While a significant body of literature has highlighted the moral obligations of companies regarding the sustainable use of common pool resources, business activities that contribute to the sustenance of common pool resources remain embryonic. Studies in this area have largely focused on environmental stimuli rather than on the complex motivational structures that drive or hinder businesses’ contributions to common pool resources. We explore the different motives and behaviors of businesses and their contributions to common pool resources, and propose four roles (...) by which companies’ motives and behaviors toward common pool resources can be categorized—namely, free riders, followers, believers, and altruists. We shift the focus from moral reasoning to Platt’s :641–651, 1973) notion of social trapping and his “ways out” as Platt’s “ways out” include propositions that address not only environmental stimuli but also companies’ motives. Both types of propositions are important for businesses to be able to respond rapidly to the scarcity of certain common pool resources and to use and maintain common pool resources in a sustainable way. Based on our categorization and Platt’s typology of social traps and “ways out,” we propose a theoretical framework by which companies and other stakeholders are provided with a differentiating perspective that allows for propositions addressing the complex nature of motivational structures and common pool resources. Our framework helps business leaders, institutions, and policy makers decide on actions that can contribute to the sustainability of common pool resources and that differ from actions that solely serve organizational self-interests. (shrink)

This narrative ethics exploration stems from my happy prostate-specific antigen (PSA) story, though it should not have been, as I annually refuse my family physician’s recommendation to purchase PSA screening. The reason for my refusal is I teach ethics to medical students and of course must walk the talk, and PSA screening is not publicly funded in the province of Ontario, Canada. In addition, I might have taken false comfort in ‘but all you need is a good index finger’ (...) to detect prostate cancer, expounded by a senior physician at a national medical conference in 2010, and applauded by the large audience of physicians. I was compelled to begin this exploration out of survivor guilt, although I will not be a survivor for long, and as a mea culpa to the men similarly situated to me in having late diagnosis of prostate cancer, aggressive tumours and multiple metastases, but who unlike me are dead because they did not experience the physician–educator-based exceptionisms and coincidences that permit me to still be alive. Although my PSA story will always be a happy story, even when my life ends in a few years, the initiation of public funding of PSA screening for all men over 50 would make my PSA story an even happier story. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Music Education in an Age of Virtuality and Post-Truth by Paul WoodfordPanagiotis A. KanellopoulosPaul Woodford, Music Education in an Age of Virtuality and Post-Truth (New York, Routledge, 2018)This book is provocative. And challenging. It is written with passion, aiming to induce controversy. And with good reason. For we live in times when populism professes an illusionary sense of community, invoking a seemingly 'anti-systemic' but highly hypocritical, racist, (...) and sexist discourse;1 in times where "bullshitting"2 has advanced to the highest governmental levels in many countries; in times where "authoritarian neoliberal statism"3 becomes the new status quo, inducing a scandalous increase of economic inequalities, forcing large populations to live precarious lives; in times where privatization of educational services in the context of market-oriented practices impose restrictive and ultimately unjust politics of accountability and performativity;4 in times where instrumentalization of educational ends has taken the lead, assisted by a systematic co-option and misappropriation of notions such as excellence and creativity;5 in times, finally, where spaces that allow for "the sharing (out) of the incalculable,"6 forging unknown potentialities in education, life, and thought, are being destroyed. In such times, Paul Woodford has stepped in, reclaiming his right to speak uncompromisingly.Hannah Arendt has written that "[w]hen men [sic] are deprived of the public space--which is constituted by acting together and then fills of its own accord [End Page 108] with the events and stories that develop into history--they retreat into their freedom of thought."7 Woodford refuses to retreat. He writes as a public intellectual of the highest order, committed to upset and not please those in power. A great service that his latest book performs is that it speaks daringly, stirring a debate that helps us all to do away with fear. For as Bertrand Russell has aptly said quite a long time ago, "[I]f thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men [sic] back."8Resisting the "melancholy of inner exile,"9 but not immune to possible accusations of left melancholy, understood as "a refusal to come to terms with the particular character of the present,"10 the author wrote a book that provokes music educators to actively think beyond their sealed and safe world of convictions that is based on ideology-free conceptions of music teaching. Estelle Jorgensen has long ago brought to our attention the urgency of this task: "in an era in which the mindset and political reality have changed dramatically, … there is an urgent need to revisit the political character of music education and the ways in which it needs to address the cultural issues of our day."11Along this pathway, Woodford's book encourages music educators to live and teach as public intellectuals, forging "a democratic purpose for music education"12 that acts against the "anachronistic and formalist conception of music that reduces music education to supply-side economics as children are conceived as either future professional musicians or consumers and not as citizens to be prepared in schools to participate intelligently in the political life of society."13 Woodford articulates a vision of music education "as preparation for adulthood and democratic and global citizenship."14 He strongly advocates an approach that balances performance and creativity-based experiences with a socio-historical study of the social, ideological, and cultural workings of different musics in a wide variety of contexts. He encourages music educators to teach "how music's structural properties and qualities contribute to the shaping of people's perceptions and understandings of themselves and their world,"15 "asking the who, what, when, where, how, to, with, or for whom, and, most importantly of all, why of music."16 He envisions a music classroom that exercises social criticism "directly and self-consciously"17 both through "learning how to make music"18 and through thinking about music. He sees this approach as a tool for raising students' consciousness. Woodford's ultimate vision of music education is one that casts it as a means for cultivating "a justice-oriented" approach... (shrink)

"Ah, for the good old days, when men were men and women were women." Men who express such sentiments long for the world where homosexuals were ensconced in their closets and women were sexy, demure, and subservient. That is a world well lost -- though not as lost as I would like. More than a few men still practice misogyny and homophobia. The defects of such attitudes are obvious. My concern here is not to document these defects but to (...) ask how real men, men who reject stereotypical male-female roles -- men who are sensitive to the insights of feminism -- should relate with women. In particular, how should men and women relate in intimate, sexually oriented, i.e., "romantic," relationships. (shrink)

This book represents an attempt to combine humanistic concern and pedagogic relevance in a systematic introductory textbook. A brief but enthusiastic introduction by Steve Allen asserts the importance of philosophic problems and Katen’s success at popularizing them in an entertaining fashion. The text itself is divided into three parts, dealing with the life, work, and persecution and death of the philosopher. Part I consists of a single short chapter which grants the poor public image of philosophers, but argues that philosophizing (...) is still an important activity. Part II is composed of three major chapters on the basic fields of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics—logic and aesthetics are judged inappropriate for treatment here—plus two short chapters, "A Little Reflection on Some Big Questions", and "The Role of Philosophy in the Space Age". Part III offers a brief final chapter on "Philosophy, Human Freedom, and Tragedy" stressing philosophy as a way of life and the claim that no harm comes to good men since the good they do lives on even after their deaths. A few pictures and diagrams illustrate the text and each chapter concludes with a summary of points covered. There is a glossary of terms and an index, but no bibliography or list of suggested readings. The central discussion of major issues and viewpoints is quite traditional and generally competent. Relevance is sought mainly in the introductory sections and through such devices as catchy titles, contemporary idiom and references, puns, and double entendre. Lacking spontaneity, much of this appears forced, artificial, and dated, both chronologically and in its perceptions.—C.A.C. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Lives Saved, With a Little Help from FriendsPrasanta TripathyIn November 2000, Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar, a state in eastern India, to be a separate state to fulfill the aspirations of its people and [End Page 109] allay their feeling of alienation. It was a good time for me to reflect on how best I could contribute. In 2002 Ekjut, a registered development organization, was set up (...) by myself and other like-minded colleagues. Ekjut, which means "togetherness," was the outcome of a longstanding desire to do something on our own, something that was close to my heart—doing something for and with the people I had grown up with. An invisible cord kept me attached to this region of India and after stints with a few development organizations within and outside the state, my wife, Nirmala, and I decided to relocate to a village near my hometown, Chakradharpur.Chakradharpur is a small railway township in South Bihar where I spent all my childhood and days of schooling. Beyond the periphery of this township and its satellite market place, live indigenous people, the Adivasi, in villages and hamlets. Even as children we could appreciate the government policy that protected them in the sense that their ancestral lands could not be acquired by Dikus, the non-tribal people living in the towns and cities. The un-spoilt bounties of nature protected and preserved by the original inhabitants of the land—the Adivasi people—was there for all of us to see and enjoy.A rumor that a doctor couple was building a nursing home led to a regular flow of men, women and children to our unfinished home with all kinds of ailments, including medical emergencies. It was becoming increasingly difficult to cope with the workload of constructing the house and at the same time—overwhelming to see children dying in our home, which was never meant to be the hospital that the villagers thought it to be. They were reluctant to visit the government hospitals, which were primarily meant to serve poor people and their attitude could be summarized in just one word—fatalism. We wanted this to change—they somehow needed to understand their rights and entitlements. The public health care system had to be strengthened and Nitmala and I wondered how our work could make this happen.The Adivasi people were soon to become partnering communities with Ekjut. It did not take us long to realize how unprotected they were. We had a vague idea that we wanted to build healthier communities. Providing full-time curative care was not an option; it was also beyond our means. Knowing that strengthening the health system would take time, we hoped that our community-based work would strengthen the demand side, since even the minimum services that were available were grossly under-utilized.India is home to about 10 million tribal people. We had seen and also knew that their health status was poor and that tribal people have the disproportionate burden of child mortality, malnutrition, malaria and death in childbirth. But we could not find a reliable existing data base that could guide our work. The health status of women and children soon became Ekjut's main concern.We wanted our work to generate knowledge that would be relevant in a wider context. Adivasis are not a monolithic entity and our evidence needed to grow from working with several different tribal groups. We needed to build our research capabilities and willingness to work with several different indigenous groups, as well as, the poor people living alongside them in different districts. A collaboration with University College of London was soon to follow. Professor Anthony Costello who was my teacher more than a decade back, invited me to partner with his department and jointly bid for a grant. This grant was likely to come at the confluence of several interesting developments. First, the self-help group movement in India had made a substantial jump and such groups existed in almost every village. Second, a grassroots organization called PRADAN was working with women's groups to strengthen their livelihoods in several states of India including our district. PRADAN shared with... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Brit Milah for Eliezer Herschel ben Yonatan AryehMolly SinderbrandFor observant Jews, the choice to circumcise one's son is not a choice. Technically, it is a contractual obligation; the belief is that male circumcision is part of a holy covenant with God. The word for ritual circumcision, brit milah or bris, literally means "covenant [of circumcision]." Circumcision is a physical symbol of a relationship with the divine. It is (...) the commandment that encompasses all other commandments. It is, thankfully, only required of men (women, they say, are naturally closer to divinity). Circumcision is when a baby boy enters the Jewish community, eight days after birth, and when he gets his name. He becomes somebody. To choose otherwise— and some may choose otherwise—is to choose not to be part of the contract, and by extension, not be part of the Jewish community. And a community is one of the most valuable things a person can have.I was not always an observant Jew, though I was raised in a Jewish household. I essentially fell into observance over a period of 10 years, starting with studying ancient Hebrew with a language-loving rabbi in high school and eventually leading to weekly attendance at an orthodox shul, which I joined shortly after first tasting the vegan cholent at kiddush. It was much easier to make friends in [End Page 91] the Jewish community than in my competitive and mildly misogynist graduate program, and frankly, I liked them better. I received kindness and support when I needed it, and gave it back equally, especially around having children. Having children is difficult under any circumstance, but it is especially difficult in social settings where it is seen as abnormal, strange, or even selfish. The Jewish community normalized having children and created a respite from the judgment of the secular world. When I was pregnant at work, I got comments like "It looks like you're having twins!" and "Are you sure you don't have pre-eclampsia? You look awfully large"; at shul, I got pep talks, encouragement, and the traditional "b'sha'a tova"—"may it happen at a good time."Eventually, after having two kids in a two-bedroom rowhome, my husband and I moved to a mostly-Jewish suburb just outside the city. It is the kind of place where everyone says "Gut Shabbes" (a good Sabbath) to each other on Saturdays, but not one in which all the men wear black hats and study Torah all day (though some do). That is, folks live Jewish lives, but interact with the outside world as well. After a few months, it felt like home.This was the context in which I decided—or rather, did not have to decide—to circumcise my son. It was the natural result of the decision to be part of a community that places value (and even membership) on the ritual of circumcision. I made that decision years earlier and have been continuously reaffirming it since. Every day I wake up is a day I decide to be an observant Jew, and I decide to do so in order to be a member of an observant community. The decision to circumcise was yet another decision to be part of that community, which has given me so much joy, support, and meaning. Why would I deny my son—and myself—that community?In addition, not needing to make any decisions was itself a kind of relief. I have heard of mothers—including my own—off in a room crying, needing comfort, unable to be there for the circumcision. That did not happen for me. Despite a history of rather severe perinatal depression and anxiety, including suicidal ideation less than a week before the event, I was completely fine. Maybe my comfort came from the fact that I already had two children; this was not my first newborn, though it was my first bris. Maybe, after almost two years of COVID, circumcision did not seem like such a big deal. Maybe I was just glad someone else would hold the baby for a while. But I think at least part of it was the happiness that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:One Parable, Two Interpretations:Pope Francis and William Langland on the Good Samaritan*Sheryl OvermyerInterpretations of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) focus on its theology, ethics, ecclesiology, and even moral psychology. The parable has much to say regarding holiness. It treats how to become holy and distinct acts of holiness, the exemplar of holiness, and the reality and effects of sin. In the history of interpretation, (...) the parable is taken to offer a model of the relationship between the fallen man and grace, the devil and the garment of virtue, the law and love, Christ and the Church. In short, the parable allegorizes salvation history.1I focus conversation about this parable through two interpretations-Pope Francis's Fratelli Tutti [FT], promulgated October 3, 2020, and William Langland's Piers Plowman [PP] circulating circa 1380. Some might hold that Francis's interpretation of the parable is ethical while Langland's is theological.2 Both interpretations of the parable are works of moral theology that intimate distinct understandings of what it means to embody [End Page 541] the Gospel and answer the universal call to holiness. In this essay, I outline the parable of the Good Samaritan as treated in Fratelli Tutti and Piers Plowman (first section), compare the major figures of the parable (second section), and compare their visions of charity (third section). In sum, I argue the encyclical sidelines crucial elements in the medieval figuration of the parable. Pope Francis elides critical issues of sin, agency, Christology, and the Church traditionally associated with this parable—all center on the Samaritan as Christ.Two Interpretations in OutlineFratelli Tutti's Parable of the Good SamaritanPope Francis's third encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, is unique in its genre. The encyclical includes all brothers and sisters in its scope of fraternity and social friendship and is addressed to all (§1). The inspiration for the encyclical includes St. Francis's visit to the Sultan some eight hundred years ago and the 2019 Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, a statement signed by Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar. Indeed, the joint document plays a critical role in the encyclical, sharing a common framework of a doctrine of creation and doctrine of God (FT §5). Because Pope Francis includes all of humanity in the audience of this encyclical and its sources of inspiration are broadly humanitarian, it is fair to raise a question about distinctively Catholic elements to the encyclical.The encyclical chapter devoted to the parable of the Good Samaritan (chapter 2 [§§56–86], treating Luke 10:25–37) intensifies these theological questions. Just as the encyclical is "addressed to all people of good will, regardless of religious convictions," likewise the parable is of universal relevance as it "is one that any of us can relate to and find challenging" (§56). Francis's interpretation of the parable encapsulates Fratelli Tutti's themes.The subject of the parable is, according to Pope Francis, the age-old problem of neighborly love (§57).3 The parable involves several figures: the wounded man lying on the wayside, the robbers, the passers-by, and the Samaritan.4 The wounded are the subject of the encyclical's first chapter. Francis characterizes the wounded as those members of weaker and poorer regions whom the global economy exploits; the poor, disabled, and elderly [End Page 542] who seem no longer useful; children, women, and men of all ages who live under contemporary forms of slavery such as trafficking; and victims of economically driven violence including war, terrorist attacks, and racial and religious persecution (§§§ 12, 18, 24–25). Francis admits that we feel like the wounded, "helpless because our institutions are neglected and lack resources, or simply serve the interests of a few" (§76). However, the primary identification of the wounded focuses on those pushed to the margins by profit-driven economic, technologically progressive, politically divisive, dehumanizing global forces (§76 briefly suggests our identification with the injured man).The parable of the Good Samaritan brings these vast forces to bear our everyday relationships—we all experience an interior struggle when we encounter anyone who suffers (§69... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Innova dies nostros, sicut a principio:Novelty and Nostalgia in Thomas of Celano's First and Second Lives of St. FrancisBarbara Newman (bio)IntroductionIn his sixth-century compendium of hagiography, Gregory of Tours argued that one should always speak of the vita patrum or vita sanctorum in the singular. According to Pliny, he noted, grammarians did not believe the noun vita had a plural. More to the point, although "there is a diversity (...) of merits and virtues among [the saints], … the one life of the body sustains them all in this world."1 Just as the Church, the body of Christ, is one, so too the saints. Their project of imitatio Christi re-presents the one and only life of Christ for each new generation. As a literary genre, hagiography fleshes out this insight, for no other genre is so steeped in self-citation. Every vita is such a tissue of biblical verses that, to edit a saint's Life before Google, one had to know Scripture by heart or spend endless hours with a concordance. After the Bible, quotations from a few classic vitae were constantly recycled: Athanasius' Life of St. Antony, Sulpicius Severus' Life of St. Martin, Gregory the Great's Life of St. Benedict. With the passage of time, newer classics joined older ones to produce one vast, self-referential monument, incarnate in the Acta Sanctorum: Gregory's vita sanctorum multiplied ad infinitum. So deep did this tendency run that, when an obscure saint needed a vita to justify a cult, shameless hagiographers would plagiarize whole paragraphs, plundering stories and miracles from earlier vitae to serve their turn.2 [End Page 169]It is small wonder, then, that the hagiographic genre is so often characterized as "traditional" or "conservative." It is nostalgic, too, in the sense that each saint's words and deeds bring a glorious Golden Age back to life—most often the apostolic age or the time of the Desert Fathers, but sometimes the graced beginnings of a religious order. Such memorials enabled later generations to idealize their glorious founders. This tendency to exalt the new as a renovation of the old has deep roots in Christianity; even the evangelist Matthew systematically represents Jesus as a new Moses. In the same vein, it is not unusual to find a saint identified as a new Jacob or a second David. On the other hand, many saints' Lives make an insistent claim to newness, renovatio. For the saints were, and are, extraordinary—not merely good men and women, but radical figures whose words and deeds shocked those around them, beginning with their parents. Like Jesus, they had not only admirers, but detractors in plenty. If their publicists held them up as exemplars of virtue, theirs was no ordinary kind, for the heroic virtue that gave saints their charisma could look much like madness. Despite the precedents of earlier vitae, their ascetic feats and challenging behavior often struck observers as new and unheard-of. In hagiography, therefore, claims of novelty play a key role that balances the familiar topoi. Sometimes the newness of a saint's charism is cause for joyful celebration. Jesus, after all, had declared ecce nova facio omnia (Rev 21:5). But "novelties" also had to be handled with care, for they could easily be condemned as heresies or extreme practices deviating from the tradition of the elders.This tension between novelty and nostalgia emerges most clearly in the vitae of saints who founded genuinely new forms of religious life. In this paper I will explore the way it plays out in two early Lives of Francis of Assisi, perhaps the most popular saint of all time. After his death in 1226, Francis set a speed record for canonization—one that would be surpassed in the Middle Ages only by his disciple, St. Anthony of Padua, and by the Dominican martyr Peter of Verona.3 Aside from his charisma and the exponential growth of the Franciscan Order, the fast-track canonization is due to Pope Gregory IX, who as Cardinal Hugolino had been personally close to Francis and supported his movement. For the ceremony in July 1228, less than two years after the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Explode and Die!A Fat Woman’s Perspective on Prenatal Care and the Fat Panic EpidemicJennifer HansenClassifying obesity as a disease provides more ammunition for the “war on obesity.” I gather that this is supposed to be a good thing. The problem is that obesity isn’t a germ or a crime; it’s a word applied to a particular kind of body—and thus to the person inhabiting it.From a fat person’s (...) perspective, the “war on obesity” is a war on fat people. It’s a license to bully, shame, and ostracize fat people and deny us employment, medical care, and even ordinary family life because we don’t look right. Fat people, proclaimed by medical authority to be the enemy and identifiable on sight as outsiders, are made into targets for all kinds of free–floating anger. For example, I am apparently sucking away people’s tax dollars via my fat, and it’s also my fault that men expecting to fantasize about every woman they see on the street encounter my distasteful fatness instead. But no matter how many times we get told that we are wrong just for existing, we go on existing, in public even. How dare we? The answer, obviously, is to keep at us. If we would just admit that we have no right to exist, then we would all either vanish or become socially acceptably thin, and then the whole world would be unicorns and butterflies and everyone would be rich and nobody would get old. Or something like that. If obesity is a disease, then phrenology is a science.Of course, we get a lot of well–meaning flak along with the bullying; after all, concentrating on weight loss can only be good for us, because fat people are always about to explode and die. This assumption has definitely affected my relationship with the only medical practice I can reach that’s in my network. During the 20–plus years since I became visibly obese, I have gotten used to the constant drone of “You’re fat, you’re fat, you’re about to explode and die, we don’t care about what you actually came in for because it’s vitally important that we bug you yet again about your pants size,” but some things can still shock me. For example, during all three of my pregnancies, I never had a result that was even borderline for gestational diabetes (GD). And yet, some time after my last baby was born, someone wrote “HISTORY OF GESTATIONAL DIABETES” in my file. I first heard about it during my annual checkup, when the doctor referred to it when talking about my increased risk of Type 2 diabetes due to age (unavoidable), my first–ever non–whitecoat–syndrome borderline blood pressure (BP) reading (taken with a standard cuff, gee how could it possibly have been inaccurate), and GD (gosh, I felt so safe and supported at this fine reality–based practice). And of course my weight.Whoever wrote that felt free to make things up because I’m fat. To repeat, somebody with access to my file at my only source for affordable health care felt free to write things in it that were completely contradicted by the facts just a few sheets below. There’s no need to fact–check your assumptions when you can tell by looking at her that she’s F–A–T, and everybody knows what they are. They’ll explode and die, every last one of them. Better medicate them now before they inevitably break down!Speaking of which, there’s a particular OB at the practice who I’ll call Doctor Eeyore. At every appointment, Doctor Eeyore would take measurements, stare, and say, “Hmm … tch.” If I asked him to tell me what he had found, he would say, “Too big,” or, “Too small,” or indicate some other inadequacy in his glum, word–miserly way. He only bothered to produce complete sentences when he enthusiastically told me that I would die if I didn’t give birth with an IV in place to administer the life–saving drugs for my inevitable cardiac event... (shrink)

We would be wrong to state that Plato’s approach to the Golden Age in the Statesman occurs through nostalgia, even if he stresses the immense distance between our world and that blessed time. After evoking the shepherd-god as a ruler, Plato shows that the completely abandoned disposition of the ruled is only justifiable in presence of an unbridgeable chasm between the two, such as that between gods and men, or men and beasts. The real question in the Statesman is how (...) to single out the peculiar form of knowledge possessed by the few men that are truly capable to rule. (shrink)

During the past century and a half historians and sociologists have often shown signs of considerable simplicity of mind when assessing the motivating forces behind the men whose deeds they are studying, and those attaining the most flattering notoriety in the intellectual world have been among the simplest. From the early nineteenth century, beginning with the fall of Napoleon, there is a tendency to present the historical disciplines as sciences: the re-creative anecdote is greeted with increasing disdain, and sociology undergoes (...) its act of baptism. The Revolution of 1789 and the epic of imperial France are events of such dimension that it is difficult to associate them with the conscious designs of a few individuals. No longer a muse, Clio becomes a goddess. In War and Peace Tolstoi ironically treats historians of the old school who pretend to offer the key to the Revolution “in exposing the deeds and gestures of a few dozen men in one building in the city of Paris.” The French emperor's gallop into Russia and the stubborn but apparently passive resistance offered by Kutuzov—these are facts in which Tolstoi sees the manifestation of forces far surpassing the play of a few human wills. Tolstoi's manner in extolling Kutuzov is typical: Kutuzov is not a visionary; he shows no signs of genius, but with humble and patient fervor he turns aside all obstacles which might stifle the voice of popular instinct. Thirty years before Tolstoi, in a letter to his fiancée, Georg Büchner stated the case in another good example of this type of thinking: “I have studied the history of the Revolution. … I find in human nature a frightening equality, in the condition of man an ineluctable power conferred at once upon all and upon no one. The individual is but a fleck of foam upon the wave, greatness merely the result of chance, the power of genius a puppet show, a ridiculous struggle against a law of iron.” Men are interesting insofar as they are representative. Saint-Simon, mentor of Auguste Comte and father of sociology, declares that the great men of the world merely play the role assigned to them in historical evolution. According to Saint-Simon, the sixteenth century, an age of theology, gave birth to theologian-kings: Charles V and Henry VIII. Because he is a theologian, Henry VIII easily prevails over gallant and witty Francis I. The eighteenth century, a siècle of philosophy, “counts but two great names among its sovereigns: Catherine and Frederick the Great, friends of philosophers and patrons of philosophy.” Seen in this light, the features of the individual become blurred and shadowy. History is admired instead— history which, often with material of mediocre quality, builds solid edifices. But, faced with the astonishing drama played out by Napoleon himself, Tolstoi merely shrugs his shoulders, while following step by step simple men like Tostopchin or Kutuzov, who are obviously the mere instruments of history. Heine, who went through a Saint-Simonian phase, is amazed that Luther, that rough, gross monk whose brain was clouded by anxiety and superstition, so easily wielded the battering ram that shattered the old medieval world. In the 1830’s Auguste Comte foresees a “history without proper names,” a definition which is of prime importance in the analysis we are undertaking here. But, a hundred years later, Maxime Leroy, nourished on both Comte and Sainte-Beuve, draws more subtly shaded definitions: history becomes a “sociology containing proper names.”. (shrink)

_The first part called the Preamble tackles: (a) the issues of silence and speech, and life and disease; (b) whether we need to know some or all of the truth, and how are exact science and philosophical reason related; (c) the phenomenon of Why, How, and What; (d) how are mind and brain related; (e) what is robust eclecticism, empirical/scientific enquiry, replicability/refutability, and the role of diagnosis and medical model in psychiatry; (f) bioethics and the four principles of beneficence, non-malfeasance, (...) autonomy, and justice; (g) the four concepts of disease, illness, sickness, and disorder; how confusion is confounded by these concepts but clarity is imperative if we want to make sense out of them; and how psychiatry is an interim medical discipline. The second part called The Issues deals with: (a) the concepts of nature and nurture; the biological and the psychosocial; and psychiatric disease and brain pathophysiology; (b) biology, Freud and the reinvention of psychiatry; (c) critics of psychiatry, mind-body problem and paradigm shifts in psychiatry; (d) the biological, the psychoanalytic, the psychosocial and the cognitive; (e) the issues of clarity, reductionism, and integration; (f) what are the fool-proof criteria, which are false leads, and what is the need for questioning assumptions in psychiatry. The third part is called Psychiatric Disorder, Psychiatric Ethics, and Psychiatry Connected Disciplines. It includes topics like (a) psychiatric disorder, mental health, and mental phenomena; (b) issues in psychiatric ethics; (c) social psychiatry, liaison psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, forensic psychiatry, and neuropsychiatry. The fourth part is called Antipsychiatry, Blunting Creativity, etc. It includes topics like (a) antipsychiatry revisited; (b) basic arguments of antipsychiatry, Szasz, etc.; (c) psychiatric classification and value judgment; (d) conformity, labeling, and blunting creativity. The fifth part is called The Role of Philosophy, Religion, and Spirituality in Psychiatry. It includes topics like (a) relevance of philosophy to psychiatry; (b) psychiatry, religion, spirituality, and culture; (c) ancient Indian concepts and contemporary psychiatry; (d) Indian holism and Western reductionism; (e) science, humanism, and the nomothetic-idiographic orientation. The last part, called Final Goal, talks of the need for a grand unified theory. The whole discussion is put in the form of refutable points._. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:72. HAS HUME A THEORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? Toward the end of An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume asserts in a footnote that: In short, we must ever distinguish between the necessity of a separation and constancy in men's possession, and the rules, which assign particular objects to particular persons. The first necessity is obvious, strong, and invincible : the latter may depend on a public utility (...) more light and frivolous, on the sentiment of private humanity and aversion to private hardship, on positive laws, on precedents, analogies, and very fine connexions and. turns of the imagination. For one who draws the connection between the ideas of justice and possession as closely as he does, Hume's ambivalence here concerning the rules or principles governing the distribution of objects to be possessed is more than slightly surprising. In fact, for admirers of Hume interested in theories of social (or distributive) justice, his failure to state a preference among these various 'principles of distribution' is downright depressing. Is this all Hume has to say on the subject of how possessions are to be distributed within society? Does it not matter to him what the principles are upon which this distribution is accomplished — as long as it is accomplished? These are the questions with which this essay is concerned, questions which essentially reduce to that of whether Hume has a theoiy of social or distributive justice at all. To be sure;, the amount of space Hume devotes to the discussion of justice would seem to indicate that he is working from a particular theory of social justice, and authors such as Miller, Day, and Ardal ascribe one to him, yet Hume's apparent lack of concern for principles of distribution disputes this ascript- 73. 2 ion. For at the center of all such theories — from Aristotle to Rawls — lies a preference for a certain principle or set of principles which dictates how advantages (goods, wealth, benefits, etc.) should be distributed. In order to evaluate Hume's status as a theorist of social justice, two approaches recommend themselves. First, it is necessary to discover and examine in Hume's major works possible criteria which might dictate how possessions should be distributed in society. Three such criteria will be dealt with here: the principle of utility as Hume construes it, the formal principle of correct application of law, and the principles Hume entitles the laws of nature". If none of these emerge, singly or in combination, as the principle underlying a Humean theory of social justice, a second avenue for analyzing Hume's views of social justice will be explored. Here some of the critical psychological and moral characteristics which Hume attributes to human nature will be examined to determine whether Hume, though he seems to accept no specific principle of distribution, might arrive at a coherent theory of justice in a negative fashion; that is, through rejecting certain criteria of distribution, particularly merit and need. II. The half-heartedness of Hume's commitment to the principle of utility as either a standard of personal morality, a measure of the justness of particular actions, or as 4 an explanatory principle has been frequently documented, and, although the main purpose of this essay is to examine Hume's theory of social rather than personal justice, a few comments on the latter will form a useful preface for the subsequent argument that Hume is equally as luke-warm toward utilitarianism as an adequate basis of social justice. Three considerations indicate Hume's non-utilitarian approach to personal morality. First, unlike all advocates of utilitarianism, Hume is not a consequentialist on matters 74. of personal ethics. That is to say, when Hume speaks of what makes persons or their actions virtuous, he insists that the major criterion for such an evaluation is the motive upon which the agent acts. In the Treatise he states that a virtuous motive is requisite to render an action virtuous ; (T478), and maintains this view in the Enquiry as well. Hume therefore violates the consequentialist stance implicit in the utilitarian construal of personal morality, but just as seriously, is also left rather cold by the later utilitarian contention of Mill... (shrink)

A feminist analysis of the Basque Mondragon system of industrial cooperatives suggests that women fare somewhat better in cooperatives than in private firms in employment, earnings, and job security. Market phenomena and the family as basic economic unit affect women workers negatively, as does increasing professionalism in the technical core of the system. Similarities in gender stratification and segregation in capitalist, socialist, and cooperative workplaces call into question the ability of all three to deal adequately with gender equality. Full workplace (...) democracy may depend on the distribution of goods and services based on need rather than work or the wage, socialization of homework and child care, degendering of technical and scientific knowledge, its dissemination as widely as possible throughout the workplace and the community, and the inclusion of all members of the community in major decisions. The article ends with modest suggestions for alleviating one pervasive problem in large industrial cooperatives—the concentration of technical and scientific skill among a few, primarily men. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:25 MORALITY AS A BACK-UP SYSTEM: HUME'S VIEW? The sense of duty is a useful device for helping men to do what a really good man would do without a sense of duty..... Nowell-Smith A certain picture of morality — arguably a Humean one — has come to have a prominent place in contemporary philosophy. On this picture, morality, as Richard Brandt asserts, is "a back-up system, which (...) operates when spontaneous personal caring fails 2 to motivate us to do as we ought." Morality — at least in the form of moral principles, whose force is felt through one's sense of duty — is, on this view, ideally superfluous. As a guide for one's own conduct it is needed only insofar as the agent's affective network is deficient. If one only spontaneously desired a, cared about b, cared for c, felt aversion towards d as, ideally, one should, moral principles and a sense of duty would be of no use. There are good reasons for supposing that this is Hume's view. After all, his characterization of acting from duty is more than a little disparaging: When any virtuous motive or principle is common in human nature, a person, who feels his heart devoid of that motive, may hate himself upon that account, and may perform the action without the motive, from a certain sense of duty, in order to acquire by practice, that virtuous principle, or at least, to disguise to himself,,as much as possible, his want of it. I will argue, however, that there is tension in Hume's ethics between two lines of thought. According to the first line of thought, and the one 26 usually associated with Hume, good conduct is conduct which is spontaneously prompted by virtuous desires. Unless our desires either are not what they should be or are motivationally weak, there is no need for mediation or tempering by a sense of duty or moral principles. According to the second line, the very good desires of a very good person may nonetheless need to be filtered, tempered, redirected or checked. This line is most evident in "Of the Origin of the Natural Virtues and Vices." Before arguing that these strains of thought are in tension in Hume's ethics, I need to clarify what is at issue and to develop the two competing pictures of moral motivation. First the issue. The issue is not 'Who is better: someone with a sense of duty but corrupt desires or someone with no sense of duty but ideal desires?' Nor is the issue one of the moral worth of actions ('Can an action have moral worth if it is not performed out of duty?') The issue, rather, is how to characterize morally good (or right) conduct. What role, if any, does a sense of duty or a Butlerian principle of reflection, i.e., an overarching, guiding conception of what is right or good which is 'juridically' supreme within the self, play in good conduct? Is morally good conduct ideally a matter of acting as one should from the proper desires? Or should the desires be governed and guided by moral principles? Consider two models of moral conduct. Model I: Morality as a Back-Up System On this picture, wrongness in conduct is traceable to an affective deficiency. The claim underlying this picture seems to be as follows: One 27 acts wrongly because one's passions are not quite what they should be. One person cheats in her business dealings because she cares too little about the welfare of others (and too much about her own); another is harsh and abrupt to a student because he cares too little about his students' concerns and is jealous and possessive when it comes to 'his time.' In each case the problem can be traced to an affective deficiency. Hume appears to be supporting this view when he asserts, "it may be establish'd as an undoubted maxim, that no act can be virtuous, or morally good, unless there be in human nature some motive to produce it, distinct from a sense of its morality' (T 479). A few pages later he writes, "[E]very immorality... (shrink)

The construction of railways has been one of the symbols of advanced technology and modernity in various societies and is known as a means of expanding and transferring goods, men, and their ideas. During the political-economic circumstances of the second half of the 19th century, the first rail line of Iran was built under the Qajar rule. This was an 8 km railway to connect Tehran to Rey with some small wagons, most local people tended to call it Mashin-Doodi, which (...) translates as Smokey Machine. The railway then appeared in southwest Iran as a means of transport for the oil industry which was booming after oil discoveries in Khuzestan. The intercity railway started to operate in 1923 and was 57 km long, connecting Masjed-i-Soleyman to Dar-i-Kahzineh. It was established for exploitative purposes of foreign states resulting in a few small-scale and temporary projects, but the idea of constructing and expanding rail lines based on national investments finally materialized with the first national railroad. (shrink)

« Good sense is, of a all things among men, the most equally distributed ». This sentence stands out as one of the most famous in Descartes’ philosophy. We often consider this simple statement a clear break from the « obscurity » of the so-called scholastic tradition. However, some contemporary commentators of the Discourse on Method, such as father Poisson, understood this sentence as an implicit reference to an ancient scholastic theory, called the theory of intensio et remissio formarum. (...) This theory states that where the accidental qualitites of a substance undergo increase or decrease, i. e. variations in intensity, the essential qualities of a substance do not. According to these commentators, Descartes uses it as a way to prove that Thought, or « good sense », knows no variation in one’s mind, that it is distributed equally amongst all men, and that the soul « always thinks ».In the present article, we recall the meaning of this scholastic theory and we show how it was perceived as a key to understanding and justifying Descartes’claim about the substantiality of thought. We then show how, a few years later, John Locke uses the very same theory to argue against Descartes that the life of the mind is in fact subject to variations in intensity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A PARABLE OF SCANDAL: SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE WHEAT AND THE TARES IN MATTHEW 13 John F. Cornell St. John's College, NM I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret since the foundation of die world" (Matthew 13:35) The title ofone of René Girard's path-breaking books, Things Hidden since the Foundation ofthe World, is of course drawn from this passage. Few scholarly writings compare to (...) this discussion ofmimetic rivalry and collective persecution for conveying a sense of the Bible's depths and secrecy, and for deciphering the wisdom inscribed in its images. Yet it is curious that Girard eschews the parables said to be the repositories of scriptural secrets. Both in Things Hidden (189) and in Quand ces choses commenceront (171-172), he distances himself from the parables as conceding too much to the human desire for a mythical God ofretribution. In light of all we have learned from Girard about our traditional misreadings of the Gospel, we might well question even the strongest impressions left by some of its figures. Might the parables' language of apocalyptic vengeance conceal a different revelation, just as an innocent death on a cross should disclose not the bloodlust ofa deity but the violence ofmen? Matthew's Jesus tells a story about a sowerwhose crop was infested by his enemy's weeds, weeds to be uprooted and destroyed at the harvest. And, granted, when Jesus translates the parable for the disciples he describes divine violence at the end ofhistory. The enemy is the devil and the sower is the Son ofMan who sends out his angels to discern the unrighteous ofhumanity and cast them into the furnace. But something does not seem quite right. Isn't Jesus' reduction of his own parable a little too obvious? And is there not John F. Cornell99 something grotesque—or at least simple-minded—about the teacher who warned about dirowing pearls ofwisdom now turning around and broadcasting the solution to one of the great mysteries? If we look closely at the very parable that surrounds the suggestion of "things hidden since the foundation ofthe world," we may see, however, that something is indeed hidden, hidden in the text. And what is hidden there confirms Girard's insight about the dominion ofmimetic rivalry since the world began. The Wheat and Tares is more than amyth ofdivine punishment. It is a parable ofthe essential human malady, a parable ofscandal. Here is the main text of the parable of the Wheat and the Tares, from Matthew chapter 13, in the New King James Version.1 "The kingdom ofheaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field (agroi) but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grainhad sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the [master of the house] (oikodespotou) came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed inyourfield? How then does it have tares?' He said to diem, 'An enemy, [a man,] has done this.' The servants said to him, 'Do you want us then to go and gather them up?' But he said, 1No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time ofharvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to bum them, but gather the wheat into my bam.'"" (Matthew 13: 24-30) Andhere is the explanation ofdie Wheat and die Tares that follows soon after: All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying: "1 will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret [since] the foundation ofthe world." 1 Minor corrections, necessary to reflect the Greek, are indicated by brackets. The source for the Greek text is the Nestle-Almond Novum Testamentum Graece. 100A Parable ofScandal Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house (oikiari). And His... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:GOOD MEN'S WOMEN: HUME ON CHASTITY AND TRUST At the very heart of Hume's philosophy in the Treatise, namely between his discussion of the artificial and the natural virtues, he places a short chapter entitled "Of Chastity and Modesty." Its central position is appropriate, since these supposed virtues present something of a test case for Hume's account of the relation between nature and artifice, and, more generally, beyond (...) his moral philosophy, for his views on regularity and constancy in and out of individual lives. For these theoretical reasons, as well as for the calm realism of his treatment of sexual inequality, the chapter warrants more attention than it has received. Perhaps Hume's most important contribution to moral philosophy is his account of the difference between natural virtues, displayed in actions which do good one by one, each act having value independently of whether similar acts are performed by oneself and others on other occasions, and artificial virtues displayed in acts in essential conformity to established socially useful conventions, which do good only in so far as they are supported by general conformity. Hume does not, like Kant, insist that we always see morally good action as obedience to law, nor does he neglect the importance of those areas where good can be done only if acts are correctly seen as conforming to general laws, general conformity to which is not only willed by the agent but assumed by him to be in effect. Hume gives a subtle and elaborate account of when we do and when we do not need moral and social conformity, of which virtues are and which virtues are not mediated by changeable public will or convention. Conventions must operate before any act can count as property-respecting, but there is no need to ask 'can I will this as universal law?' before comforting a frightened child. Whatever the conventions, whatever others do, such an act does some good, and is the sort of 2. act which displays the natural virtue of kindness. Hume requires of a virtuous act not merely that it be helpful or agreeable to someone (or some public) but that it display a durable character trait in the agent. An uncharacteristic act of kindness to a child may do good without displaying a virtue or a good character. Approval is given, according to Hume, to persons on account of theii durable character traits, as displayed in their actions and reactions. The natural response to virtue is to welcome its possessor: His company is a satisfaction to me (T588), and virtue in rags will be the exception in a smoothly functioning society. The fact that Hume's ethics is an agent ethics, and that the concept of welcome virtue is more fundamental to it than that of a useful action, commits Hume, throughout his moral philosophy and especial!, in his treatment of the natural virtues, to an emphasis on consistency or integrity of character, to a search for durable character traits and so for characteristic actions. Now a person might be characteristically kind, yet on occasion, under stress, give expression to unaccustomed malice. The uncharacteristic malicious act may weaken but not destroy the virtue of kindness which kind acts have both expressed and infixed (T411). When the malicious act is known, the person's reputation for benevolence may be slightly sullied, but certainly not ruined. Both within one person's life, and within one population, there will be reason to encourage consistently virtuous action, but no reason to feel that all is lost or spoiled if lapses from the natural virtues occur. Even when cruelty is the norm, the rare kind act may be appreciated, if not rewarded, the rare kind person may be welcome, if also exploited and victimized. With the artificial virtues there is a stronger demand and need for uniformity in a population, since the value of any one just act, or one person's character trait, depends upon the support received from the similar acts and 3. traits of others. Every single act is performed in the expectation that others are to perform the like (T498). To display artificial virtues, actions must be seen as rule... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision by Erika BachiochiAngela KnobelThe Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision by Erika Bachiochi (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), 422 pp.Erika Bachiochi's The Rights of Women is animated by a clear vision: a vision of men and women as possessors of the same nature and engaged in the same shared enterprise. Men and women possess the (...) same nature because they are rational animals and hence fulfilled by living a life that exhibits the fullness of their rational human nature, and they are engaged in the same enterprise because both naturally pursue the same good: the common good of their families and societies. Bachiochi argues that this Aristotelian and communitarian understanding of the relationship between the sexes was the original vision of feminism: it was the vision of the early feminist Mary [End Page 742] Wollenstonecraft, and likewise the vision that inspired and animated our nation's founding mothers. As feminism's most famous advocates began to adopt the language of the Enlightenment and its incoherent emphasis on "rights," however, Wollenstonecraft's robust and sensible understanding of the right relationship between the sexes was gradually left behind. Modern feminism, Bachiochi argues, needs to reclaim Wollenstonecraft's vision, and has indeed already begun to do so in the communitarian and dignitarian work of Mary Ann Glendon.As is evident from the preceding, there are three distinct claims advanced in Bachiochi's book. First—and this I take to be the overarching thesis of the book—there is a claim about how feminism ought to understand the relationship between the sexes (i.e., in terms of Aristotelian flourishing and natural law). Second, there is the claim that feminism originally did understand the relationship between the sexes in this way. Finally (this is the third thesis), there is the claim that modern feminists have lost this vision, and that the solution to our current woes is to reclaim it. It is important to notice that truth of the first thesis does not depend on the truth of the second or the third, or vice versa. Because the first thesis is to my mind the most interesting and important of the three, it will be the focus of my remarks here. But it is worth making a few brief remarks about the other two theses, if only because so much of the book's content is devoted them.Did early feminists have a clear vision of the right relationship between the sexes, a vision informed by Aristotle and natural law? Did later feminists discard that clear vision? Is Enlightenment philosophy to blame? This is a common narrative, particularly in pro-life circles, and I think there is certainly an element of truth to it. I think Bachiochi rightly recognizes an Aristotelian strain in Wollenstonecraft, and rightly applauds the early feminist advocacy of virtue. What I am not quite ready to accept, though, is the "clear" part of the clear vision. Early feminists subscribed to many admirable views. They also seem to have held some less admirable ones. However laudable her advocacy of virtue and chastity may have been, for instance, Wollenstonecraft seems to have had a very dim view of men (45). Similarly, I found the "voluntary motherhood" movement, which Bachiochi applauds, repellent. If disharmony between the sexes arose from men having too much control over women's sexual lives, harmony will hardly be restored by reversing the equation and instead giving women complete control over sex (109). My own instinct (which this book only reaffirmed) is to think that feminism as a movement has always been a bit confused, has always had some good goals and some that were less so. I think this, in [End Page 743] part, because I am not sure that a coherent "feminism" is possible. I shall say more about this below.Bachiochi's real claim, of course, is that there is a right way to understand men and women, and consequently a right way to be a feminist. But my genuine appreciation for and affirmation of her view of what the right relationship between the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"To make a difference...":Narrative Desire in Global MedicineByron J. Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio GoodIf, as Arthur Frank (2002) writes, "moral life, for better and worse, takes place in storytelling," this collection of narratives written by physicians working in field settings in global medicine gives us a glimpse of some aspects of moral experience, practice, and dilemmas in settings of poverty and low health care resources. These essays are (...) written from the midst of practice, in diverse settings in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The majority of the writers are practitioners of contemporary 'global medicine'—physicians from North America or Europe who spend part of their lives flying into settings of poverty or special need to practice medicine and work with on-going collaborative clinical and public health systems—while a smaller number are working in the societies in which they were born. Although a few work for classic humanitarian organizations or have developed their own local NGO's, the great majority are engaged in the 'hybrid life' described by Robert Riviello and noted by Renée Fox, moving between academic medical centers and distant health care systems that are supported by local governments, major international organizations and funding agencies, and international NGO's like Partners in Health. These diverse forms of practice have become a common model for contemporary clinicians engaged in what has emerged as a new discipline of global health or global medicine, and these narratives give us a glimpse of some of the enduring, as well as newly emerging, forms of moral practice and ethical dilemmas characteristic of today's global medicine.Many of these stories are filled with the tension and pathos that makes clinical narratives powerful to read. Physicians are forced to make unfathomable decisions about whether to resuscitate and keep a baby alive, using all means available, or to let the infant die, whether to carry out a procedure that will save an infant in birth but would put the mother at risk, about how to deal with a cancer found in a very advanced state. However, virtually all of the stories transcend these classical stories of the decisions physicians are forced to make by being placed in settings of great scarcity of resources, which stand in particular contrast to the academic medical settings in North America or Europe where many of these global medicine specialists have trained and many continue to practice. The unspeakable inequality of resources emerges throughout these narratives as a kind of master theme, as the underlying moral, as opposed to plot, which gives meaning and sense to the stories. For those who practice medicine in such settings, global inequalities and scarcity of medical resources are deeply felt. They produce the rage that Jeffrey Deal describes. ("I learned to despise American churches during that time, a time when my world encompassed a dying newborn in Sudan, as well as the air conditioned padded seats [End Page 121] of our affluent suburban church.") They produce the distinctive experiences of helplessness and pain felt by clinicians who cannot separate how they would be able to treat such a patient at home from how they have to practice in these settings. For those clinicians working in their own societies, scarcity of resources often produces deep anger at the corrupt governments that fail to support basic human services for the great majority of their population. ("We were temporary actors performing in the cynical play of scarcity on permanent display in Port-au-Prince," writes Haitian physician Paul Pierre about his experience prior to joining Partners in Health.)But for those who regularly travel back and forth across the divide between rich and poor, whether across national boundaries or within their own society, the challenge to live a moral life is unendingly complicated. While becoming a part of a struggle for global justice with colleagues and advocates from both sides of the divide, few of the narrators can avoid personal feelings of ambivalence and guilt at being able to easily move from one side of that divide to the other back home. Many fantasize about giving up their lives in the north to devote themselves... (shrink)

Hume refers to women as imaginative, compassionate, conversable, and delicate. While his appraisals of women seem disparate, I argue that they reflect a position about the distinctive role that Hume takes women to have in shaping and enforcing moral norms. On his view, I maintain, women provide us with the ideal model of a moral judge. I claim that Hume sees a tight connection between moral competency and those traits he identifies as feminine. Making this case requires clarifying a few (...) concepts in Hume’s philosophical toolbox and their relation to one another. The primary quality of a good moral judge, according to Hume, is a delicacy of taste. I show that Hume thinks of delicacy as a feminine skill that can only be developed in men imperfectly, thereby making women the ideal moral judges. (shrink)

William James makes several major claims about truth: (i) truth means agreement with reality independently of the knower, (ii) truth is made by human beings, (iii) truth can be verified, and (iv) truth is necessarily good. These claims give rise to a few puzzles: (i) and (ii) seem to contradict each other, and each of (ii), (iii), and (iv) has counter-intuitive implications. I argue that Richard Gale's interpretation of James' theory of truth is inadequate in dealing with these puzzles. (...) I propose an alternative interpretation and show how it can solve these puzzles. (shrink)

The term "callous" has not, to this point, been studied empirically or considered philosophically in the context of healthcare professionalism. It should be, however, because its uses seem peculiar. Sometimes "callous" is used to suggest that becoming callous confers a benefit of some protection against emotional distress, which might be considered expedient in the healthcare work environment. But, "callous" also refers to a person's unappealing demeanor of hardened insensitivity. The tension between these different moral connotations of "callous" prompts several empirical, (...) psychological, and moral questions; I introduce and entertain a few here. I also suggest a distinction between callousness and inurement and argue for why this distinction is important to appreciate and uphold in health professions education. (shrink)

Yah boo sucks to the grammer wot we lernt in skool! Grammar (and the bad old traditional logic) says that quantifier phrases such as 'nobody', 'everyone', 'all women', 'some men' and 'a man' are in the same category as names such as 'Milly', 'Molly' and 'Mandy'. So, prior to their first corrective lessons, students are awfully muddled, the first and fundamental problem being the Woozle hunt for somebody called 'nobody'. Hoorah for modern logic and logic teachers! The story used to (...) justify our current logics is entirely fictional. The claims about names and quantifier phrases in English are wildly false. Two of the heroes of modern logic, Russell and Hilbert, make the very mistakes which are falsely blamed on traditional logic. The villain, Meinong, turns out to have been working a different patch. Ideas ascribed to traditional grammar are modern inventions. Neither logicians nor grammarians can be trusted to tell the history of either grammar or logic. (shrink)

The Chinese philosophical tradition aims at a departure from the imperfect reality for the sake of the ideal. But it is also clear to the Chinese philosophers that most people would not follow their footsteps in discarding reality and seeking the ideal. The weakness of the ideal in its incapacity to change the uncultivated man defines a common thread of philosophical thinking in China, and constitutes a bitter truth which these philosophers do not make explicit. Seven philosophers from the fifth (...) to the third centuries B.C.E. are analyzed in order to develop a fresh understanding of the dialectic between the ideal and the uncultivated man: Lao Tzu, Confucius, Mo Tzu, Mencius, Chuang Tzu, Hsun Tzu, and Han Fei. Although I treat them individually rather than group similar topics for comparison, I employ a consistent mode of analysis to study each of them. ;I find that Mo Tzu perceives reality as an oppressive order and attributes it to the egoism of the uncultivated man; and under his system, oppression will prevail since Mo Tzu's proposals of political and religious controls are imperfectly designed. Mencius shows that the uncultivated man is driven by profit and is repulsed by the demands of morality, making it difficult to found a moral polity. Hsun Tzu believes that the irrationality in man withdraws the popular support from a ritual and rational regime. ;Lao Tzu argues that reality is divided between "good" and "evil," which are themselves defined by conventions. Both "good" and "evil" acquire perpetuity, and even Lao Tzu's proposal of primitivism cannot destroy them. Han Fei similarly conceives reality as composed of both moral and immoral men. His statecraft either lends support to morality or is unable to curb wickedness; accordingly, he is incapable of improving reality. ;Confucius observes that his gentlemanly ideal splits into halves as his students appropriate one mode or the other. The gentleman is underappreciated because those embodying one half or the other of the good are not sympathetic to the full ideal. Chuang Tzu thinks that most people are gripped by partisan points of view, while only a few have transcended partisanship. His ideal personality, combining both partisan and nonpartisan standpoints, would appear suspect to most people. (shrink)

The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe (1946) by Glenn Clark is a work of biography and philosophy, exploring the life and ideas of the versatile artist, writer, and philosopher Walter Russell. New Thought writer and professor Glenn Clark (b. 1882, d. 1956) was a fervent believer in the power of prayer and the Light of God to reveal the secrets of the universe. As he explains in Chapter One: We Go Seeking, he had been searching "...for a (...) man who has discovered the universal law which lies back of the Sermon on the Mount, and who consciously uses that law with full awareness of its meaning, and full obedience to its principles." He believed that he had found that man in Walter Russell. Walter Russell (b. 1871, d. 1963) was a man who seemed preternaturally adept at everything he wished to try. After being removed from school at the age of nine and sent to work at a dry goods store, he worked a number of low-paying jobs. But he had "absolute faith...that anything can come to one who trusts to the unlimited help of the Universal Intelligence that is within so long as one works within the law and always gives more to others than they expect, and does it cheerfully and courteously." Throughout his life, he found success as a musician, painter, sculptor, writer, ice skater, philosopher, and lecturer. He was commissioned to sculpt a 28-figure Mark Twain Memorial just a few years after he began sculpting. And in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked him to sculpt the Four Freedoms Monument. He designed several buildings in New York City and invented the cooperative ownership model (aka the co-op). And most of these pursuits were undertaken with no formal education. By the time Clark met with Russell, he had achieved success in his artistic, literary, architectural, physical, and even scientific pursuits. So when Clark was searching for a man who knew the secrets of the universe and was referred to Russell on more than one occasion, he knew that he had to meet him. Large portions of the book, particularly in the chapters We Meet the Man, We Meet the Man of Action, and The Five Laws of Success, are presented as an interview with Russell, giving us insight into his beliefs straight from the source. "Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common," he says. "The most conspicuous of these is that they all produce a prodigious amount of work. The second is that they never know fatigue. And the third is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men's lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man's life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws." At the heart of Russell's philosophy is a belief that every man "has consummate genius within him. Some appear to have it more than others only because they are aware of it more than others are, and the awareness or unawareness of it is what makes each one of them into masters or holds them down to mediocrity..." To know that we have genius inside of us, and to have absolute faith in our inner voice and in the Universe, is to unlock that genius. Through the story of Russell's brilliant life and his Five Personal Laws of Success (humility, reverence, inspiration, deep purpose, and joy), the reader gets a plain-language example of genius-in-action. He demonstrated his great energy, lack of fatigue, and "ever-flowing fountain" of genius throughout his long life, maintaining his creativity until his death in 1963 at the age of 92. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:C. Suetonius Tranquillus: De Grammaticis et RhetoribusJames E. G. ZetzelR. A. Kaster, ed. C. Suetonius Tranquillus: De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus. Edited with a translation, introduction, and commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. lx 1 370 pp. Cloth, $72.00.From a very early stage, the Romans were interested in their own literary history. In the second century B.C.E., Accius composed his didascalica; in the first century, Varro, Cornelius Nepos, and Julius Hyginus (...) all wrote biographies of literary figures; and early in the second century c.e. Suetonius wrote a set of books De uiris illustribus, giving accounts of the lives of Roman poets, historians, orators, philosophers—and teachers of grammar and rhetoric. Our knowledge of the first four categories of writers is exiguous: aside from Cicero’s Brutus, which is of more importance for chronology than for biography proper, we have the versions of some of Suetonius’ lives of the poets that are attached to scholia and the one-sentence notices excerpted from Suetonius by Jerome in his adaptation of Eusebius’ Chronicle; we also have occasional anecdotes in the elder Seneca, Aulus Gellius, and a few other sources. The vagaries of textual transmission, however, have left us much better off with the last of Suetonius’ rubrics: a single manuscript survived to the middle ages containing (along with Tacitus’ minor works) the portion of De uiris illustribus known as De grammaticis et rhetoribus (DGR). The text is badly preserved, and it is also incomplete: of the sixteen professors of rhetoric once included, lives of only five remain. Even so, it is a text of considerable importance for students of Roman education and, indeed, of Roman intellectual life: not only does it describe the origins of grammatical and rhetorical education at Rome, it discusses the origins, character, and students of the men who taught the elite of Rome; it preserves anecdotes involving the leading political and literary figures of the first centuries B.C.E. and c.e.; and along the way it offers quotations, otherwise unknown, from such figures as Valerius Cato, Helvius Cinna, Furius Bibaculus, Cicero, Asinius Pollio, and Asinius Gallus.Until now, DGR has been an extraordinarily difficult text to understand or [End Page 475] to use. Suetonius’ chronology is vague, his biographical reconstructions obscure, and his narratives maddeningly brief and anecdotal—not to mention the fact that the text itself is so corrupt that the words themselves are not always easy to ascertain. No longer: with Robert Kaster’s magnificent edition, DGR is a text that cannot only be read, but understood, used, and even (at times) admired. In some respects, K. is the perfect match for Suetonius: like Suetonius, K.’s principal interest is not in the internal history of ancient education, but in its external history, above all in the social context and significance of teaching at Rome. It should also be said, however, that in other ways K. is far better than Suetonius: where the ancient text is brief, elliptical, and anecdotal, K. is thorough, patient, and extraordinarily learned. K.’s edition includes a long introduction, a new critical text and facing translation, and an exhaustive commentary, followed by four appendices (of which the longest and most important concerns Suetonius’ use of the elder Seneca). A brief review can scarcely do justice to K.’s achievement; a few comments will have to suffice.Introduction: Although DGR is perhaps the portion of De uiris illustribus that modern scholars would most happily have done without, K. turns the very obscurity of the subject matter to good advantage. In writing of poets, historians, and the rest, Suetonius could make full use of earlier biographers such as Nepos and Hyginus; with the teachers, he had no such sources. As a result, DGR provides an excellent laboratory in which to observe Suetonius’ working methods: K. analyzes brilliantly the way in which he collected his information, how it is related to his research for the lives of literary figures, and the strengths and weaknesses of Suetonius’ approach. In both the introduction and the commentary (to singularly good effect in his analysis of DGR1–4 on the origins of grammatical teaching at Rome), K. pays close attention... (shrink)

Time allocation, whether considered at the level of the individual or of the society, is a major focus of public concern. Are our lives more congested with work than they used to be? Is society polarizing into groups which, on one side, have too much work and too little leisure time to spend their money in, and on the other have no paid work, and hence no money to pay for the goods and services they might wish to use during (...) their leisure? Has the recent convergence in men's and women's labour market roles led to an unfair distribution of the totals of paid plus unpaid work? These issues, and others similar, once the preserve of a few specialist sociologists and economists, now appear daily and prominently across the news and entertainment media.Yet there is surprisingly little substantive evidence of how individuals and societies spend their time, and of how this has changed in the developed world over the recent past. This book brings together, for the first time, data gathered in some forty national scale 'time-diary' studies, from twenty countries, and covering the last third of the twentieth century. It examines the newly emerging political economy of time, in the light of new estimates of how time is actually spent, and of how this has changed, in the developed world. (shrink)

Most men experience from time to time a wish to know something about the character of the larger reality in which they live, move, and have their being; something much more fundamental than any department of research classed as “scientific” can provide. And the most incurably practical of us has good reason for cherishing this wish. Metaphysics, i.e. inquiry into the general nature of reality, makes appeal first to the contemplative student interested in knowledge for its own sake, but (...) it has a very noteworthy practical side as well. Few, like Earl Russell, can build the soul”s habitation on a “foundation of unyielding despair”; very many will not take life seriously unless its value, which must be lasting, is high. The problems stated by pessimism have to be solved; our burdens must be shown to be worth taking up strenuously. Religious consolations, once potent, are losing their force, and the danger of social decay has therefore to be countered. Let man suspect seriously that he is a day-fly, flitting about futilely a short while ere it perishes, and, whatever a few wild optimists may counsel, his big battalions are lost to progress. The East is right. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Invisible HarmKimberly ZieselmanI’m a 48–year–old intersex woman born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) writing to share my personal experience as a patient affected by a Difference of Sex Development (DSD). Although I appear to be a DSD patient “success story”, in fact, I have suffered and am unsatisfied with the way I was treated as a young patient in the 1980’s, and the continued lack of appropriate care for (...) intersex people even today.As the Executive Director of the advocacy organization Advocates for Informed Choice and a board member of the AIS–DSD Support Group since 2012, I have heard doctors reference the “silent happy majority” of DSD patients all too often. They speak [End Page 122] of patients who were treated in childhood and went on to live (seemingly) contented lives. It appears however that doctors have drawn this conclusion from the fact that most of their patients have not returned to complain about their treatment. While there is little evidence to support the success doctors claim, there is quite a bit of evidence that suggests my suffering is the norm rather than the exception.Medical professionals would likely include me in that “silent majority,” only seeing a woman who identifies and appears typically female, graduated law school, married for over twenty years, with adopted children and a successful career. And while I have been fortunate in many ways, I no longer want my voice to be presumed buried within that silent majority. Instead, I am speaking out today to tell my story.My StoryAt age 15 I was diagnosed with amenorrhea and referred to a reproductive oncologist who told my parents I had a partially developed uterus and ovaries that would likely soon become cancerous. We were told my vagina was abnormally short and might require surgery in order to have heterosexual intercourse.Neither my parents nor I was ever told I had AIS and XY chromosomes, or that the gonads being removed were testes, not ovaries. I was told I needed a “full hysterectomy” to prevent cancer and hormone replacement therapy. That summer I spent my 16th birthday recuperating from surgery. I spent the next 25 years living a lie.A lie that has had a profound and harmful impact on me.At some level, I knew I was not being told the whole truth. My parents’ and the doctors’ actions signaled to me something more might be going on. But I was afraid to ask questions; my parents were distressed and I didn’t want to cause them any more pain. Over the years I have wondered just how much my parents knew but withheld from me (albeit with good intentions). I sensed something awful was being hidden from me, and I didn’t know whom I could trust.When I asked my doctor if I could meet someone else with my condition, I was told I was different, that there was “nobody” with my medical condition in the world, that my situation was “very rare.” I was told to get on with my life and not talk about my surgery because it wasn’t important; I was healthy and could adopt if I wanted to become a parent. I was told I must take a hormone pill each day for the rest of my life to stay healthy.But what I heard was, “you are not a real woman: you are a damaged freak, so go out and fake the rest of your life and be sure nobody knows your secret.” So that’s what I did. I was a “good girl” and took my pills, didn’t ask questions and did what the men in white coats asked me to do. There was no support provided for either my parents or me. No social workers, no therapists. Perhaps most shockingly, there was no true informed consent.A few years ago I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome caused by anxiety I had been harboring for over two decades about my past surgery and fear of getting cancer. I decided to obtain my medical records from the hospital and discover the truth.Covering several pages of... (shrink)

“?… may we not say in the words of Bacon? — ‘The introduction of new inventions seemeth to be the very chief of all human actions. The benefits of new inventions may extend to all mankind universally, but the good of political achievements can respect but some particular cantons of men; these latter do not endure above a few ages, the former for ever. Inventions make all men happy without either injury or damage to any one single person. Furthermore, (...) new inventions are, as it were, new erections and imitations of God's own works.’”. (shrink)

This article draws on data from a qualitative research study undertaken in an old UK university with the main aim of investigating the issue of the gender dimension of academic careers. It examines the idea of an individualistic academic career that demands self-promotion, which is still used as a measure of achievement by those in senior positions. However, there is a basic contradiction. While this idea is upheld, men simultaneously gain by an in-built patriarchal support system. They do not have (...) to make a conscious effort to be helped by it, thereby perpetuating the cultural hegemony of individualism. Women are not admitted to this support system, and if they are seen as needing or wanting to set up their own system, this is viewed as a weakness. The answer appears to be for women to strategically harness feminist ways of working in a collaborative and supportive way. (shrink)

Consider the following problem. A multinational corporation is expanding its operations to a developing country. The developing country in question is now a democracy or is in the process of becoming one, it has a (fairly) independent and corruption-free judiciary (or is in the process of establishing one), its human rights record, while not perfect, is improving, and its bureaucracy and police are not now terribly corrupt. But not too long ago, none of these things were true. A few years (...) back, the nation was run by a dictator, and the bureaucracy, judiciary, and police were all corrupt. Business people, and everyone else, had to operate within this corrupt system, and for business people this usually involved—at a minimum—lending tacit support to the existing regime, paying bribes, making financial “donations” to the ruling party, overlooking various “activities”, and so forth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kenneth Burke, John Dewey, and the Pursuit of the PublicPaul StobIn Deliberation Day, Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin argue for the creation of a national holiday, "Deliberation Day," in which citizens come together over a two-day period in their local schools and community centers to deliberate over the merits of presidential candidates and their platforms (Ackerman and Fishkin 2004). While Ackerman and Fishkin propose that the government pay each (...) citizen a $150 stipend for voluntary participation, the purpose is not so much to monetarily to reward citizens for "showing up" as it is to foster an enriched civic culture that would send shockwaves through America's political infrastructure: "If Deliberation Day succeeded, everything else would change: the candidates, the media, the activists, the interest groups, the spin doctors, the advertisers, the pollsters, the fund raisers, the lobbyists, the political parties. All would have no choice but to adapt to a more attentive and informed public" (3). The task of Deliberation Day would be to create a new social context in which citizens could become enlightened through public participation. As the authors conclude the book, "We can, through an act of political imagination, create new institutions for redeeming the ancient promise of democratic citizenship. Ordinary men and women need not be the hapless playthings of the powerful. They can and must find new ways to hold their leaders to account, and redeem their dignity as human beings by responsibly shaping their collective destiny" (219).Ackerman and Fishkin's proposal is indeed filled with political imagination. I bring their proposal to light not to critique the possibilities and limitations of Deliberation Day, but to understand the way in which the authors understand "the public." At the bottom, what the polity needs, Ackerman and Fishkin believe, is a public space dedicated to the reinvigoration [End Page 226] of political culture. It is not that the citizenry is incapable of hammering out intelligent political solutions, but that it needs access to social contexts that facilitate deliberation and the emergence of a common good. To foster a culture of political intelligence, the public needs only the chance to enter the forums that will facilitate thorough, cooperative political decision-making.Ackerman and Fishkin are not alone in calling for access to or creation of these types of forums. Habermas's bourgeois public sphere—a public space in which citizens could come together and rationally debate the activities of the state—essentially represents the evolution of a context, a social space, a public arena (Habermas 1989). The bourgeois public sphere is meant to be egalitarian, providing citizens a forum in which to debate openly and foster a common political consciousness.1 But this sphere has proved problematic for a number of scholars. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge (1993), for example, propose a proletarian public sphere to counter capitalism's socioeconomic domination over public resources. Joan Landes (1988) argues that the bourgeois public sphere entails male domination in public life, to the exclusion of women. Nancy Fraser (1992) builds on the feminist critique by adopting the term "counterpublics," collectives of citizens—women, peasants, the working class, and other groups demarcated by issues of race, gender, and ethnicity—that arise in reaction to the dominant public sphere.2In the introduction to Counterpublics and the State (2001), Robert Asen and Daniel Brouwer argue that critiques of the bourgeois public sphere specifically and public sphere theory generally amount to three "reconfigurations" in the way in which scholars think of the public. First, scholars have come to recognize the existence and interaction of multiple public spheres. Second, they have come to acknowledge permeable boundaries of access to the multiple public spheres. Third, scholars have come to recognize the dynamic role of the state in shaping public discourse. One considerable result of these three reconfigurations is an increasing recognition of the political divisions that permeate society (Asen and Brouwer 2001, 17-25).If Asen and Brouwer are right, and I think they are, these three reconfigurations represent the general thrust of contemporary public sphere scholarship, including as it is understood among communication scholars.3 And however diverse such scholarship may be, a few common themes seem to recur across... (shrink)

Implementing a head-heart-body pedagogy in higher education institutions needs the mobilization of all the actors currently involved in education, to identify those who are absent today and surpass the logic that feeds on silo effects in order to support actors towards sustainable educational actions. By transforming campuses and courses, the university can thus become a learning organization where everything is about learning not only for students, but also for all actors in the university community. This chapter mentions first students, who (...) are the direct beneficiaries of education as well as the future actors of the transition. Secondly, it calls upon teacher-researchers to incarnate the multifaceted role of mentors, which far beyond the transmission of knowledge involves accompanying the students in a holistic transformation. Third, it turns towards pedagogical support services, whose diverse disciplines and skills are essential to develop the pedagogical methods required for transition education. Finally, the chapter underlies the role of public authorities to systematize good practices, to allow bottom-up incentives to grow, to put in place the necessary conditions and resources as well as to engage the whole of society. (shrink)

Gangestad & Simpson's account of the role of good-gene sexual selection in conditional human mating strategies is reasonably convincing, but could be more so with a little more attention to (1), dropping unnecessary sub hypotheses and especially (2) the inclusion of alternative evolutionary explanations.

Few propositions are so widely affirmed among Christian theists as God is wholly good. We say of God that he is wholly good when we mean to say that God never does evil. One proposed explanation for why God is wholly good, of course, is that God is necessarily good. Although is uncontroversial among Christian theists, clearly does not enjoy such universal favour. Whereas such prominent theists as St Anselm, St Thomas Aquinas, Alvin Plantinga, and T. (...) V. Morris have defended the truth of, other theists claim to have found good reason to doubt God's necessary goodness. In this paper I will attempt to show that God's goodness is accidental to him. My argument will proceed faithfully along Anselmian lines, i.e. a key premise will concern God conceived of as ‘ the being than which none greater can be conceived’. In addition to this, I will need to activate action-theoretic machinery which will be crucial to the derivation. Rather than detracting from God's greatness, the argument's conclusion, namely God is contingently good, is seen as faithfully articulating one facet of Anselm's core intuition of God as the ‘greatest possible being’. Is God necessarily good? I shall shortly present an argument which gives one good reason to doubt God's necessary goodness. But before I begin, I shall need to develop a backdrop of philosophical theology and action-theoretic machinery from which to suspend the argument in question. (shrink)

In January of the year a.d. 69, Marcus Salvius Otho, disappointed in his attempt to be named Galba's heir and successor, fomented revolt among the praetorian guard. Trading on the praetorians’ own discontent at not receiving the donative, he began to win over the soldiers’ favour. Tacitus relates that, when the attitude of the soldiers seemed ripe, Otho himself came forth and began to implore them directly ; and after he accepted the oath of loyalty from the entire classicorum legio, (...) he felt ready to hold a speech encouraging the men to complete the deed by ousting Galba. (shrink)

This research article focuses on selected Old Testament (OT) texts that deal with the theme of violence and disempowerment. The selected texts are studied and viewed from a feminist interpretation perspective, and laid bare the violent and mistreatment of women in these texts. This research study builds on the work of Phyllis Trible (1978), and she uses the term ‘texts of terror’ to refer to passages where women suffer especially at the hands of men. She believes that passages, such as (...) Deuteronomy 22:5, are regrettable and should be a cause of repentance in order to avoid them being repeated again. The way this article deals with the aforementioned exemplary books or texts in the OT is to explore a gendered feminist lens to understand the theme of disempowerment or violence against women. This approach, with the data, lays bare to the reader the nature of the problem of disempowerment and violence against women.Contribution: This article brings a feminist understanding of the OT Bible (including its social-historical context) in order to gain a clearer insight into the problematic narratives of the disempowerment of and violence against women in a patriarchal society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of SapphoSarah MaceJane McIntosh Snyder. Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. xi 1 261 pp. Cloth, price not stated.Snyder’s aim in Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho is to make Sappho’s poetry “come alive for the modern reader” (ix), which is to say, for the Greekless reader. To this end, the author bases her discussions (...) of Sappho’s poems on her own translations accompanied by transliterations of the Greek text. She also explains the system of inflection in Greek and Sappho’s lyric meters, discusses the meanings of Greek words, and lucidly summarizes some of the principal textual difficulties. The result is a far from unsophisticated introduction to Sappho’s poems and the complex issues of their interpretation. For the non-Greekless reader, Snyder reproduces Voigt’s text (with her own translations in parallel) in an appendix (163–218). Her notes (219–37) are scholarly but not pedantic and refer to most of the important recent and older scholarship on Sappho.Snyder’s translations of Sappho are good: quite literal, simple, and elegant. Although it is possible to take issue with a few renderings here and there, it would be caviling to cite examples here; I should note, however, that she has [End Page 636] a tendency to translate supplements (found, e.g., in Campbell) which do not appear in Voigt’s text, and has been somewhat inconsistent about bracketing supplements in her own translations (particularly, e.g., in 17 V). The transliterations would probably have served their purpose just as effectively if used only for illustrative purposes rather than throughout the text; presumably Greekless readers will not be able to connect sense and sound except where their attention is drawn to a particular phrase or verse. The first appendix, “A Guide to the Transliteration,” could have been improved by a pronunciation guide; nowhere does the author note distinctions between long and short alpha, iota, and upsilon.Snyder’s approach to interpreting Sappho’s lyrics is twofold. The author points out that her method “is inevitably that of the classical philologist” and that she is “heavily influenced by the assumptions of New Criticism and the tradition of close textual analysis” (ix). She intentionally steers clear of the subject of Sappho’s historical and social context (1), believing that “Sappho’s text—even in its battered state—has the power to stand alone, with the benefit of very little ancient social context to help explain the author’s purpose or intention” (79). At the same time Snyder identifies herself as a “feminist scholar” whose approach has been “significantly colored by the questions raised through the influence of women’s studies, gay and lesbian studies, and postmodernism” (ix). Thus she wishes “to read what is left of [Sappho’s] songs for what they can say to women (and men who are willing to abandon a masculinist frame of reference) who hear her words today” (1).Chapter 1, “Sappho and Aphrodite,” focuses on the Hymn to Aphrodite (1 V). After a close reading of the poem, with attention to Sappho’s themes and techniques of composition, Snyder advances the view that it “subverts the traditional system of female subordination by creating a female authorial self that is of key importance in this song” (16); the powerful goddess featured here also contrasts with “the helpless, girlish whiner of the Iliad” (10). She concludes that the poem “offers us a clear paradigm for a woman-centered perspective on the universe, one in which the goddess and the relationships between women take center stage” (24). This movement from close, text-based readings to more general assertions sets the pattern for chapters 1–4. In a discussion of 2 V Snyder asserts that the temple and grove are “encoded as female space” (19) but does not demonstrate how the description differs substantively from other passages describing idyllic settings in archaic lyric (e.g., Ibycus 286 PMG). The chapter concludes with a summary treatment of other fragments involving Eros or Aphrodite.Chapter 2, “The Construction of Desire,” focuses on 31 V. Properly dismissing interpretations based on “the disease... (shrink)