamente gnoseológico, más que metafísico, llegando así a una explicación altamente original de la contingencia. (shrink)

Seria possível uma sociedade em que a crueldade provocasse uma comoção absoluta em todos os seus membros, de modo que o grande objetivo fosse a sua não realização? A solidariedade seria possível em uma perspectiva em que esta não fosse concebida como o absoluto, o universal desde sempre? Estes são alguns dos questionamentos com que Richard Rorty, filósofo pragmatista, estadunidense e liberal, ao final da década de 1980, provoca-nos nas páginas do seu livro “Contingência, ironia e solidariedade”, considerado por muitos (...) estudiosos como a obra-chave de seus escritos, superando inclusive o relevante “Filosofia e o espelho da natureza”. Em “Contingência, ironia e solidariedade” o autor trabalha mais explicitamente com as categorias com as quais passou a conceber seus escritos posteriores e que representam sua proposta mais amadurecida, tais como os termos “redescrição”, “autocriação” e “ironista liberal”. (shrink)

O presente artigo trata do caráter contingente ou necessário da relação causal entre a causa primeira e seu efeito, tal como apresentada por Avicena e Tomás de Aquino. Para tanto, aborda o paralelismo no tratamento da inteligência e vontade divinas por parte de ambos os autores. Ambos aceitam que Deus conhece a si mesmo e, conhecendo-se, conhece aquilo que lhe é distinto. Aceitam igualmente que Deus quer ou ama a si mesmo e, querendo a si mesmo, quer acidentalmente o que (...) lhe é distinto. No entanto, discordam com respeito à necessidade ou contingência do mundo. Para Avicena, o mundo é possível em si mesmo, mas “necessário por outro”. Para Tomás, que Deus queira o mundo com necessidade hipotética corresponde mais à necessidade do querer divino, sem que isso determine a contingência ou necessidade do mundo. Com efeito, na visão tomista, é preferível um universo no qual haja mescla de necessidade e contingência, pois isso representa melhor as múltiplas perfeições divinas. (shrink)

Mental health research and care in the twenty first century faces a series of conceptual and ethical challenges arising from unprecedented advances in the neurosciences, combined with radical cultural and organisational change. The Oxford Textbook of Philosophy of Psychiatry is aimed at all those responding to these challenges, from professionals in health and social care, managers, lawyers and policy makers; service users, informal carers and others in the voluntary sector; through to philosophers, neuroscientists and clinical researchers. Organised around a series (...) of case studies in five key topic areas - concepts of disorder, the philosophical history of psychopathology, philosophy of science, ethics and philosophical value theory, and philosophy of mind - the book provides a detailed introduction to the field and a framework for study and skill development. Each case study is supported by selected readings from both philosophy and mental health, thinking skills exercises, self-test questions, key learning points and detailed guides to further reading. There is an introduction for philosophers to classification and descriptive psychopathology, and for practitioners to philosophical methods (including logic). The philosophical topics covered include philosophical methods (analytic and Continental); phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism, logical empiricism and its successors; idealism and realism; reasons and causes; and modern theories of mind and brain, free will and personal identity. Topics from mental health include psychiatry and 'anti-psychiatry'; Jaspers' psychopathology and the new neurosciences; the future of psychiatric classifications; strengths-based approaches, recovery practice, social inclusion and diversity; and key topics in psychopathology, such as delusion, autism, disorders of volition, thought insertion and other experiences in schizophrenia. The Oxford Textbook of Philosophy of Psychiatry aims to secure the skills-base of the discipline by bringing philosophers closer to the realities of practice in mental health, and mental health practitioners closer to the resources of philosophy as a partner to the sciences in responding to the challenges of twenty-first century mental health and social care. (shrink)

'During the course of the seventeenth century, within the scholastic tradition itself, commentaries on Aristotle's natural philosophical works increasingly gave way to textbooks and compendia organized along thematic lines' (Dear 1985, 161).

It is sought to return to the Leibnizian’s concept of contingency to thwart the postkantian’s and posthegelian’s philosophy of it. This search records two relatively different ways: Leibniz, as a typical thinker of his time, and Leibniz as a precursor of our own contemporary way of thinking. As regards this, the comparison that is made with Sartre and Rorty gains special importance.

Preceded by Comprehensive textbook of psychotherapy: theory, and practice / edited by Bruce Bongar, Larry E. Beutler. 1995.

Palabras pronunciadas por Markus Gabriel en el marco del encuentro internacional "Presente del idealismo alemán" organizado por el Departamento de Filosofía de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Conferencia que tuvo lugar el 9 de octubre de 2009.

Este trabalho examina as ideias filosóficas de contingência, correlacionismo e realidade, com foco nas críticas formuladas por Slavoj Žižek e Markus Gabriel ao projeto de Quentin Meillassoux. Žižek destaca uma crítica à absolutização da contingência em Meillassoux, argumentando que o filósofo não consegue verdadeiramente superar o correlacionismo kantiano. Žižek, ao contrário, defende a correlação transcendental como parte integrante da própria coisa em si, enfatizando a importância de entender a relação entre como as coisas são em si mesmas e como aparecem (...) para um sujeito. Por outro lado, Markus Gabriel contribui ao enfatizar os modos de apresentação na constituição da realidade. Ele aborda a ideia de que a diferença entre como as coisas são em si mesmas e como são apresentadas é constitutiva da realidade. Gabriel explora a diversidade de modos pelos quais a realidade se manifesta, destacando a complexidade da relação entre sujeito e objeto. O texto também aborda a crítica de Žižek ao projeto meillassouxiano de buscar o em si lá fora, defendendo que a contingência não é apenas um aspecto externo à subjetividade, mas também inerente ao próprio sujeito como um corte no circuito da causalidade natural. Ao longo do artigo, são evidenciadas as divergências e contribuições desses filósofos, proporcionando uma análise aprofundada das relações entre contingência, correlação e a natureza fundamental da realidade. A interseção dessas críticas fornece uma perspectiva de leitura sobre os desafios e implicações da abordagem de Meillassoux no cenário filosófico contemporâneo. (shrink)

In the middle of the 1980s, logical tools were discovered that make it possible to model changes in belief and knowledge in entirely new ways. These logical tools turned out to be applicable both to human beliefs and to the contents of databases. This is the first textbook in this new area. It contains both discursive chapters with a minimum of formalism and formal chapters in which proofs and proof methods are presented. By using different selections from the formal section (...) the book can be used on all levels of University education. (shrink)

The ‘principle of the best’ referred to the actually existing world is at the same time a ‘principle of contingency’ whenever the criterion of maximum compossibility is taken into account. As it is well known, this last criterion is that which governs God’s creative election. The paper explains this issue in the context of Leibniz’s modal ontology.

Apresento e desenvolvo neste artigo o problema da prova sortuda, analisando duas soluções para ele presentes na literatura. A primeira delas consistira em alegar que mostrar que o predicado está contido no sujeito não basta como demonstração da verdade de uma proposição, sendo preciso que se prove ainda que a noção relativa ao sujeito é logicamente consistente. A segunda repousaria em uma hierarquização modal, por assim dizer, dos pre- dicados integrantes de uma noção individual. Após exibir as razões que me (...) levam a rejeitar essas duas soluções, apresento os traços fundamentais de uma interpretação que me parece resolver o problema de maneira satisfatória. Minha posição envolve conceder ao Princípio da Razão Suficiente um papel central na compreensão do que significa, para Leibniz, provar que um determinado predicado está contido na noção relativa a um certo indivíduo. (shrink)

Desde la perspectiva de la investigación social partir de planteamientosfilosóficos se convierte en la tarea fundamental de construcción de sentido y en un reto constante al tratar de llevar a lapráctica desde la reflexión acciones útiles y coherentes. De estamanera llegamos a la propuesta hermenéutica desde planteamientospragmatistas que son el puente hacia un nuevo contexto paralas Ciencias Sociales. Este contexto supone pensarnos desde yen la contingencia y hacia y para la comprensión. Desde una visión antidualista y constitutivamente cooperativa del (...) ser humanonos entendemos poseedores de las herramientas necesarias paraabordar las infinitas posibilidades que nos ofrece la contingencia.Plantearemos un marco cooperativo desde el cual ser coherentesy potenciar nuestra predisposición a la comprensión. (shrink)

Psychiatry is unique in medicine in being on the border between science and the humanities. Science provides insight into the 'causes' of a problem, enabling us to formulate an 'explanation', while the humanities provide insight into its 'meanings' and helps with our 'understanding'. The new interdisciplinary field of 'philosophy of psychiatry' has developed to explore the range of issues relevant to this border country. The Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry is a unique textbook which provides a detailed introduction to (...) the field, a framework for study and skill development, and an overview of current research. It focuses on case studies in 5 key topic areas. Each case study is supported by selected readings from both philosophy and mental health, thinking skills exercises, self-test questions, key learning points and detailed guides to further reading. (shrink)

Here, Erich H. Loewy expands on his earlier book Textbook of Medical Ethics (1989) offering healthcare workers and students a new perspective on ethical practice. Textbook of Healthcare Ethics focuses on the social conditions in which medical practice occurs and how ethical healthcare decisions involves nurses, social workers, psychologists, technicians, and patients as well as physicians. This thoroughly revised and expanded edition addresses historical and theoretical underpinnings and practical concerns. A series of case studies serve as a guideline for further (...) discussion. The text examines provocative issues such as organ donation, care of the terminally ill, abortion, HIV-positive healthcare professionals, physician-assisted suicide, and experimentation with fetal tissue. This is an ideal book for all members of the healthcare team as well as students and residents in any discipline of medicine. (shrink)

Research in science education has recognized the importance of history and philosophy of science (HPS), and this has facilitated the evaluation of science textbooks. Purpose of this chapter is to review research based on analyses of science textbooks that explicitly use a history and philosophy of science framework. This review has focused on studies published in the 15-year period (1996–2010) and has drawn on the following major science education journals: International Journal of Science Education, Journal of Research in (...) Science Teaching, Science Education, and Science & Education. Based on HPS-related criteria, 52 articles were selected for review, and of these 28 were published in Science & Education, which clearly shows the importance of HPS for this journal. Selected articles were classified in the following subject areas depending on the textbooks analyzed: university biology textbooks (n = 2), university chemistry textbooks (n = 14), university physics textbooks (n = 17), and primary, secondary, and high school textbooks (n = 19). Results obtained revealed the following: (a) Most biology, chemistry, physics, and school science textbooks lack a history and philosophy of science perspective; (b) most of the textbooks analyzed were published in the USA and to a much lesser extent in other countries; (c) few studies provided details of the procedure and reliability of the application of criteria/rubric for analyzing textbooks; (d) some of the topics analyzed in the textbooks were nature of science, atomic structure, Newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics, special theory of relativity, and evolution; (e) textbooks avoided including controversial and difficult aspects of different topics (e.g., concepts of force, weight, heat, temperature, origin of the quantum hypothesis, oil drop experiment, Millikan’s data supported Einstein’s photoelectric equation but not his theory); and (f) various science topics provide an opportunity to illustrate the tentative nature of scientific knowledge, and still very few textbooks referred to this important aspect. As textbooks do refer to laws and theories while referring to historical content, it is concluded that HPS is already “inside” the science curriculum provided textbook authors make an effort to scrutinize the historical reconstructions while dealing with the different topics. (shrink)

Tomando como punto de partida las acusaciones planteadas por Hegel en la sección ‘razón legisladora’ de la Fenomenología del espíritu, en este escrito se buscará precisar el rol que ocupa la contingencia y la necesidad en la filosofía práctica kantiana. Posteriormente, se elucidará las coordenadas concretas del mandato ‘no mentir’, tanto en la doctrina del derecho como en la doctrina de la virtud. Lo anterior, responderá a un objetivo común: arrojar luz a las ambigüedades que introduce Hegel en la (...) sección mencionada de la Fenomenología, puesto que estos equívocos arrastran malentendidos en lecturas recientes, por ejemplo, en la obra de Ludwig Siep, quien, en El camino de la fenomenología del espíritu, le concede ciertas equivalencias al filósofo de Stuttgart. Por ello, se aclarará cómo se cualifica el mandato ‘no mentir’ en la filosofía práctica kantiana, lo que permitirá rectificar el modo en que se desarrolla ese mandato en distintos contextos. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence the intention of students to pirate academic e-books by integrating three main theories: ethics theory, deterrence theory, and the theory of planned behavior. The study also examines the moderating role of past piracy behavior on the relationship between the factors in the previously mentioned theories and students’ piracy intention.,The data were collected using a convenience sample of 662 university students. Based on their past behaviors, the students were grouped (...) into “no piracy” and “piracy” groups.,The result shows that the piracy intention of both the no-piracy and piracy groups has a similar influence based on the moral obligation in ethics theory. The factors in the deterrence theory, which includes fear of legal consequences and perceived likelihood of punishment, have no significant impact on the attitudes of the two groups toward piracy. While the intention of the no-piracy group is not influenced by other internal factors, such as self-efficacy, or by external factors, such as subjective norms and facilitating conditions, the behavioral intention of the piracy group is significantly influenced by these three factors.,This study only focuses on piracy attitude and behavior in the context of e-books.,In Indonesia, the insignificant impact of factors from deterrence theory (the fear of legal consequences and perceived punishment) indicates weak law enforcement to combat digital piracy. Thus, it is imperative that law enforcement, especially regarding piracy, should be enhanced.,The significant role of ethics in the attitudes toward piracy indicates that morality serves as a moral compass to fight piracy behavior. The strong impact of subjective norms, especially in the piracy group, suggests that families should raise children and educate youth with beliefs that align with the concepts of morality.,The study integrates three theories that are most often used in piracy behavior studies: ethics theory, deterrence theory, and theory of planned behavior. In addition, the study provides empirical evidence on the moderating role of past experience in piracy behavior. (shrink)

A new, updated third edition of the most successful and widely used textbook on Christian ethics.

Em sua correspondência com Arnaud, Leibniz mostra como o recurso à vontade divina é fundamental para garantir o espaço da contingência no interior de uma metafísica que não permite a indeterminação. No entanto, ainda resta perguntar se a bondade divina, uma das perfeições incluídas na noção de Deus, não torna necessário aquilo que Leibniz chamara de contingente. Por isso faremos um exame da concepção leibniziana de vontade divina, sobretudo a distinção entre vontade antecedente e vontade consequente, visando determinar até que (...) ponto a bondade divina implica ou não um necessitarismo universal. (shrink)

Ever since Thomas Kuhn's influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), textbooks have suffered a bad reputation. They have been accused of distorting—at times purportedly—history and of feeding students with an unacceptably simplified and optimistic view of science. This attitude started to change only in recent times. With the increase of attention paid not only to how theories are conceived, but also how they are practiced, disseminated, and appropriated, historians have rehabilitated textbooks as a legitimate site of knowledge (...) production. In this paper, I adopt textbooks as an instrument to unfold multiple facets of the culture that allowed quantum physics to flourish between 1900 and the early 1930s. I organize the article around two stories about two major textbooks, i.e., Sommerfeld′s Atombau und Spektrallinien and Dirac′s Principles of Quantum Mechanics. I explore the complex pedagogical cultures underlying these two masterpieces and how they intersect local agendas. (shrink)

It is frequently claimed by critical thinking and logic textbooks that people commonly commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent. This paper argues that if people did commitment this fallacy with any type of regularity, then it would be easy to locate examples from news media. However, a review of the examples cited by critical thinking and logic textbooks show that it is nearly impossible to find a real instance of this logical fallacy since purported instances of the (...) fallacy are not deductive inferences at all but are instead inferences to the best explanation. (shrink)

In his Fallacies, Hamblin (1970) castigated what he called the “standard treatment” of fallacies in introductory textbooks of his day as debased, worn-out, dogmatic, and unconnected to anything else in modern logic. A bit more than 50 years later, I investigate the treatment of fallacies in six English-language introductory textbooks with a section on fallacies that have gone into 10 or more editions, to see whether their treatment of fallacies has taken account of the scholarship on fallacies that (...) Hamblin’s book evoked and is better than the treatment that Hamblin described. The answer is: not much. I conclude by setting out criteria for an adequate treatment of fallacies in an introductory textbook. (shrink)

Public universities in Poland receive fairly limited financial support for creating e-textbooks (interactive online textbooks) and lack the appropriate ICT competences among teaching staff, especially in the case of non-technical universities. The authors propose a pedagogical and technological paradigm for e-textbooks in medical education using open source software with minimal IT skills required. Technologies used to develop e-textbooks are connected with: publication and distribution of e-textbooks, e-book readers, and editing tools. The paper also discusses a (...) survey that targeted students of medical sciences, which focused on their understanding of their educational needs that can be met through new online resources as well as their expectations of how such e-textbooks should be like. (shrink)

Kripke, argued like this: it seems possible that E; the appearance can't be explained away as really pertaining to a "presentation" of E; so, pending a different explanation, it is possible that E. Textbook Kripkeans see in the contrast between E and its presentation intimations of a quite general distinction between two sorts of meaning. E's secondary or a posteriori meaning is the set of all worlds w which E, as employed here, truly describes. Its primary or a priori meaning (...) is the set of all w such that if w is actual, then E is true. "Conceivability error" occurs when a primary possibility is mistaken for a secondary one. Textbook Kripkeanism is rejected on the grounds that it makes meaning too modal and modality too much a matter of meaning. (shrink)

This article examines the role of middle-school science textbooks in dealing with sensitive social and scientific issues. Education specialists compared the ten most widely used sixth- and seventh-grade textbooks to determine the amount and depth of content presented on five major global issues, including the issue of nuclear weapons. Differences between grade levels were also explored. Implications stemming from the content analysis are discussed within the context of a television culture.

Because of their basic level, textbooks show the assumptions and biases of art historians more clearly than does advanced, and therefore more restricted, scholarship. Textbooks are the rock, as it were, within which lie the strata of historical method. They bury, and so preserve for the good and ill of students , not so much individual historical data, which can be picked up or rejected rather easily, as those things which give the appearance of intellectual grasp to historical (...) writing: its generalizations, its interpretations, its sweeping perspectives. The successive editions of Helen Gardner's Art through the Ages can tell us much about the assumptions that have pervaded art historical education in America over the past century. The first edition, published fifty years ago last year, is worth looking at in some detail, because for all its seminal importance in the teaching of art history it is by now little more than a deposit in library stacks. A mere glance will show that it is not ours. Indeed, the distance we have gone since then is exactly measured by the gaucheries it displays. It is half the length of modern surveys, and it makes no pretense either to completeness or to objectivity. It is arranged by period and style until we reach the Renaissance , at which point, in keeping with the interest of an earlier age in national characteristics, each country receives its due chapter. The Italian Renaissance, as befits the central position of the primitives in American taste then, has four chapters to itself. Thereafter, except for a final, brief section on contemporary art, each national school is taken to the period of its decline. This, of course, will vary. France is taken through Cézanne; England through the Pre-Raphaelites and William Morris; Spain, thanks to Goya, into the early nineteenth century; and Dutch and Flemish art only through the seventeenth century, but without Bosch or Bruegel. As for Germany, though the chapter heading promises us "From the Gothic Age to the Nineteenth Century," in fact it is on Durer and Holbein. What fulfills the promise of the title appears in its entirety thus: "After the death of these two masters, largely on account of exhaustion from wars there was very little production, until the second great manifestation of the German people came in the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."1 No pretense here at dutiful compilation; high points, after all, are high points. · 1. Helen Gardner, Art through the Ages: An Introduction to Its History and Significance , p. 345. Marcel Franciscono is the author of Walter Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus in Weimar. He is associate professor of art history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (shrink)

En el siguiente artículo intentaremos mostrar cómo la definición de Contingencia individual, dentro del discurso de Richard Rorty, genera ciertos problemas. Este autor menciona que debemos deslastrarnos de las siguientes dicotomías conceptuales: objetivo-subjetivo, moralidad-prudencia, apariencia-realidad, esencia-accidente, absoluto-relativo, entre otras. A todo esto Rorty propone un nuevo concepto: Contingencia, el cual sería una definición útil que lograría justificar la desaparición de las concepciones como algo que petrifica el conocimiento y lo hace inútil para entender la realidad, es decir, el (...) conocimiento no sería útil en el momento en que intenta “representar” la realidad porque la vacía. Luego de un recorrido por algunos autores representativos en lo concerniente a la conceptualización de “esencia”, nuestra conclusión es que la definición de Contingencia rortyana es una nueva petrificación de la realidad, es decir, Contingencia también termina “representado” lo que es “real”. Is Contingency an essence? A review of the theory of Contingency in Richard RortyIn the following article, it is shown how the definition of individual Contingency, within the discourse of Richard Rorty, produces certain problems. This author mentions we should put an end of the following conceptual dichotomies: objective-subjective, morality-prudence, appearance-reality, essence-accident, and absolute-relative, among others. To all this Rorty proposes a new concept: Contingency, which could be a useful definition which would achieve the justification of the loss of conceptions as something that petrifies knowledge, and renders it useless for understand reality, i.e., knowledge is not useful in the moment you try to "represent" reality because simply empties it. After a tour of some representative authors with regard to the conceptualization of "essence", our conclusion is that the definition of Rorty's Contingency is a new petrifaction of reality, i.e., Contingency also ends "representing" what is "real.". (shrink)

I taught for 8 years at a moderate evangelical liberal arts college. At one faculty meeting the topic turned to the challenge of dealing with controversial topics in the classroom, a pressing question given that many of our students came from extremely conservative backgrounds. One faculty member commented that he and his colleagues in the sciences avoided problems by never using the word “evolution” in the classroom. A number of us from the humanities immediately expressed shock and dismay. In response, (...) our colleague reassured us that science faculty were indeed teaching evolution, but they had learned they could be spared student resistance and parental phone calls by replacing the word “evolution” with “development.”I was reminded of this while reading Adam Shapiro’s fine book, Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools. Central to Trying Biology is the argument that the Scopes Trial was not the inevitable result of an eternal con .. (shrink)

The present study examined the traces of neoliberal ideology in O-level English language textbooks taught in elitist private schools in Pakistan that follow the UK-based international educational system administrated by the University of Cambridge under the General Certificate of Education (GCE). Analysis in the study was informed by Fairclough's CDA writings. Moreover, Bourdieu's views on neoliberalism were also considered to shed some light on neoliberal ideology in the textbooks. Findings suggest that several neoliberal themes were evident in the (...) textbooks under scrutiny, including marketization, consumerism, branding, celebrity culture, competition, individualism, self-responsibility and self-entrepreneurship, mobility, new ‘Othering’ strategy and English as a neoliberal skill. Based on the findings, we argue that the global ELT industry that produces teaching materials, including textbooks for the periphery is a major contributor to the neoliberal world order maintained by the local (political) elite in the government(s) e.g. Pakistan in case of the present study. The textbooks prepare learners for a competitive world rather than a world based on cooperation, mutual progress, and happiness. The study thus questions such neoliberal hegemony encoded in the textbooks and argues for critical examination and selection of the materials for contexts where English is taught as a foreign language. (shrink)