I : PETRARCH'S BRITAIN 1: Piero Boitani: Petrarch and the barbari Britanni II: PETRARCH AND THE SELF 2: Jennifer Petrie: Petrarch solitarius 3: Zygmunt G. Baranski: The Ethics of Ignorance: Petrarch's Epicurus and Averroes and the Structures of the De Sui Ipsius et Aliorum Ignorantia 4: Jonathan Usher: Petrarch's Second Death III: PETRARCH IN DIALOGUE 5: Francesca Galligan: Poets and Heroes in Petrarch's Africa: Classical and Medieval Sources 6: Enrico Santangelo: Petrarch reading Dante: the Ascent of Mont Ventoux 7: John (...) Took: Petrarch and Cino da Pistoia: A Moment in the Pre-history of the Canzoniere IV: PETRARCHISM AND ANTIPETRARCHISM IN ITALY 8: Abigail Brundin: Petrarch and the Italian Reformation 9: Hilary Gatti: Petrarch, Sidney, Bruno 10: Diego Zancani: Renaissance Misogyny and the Rejection of Petrarch 11: Letizia Panizza: Impersonations of Laura in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Italy V: PETRARCHISM: ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH CONNECTIONS 12: Michael Wyatt: Other Petrarchs in Early Modern England 13: Stephen Clucas: Thomas Watson's Hekatompathia and European Petrarchism 14: John Roe: The Comedy of Astrophil: Petrarchan Motifs in Sidney's Astrophil and Stella 15: Syrithe Pugh: Sidney, Spenser and Political Petrarchism 16: R. D. S. Jack: Petrarch and the Scottish Renaissance Sonnet VI: PETRARCH AND THE MODERNS: ITALY AND BRITAIN 17: Pamela Williams: Leopardi and Petrarch 18: Ela Tandello: Between Tradition and Transgression: Amelia Rosselli's Petrarch 19: Martin McLaughlin: Nineteenth-century British Biographies of Petrarch 20: Peter Hainsworth: Translating Petrarch. (shrink)

This letter responds to the letter “The Open Donor View and Procreative Beneficence,” by Daniel Groll, in the same, May‐June 2024, issue of the Hastings Center Report.

This article examines the limitations associated with Irigaray’s concept of a culture of difference. I suggest that her concept of sexual difference depends upon a conservative fiction of sameness. I argue that a fiction of phallic sameness underpins her evangelical championing of difference, and that such a fiction retains a conservative blindness to the complexities of contemporary social relations and erases the positive effects oppositional discourses have had on the culture of modernity. I question the debt Irigaray disavows to other (...) non-difference feminism, her insistence that woman are radically marginalized and suggest that her culture of difference is prescriptive and normative. Egalitarian feminism, understood as a postmodern project, is far more strategic, insofar as it offers a multiply-situated analysis of the relationship between women and power within modernity. I replace Irigaray’s negative image of the egalitarian feminist as an unnatural woman with the figure of the cyborg who embraces ontological impurity and strategically works within culture. (shrink)

In this paper, I contend that the use of the notion of non-inevitability on the part of many social constructionists and non-social constructionists alike is either vague or relies too heavily on intuition. I propose two readings, namely the Dependence and Alterability Readings, to provide a principled criterion for determining whether and to what extent something may be argued to be non-inevitable. By utilizing the examples of gender and human emotion as case studies, my ultimate goals herein are not to (...) provide a wholly foolproof criterion to delimit the non-inevitable, but to proffer one attempt at fleshing out a structured analysis at what non-inevitability might amount to and, also, to highlight the importance of why the notion of non-inevitability must be précised in order for social constructionist or non-social constructionist programs to hold weight. (shrink)

It was news verging on sensational when A. J. Ayer came back from four minutes of heart death with a report of what he saw. Especially since the philosopher, who publicized his near-death experience [NDE] in 1988, in the Telegraph and the Spectator, was known for his lifelong rejection of religion and the supernatural. But, as will be seen, Ayer's beliefs on that head were substantially unchanged, if more ambivalently expressed, and the interest of his NDE lies elsewhere— in what (...) it reveals about his philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction: Middle-Earth, The lord of the rings, and international relations -- Order, justice, and Middle-Earth -- Thinking about international relations and Middle-Earth -- Middle-Earth and three great debates in international relations -- Middle-Earth, levels of analysis, and war -- Middle-Earth and feminist theory -- Middle-Earth and feminist analysis of conflict -- Middle-Earth as a source of inspiration and enrichment -- Conclusion: international relations and our many worlds.

This article examines how sexual harassment has been conceptualized by French feminists in an increasingly global political environment, demonstrating how feminist ideas, politics and legal initiatives are transformed as they travel across space and time. I argue that feminist networks have been a central determinant of the ways in which ideas about sexual harassment have spread across the globe in the past 20 years. However, I further contend that there were basic national differences in political, legal and cultural traditions that (...) made it likely that feminist concepts and policies would be translated as they traveled. Moreover, I show how certain social actors heightened the importance of such cultural differences through `symbolic boundary work'. Finally, I discuss how feminist activists both distance themselves from negative stereotypes of American feminist approaches to sexual harassment and simultaneously draw on international networks and ideas to expand the scope of French sexual harassment law. (shrink)

Phenomenologically speaking, we perceive the present, recall the past, and anticipate the future. We offer an account of the temporal content of the perceptual present that distinguishes it from the recalled past and the anticipated future. We distinguish two views: the Token Reflexive Account and the Minimal Account. We offer reasons to reject the Token Reflexive Account, and defend the Minimal Account, according to which the temporal content of the perceptual present is exhausted by its direct reference to the interval (...) of time over which it occurs. (shrink)

People who have mental health diagnoses are often subject to sanist microaggressions in which pejorative terms to describe mental illness are used to represent that which is discreditable. Such microaggressions reflect and perpetrate stigma against severe mental illness, often held unconsciously as implicit bias. In this article, I examine the sanist attitudes that underlie sanist microaggressions, analyzing some of the cognitive biases that support mental illness stigma. Then I consider what responsibility we have with respect to microaggressions. I argue that (...) all people share in a collective responsibility to engage in acts of epistemic resistance that challenge sanist attitudes so that it is easier for bystanders who witness microaggressions, and targets of microaggressions in particular, to identify microaggressions and to point out biased behavior. The act of pointing out bias is best understood as an act of epistemic resistance that is more effective and meaningful in the context of other acts of epistemic resistance. Ultimately, whether to point out bias is an individual decision that one must make after weighing the risks involved; engaging in a range of acts of epistemic resistance, on the other hand, is a moral responsibility everyone shares. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the way that mental illness stigma impacts epistemic credibility in people who have mental illness. While any kind of stigma has the potential to discredit a person’s epistemic agency, in the case of mental illness the basis for discrediting is in some cases and to some extent justifiable, for impairments in rationality, control, and reality perception can indeed be obstacles to participating appropriately in epistemic activities such as normal conversation and public discourse. People with mental (...) illness are still potentially subject to epistemic injustices, however, especially when we rely on stereotypes and fail to make complicated and nuanced judgments which are more accurate. In this paper, I explain some of the ways that people with mental illness may be subject to epistemic injustices, and I propose some suggestions for how epistemic injustice can be avoided. (shrink)

Background Human brain organoids are a valuable research tool for studying brain development, physiology, and pathology. Yet, a host of potential ethical concerns are inherent in their creation. There is a growing group of bioethicists who acknowledge the moral imperative to develop brain organoid technologies and call for caution in this research. Although a relatively new technology, brain organoids and their uses are already being discussed in media literature. Media literature informs the public and policymakers but has the potential for (...) utopian or dystopian distortions. Thus, it is important to understand how this technology is portrayed to the public. Methods To investigate how brain organoids are displayed to the public, we conducted a systematic review of media literature indexed in the Nexis Uni database from 2013–2019. News and media source articles passing exclusion criteria (_n_ = 93) were scored to evaluate tone and relevant themes. Themes were validated with a pilot sample before being applied to the dataset. Thematic analysis assessed article tone, reported potential for the technology, and the scientific, social, and ethical contexts surrounding brain organoids research. Results Brain organoid publications became more frequent from 2013 to 2019. We observed increases in positively and negatively toned articles, suggesting growing polarization. While many sources discuss realistic applications of brain organoids, others suggest treatment and cures beyond the scope of the current technology. This could work to overhype the technology and disillusion patients and families by offering false hope. In the ethical narrative we observe a preoccupation with issues such as development of artificial consciousness and “humanization” of organoid-animal chimeras. Issues of regulation, ownership, and accuracy of the organoid models are rarely discussed. Conclusions Given the power that media have to inform or misinform the public, it is important this literature provides an accurate and balanced reflection of the therapeutic potential and associated ethical issues regarding brain organoid research. Our study suggests increasing polarization, coupled with misplaced and unfounded ethical concern. Given the inhibitory effects of public fear or disillusion on research funding, it is important media literature provides an accurate reflection of brain organoids. (shrink)

La Nota Roja en México es una manifestación periodística bien consolidada en la cultura en México, cada año se venden miles de ejemplares en los lugares más cotidianos de esta sociedad. Así pues, este trabajo tiene como objetivo principal presentar un debate que resulta fundamental para la teoría de los modelos de mundo: la necesidad de “reconstrucción del contexto” que nace de la discusión que se plantea en Crítica y sabotaje con los planteamientos derridianos (Firma acontecimiento contexto. La Diseminación) y (...) que se trabajarán a propósito del periodismo. (shrink)

A philosophical study of the ethics of good and evil. Ch. 6 (pp. 163-207), "Banality and Originality, " takes issue with Hannah Arendt's thesis of the banality of evil. Contends that no legally sane Nazi was free of evil. The individual has free choice in regard to doing good and evil, and is responsible for his evil acts. Takes issue, also, with Raul Hilberg's view that the Jews did not resist the Nazi terror, and asks "What is the right way (...) to act during one's Holocaust?" Ch. 7 (pp. 209-220), "Thinking Like a Nazi, " analyzes the Nazi mentality, again showing that the individual cannot claim to have been led astray or to have been controlled by his subconscious - at every stage he was a free agent deliberately choosing evil. (shrink)

Nicholas Vriend asked whether F.A. Hayek was an “ace,” and answered affirmatively. By “ace,” Vriend meant someone who worked with agent-based modeling. To be sure, Hayek could not have worked with agent-based models because that platform did not exist when Hayek was developing his ideas about the distribution and use of knowledge in society. All the same, Vriend explained convincingly that Hayek could have made good use of the agent-based platform had it been available in the 1930s. To similar effect, (...) we argue in this paper that James Buchanan could have made good use of agent-based modeling to carry forward his ideas about the value of taking an emergent approach to the explanation of economic processes. (shrink)

SummaryJudith Montefiore's life has attracted attention principally by association with that of her husband Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), the pre-eminent Jewish figure of his age. This article emphasises instead Judith's pioneering role as a Jewish woman travel-writer and influential female voice in the world of Jewish letters and international Jewish politics. To Jews in the Holy Cities of Palestine and the ghettos and shtetls of Eastern Europe, Judith was—like her husband—a beacon of hope, an example to follow and an instrument (...) of change. Her activities drew on a rich vein of Jewish tradition and a series of profound encounters with Middle Eastern and, to a lesser extent, Eastern European Jewries, which shaped her spiritual world. These paradoxes are easily conceptualised by the contrast between Judith's different worlds: the Jewish world that underpinned her marriage, structured her spirituality and infused her life with meaning, and the world of the English gentry and dissenting middle classes, with whom she mixed socially, and whose spiritual style, values, expectations, and mode of life shaped her in other, equally profound ways. This article argues, however, that it was the interaction and cross-fertilisation between these different worlds that enabled Judith to carve her distinctive path in life. (shrink)

Skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis are relatively prevalent health concerns in children, adolescents and young adults. Experiences of these dermatology diagnoses in adolescence have hitherto not been the focus of research, perhaps owing to assumptions that these diagnoses are not particularly impactful or intricate processes, events or labels. We draw on a thematic secondary analysis of in-depth interviews with 42 adolescents and young people living in the United Kingdom and, influenced by the sociologies of diagnosis and time, highlight (...) the psychological, emotional, social and temporal complexities involved in their diagnosis experiences. Firstly, we describe how participants remembered, re- and co-constructed their diagnosis experiences during the interview. Secondly, we explore the pace and rhythm of diagnosis, including mis-diagnoses, highlighting the jarring potential for adolescents on being diagnosed, even for conditions typically deemed minor. Thirdly, we consider the ways in which these diagnoses have the capacity to reformulate notions of past, present and future, including projecting into imagined futures and reinterpreting past bodily sensations. Finally, we examine how memories about and the meaning of diagnosis are revisited, revised and potentially replaced as a child or adolescent grows older, and increases their management of their condition and encounters with healthcare professionals. In unsettling an assumption that diagnosis experiences for adolescents of common skin conditions is unproblematic or straightforward, our qualitative analysis critically engages with and contribute to tenets of health research that are of interest to quantitative and qualitative researchers, clinicians and patients. (shrink)

Most histories of livestock disease in Britain treat the development of control policy as a government responsibility, to which farmers made little constructive contribution. Similarly, farmers rarely appear in accounts of disease research. This paper uses the example of contagious abortion at the turn of the twentieth century to reveal that state-farming collaboration in research and policy did in fact occur, and that it operated in various ways, with often unexpected outcomes. The collaborative approach to contagious abortion is partly attributed (...) to its clinical and epidemiological features, which made it an unsuitable candidate for the existing, state-led policy of stamping out disease. It is claimed that such collaboration has been overlooked by historians on account of their focus upon diseases that were amenable to stamping out. This focus needs to change if history is to inform present-day disease governance in Britain, which is founded on the concept of ‘partnership’ between farmers and the state. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:234 Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Abigail G. H. Manzella Built for Two Abigail G. H. Manzella Arabesque, darling, arabesque. Then my grandmother would guffaw as my six-year-old leg lifted, pose unsteady Twisting, shifting in my first artistic throes still buoyant and raw. She could be brusque, Not grasping what could hurt a child’s heart, But her laughter was infectious Her eyes like mine—a (...) smile. At a distance, she supported my adventures in art. What became of your poems, she pried when I’d reached my full height. That’s kid stuff, my flippant response. She’d nod and at my next visit ask again, More shrewd than polite. A day arrived when she could ask no more. I sang to her the songs of her childhood Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do... She’d mouth the words and swing her leg The one still good. Just like a kid. And there I stood feeling like one, too.... (shrink)

Conversions: A Philosophic Memoir belongs to the tradition of Augustine and Rousseau: the "confession" of a life that is a quest for truth. It is in large part the story of two major episodes from Abigail Rosenthal's early adulthood, bought putting personal identity dramatically at risk. As a young Fulbright scholar in Paris, Rosenthal met and entered reluctantly into a love affair with a young Greek communist philosopher who believed (along with many Parisian intellectuals of that era) that force (...) and deception were justified by a utopian vision of world history. In the inevitable collision of values—between Jew and Greek, liberal and revolutionary, theist and atheist, woman and man in unequal truggle—they separated. Suffering in the aftermath, she at last turned for help to a young African American woman graduate student whom she met in London. This woman's Gnostic Christian rejection of personal and cultural history eventually left Rosenthal without defense against her new mentor's remarkable use of charisma, ridicule, and moralistic reproach to usurp the author's life story. These stratagems of mind control reached a climactic phase in Portugal, where the two went—Rosenthal to paint the other woman to write—in what would turn out to be the terrifying reverse of a summer idyll. With the U.S. State Department, the Portuguese Policía Internacional devised an extraordinary rescue. This arresting narrative, which deals with relations between blacks and whites, Christians and Jews, and men and women, delivers its own philosophic theory of the individual in history. Author note: Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York and the author of A Good Look at Evil (Temple). (shrink)

_A groundbreaking study of the development of form in eighteenth-century aesthetics_ In this original work, Abigail Zitin proposes a new history of the development of form as a concept in and for aesthetics. Her account substitutes women and artisans for the proverbial man of taste, asserting them as central figures in the rise of aesthetics as a field of philosophical inquiry in eighteenth-century Europe. She shows how the idea of formal abstraction so central to conceptions of beauty in this (...) period emerges from the way practitioners think about craft and skill across the domestic, industrial, and so-called high arts. Zitin elegantly maps the complex connections among aesthetics, form, and formalism, drawing out the understated presence of practice in the writings of major eighteenth-century thinkers including Locke, Addison, Burke, and Kant. This new take on an old story ultimately challenges readers to reconsider form and why it matters. (shrink)

With no statutory definition of death, the accepted medical definition relies on brain stem death criteria as a definitive measure of diagnosing death. However, the use of brain stem death criteria in this way is precarious and causes widespread confusion amongst both medical and lay communities. Through critical analysis, this paper considers the insufficiencies of brain stem death. It concludes that brain stem death cannot be successfully equated with either biological death or the loss of integrated bodily function. The overemphasis (...) of the brain-stem and its consequences leaves the criteria open to significant philosophical critique. Further, in some circumstances, the use of brain stem death criteria causes substantial emotional conflict for families and relatives. Accordingly, a more holistic and comprehensive definition of death is required. (shrink)

This paper uses a non-ideal theory approach advocated for by Alison Jaggar to show that practices involved with the medicalization of serious mental disorders can subject people who have these disorders to a cycle of vulnerability that keeps them trapped within systems of injustice. When medicalization locates mental disorders solely as problems of individual biology, without regard to social factors, and when it treats mental disorders as personal defects, it perpetuates injustice in several ways: by enabling biased diagnoses through stereotyping, (...) by exploiting and coercing people who are seen as insufficiently competent, and by perpetuating idealized conceptions of choice and control that do not take into account people’s real limitations and the social context of health. Through practices of diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, medicalization can perpetuate injustices toward people who have serious mental disorders. (shrink)

Drawing on 63 interviews with a diverse sample of tradeswomen, this article examines how the cultural meanings of sexual orientation—as well as gender presentation, race, and body size—shapes the constraints that women face in the construction industry and the specific resistance strategies they develop. We argue that women’s presence in these male-dominated jobs threatens notions of the work as inherently masculine and a gender order that presumes the sexual subordination of women. Tradesmen neutralize the first threat by labeling tradeswomen as (...) lesbians—and therefore not “real” women—and respond to the second by sexualizing straight and lesbian tradeswomen alike. In turn, tradeswomen develop individual resistance strategies, which are shaped by the intersections of their sexual identity, gender presentation, race, and body size. Finally, we show how tradesmen deploy homophobia to stymie collective action and solidarity by tradeswomen, gay or straight. (shrink)

More than twenty years ago the late Bernard Williams published a paper under the oxymoronic title of ‘Moral Luck’, which claimed that chance shapes moral standing, and that moral standing, like social or professional standing, has its winners and losers, successes and failures. Williams’ final book, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy, offered as a ‘fiction’ a sociobiological genealogy of moral standing, and worked to free some of the virtues associated with it—such as integrity, Accuracy, and Sincerity—from the taint (...) of these presumed primitive origins. Whatever the proceeds of this exercise in saving reductionism from itself, it seemed that ‘moral luck’—the earlier category—had come through it essentially undamaged. (shrink)

Researchers increasingly rely on large data sets of health information, often linked with biological specimens. In recent years, the argument has been made that obtaining informed consent for conducting records-based research is unduly burdensome and results in ?consent bias.? As a type of selection bias, consent bias is said to exist when the group giving researchers access to their data differs from the group denying access. Therefore, to promote socially beneficial research, it is argued that consent should be unnecessary. After (...) analyzing the biostatistics evidence and bioethics arguments, the article concludes that (1) claims about the amount of consent bias are overstated; (2) commonly used statistical methods usually can account for consent bias; and (3) any residual effects of consent bias are below an acceptable level of imprecision and constitute a reasonable social cost for conducting ethically responsible research. (shrink)

Empathy is a construct that is notoriously difficult to define. Murphy and colleagues ( 2022 ) argue for leaning into the construct's inherent fuzziness and reverting to what they term a classical definition informed by the observations of philosophers and clinicians: as a dynamic, “unfolding process of imaginatively experiencing the subjective consciousness of another person, sensing, understanding, and structuring the world as if one were that person.” Although consistent with some historical conceptualizations, this definition risks incorporating so many processes it (...) would make empathy difficult to operationalize or distinguish from any generally socially sensitive interaction. Defining empathy instead as the attempted representation, or simulation, of another's subjective internal experiences (whether sensory, affective, or cognitive) would increase its clarity and empirical utility. (shrink)

In 1892, the British agricultural authorities introduced a policy of slaughtering animals infected with foot and mouth disease (FMD). This measure endured throughout the 20th century and formed a base line upon which officials superimposed the controversial "contiguous cull" policy during the devastating 2001 epidemic. Proponents of the slaughter frequently emphasized its capacity to eliminate FMD from Britain, and claimed that it was both cheaper and more effective than the alternative policies of isolation and vaccination. However, their discussions reveal that (...) a less obvious but nonetheless important reason for maintaining the slaughter policy was the conviction that in its manner of operation and its outcomes, it benefited the state and status of the British nation. To its supporters, slaughter was far more than a method of disease control; it acted also as a moralizing and civilizing force, an indicator of veterinary ability and a "virility symbol" of British international leadership. This "cultural" rationale for FMD control by slaughter declined during the late 20th century and was wholly undermined by the 2001 epidemic, when extensive culling failed to convey the intended image of an organized, enlightened Britain. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Ambiguity (herein the Ethics), Simone de Beauvoir declares that science condemns itself to failure if it takes as its task the total disclosure of being (Beauvoir 1948/1976, 130). I suggest that the Ethics actually parallels the spirit of some scientific programs, specifically those that utilize positive skepticism as method. I draw out connections among the Ethics, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty 1945/1962) to which Beauvoir's works show much likeness, and Francis Bacon's The New Organon (Bacon (...) 1620/2000), the latter being at once a scientific and a positive skeptical program. Underscoring the ways in which Beauvoir's method of interrogating the being of beings and reality is compatible with some scientific pictures is important. It complicates the usual thought that existentialism is antiscience, problematizes Beauvoir's overly simplistic depiction of science, and nuances her analysis of the existent's experience of itself. (shrink)

Good decision-making requires reliable information. In medicine, relevant information comes from clinical trials and other forms of scientific research. In business, one source is in corporate annual financial statements. As for-profit, publicly traded companies whose business is discovering, manufacturing, and marketing drugs, pharmaceutical companies sit at the nexus of these two fields. Determining the safety and efficacy of a pharmaceutical product and determining the profitability of a complex enterprise are similarly difficult tasks: each is fraught with deeply ambiguous information that (...) requires sophisticated judgment to interpret reasonably. (shrink)