First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

There have been more studies, critical books, and learned articles produced over the years about Jane Austen than of any other English literary "great" with the exception of William Shakespeare. The flow of these studies greatly increased in the latter part of this century. Her novels, juvenilia and surviving letters have been intensively researched. Added to this, there is an ever growing interest in her life, times, the importance to her writing of a sense of place, and in her familial (...) and social relationships. To study her work within this wider context, the student needs to refer to the source texts, some written by members of her family after her death, printed in small printings and now both scarce and valuable. (shrink)

Using a result of Gurevich and Lewis on the word problem for finite semigroups, we give short proofs that the following theories are hereditarily undecidable: (1) finite graphs of vertex-degree at most 3; (2) finite nonvoid sets with two distinguished permutations; (3) finite-dimensional vector spaces over a finite field with two distinguished endomorphisms.

Dans ce texte de 1936, inédit en français, le théoricien du droit danois Alf Ross rend compte de la parution de la première édition de la Théorie pure du droit de Hans Kelsen. C'est l'occasion pour lui de souligner à la fois tout ce que la théorie du droit moderne doit au normativisme, mais aussi les profondes différences de conception dans le camp positiviste entre la conception idéelle des normes de Kelsen et le programme empiriste dont se réclament les (...) réalistes scandinaves, dans la lignée d'Hägerström. Antérieur aux grands écrits accessibles de Ross, qui vont marquer un tournant vers le positivisme logique, ce texte constitue un témoignage important pour la compréhension du débat réalisme-normativisme. (shrink)

With the recent deaths of both Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida, it is an opportune moment to consider their respective contributions to social and cultural theory. The purpose of this article is not to establish an unbridgeable gap which allows no communication between Baudrillard and Derrida's thought. Rather, I will argue that there is an underlying assumption which brings them into close proximity: the idea that the dialectical order of the social, and its relationship to human mortality, has been radically (...) altered by the media-technological systems through which `the real' is represented. Baudrillard's concept of simulation attempts to show how the mass media have become the exclusive condition through which the social is staged, and that there is nothing outside of their operational logics (including the performance of political responsibility and the temporality of history). Derrida's conception of the spectre, on the contrary, presents a `quasi-messianic' figure which haunts the system of simulation; it is s/he who arrives through the intensification of social performativity which Baudrillard understands as completely self-referential. My aim is to show that the most political way of approaching Baudrillard is to read him as a kind of `evil genius' of simulation; as a provocation to acknowledge the spectral bodies who hover between life and death within the system of the hyperreal. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to evaluate the ethical and political conclusions that Ulrich Beck draws from his account of ‘civilization risks’. I have argued that the categories of ‘life’, ‘the organic’, and the ‘technological’ which are presented in Risk Society, presuppose a certain metaphysics of ‘natural’ human identity; and that it is the inscription of this identity in the politics of risk administration which opens the possibility of an absolutely legitimized regulation of nature, humanity, and society. Thus, in (...) order to evaluate the ‘risk’ entailed in the ethical and political strictures of Beck's ‘world risk society’, I have had recourse to the expositions of time, presence, identity and technology which Derrida has given in Of Grammatology and Specters of Marx. It is through these expositions that I have tried to work through the idea of an ecological politics that would remain sensitive to the events of difference and alterity precipitated by its own ‘cosmopolitan’ interventions. (shrink)

Sacrifice haunts the Phaedo. In this article, I argue that the mise-en-scène of the death scene of the Phaedo, as well as other sacrificial elements in the background of the dialogue, creates a nexus that positively integrates the birth, philosophical practice, and death of Socrates into the ritualized rhythm of the life of the city of Athens. A close reading of the death scene presented as a synopsis with Walter Burkert’s well-known analysis of Greek sacrifice reveals convergences and divergences between (...) the Phaedo and Greek sacrificial practice. Socrates appears as a willing victim who accepts the city’s sacrificial practice while remaining on his own terms. (shrink)

This essay reflects on arguments by Paul Ramsey, in The Patient as Person: Explorations in Medical Ethics (1970) and elsewhere, that continue to challenge policy‐makers and those doing clinical and translational research involving children. Ramsey argued that parents cannot morally authorize their child's participation in research unless the research is designed to benefit the child. He acknowledged that abiding by this position could have adverse impacts on improving child health, and he concluded, in a 1976 Hastings Center Report piece, that (...) researchers must “sin bravely.” Many philosophers and theologians, including Richard McCormick, have argued against Ramsey. The Ramsey‐McCormick debate played out in the bioethics literature and, by invitation, at the deliberations of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which was tasked with developing an ethics framework and policies for human subjects protections. Although in its final recommendations, the commission sided with McCormick, the strict limitations on risks and harms to which a child can be exposed were clearly influenced by Ramsey. (shrink)

Most commentators have focused on ethical dilemmas and the idea that they were core to the actions of and decisions by Jewish doctors in SS concentration camps and ghettos during the Holocaust. While I recognize Jewish doctors did face ethical dilemmas, in this article, I shift my attention to include two other significant factors: choiceless choices, defined by the eminent Holocaust historian Lawrence Langer as “crucial decisions [that] did not reflect options between life and death, but between one form of (...) abnormal response and another, both imposed by a situation that was in no way of the victim’s own choosing,” and the human condition, whereby decisions and actions were triggered by personal traits and past experiences in response to particular situations and circumstances. Inherent in all three factors is the tenaciousness of reality and how the abhorrent conditions, immorality, inhumanity and evilness cast a shadow over every moment of the Jewish doctor’s life. My thesis is that decision-making was not one-dimensional but multi-dimensional. For the Jewish doctor every incident became a source of dread and tragedy. They were often not trained to treat some diseases or perform surgery and lacked experience to work in such conditions and cope emotionally and psychologically. I will attempt to show that how a person responds to an ethical dilemma is based on his or her own experiences and reasoning, and how they reacted to sudden and inexplicable incidents that threatened life or impacted survival induced abnormal actions and decisions. As Jewish doctors they were driven to be healers, to be normal, but they were forced by circumstances to kill or become perpetrators, acting abnormally. Tragically the abnormal became the norm. The Jewish doctors were professionally trained and culturally socialized to continue their roles as doctors. Nevertheless, they were human and were driven by the innate will to live. (shrink)

Healthcare decision making for children has adopted the best interest of the child standard, a principle originally employed by judges to adjudicate child placement in the case of parental death, divorce, or incompetence. Philosophers and medical ethicists have argued whether the best interest principle is a guidance principle (informing parents on how they should make healthcare decisions for their child), an intervention principle (deciding the limits of parental autonomy in healthcare decision making), or both. Those who defend it as only (...) a guidance principle often cite the harm principle as the appropriate intervention principle. In this article, I challenge current use of the best interest principle in pediatric decision making as a guidance principle and as an intervention principle. I propose a model that I call constrained parental autonomy, which focuses on promoting and protecting the child’s primary goods or basic needs. I show that constrained parental autonomy can serve as both a guidance principle and an intervention principle in making decisions. I conclude by examining a case study involving bone marrow donation by a young child to her sister. (shrink)

The Acquaintance Principle has been the subject of extensive debate in philosophical aesthetics. In one of the most recent developments, it has become popular to claim that some works of conceptual art are counterexamples to it. It is further claimed that this is a genuinely new problem in the sense that it is a problem even for versions of the Acquaintance Principle modified to deal with previous objections. I argue that this is essentially correct; however, the claim as it stands (...) needs some work. I draw attention to, and defend, two assumptions on which the claim rests but which have so far gone unrecognized. I also address an objection that has recently been made to the claim and threatens to raise further complications for it. In doing this, we arrive at a fuller, more robust version of the initial claim. (shrink)

The Heart of School Leadership focuses on 50 areas that school leaders need to think about in order to nurture a cohesive school community.

ABSTRACT Although environmental and eco-centric efforts have been made in education, the sphere of influence and cogency of these efforts is limited by their anthropocentric framing of the environment. In order to subvert anthropocentric ideals, it is necessary to reposition humans in relation to other living and non-living forms. This study examines the anthropocentric tendencies perpetuated in environmental education efforts. The impetus of this work is to locate specific moments wherein human dominion is invoked within educational efforts that purportedly champion (...) environmentalism. I analyze the nature-based learning movement in particular, and illuminate these anthropocentric tendencies using critical discourse analysis. I take up variations of thematic, structural, and semiotic analyses in order to reveal how the environment is framed within a nature-based learning professional development webinar. This research poses implications for environmental educators broadly, nature-based learning instructors specifically, and researchers of posthumanist education as well. (shrink)

Systemic existential conditions are indelible aspects of a client's reflective and nonreflective modes of consciousness, and therefore fall within the purview of philosophical counseling. This paper focuses on the experience of the dehumanization that is a function of the monetization of all aspects of post-modern neoliberal society. Monetization demands radical self-abandonment, self-anesthesia, auto-aggressive self-exploitation and addiction for functionality within the system. The bankrupt logic of pandemic terrorism confirms that monetization has become the preeminent measure of value. Monetization distorts both reason (...) and value, concealing a covert nihilism masquerading as the new metaphysics. The symbiotic natural world evidences a level of cooperation and coexistence that escapes monetization. Therefore, a monetized society is a society at odds with the world ecosystemand life itself. Caught in a labyrinth ofmonetized dehumanization, clients often participate in the fictional metanarrative of belief in unlimited individual possibility as a hedge against anxiety, depression, powerlessness, anomie, and the logical loop of cognitive dissonance. (shrink)

We agree that the relationship between phenomenology and accessibility can be fruitfully investigated via meshing, but we want to emphasise the importance of proper comparison between meshes, as well as considerations that make comparison especially difficult in this domain. We also argue that Block's interpretation of the neural data in his exemplar mesh is incorrect, and propose an alternative.

Pop and camp nostalgia for the lofty ziggurats, teardrop automobiles, sleek ships of the airstream, and even the alien BEMs with imperiled women in their clutches, are one thing; the cyberpunk critique of “wrongheadedness,” whether in Gibson’s elegant fiction or Sterling’s flip criticism, is another. Each provides us with a stylized way of approaching SF’s early formative years, years usually described as “uncritical” in their outlook on technological progress. But neither perspective can give us much sense of the sociohistorical landscape (...) of the thirties on which these gleaming technofantasies were raised. To have some idea of the historical power of what Gibson calls the “Gernsback Continuum,” we need to know more, for example, about the entrepreneurial activities and scientific convictions of Hugo Gernsback himself, a man often termed the “father” of science fiction because he presided over its market specialization as a cultural genre. In Gernsback’s view, SF was more of a social than a literary movement. We need to know more about the hallowed place of engineers and scientists in public consciousness in the years of boom and crisis between the wars, the consolidation of industrial research science at the heart of corporate capitalism, and the redemptive role cast for technology in the drama of national recovery and growth. We also need to know about the traditions of progressive thought that stood behind the often radical technocratic philosophy of progressive futurism in the thirties. My description of North American SF’s period of genre formation will show the crucial influence of the national cults of science, engineering, and invention as well as discuss the role of technocracy in the social thought of the day. I will also consider the ways in which pulp SF escaped or resisted the recruitist role allotted to it not only by shaping figures like Gernsback, who devoted himself directly to enlisting his readers in the cause of “science,” but also by subsequent critics of early SF, including those writers, like Gibson and Sterling, who have lamented its naïve celebration of technological innovation. Andrew Ross teaches English at Princeton University and is the author of The Failure of Modernism: Symptoms of American Poetry and No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture . He is also the editor of Universal Abandon?: The Politics of Postmodernism and the coeditor, with Constance Penley, of Technoculture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FOR A NON-VIOLENT ACCORD: EDUCATING THE PERSON Marie-Louise Martinez Education has been criticized, no doubt justly, for the symbolic violence of its prohibitions and exclusionary rituals that mirror the violence of society (Bourdieu, etc.). But this criticism is short-sighted. When restraints are removed in teaching and education (in the family and in the school), violence wells up anew and produces at least the following two results: access to (...) meaning and knowledge is restricted; access to the law and its structure-inducing prohibitions is restricted. The result is that we foster vulnerable personalities who confuse fiction and reality, and who do not hesitate to turn their violence into acts of hostility directed toward themselves, other people, and society. A further consequence has been a certain violent non-differentiation that has tended in turn to produce a violent re-differentiation ofsociety. There is a nostalgia everywhere today for a return to discipline, to the rule oflaw, etc. One hears talk of the "sanctuary of the classroom" or again of the necessity of preserving a "symbolic cloister." We are not able, purely and simply, to feel remorse for having maintained the rule ofa violent symbolic order. One might ask in what the symbolic consists. How is it connected to teaching and education? Is there not a fundamental violence in the symbolic? Does there exist a less violent symbolic, or even a non-violent one? How might one define it and put it to work in teaching and education? Girardian theory can help us to reinterpret various contributions from a number of authors in the human sciences (Benveniste, Lacan, etc.) and from the personalist philosophy of language. I would like to propose the hypothesis that there are two stages ofthe symbolic: first, a violent symbolic accord and, second, a non-violent threshold within the symbolic, which alone can serve as an appropriate model for teaching and education. 56Marie-Louise Martinez I. The symbolic and its powers. We are not using symbolic in its specific sense as metaphorical or figurative language as it occurs in myth and poetry but in a more general sense, i.e., to refer to the totality ofthe sign and code systems employed by human beings, as that which allows for the production and deployment of significations within society. Stemming from the Greek symbolein (to throw or put together, to assemble), the symbolic is that type or order of signs that assembles. Much more than the pure language of linguistics, the symbolic is the totality ofverbal, non-verbal, and para-verbal conventions, of systems ofexchange, and ofrites. It also comprises the regulated use ofbodies and ofnature. Our definition ofthe symbolic is not idealist: more than simply the expression of ideas, it is also interaction and action, on oneself, on others, and the world. It includes technical and bodily activities to the degree that these have been codified. In this sense, the symbolic (in agreement with philosophers as diverse as Cassirer or Clifford Geertz) can be said to embrace the totality of what is called culture. But ifthe symbol throws orputs together, it is necessary to discuss what and why and how it does so. The modern science ofsigns (semiology) has shown that the sign or symbol serves to place in relation. Relying on the contemporary semiology that stems from the American philosopher Pierce, and also on the work of Francis Jacques in France, we can say that this relation, far from being a simple binary one (sign/referent or sign/signifier) is a complex relation which aligns signs with the objects to which they refer, but also with the people deploying those signs. This latter signifying relation, which is intersubjective and social, was invisible in Saussurean semiology. In itself, the symbolic is the product of a complex relation which links people among themselves and the things referred to by the agency of signs. In other words, the basis of the signifying relationship is not the dyad subject/object (relation to objects) but a triadic relation, subject/ subject/object (intersubjective and objectai). This triangular relationship, which traverses the intersubjective and the objectai, is a relationship of convention, underlined in antiquity by Plato in the Cratylus (for Hermogenes, a word... (shrink)