Booker T. Washington's Cotton States Exposition Address enlarges our understanding of the genre of witnessing by presenting a version of public testimony and historical remembrance sharply at odds with contemporary definitions of the genre. Washington's resolute choice to lend voice as a living witness to the atrocities of slavery in the service of conspicuously pragmatic and narrowly defined interests rather than universal human rights dramatically separates his performance of public witnessing from its late modern forms. Whereas survivors of historical atrocity (...) in the post–World War II era ritually assume the difficult responsibility of testifying to past evils with the greatest possible accuracy, Washington relates the history of slavery—most notably its legacy of heinous human rights abuses—in radically inventive ways. The address demonstrates that those who embody the putative collective voice of subaltern communities may, in particular circumstances, call on the public to willfully forget, rather than somberly remember, the crimes of history. In doing so, the speech also suggests that the ability to bear witness may not automatically result in the ability to petition for equal human rights. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Being Made Strange: Rhetoric Beyond RepresentationPat J. GehrkeBeing Made Strange: Rhetoric Beyond Representation. Bradford Vivian. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004. Pp. 229. $55.00.To call Being Made Strange an important contribution to our ongoing conversation about rhetoric and its philosophical dimensions would be too trite for a book of the density and complexity that Professor Vivian has given us. This book, for (...) whatever weaknesses it may have, stands alone in its boldness, scope, and aggressiveness in pursuing some of the most important questions facing rhetorical theorists and communication ethicists. Being Made Strange goes after what has been a critical and unyielding question for rhetoricians for some time now: "Can one conceive of rhetoric without appealing to essential notions of human being?" (9). To explore this possibility, Vivian has turned his significant knowledge of twentieth-century continental philosophy to bear upon rhetorical studies with a particular emphasis upon ethos and the middle voice. In so doing, he continually appeals to a privileging of "difference rather than identity, multiplicity instead of unity, and mutation instead of essential continuity" (15).This is not a book that I recommend lightly, for it is not a book to be read lightly. Those without the particular type of patience required to read primary texts in continental philosophy likely will tire quickly and lose sight of its contributions or read too hastily and miss the significance of this text. Being Made Strange was not written as a primer or a translation, but as a study that speaks to scholars who are seriously invested in the questions that Vivian is asking and who are willing and able to read slowly and carefully. Those who ascribe dogmatically to the populist or Orwellian schools of writing and scholarship may well be frustrated by this text's tendency to presume more capacity, engagement, and work from its readers. For those willing to do such work and expend the energy and time required to really read this book, I think the rewards will more than justify the effort. Certainly, there are some chapters that make for easier reading than others. In general, the second half of the book demands far less from the reader than the first.Being Made Strange is divided into three major sections. The first section offers an overview of the history of rhetorical studies, contrasting it to the sentiments of contemporary philosophy. Vivian particularly notes the priority of [End Page 340] representation and active voice in rhetoric and thus sets out the foundation of his critique. The second section offers the theoretical intervention that is to serve as salve for the difficulties of representation and active voice. Here, Vivian offers us an explication of rhetoric in the middle voice, as neither active nor passive, dissociated "from its conventional affinity with speech and intention" (77). Working primarily from the writings of Michel Foucault, he refigures ethos as "a discursive practice rather than the expression of an essential state of being" (104). These moves then enable Vivian to set his sights on theories of style and ethical inquiry in rhetorical studies. Finally, the third major section provides us with two more concrete studies that set out to demonstrate how rhetorical inquiry might look after the revolutionary reforms proposed in section two. The first study, on discourses concerning the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, is an outstanding piece of scholarship that can stand (and has stood) alone. The second is a study of the rhetoric of silence that offers a compelling criticism to how silence has been figured in most rhetorical studies as another form of speech, maintaining the privileged space and operation of speech and representation in rhetoric. The concluding chapter, entitled "Rhetoric in a Nonmoral Sense," is perhaps the most ambitious, but it is also the most prone to excesses, which is entirely normal for conclusions of such books.I would be remiss if I did not mention some of the weaknesses that trouble me about Being Made Strange. I have to confess, without playing the apologist too strongly, that at times Vivian paints an excessively bleak picture of the history of rhetorical studies. Particularly in the first... (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a proliferation of research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, available to psychologists. Whereas some scholars have claimed that qualitative and quantitative methods are inherently opposed, recently many more researchers have argued in favor of “mixed methods” approaches. In this article the author presents a review of the literature on the issue of how to meaningfully relate qualitative and quantitative approaches, with a particular emphasis on recent calls for mixed methods. The relative success of mixed-methods approaches is (...) examined, and some of the common pitfalls of these approaches are outlined. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.4 (2000) 303-318 [Access article in PDF] The Threshold of the Self Bradford Vivian The subject has a history. Classical Greek sculpture expressed a fascination with the formal beauty of one's self. Ever gazing outward or upward, the marble figures symbolized the Greek preoccupation with a boldness of being, a constant focus on the ideals of the body and mind, which, through their pursuit, (...) might allow one a foretaste of heaven. Centuries later, as the pagan symbols of the ancient world were replaced with those of the growing Byzantine Empire, blocks of the same marble were fashioned into very different expressions. The ideals of form made manifest in the smooth, taught lines and surfaces of classical Greek sculpture were supplanted by Byzantine art's attention to the less perfect details of the individual: distinctive and common faces, beards, clothing, and less glorified bodies. The gazes of the Byzantine statues were cast down, contemplative, reflecting Byzantium's early Christian emphasis upon the modesty of human existence, the pious appraisal of one's time on Earth. Each of these sculptural styles is a material way of thinking and expressing one's being in the world. In this context, each is also symptomatic of the conditions in which such being was possible.The subject must not be conceived as a transcendent entity. Quite to the contrary, there is a historicity to our being and its expression, to our subjectivity and its elaboration. Within a more sweeping perspective, our epochal narratives of the subject--as well as the modes of thought and speech by which we make sense of ourselves--change with each passing age.At the forefront of the current era is a manifold effort to rethink and elaborate anew the concept of the subject. Feminist scholars have initiated political critique and transformation by arguing that the very notion of a subject in Western discourse has functioned as a trope of masculine privilege cloaked in the language of equality and secular humanism. 1 Postmodernists, of course, define contemporary subjectivity as de-centered and fragmented by nature (e.g., Baudrillard 1994; Latour 1993; Lyotard 1984). And [End Page 303] a variety of interdisciplinary studies illuminate the role of modern science and technology in not only sustaining our being, but actually constituting the human; in short, our daily interdependence and union with artificial body parts, synthetic products, life-support machines, test-tube reproduction, computers, and more, characterizes the arrival of what has been called "the posthuman." 2 Like ancient marble from a quarry, however, all of these materials are sculpted in historically specific ways to simultaneously think and express our subjectivity.What role might rhetoric play in this re-imagining of subjectivity? Modern Western thought has defined the subject according to content--that is, by the nature of the essence or being the subject is said to possess. Drawn around this content, the subject comes to appear enclosed, perhaps autonomous, and identical to itself. In this essay, however, I argue that the self may be conceived as a form--a rhetorical form--that exists only in its continual aesthetic creation, in its indefinite becoming. The self is, by this account, isomorphic with the threshold out of which it is composed. Such a formulation makes the self open to difference, to continual movement and transformation, instead of identical to itself.I aim in this essay to explore the abstract rhetorical forms and functions out of which the self is composed. The distinction here amounts to no longer asking, "What is a subject?" but, "What conditions and forces enable the ongoing production of the self?" Commensurate with such a proposal, it will be essential to ask how this movement--this continual becoming--of the self is brought about. The answer to this question ultimately will amplify the role of rhetoric in, not simply expressing, but actually producing conditions of being. In what follows, I begin by reviewing the very general aspects of subjectivity that I wish to call into question. Thereafter, I explore how the subject might be conceived differently. Finally, I discuss the manner in which rhetoric may... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.3 (2002) 223-243 [Access article in PDF] Style, Rhetoric, and Postmodern Culture Bradford Vivian Modern rhetoricians habitually avoid the canon of style. The reasons for this avoidance should be familiar to those versed in the disciplinary lore of rhetoric. Since the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. E., when oratorical virtuosos like Gorgias proclaimed that "Speech is a powerful lord, which by means of (...) the finest and most invisible body effects the divinest works" (41), the suspicion that rhetorical style amounts to irrational verbal excess has dogged those who would argue for the moral integrity of the art. Most recently, twentieth-century rhetoricians, Toulmin (1958) and Perelman (1969, 1979, 1982) in particular, realigned rhetoric with the study of argumentation after its apparent reduction, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to innocuous matters of form and taste by the elocutionist and belletristic movements. Consequently, the aesthetic capacities of rhetoric have received scant attention from modern rhetoricians, who resign considerations of style largely to supposedly regrettable episodes in the history of the discipline. For better or worse, then, modern rhetorical theory lacks a contemporary rationale and methodology for the study of style. 1Beyond unfortunate equations of rhetoric with grandiloquence, this scarcity in recent rhetorical scholarship corresponds to general humanistic and social scientific prejudices against the topic of style. Robert Hariman posits, "Established academic conceptions of style hardly prepare one to take seriously the aesthetic dimension of political experience" (7). As evidence for this claim, he cites Stuart Ewen's reflections on the "frustration" peculiar to research on style: "It seemed to be a universal category," Ewen writes, "transcending topical boundaries, an accolade applied to people, places, attitudes and things... a subject that was, at best, amorphous" (quoted in Hariman, 7-8). Yet the social ubiquity of style—"[o]n news magazines, sports magazines, music-oriented magazines, magazines about [End Page 223] fashion, architecture and interior design, automobiles, and sex"—indicates that it offers "a key to understanding the contours of contemporary culture" (qtd. in Hariman, 7-8). Hence, the paradox of style as a scholarly topic: that which exhibits its cultural importance makes it seem intellectually vacuous.Hariman's treatise on political style offers the most noteworthy attempt in rhetorical studies to remedy these trends; brief consideration of his insights will suggest further objectives for the study of rhetoric and style. 2 In Hariman's estimation, "style ultimately is a significant dimension of every human experience" because "relations of control and autonomy are negotiated through the artful composition of speech, gesture, ornament, decor, and any other means for modulating perception and shaping response. In a word, our political experience is styled" (3, 2). The distinctive contribution of rhetorical inquiry into political style involves "understanding the dynamics of our social experience or the relationship between rhetorical appeals and political decisions" rather than merely "cataloging discursive forms in the artistic text alone" (Hariman, 8).Accordingly, Hariman acknowledges that one must recognize the substantive social and political influences of style apart from its traditional connotations of individual artistic performance. "In this context," he explains, "although style still highlights aesthetic reactions it no longer enforces artistic autonomy. Style becomes an analytic category for understanding a social reality; in order to understand the social reality of politics, we can consider how political action involves acting according to a particular political style" (9). Thus, for Hariman, rhetorical choices in political style need not amount to a valorization of "artistic autonomy": "each political style draws on universal elements of the human condition and symbolic repertoire but organizes them into a limited, customary set of communicative designs... Each is thoroughly conventional, yet the means for personal improvisation and intelligent, innovate responses to unique problems" (11-12). His treatise therefore appears to dissociate style from its outmoded definitions while recommending the utility of rhetorical principles to the study of political culture.What Hariman calls the "cautious postmodernism" (6) of his project, however, hinders its innovative aspirations. The postmodern portion of his work endorses the study of style according to the aesthetic dimensions of social relations rather than "artistic autonomy" alone; but its... (shrink)

By elaborating upon pivotal twentieth-century studies in language, representation, and subjectivity, Being Made Strange reorients the study of rhetoric according to the discursive formation of subjectivity. The author develops a theory of how rhetorical practices establish social, political, and ethical relations between self and other, individual and collectivity, good and evil, and past and present. He produces a novel methodology that analyzes not only what an individual says, but also the social, political, and ethical conditions that enable him or her (...) to do so. This book also offers valuable ethical and political insights for the study of subjectivity in philosophy, cultural studies, and critical theory. (shrink)

Using examples ranging from classical rhetoric to contemporary crises like 9/11, Public Forgetting demonstrates how communities may adopt idioms of forgetting in order to create new and beneficial standards of public judgment.

[N]othing is more dangerous than a political system that claims to lay down the truth.We have allegedly entered a post-truth era. Oxford Dictionaries selected the previously "peripheral term" post-truth "as 2016's international word of the year" because it had quickly become "a mainstay in political commentary" with demonstrable "impact on the national and international consciousness." The very idea of a post-truth condition, as discussed in ongoing public discourse,1 relies upon various assumptions about the nature and status of truth itself as (...) an adjunct of contemporary U.S. democracy. Oxford Dictionaries defines "post-truth" as "[r]elating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.4 (2001) 343-354 [Access article in PDF] "Always a Third Party Who Says 'Me'": Rhetoric and Alterity 1 Bradford Vivian In his thoughtful and provocative response to my essay, "The Threshold of the Self" (Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.4: 303-18), Philip Lewin offers a series of related critiques concerning my discussion of the affinities between rhetoric and subjectivity. In that essay I posited that a (...) revised understanding of rhetoric allows us to account for the formation of subjectivity without the lingering influence of Cartesian ideals. Lewin, however, argues that my use of self-persuasion to explain the aesthetic formation of subjectivity "suggests a kind of autonomy and self-transparency in self-formation that has discouragingly Cartesian overtones" (335). He cites my thesis that "In order to compose and cultivate one's being in the world, one must persuade one's self to choose and orchestrate certain styles of life from among those available into an entire aesthetics of being" (316-17). Subsequently, Lewin asks, "How does this process of self-persuasion actually take place? What aspect or agency of psyche is doing the persuading?" (336) In short, Lewin argues that the notion of self-persuasion necessarily, even if unwittingly, preserves a valorization of subjective consciousness--a governing seat of intuitive reason. There is a sense in which I agree with the general critique offered here. Although I attempted to advance an account of thought that affirmed the ways in which consciousness is engendered by power relations and regimes of truth, the notion of self-persuasion remains too evocative of an ideal and rationally governed subject, too vulnerable to Lewin's claim that it "reintroduce[s] several of the cogito's essential features" (4), for it to define the affiliation between rhetoric and subjectivity.If Lewin and I agree that the master concept of self-persuasion proves untenable, we nevertheless reach this conclusion by different means. In fact, I argue that the manner in which Lewin arrives at this conclusion [End Page 343] ironically endorses the sort of imperatives for which he indicts my essay. Neither Lewin's nor my implicit endorsement of such imperatives should be cause for lament, however. Rather, I would like to suggest that there is much to learn from the distinct ways in which both Lewin and I have yet to overcome certain values and ideals.Instead of simply defending my previous essay, then, I attempt in the majority of what follows to respond to Lewin's critiques as a way of provoking still further discussion of rhetoric and subjectivity. Before doing so, I first comment upon Lewin's response in order to clarify my essay's guiding aspirations and explore the ways in which they may have been comprised. Thereafter, I propose a discourse on rhetoric and subjectivity whose revised methodology seeks to realize the aspirations of my previous essay in a more convincing fashion.Lewin's objections concerning my use of self-persuasion serve to remind us that the critical transformation of our language and conceptuality is fundamentally constrained by the history and grammar of that language and conceptuality. Simply put, a concept like self-persuasion may carry too much Cartesian baggage to accomplish the task for which I selected it. The onerous weight of such baggage is evinced less by the precision of Lewin's critique and more by the fact that the language of my essay could be made to support that critique.Therefore, let me briefly review the aspirations of my inquiry. I intended to initiate a rethinking of rhetoric and subjectivity that acknowledged the formative influence of historical subject positions on the self without reducing the life of the self to those subject positions. Instead of measuring subjectivity against the ideal of a transcendent and essential subject position influenced only by the transparency of reason, I sought to offer a discourse on subjectivity that affirmed the principles of difference, multiplicity, becoming, and variation in the formation of the self. Such a discourse, as I imagined it, would not deny that reason, agency, or essence come to pass... (shrink)

Terrance Malick's film _The Thin Red Line is notable for its inexorable tendency to undermine the ontological status of the very times, places, and people it portrays. The film consists in an unrelenting questioning of cinematic reality. Such questioning does not lead to definitive truth or thematic resolution but only to more questions, more incredulousness at the continual disclosure and withdrawal of difference and multiplicity in their own accord. The film thus adopts what one might call a Heideggerian posture of (...) questionableness without the expectation of answer. Far from striving to depict a truth, meaning, or moral that allows it to achieve a verisimilitude with some reassuring dimension of reality, _The Thin Red Line labors to intricately destructure the ontological ground of every such unifying principle, and thus every correspondence with an external reality. In doing so, it meticulously questions the material status of every filmic pretense to coherent and natural representation, thereby striving to affirm in cinematic space the irreducible difference and multiplicity that conventional cinematic productions typically negate. (shrink)

Philosophers provide excellent resources for developing a science of virtues, and an interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers and psychologists seems ideal. This suggestion is not new, but there has been little guidance for psychologists about how philosophical work can be useful in developing a science of virtue. This article provides some guidance by dividing the contributions of philosophers into three categories. First, many philosophers provide theories of virtue’s nature or value, but these are generally not useful for psychological scientists and can (...) be safely ignored. Second, awareness of the range of philosophic positions can enable scientists to recognize contentious theoretical assumptions that they are making. Psychologists need not try to resolve these debates; they can choose to only identify which position(s) they are taking. Third, awareness of the range of philosophic positions and the competing conceptual analyses of various virtue concepts and traits can help psychologists to identify and test new empirical hypotheses. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists come together to think systematically about the nature and value of guilt, looking at the biological origins and psychological nature of guilt, and then discussing the culturally enriched conceptions of this vital moral emotion.

Considering a growing nurse shortage and the need for qualified nurses to handle increasingly complex patient care situations, how ethical beliefs are influenced and the consequences that can occur when moral conflicts of right and wrong arise need to be explored. The aim of this study was to explore influencers identified by nurses as having the most impact on the development of their ethical beliefs and whether these influencers might impact levels of moral distress and the potential for conscientious objection. (...) Nurses whose ethical beliefs were most influenced by their religious beliefs scored higher in levels of moral distress and demonstrated greater differences in areas of conscientious objection than did nurses who developed their ethical beliefs from influencers such as family values, life and work experience, political views or the professional code of ethics. (shrink)

This companion volume to The Sacred Mirror is an anthology of teachings on how nondual spiritual realization and psychology work in the specialized relationship between therapist and client and in ordinary personal relationships"--Provided by publisher.

Common everyday materials such as textiles, foodstuffs, soil or skin can have complex, mutable and varied appearances. Under typical viewing conditions, most observers can visually recognize materials effortlessly, and determine many of their properties without touching them. Visual material perception raises many fascinating questions for vision researchers, neuroscientists and philosophers, yet has received little attention compared to the perception of color or shape. Here we discuss some of the challenges that material perception raises and argue that further philosophical thought should (...) be directed to how we see materials. (shrink)

In their Out of Work: Government and Unemployment in Twentieth Century America, Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway contend that government intervention in American labor markets has caused unemployment by raising the real price of labor. In my critique of the book, I allowed that while this might sometimes be the case, it is not as important as Vedder and Gallaway claim. Their Reply does not succeed in vindicating their argument, because their wage averages fail to take into account variations in (...) wages within phases of the business cycle; because they fail to take into account the effects of unemployment on potential productivity, distorting their measures of real wages; and because they ignore the vast literature on the subject. (shrink)

Our limited evidence for the formula of the Roman sponsio is enough to clear up lingering controversy about two otherwise obscure speeches preserved only in testimonia and fragments. The elder Cato wrote a speech whose title is variously cited by our sources: ‘si se Caelius tribunus plebis appellasset’; ‘in M. Caelium si se appellasset’; ‘contra M. Caelium’ ; ‘in Marcum Cae[ci]lium’. On the reasonable postulate that these are variations on a single original, the fullest expression is relatively easy to reconstruct: (...) ‘si se M. Caelius tribunus plebis appellasset’.Doubts about the sense of these words have led to more radical proposals which have little to recommend them, especially in view of the new analysis I intend to offer. The conclusion among those who have attempted to explain the obvious reading has been that the title of the speech is a condition contrary to fact referring to a hypothetical situation to which the speech responded: some have suggested that Cato wrote the speech against the possibility that Caelius might make an accusation against him; Antonio Cima suggested that Caelius had made a speech against Cato without naming him and that Cato had responded, ‘if Caelius had meant to refer to me… ’. (shrink)

Examined the role of philosophical beliefs in psychotherapy approach preference. It was hypothesized that trainees would prefer approaches that most closely correspond to their personal philosophical beliefs. 59 students were given audiotaped presentations. Three dimensions of the Ss' philosophical commitments were examined in relation to their relative preferences for 3 therapy approaches: rationalist, constructivist and behavioral. Results show that Ss tended to prefer a specific approach that most corresponded to their own ontological, epistemological and causal commitments. This suggests a role (...) for philosophical beliefs in therapists' preferences for different theoretical orientations. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This book is a methodological guide for the emerging, interdisciplinary science of virtue traits and their value. The authors situate this emerging empirical field in the history of psychology, critically survey existing work, defend the scientific validity of virtue science, and develop a general model that can guide, unify, and catalyze future research. In addition, chapters discuss how philosophy and philosophers can contribute to empirical inquiry and how a mature science of virtue could inform moral philosophy. The book is co-authored (...) by two psychologists and a philosopher who pursued joint empirical work on fairness and then began to discuss larger methodological issues raised by that collaboration. -/- o Expected publication date: January 31, 2024 o Paperback ISBN: 1108747981. (shrink)

V. 1. Structures and processes -- v. 2. Domains and categories.

Bernard Suits’ groundbreaking work, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, has profoundly shaped the philosophy of sport. Its sequel, Return of the Grasshopper: Games, Leisure, and the Good Life in the Third Millennium, released in October 2022, enriches scholarly understandings of Suits’ views on games, emphasizing the normative aspects of gameplay and its impact on people’s pursuit of the good life. In this book symposium, world-leading Suits scholars analyze the Suitsian conception of gameplay and its relevance to his views on (...) Utopia outlined in the sequel, covering a wide range of topics. Filip Kobiela explores counterfactual situations in Suits’ oeuvre. Christopher Bartel and Gwen Bradford scrutinize the ethical nature and ramifications of Suits’ claim that life is an unconscious game. R. Scott Kretchmar and John S. Russell present thoughtful critiques of Suits’ musings on Utopia. William J. Morgan’s contribution integrates contemporary work studies to illuminate Suits’ utopia. The symposium concludes with the editors, Francisco Javier Lopez Frias and Christopher Yorke, offering their perspectives on Suitsian Utopia, ethics, and metaethics. (shrink)

Vedder and Gallaway are mistaken in their attempted demonstration that government policies to raise real wages have been the source of most or all U.S. unemployment in the twentieth century. Their case depends on a presumed correlation between high unemployment and high real wages that has not existed since World War II, and on a naive confusion between correlation and causation: just because real wages and unemployment were both relatively high during the Great Depression does not mean that high real (...) wages were the cause of high unemployment. More likely, the reverse is true. The ascription of high unemployment to higher‐than‐equilibrium real wages is not always in error. But there is no reason whatsoever to believe Vedder and Gall‐away's claim that the government's policies to raise wages have been “the major cause of high unemployment in the United States.”. (shrink)

The progression of research and scholarly inquiry does not occur in isolation and is wholly dependent on accurate reporting of methods and results, and successful replication of prior work. Without mechanisms to correct the literature, much time and money is wasted on research based on a crumbling foundation. These guidelines serve to outline the respective responsibilities of researchers, institutions, agencies, and publishers or editors in maintaining the integrity of the research record. Delineating these complementary roles and proposing solutions for common (...) barriers provide a foundation for best practices. (shrink)

In 1976 Raymond Williams commented, ‘Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.’ Such implied difficulty has not prevented Bloomsbury Academic, since the 2000s, from publishing around forty series of their well-produced and generously illustrated Cultural Histories, with, according to their website, a further fifty in progress. Each series contains six volumes, each book covering, in theory, the same chronological period (antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the age of empire and (...) the modern age), though there is some variation depending on precise topic. The idea is that one can use these books not only to read ‘horizontally’ about a subject across time, but also ‘vertically’ through different subjects in the same period – a idea made easier by the e-texts of the series on Bloomsbury's website. (shrink)