Over the centuries, history has shown that peasant members of society are drenched with various forms of marginalisation. These often come from the more privileged members of society and even the government. Studies have also shown that the religious sphere that ought to be the hope of the neglected poor has turned out to be like the political milieu in the secular world. Isaiah 10:1–4 spelt out punishment meted out for the violators of the rights of the peasant poor. The (...) text indicates that the poor have been neglected in the past millennium. There have likely been no studies that took into cognisance the neglect of the poor from Isaiah 10:1–4 in the context of Nkanuland. Isaiah 10:1–4 examines the height at which the Jewish rulers exploit the poor at their various dispensations. However, such wicked acts by such leaders would not go unpunished. The poor are highly marginalised using different means by both religious and political leaders. The insufficient welfare provision for the poor has consequently led to ill health, death, vulnerability to danger, psychological stress, social alienation, poor education, poor diet and other related problems in Nigeria in general and Nkanuland in particular. The researcher, therefore, seeks to take a critical look at Isaiah 10:1–4 and applies its exegetical result(s) in Nkanu. It is argued that if the text is practically applied by religious and political leaders in Nkanuland, there would be improved welfare provision for the poor. Rhetoric and sociological approaches common to Old Testament exegesis are employed.Contribution: The researcher posits that Isaiah 10:1–4 would be a feasible solution to curb the incessant marginalisation of the peasant poor in Igboland in general and Nkanuland in particular. This would enhance both human and other aspects of development in Nkanuland. (shrink)

Firearm violence in the United States produces over 36,000 deaths and 74,000 sustained firearm-related injuries yearly. The paper describes the burden of firearm violence with emphasis on the disproportionate burden on children, racial/ethnic minorities, women and the healthcare system. Second, this paper identifies factors that could mitigate the burden of firearm violence by applying a blend of key ethical theories to support population level interventions and recommendations that may restrict individual rights. Such recommendations can further support targeted research to inform (...) and implement interventions, policies and laws related to firearm access and use, in order to significantly reduce the burden of firearm violence on individuals, health care systems, vulnerable populations and society-at-large. By incorporating a blended public health ethics to address firearm violence, we propose a balance between societal obligations and individual rights and privileges. (shrink)

Purpose:To test the hypothesis that supernatural agents (SAs) appear in nightmares and dreams in association with evidence of diminished agency within the dreamer/dream ego.Methods:Content analyses of 120 nightmares and 71 unpleasant control dream narratives.Results:We found that SAs overtly occur in about one quarter of unpleasant dreams and about half of nightmares. When SAs appear in a dream or nightmare they are reliably associated with diminished agency in the dreamer. Diminished agency within the dreamer occurs in over 90% of dreams (whether (...) nightmares or unpleasant dreams) that have overt SAs. In about half of nightmare reports the SA appears suddenly with no clear emergence pattern. In some two thirds of unpleasant dreams, however, the SA emerged from a human character. The SA’s gender was indeterminate in most dreams with SAs but the SA communicated with the dreamer in 24% of nightmares and only 13% of unpleasant dreams. In most nightmares, the SA intended to harm the dreamer and in one third of nightmares the dreamer was the victim of physical agression by the SA. SA intentions in unpleasant dreams were more varied and actually benign in 13% of cases.Conclusion:Supernatural agents reliably appear in nightmares and unpleasant dreams in association with diminished agency in the dreamer. Diminished agency in an individual may facilitate supernatural agent cognitions. (shrink)

Preoperative informed consent is a legal and ethical requirement that ensures patients understand a procedure, its associated risks and benefits, alternative treatment options, and potential complications to make an informed decision about their care. This cross‐sectional study evaluated the informed consent process for major orthopaedic surgeries at a tertiary hospital in Nigeria. A self‐administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 120 adult participants. Results showed that many patients do not read the consent form before signing it, and surgeons do (...) not adequately explain the alternatives to surgery, potential risks, and available anaesthetic options. Higher‐educated patients are more likely to read the consent form. Surgeons performed well in explaining the nature of the condition and prognosis, the procedure's potential benefits, and answering patients' questions. The study emphasises the need to improve the informed consent process to ensure patients understand and can make rational decisions about their healthcare. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the far-reaching significance of religion in shaping human interaction within social crises. Efforts to slow down the spread of coronavirus prompted different national governments, including the Federal Government of Nigeria to restrict large density gatherings, enforce lockdowns and promote social distancing, which were largely resisted initially. Organised religion may have influenced citizens’ compliance with government directives for curbing the pandemic. Focussing largely on providing economic assistance to people in need, it may have missed out on the (...) reason for recourse to faith. One outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic was the need to understand the application of religious faith in explaining epidemics and health crises. This work predominantly relies on data from secondary sources (library research and internet materials). Just as it critically investigates Christian-Muslim responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seeks also to justify reliance on religion during a health emergency. By the evaluative method of philosophy, we show that although the pandemic triggered dread of annihilation, it brought in its wake a search for ontological meaningfulness. This study therefore argues that Nigerians turned to religion to meet the deep-seated, individual need for meaningfulness (‘survivability’) that is primary to the need of soul and body, which includes material donations by organised religious entities. The primacy of fulfilling this need precedes sociality both ontologically and epistemologically because meaningfulness is an inalienable property of individuality.Contribution: This work presents religion as a rationally defensible need that is fundamentally rooted in individual human nature, even in a pandemic; religion pertains to meaningfulness, which counters human fear of annihilation and meaninglessness. (shrink)

Social poetics as research and practice: living in and learning from the process of research This paper is both a report of research work carried out by one author of the paper with the other involved in a supervisory role, and a reflection on methodology that was an emergent property of the research process. The research question arose when professional preunderstandings about schizophrenia as a biological disturbance were bracketed as a Husserlian form of phenomenology was adopted. The initial study focused (...) on the meanings three individuals attached to being diagnosed with a mental illness and being involved in psychiatric treatment systems. The exploration of meanings led to the researcher being guided by one study participant in relation to a suitable framework for making sense of her lived experience of being entangled in psychiatric systems. This involved an appreciation of the poetics of interpersonal interaction that was simultaneously fuelled by the researcher’s reading of social poetics in psychology. Thus, the research became a hermeneutic inquiry, focused upon the text of one participant (Beth)1 and the psychiatric system that she and colleagues encountered. Beth’s psychiatric predicament was described by a loss of ‘self’, psychiatric interrogation, and positive and negative features of immersion in the system. A byproduct of taking a poetic approach was that the participant found the research process therapeutic. Thus, social poetics encouraged a beneficial blurring of the boundaries between research and practice. In both arenas, social poetics can lead to a different level of understanding. This is contradictory to mainstream approaches to research that value objectivity with a strict division between the researcher and the subjects, with the aim of producing scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This article combines an appreciation of several themes in Josh Reeves's Against Methodology in Science and Religion: Recent Debates on Rationality and Theology while arguing in favor of critical realism. The author holds that critical realism manages to combine the objective truth reached through inference and especially cognitive acts of judgment as well as the various, contingent historical contexts that also define where science is practiced. Reeves advocates a historical perspective, but this article claims that in order for critical realism (...) to be credible, a philosophical perspective must be maintained. (shrink)

With obstacles at various levels of government, multi-level settings provide complex challenges for the implementation of gender mainstreaming. Policy transfer appears to hold some explanatory potential in these sorts of contexts; scholarship however, still tends to focus on single sources of influence – either European or domestic – and potentially misses the broader picture. This article revisits the classic question of who learns what from whom by addressing the implementation of gender mainstreaming in research policies in the Spanish regions through (...) the lens of policy transfer. Measures to tackle gender inequality in science have been developed at the EU, state and regional levels, thus enabling the three regions studied here – Galicia, the Basque Country and the Balearic Islands – to ‘borrow’ good practices from different layers of government. This article suggests that more nuanced frameworks, recognizing that multi-level settings are potential sites for complex lesson-drawing processes, are likely to offer greater explanatory depth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading Style In DickensRobert AlterIt is a sad symptom of the devolution of literary studies and of our culture’s relation to language that it should at all be necessary to explain that style is crucial to the experience of reading. As the language of literature has been variously designated a mask for ideology, an expression of the “poetics of culture,” or a medium of communication not different in kind (...) from menus and graffiti, the academic study of literature in many cases seems to have lost the essential sense that style has its unique enchantments, and that those enchantments can often be a privileged vehicle of insight, even of vision. As someone who is temperamentally a rationalist, I do not want to sound mystical, but I find it an empirical fact as a reader that great writers are able in a variety of surprising ways to tap into occult connections between words and social, historical, psychological, or moral realities. Saul Bellow has aptly stated this commingling of uncanny insight and deep satisfaction that style can give its readers:A small clue will suffice to remind us that when we hear certain words—“all is but toys,” “absent thee from felicity,” “a wilderness of monkeys,” “green pastures,” “still waters,” or even the single word “relume”—they revive for us moments of emotional completeness and overflowing comprehension, they unearth buried essences. 1A novel is a whole world reconstituted through words. Style in a novel is that world’s very air which we breath (I shall presently cite a rather literal illustration of this principle in Dickens), the rhythm of relation [End Page 130] of the represented objects and personages, the depth of field in which they are seen. When we read style in Dickens, or in any other novelist, we of course are reading all sorts of other things at the same time—plot, character, moral dilemma, historical predicament, and so forth—but we can see all these in their full complexity only if we attend to the illuminating play of style.Despite the great length of his major novels, Dickens deserves to be read slowly, with delectation, with occasional pauses to reread a choice passage, because he is one of the most inventive and vigorous stylists in the whole range of English literature. Style, as we know, has many facets, and Dickens’s powerful rhythms, his supple patterns of alliteration, the hammer-blows of the anaphoric insistence he often favors, the cunning interplay of different linguistic registers he sometimes introduces, are all worthy of attention. But he is above all the great master of figurative language in English after Shakespeare, and what I want to concentrate on here is how I focus as a reader on Dickens’s use of figurative language, and what it reveals to me about the world of his novels.Dickens is one of those novelists who is preeminently a rhetorical performer, and so there is a good deal of self-conscious display of virtuosity, sheer exuberant verbal high jinks, in his writing. The high jinks are there for the reader to enjoy—in historical context, to keep the reader’s interest from one monthly serial to the next—but as Dickens grows in mastery and gravity, they are more and more a means of what Bellow calls unearthing buried essences. Let me glance quickly at the operation of style in a passage from Dombey and Son (1848), an approximate midpoint in Dickens career, and then consider more closely the visionary power of his prose at two moments in his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend (1861). Here is the description in chapter thirteen of the company office of Dombey and Son as its august proprietor enters:The wit of the Counting-House became in a moment as mute as the row of leathern fire-buckets hanging up behind him. Such vapid and flat daylight as filtered through the ground-glass windows and skylights, leaving a black sediment upon the panes, showed the books and papers, and the figures bending over them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as much abstracted in appearance, from the world without, as if they were assembled at the... (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo forma parte de un estudio más amplio sobre el tiempo y la eternidad en Confesiones de Agustín de Hipona. Esta ocasión permite sólo ocuparme de los primeros ocho libros, es decir, hasta su relato de la conversión al cristianismo como hito radical. Me ocuparé para los efectos de una reflexión gradual, exclusivamente de los pasajes donde nuestro autor en su relato del tiempo vivido nos ofrece textos que, coherentes con la obra entera, muestran cómo está presente la (...) tensión entre tiempo y eternidad. No se pretende recorrer las etapas biográficas de Agustín, sino mostrar cómo en el intento de comprensión que se da en la conciencia de nuestro autor aparece la experiencia tanto del tiempo como de la eternidad.This paper is part of a larger study of time and eternity in Agustín de Hipona's Confessions. This opportunity helps deal with only the first eight books, that is, until his account of the conversion to Christianity as a radical milestone. With this purpose, this paper presents a gradual reflection upon only the passages where De Hipona, in his account of the time lived, offers some texts that, coherent with all his works, show how the tension between time and eternity is present. De Hipona's biography is not the subject of this paper but the way in which his experience of both time and eternity emerges in his conscience in his attempt to comprehend them. (shrink)

This article examines the particular aesthetic experience brought about by soundwalks. In each case, the point of departure is the phenomenological analysis of two case study: Janet Cardiff’s Walks and the audio-tours Remote x by Rimini Protokoll. Drawing upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, I will examine the conflicts of perception and the peculiar shift from one order of perception to another that punctuate the spectator’s walking, as well as the intertwining of the real and the imaginary coming into being in such (...) performances and experienced at the very level of his bodily inscription in space. More specifically, my aim is to address the challenge that the aesthetic experience here in question sets to Husserl’s phenomenology of perception and to show how the extension of the notion of perception achieved by Merleau-Ponty makes it possible to overcome the paradox. (shrink)

This book rethinks the discussion of sport as a cinematic subject. Arguing for the vitality of the sports film as distinctively 'modern' genre, the book looks at its innovative potential to capture twentieth- and twenty-first-century sport in all its complexity. Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout, the book integrates work and ideas from film studies with thinking from sports psychology, philosophy, data theory and ecocriticism. In its detailed analyses of a wide-ranging group of films, the book shows how (...) film, from fictional works to biopics to experimental documentaries, can illuminate individual sporting experience, as well as sport's wider place in modern life. (shrink)

This essay explores the reception and used of Suárez’s philosophy by two canonical early modern philosophers, René Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz. It is argued that Descartes’ theory of distinctions does not betray any indications of being Suárezian, despite many claims to the contrary. Leibniz, however, was a very different reader of Suárez’s works, it is argued, and his thinking about individuation was clearly influenced by Suárez even if he did not adopt the Suárezian position in the end.

"L'esprit d'aventure animait-il Pierre Teilhard de Chardin? Il ne suffit pas, pour répondre, de rappeler la devise que lui applique l'un de ses amis, George Barbour : "Ut migraturus habita. Vis comme si tu allais partir." Il ne suffit pas non plus de trouver sous sa plume ce bel aveu : "Je ne saurais désormais être autre chose qu'une sorte d'aventurier spirituel." Il faut le suivre dans ses multiples voyages, lire son abondante correspondance, l'entendre se plaindre d'être retenu à Pékin (...) durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale sans aucun terrain d'action, ou encore douter que la Croisière Jaune puisse lui être utile. Il faut aussi l'écouter se plaindre que le christianisme a perdu l'esprit d'aventure et le voir s'engager lui-même dans les zones laissées en blanc, celles où le savoir comme le croire perdent pied et où le réel reprend tout son pouvoir. Une invitation à mettre les pas dans ceux de ce gentilhomme aux semelles de vent."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

La privatisation de la connaissance est en contradiction avec la possibilité d'accéder à l'ensemble des savoirs disponibles à travers les nouveaux réseaux de communication. La qualification de l'accès au savoir en ligne comme « bien public international » répond à la demande des populations des pays en développement qui n'ont pas les moyens de s'équiper à domicile et encore moins de payer l'accès à des contenus en ligne à des tarifs élaborés par les marchands des pays développés. Les modalités de (...) mise à disposition des savoirs incluent des composantes techniques, informatiques et juridiques qu'il est nécessaire de mettre au point. Quant au régime de propriété intellectuelle, il devrait être modifié en conséquence.Privatization of knowledge is in contradiction with the ability to access all the knowledge available through the new communication networks. Qualification for access to online knowledge as "international public good" meets the needs of people in developing countries do not have the means to equip themselves at home and even less to pay for access to content Online prices developed by merchants developed countries. The terms of knowledge available include technical components, IT and legal need to develop. As for the intellectual property regime, it should be amended accordingly. (shrink)

Rendre hommage à un auteur, ce n'est pas seulement célébrer ce qu'il fut mais c'est aussi alerter sur ce que son oeuvre apporte au présent et à l'avenir de la connaissance. C'est bien le sens donné à cet hommage à André-Jean Arnaud. Repenser le droit, c'était pou r cet auteur érudit : repenser les lieux, les conditions et les façons de l'étudier en dépassant les frontières géographiques en même temps que les frontières disciplinaires. En montrant en quoi André-Jean Arnaud fut, (...) hors des sentiers battus et des orthodoxies de la production et de la transmission des savoirs en la matière, un exceptionnel précurseur et l'infatigable artisan d'un nouveau régime de connaissance sur le droit, le présent ouvrage s'adresse à toutes celles et à tous ceux, enseignants, chercheurs, étudiants ou simples citoyens, pou r qui l'étude du droit permet de mieux comprendre ce que sont et ce que sont susceptibles de devenir nos sociétés. (shrink)

Les sermons africains d’Albert Schweitzer, édités en 2002, opposent fréquemment les Blancs aux Noirs, dont le prédicateur vise à changer les croyances et le comportement. Dépourvu de préjugé raciste, ce contraste répond au dessein de tout prédicateur – et plus particulièrement du missionnaire : porteur d’une éthique qu’il juge universelle, Schweitzer veut améliorer ses auditeurs, et, pour nourrir leur émulation, il leur propose des modèles . Mais les sermons de Lambaréné témoignent aussi d’une certaine indifférence de Schweitzer à l’égard de (...) la culture africaine ; en cela, ils confirment les conclusions fondées sur les autres écrits du « Grand Docteur » : s’il a donné sans compter à l’Afrique, n’en a-t-il pas trop peu reçu ? The African sermons of Albert Schweitzer, which were published in 2002, often contrast the Whites with the Blacks, whose beliefs and behaviour the preacher wants to change. Without any racist prejudice, this contrast corresponds to the intention of each preacher, and more particularly of the missionary : being the bearer of an ethics which he considers to be universal, Schweitzer wants to improve his listeners, and in order to stimulate their emulation, he furnishes them with models . But the Lambaréné sermons also testify to Schweitzer’s relative indifference toward the African culture ; in this respect, they confirm the conclusions based on other writings of the « Great Doctor » : even though he spared no effort in giving to Africa, did he received enough from it ? (shrink)

In 1980, Amartya Sen’s essay ‘Equality of What?’ stimulated a still ongoing discussion on the question: ‘Insofar as one holds that social justice demands rendering people’s condition more nearly equal, what aspects of people’s condition should be equalized?’ (Sen, 1982). In what respects should people be rendered more nearly the same? Prominent responses include resources, fundamental liberties, capabilities, advantages, welfare, and opportunities for welfare.1 There is a more general question in this neighbourhood that should be of interest. We might conceive (...) of social justice as requiring us to maximize some function of some aspect of people’s condition. The relevant aspect might be any of the candidates just listed or some hitherto unnoticed alternative. But it is not obvious in advance of argument that social justice requires equality of any sort. Perhaps the function we should be maximizing requires us to equalize, but it might be ‘maximize the average!’, ‘maximize the aggregate!’, ‘maximin!’, ‘equalize at the highest feasible level!’, ‘maximax!’, ‘prioritize!’, ‘maximize the number above sufficiency!’, or yet another alternative. The more general question about the nature of social justice requirements is ‘Whatever of what?’ There are two issues to resolve, not just one. (shrink)

Starting with the words that finish, or interrupt Master Wincenty’s Polish Chronicle, I interpret its historiographic content as characteristic of 12th century humanism, expression of love, of wisdom. The infallible condition of ethicalarete may be found to be formulated in the last words of the Chronicle concerning humanity which consists in tolerant indulgence of others’ vices and modesty about one’s virtues.

En vertu de quelle prescience la querelle la plus importante du XXe siècle a-t-elle annoncé la plus grande question du XXIe ? Lors de la rupture entre Camus et Sartre, le point sur lequel ils étaient le plus divisés était la question de la violence politique et spécifiquement celle du communisme. Et au fur et à mesure qu’ils continuaient à s’attaquer mutuellement, de façon codée,..

Francisco Romero y Augusto Salazar Bondy se interesaron por los temas antropológicos y axiológicos, por la actualización y difusión de la producción filosófica en general y, en especial la de lengua española y manifestaron particular inquietud por los desarrollos de la filosofía en América Latina. Aunque la evolución posterior del pensamiento de Salazar Bondy siguió rumbos teóricos diferentes a los de Romero, es posible señalar algunos puntos de contacto entre sus ideas acerca del valor, sobre todo con aquellas que el (...) peruano elaboró durante la primera etapa de su trayectoria intelectual, entre 1958 y 1964. La idea de trascendencia del argentino resulta compatible con la tesis salazariana acerca del valor como ente no-real, cuya consistencia radica en la "posibilidad ideal"; o apertura -trascendencia- hacia un correlato concreto, por referencia al cual el ente alcanza su completud. Francisco Romero and Augusto Salazar Bondy were interested in anthropological and axiological issues, the updating and dissemination of philosophical work in general, especially in Spanish language. Both were interested in the development of philosophy in Latin America. Although the subsequent evolution of Salazar's thought followed different theoretical lines to those of Romero, it is possible to note they shared some ideas about value, in particular those that Salazar developed during the first stage of his intellectual career, between 1958 and 1964. The idea of transcendence of Romero is consistent with the thesis about value as being unreal, and which lies in the "ideal opportunity"; or open-transcendence, to a peculiar correlation, by reference to which the entity reaches its fullness. (shrink)

This book examines how ancient authors explored ideas of kingship as a political role fundamental to the construction of civic unity, the use of kingship stories to explain the past and present unity of the polis and the distinctive function or status attributed to kings in such accounts. -/- It explores the notion of kingship offered by historians such as Herodotus, as well as dramatists writing for the Athenian stage, paying particular attention to dramatic depictions of the unique capabilities of (...) Theseus in uniting the city in the figure of the ‘democratic king’. It also discusses kingship in Greek philosophy: the Socratics’ identification of an ‘art of kingship’, and Xenophon and Isocrates’ model of ‘virtue monarchy’. In turn, these allow a rereading of explorations of kingship and excellence in Plato’s later political thought, seen as a critique of these models, and also in Aristotle’s account of total kingship or pambasileia, treated here as a counterfactual device developed to explore the epistemic benefits of democracy. -/- This book offers a fascinating insight into the institution of monarchy in classical Greek thought and society, both for those working on Greek philosophy and politics, and also for students of the history of political thought. (shrink)

Based on interviews with more than 70 survivors of traumatic events, Ataria presents a trade-off model between the sense of agency—the feeling that one has a sense of control over one’s actions—and the sense of body ownership, the sense that this is my body. According to this trade-off model, there exists a reciprocal relationship between the sense of agency and sense of body ownership: by relinquishing a degree of the sense of body ownership over his body, the subject gains an (...) sense of agency. Essentially, this trade-off enables the traumatized subject to maintain a limited sense of control during acute... (shrink)

Introduction to Xenophon's work and overview of his philosophy. _Greece and Rome_ New Surveys in the Classics Vol 48.

This useful anthology comprises seventy-nine selections arranged under three headings. Part I is titled "Ancient and Classical Ideas of Space"; part II, "The Classical and Ancient Concepts of Time"; part III, "Modern Views of Space and Time and their Anticipations." According to the general editors of the Boston series, R. S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky, Capek’s choice of contents was governed by the desire to show that "parts of our view of nature greatly and mutually influence other parts, and (...) that our conception of the world keeps evolving. Thus, ideas of time intertwine with ideas of space, and both with ideas of matter and force." F. M. Cornford’s essays, "The Invention of Space" and "The Elimination of Time by Parmenides," introduce parts I and II respectively. In part I, while Descartes, Pascal, Gassendi, Newton, etc., speak for themselves, the ancients and medievals are given other mouthpieces—Duhem’s monumental Le système du monde, for Plato, Aristotle, and the medievals; C. Bailey, for Leucippus, Epicurus and Lucretius; Koyré, Höffding, Jammer, for the period from Bradwardine to William Gilbert. On the subject of time, however, both ancient and classical authors are allowed to express their opinions in their own words, with the understandable exception of the Stoics. Part III begins with the prerelativistic critique of Newton as well as the well-known Clarke-Leibniz discussion on the nature of space and time. This third part, however, is dominated largely by the implications of Einstein’s general and special relativity theories. For instance, we have Minkowski’s "Union of Space and Time." Four items, at least, are devoted to the twin-paradox. Some argue for a static, subjective, or even idealistic conception of space-time whereas positivists like Frank attack Sir James Jeans’ and other idealistic interpretations of relativity as instances of meaningless metaphysics. Part III concludes with Weyl’s objectivistic interpretation of quantum-mechanical indeterminacy. While it is difficult to find an anthology that will please all readers or teachers, this work goes far towards dealing comprehensively with the subject of space and time. As Cohen and Wartofsky note, what is distinctive of Capek’s approach within the field of philosophy of nature and its history is that "he is greatly appreciative of Bergson, James, Peirce and Whitehead" and though influenced by them, he is also critical because of the "understanding of the philosophical import that contemporary physics brings into our picture of the world." In a lengthy introduction, the editor explains his rationale for each item he includes. In general this is very helpful, but in some instances the suggested historical connections are misleading at best, if not simply false or questionable. Einstein for instance is said to have "rejected any absolute frame of reference which would be a substrate of absolutely simultaneous events... within the context of Michelson’s vain search for the absolute motion of the earth." This seems to imply—as many others have claimed—that the negative results of the ether-drift experiment influenced Einstein in formulating his relativity theory, whereas historians have pointed out that if Einstein referred to the experiment, it would have to be as a confirmation of his theory, since he did not learn of the results obtained by Michelson and Morley until after the publication of his revolutionary paper in 1905. Though there are other generalizations in the introduction which might be open to dispute, Capek’s prefatory remarks are in general helpful, and the essay collection as a whole stands on its own feet. It is valuable, if for no other reason, that a number of the selections appear in English translation for the first time.—A.B.W. (shrink)

Written over a period of twenty years, which saw the success of the author's more specialized contributions, the present treatise gathers together personal memories, clinical experiences, and efforts to superimpose without eclecticism the best insights offered by the various psychological and psychiatric trends of the century. A clear delineation of the subject matter and theoretical instruments of psychopathology emerges, and confirms the relative autonomy of this field as against clinical psychology and psychiatry. This method relies on qualitative profiles of the (...) most serious mental troubles, then establishes behavioral correlations. This requires careful analysis of the most objective manifestations of mental illness. Special attention is given to language, since language, in this case "metaphoric" language, is the best evidence for the unveiling of the predominant vital categories of the psychopath. The first section, a history of clinical analysis, is thorough and well documented, especially the sections on typology, and on the central figure of Pierre Janet. However it is the second and third sections that carry the most conviction. Section four restates some of the notions that will be permanently incorporated into psychopathology through the work of Minkowski. Notable examples of these are: spatial thought, morbid rationalism and geometrism, some problems of reality and irreality, and such psychopathological mechanisms as disjunctions and peculiar syntheses, schematization and fusions, confusion and vagueness, and, lastly, reification.—A. M. (shrink)

Some argue that if an agent intentionally participates in collective wrongdoing, that agent bears responsibility for contributing actions performed by other members of the agent’s collective. Some of these intention-state theorists distribute co-responsibility to group members by appeal to participatory intentions alone, while others require participants to instantiate additional beliefs or perform additional actions. I argue that prominent intention-state theories of co-responsibility fail to provide a compelling rationale for why participation in collective wrongdoing merits responsibility not only for one’s own (...) actions but the contributing actions of others as well. I propose that authorization agreements provide us with a suitable rationale. Authorization may be expressly given, as when one person signs a document authorizing another to advance her aims. Or, authorization may be tacitly or implicitly given by participating in and sufficiently contributing to a common plan. If a person authorizes an agent to act, it is right to blame the authorizer for what the agent does on the authorizer’s behalf. An authorization theory justifies the distribution of co-responsibility by appeal to the morally transformative power of agreement, thereby providing a compelling rationale for why a person may be to blame for contributing actions performed by other agents. (shrink)

" Les critiques de la métaphysique ne s'attachent plus aujourd'hui à la réfuter, car cela supposerait ce qui est justement en question, à savoir que ses propositions soient falsifiables. De Nietzsche à Derrida en passant par Heidegger, on s'attache plutôt à la "dépasser" ou à la "déconstruire", c'est-à-dire à la déborder ou à mettre à nu sa structure, tout en laissant subsister dans sa massivité incontournable l'événement qu'elle représente... On voudrait, dans ces quelques leçons prononcées dans le cadre de la (...) Chaire Étienne Gilson, s'interroger sur les raisons d'une telle attitude, qui n'est qu'apparemment iconoclaste, et montrer que ces raisons sont aussi anciennes que la métaphysique elle-même, donc co-essentielles à son projet. Cela ne signifie pas que la métaphysique résiste, pour les avoir anticipées, à toutes les tentatives de déconstruction, mais que le moment herméneutico-critique de la déconstruction est inhérent à sa fonction proprement métaphysique de dépassement. ". (shrink)

Seven recent monographs on the philosophical foundations of library science are discussed in light of the questions the authors ask and the assumptions that underlie the questions asked. The author finds that epistemological discussions frequently identify epistemology with philosophy of science while ontological discussions rest upon reifications, and in both cases there is an absence of attention to ethical and political questions. The author's critique links the absence of ethical and political dimensions in several of the works discussed to an (...) approach to philosophy that offers the reader answers rather than questions. (shrink)

In this critical edition of An Inquiry Into the Human Mind, Reid’s classic eighteenth-century treatise in the philosophy of mind appears with supplementary manuscripts and correspondence which, along with a crack editing job, provide the context for a rich understanding of this work. Reid’s central concern in the Inquiry was to provide an alternative to the account of the mind handed down by the Cartesian tradition. Thus the book contains a considerable amount of polemical material. A main target is the (...) representational theory of perception, which he took to be the essential though unproved foundation of Berkeley’s idealism and Hume’s skepticism. Also singled out for criticism are Locke’s view of truth and formulation of the primary/secondary quality distinction, Hume’s reduction of all mental content to impressions and ideas, and the inability of prior philosophers to distinguish sensations properly from the objects they signify. This last is where Reid believes that he has made an important advance. The inability to distinguish between sensation and body has been, according to Reid, a main source of philosophical confusion. The Aristotelian tradition missed the distinction entirely, but the moderns have only partially grasped it. Locke, for example, believed that some of our sensations, though not all, resemble objects. Reid’s contribution to the discussion is to make the distinction clearly and to recognize that none of our sensations do or could resemble bodies insofar as they are entirely different things. Here he agrees with Berkeley. Reid, however, retains material objects as a first principle. This, in conjunction with his rejection of the “theory of ideas” animating representationalism, leads Reid to formulate a realism which is neither naive nor which has any tendency to degenerate into the idealism of Berkeley or skepticism of Hume. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to resolve a contradiction arising from the combination of two theses: (1) self-forgiveness is sometimes morally justified and (2) only victims can rightly forgive. As has been pointed out by other philosophers, both are plausible but the two taken together are inconsistent. In the literature, self-forgiveness is painted as an “imperfect” form of forgiveness or as a “second best option” because it entails a violation of the victim’s prerogative to forgive. So far, this view has (...) not directly been challenged and philosophers have focused on the task of giving a plausible account of self-forgiveness while leaving the claim according to which forgiveness is among the victim’s prerogative unchallenged. I argue that self-forgiveness is largely independent from the victim’s forgiveness both morally and conceptually. (shrink)

In our study, we examine the association between hedge fund activism and a target firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and whether activists can promote socially responsible investments while upholding shareholders’ interests. Using different matched samples, we find a strong positive association between the target firm’s CSR in the year before it is targeted by activists and its probability of being targeted by a hedge fund. Classifying hedge fund activists into socially and non-socially responsible funds based on their objectives, we (...) find that both give similar level of consideration to a firm’s CSR activities when initiating campaigns. Similar to DesJardine and Durand (DesJardine and Durand, Strategic Management Journal 41:1054–1082, 2020), we demonstrate that hedge funds have, on average, a negative impact on target firms’ CSR in the years following the initial investments. Complementary to DesJardine and Durand (DesJardine and Durand, Strategic Management Journal 41:1054–1082, 2020), we compare the two types of hedge funds and find an asymmetric effect of the hedge funds’ campaigns. Socially responsible hedge fund campaigns are associated with a large _increase_ in their target’s CSR, whereas non-socially responsible hedge funds _decrease_ this measure in their target. Finally, we find that target firms exhibit a long-term improvement in future stock returns and profitability. These findings provide evidence that certain types of activists, such as socially responsible funds, promote both _stakeholder_ and _shareholders’_ long-term interests. (shrink)

In 1952, Waldemar Gurian, founding editor of The Review of Politics, commissioned Eric Voegelin, then a professor of political science at Louisiana State University, to review Hannah Arendt’s recently published The Origins of Totalitarianism . She was given the right to reply; Voegelin would furnish a concluding note. Preceding this dialogue, Voegelin wrote a letter to Arendt anticipating aspects of his review; she responded in kind. Arendt’s letter to Voegelin on totalitarianism, written in German, has never appeared in print before. (...) She wrote two drafts of it, the first and longest being the more interesting. It contained an early reference to her thinking about the relationship among plurality, politics, and philosophy. It also invoked her notion of the compelling “logic” of totalitarian ideology. But this was not the letter Voegelin received. Because of this, he misunderstood significant parts of her argument. Below, the two versions of Arendt’s letter are translated. They are prefaced by a translation of Voegelin’s initial message to Arendt. An introduction compares Arendt’s letters, offers context, and provides a snapshot of Arendt’s and Voegelin’s perceptions of each other. Their views of political religion and human nature are also highlighted. Keyed to Arendt and Voegelin’s letters are pertinent aspects of the debate in The Review of Politics that followed their epistolary exchange. (shrink)

Biologists and philosophers of science have recently called for an extension of evolutionary theory. This so-called ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’ seeks to integrate developmental processes, extra-genetic forms of inheritance, and niche construction into evolutionary theory in a central way. While there is often agreement in evolutionary biology over the existence of these phenomena, their explanatory relevance is questioned. Advocates of EES posit that their perspective offers better explanations than those provided by ‘standard evolutionary theory’. Still, why this would be the case (...) is unclear. Usually, such claims assume that EES’s superior explanatory status arises from the pluralist structure of EES, its different problem agenda, and a growing body of evidence for the evolutionary relevance of developmental phenomena. However, what is usually neglected in this debate is a discussion of what the explanatory standards of EES actually are, and how they differ from prevailing standards in SET. In other words, what is considered to be a good explanation in EES versus SET? To answer this question, we present a theoretical framework that evaluates the explanatory power of different evolutionary explanations of the same phenomena. This account is able to identify criteria for why and when evolutionary explanations of EES are better than those of SET. Such evaluations will enable evolutionary biology to find potential grounds for theoretical integration. (shrink)

Anyone wearing rose-tinted glasses might be forgiven if s/he comes to the conclusion that the world out there is rosier than it actually is. With his Fish Story, Sir Arthur Eddington warned us how analogous illusions might have happened in our models of the physical world. His allegory describes how observer characteristics can be inadvertently assigned to the systems being observed. If Eddington's conjecture is applicable, the most fundamental properties of nature will turn out to be the construction rules of (...) the observer who measures nature. Since no one exactly knows how the brain works and because it is the final measuring instrument that collapses the wave function at the end of von Neumann's measurement chain, it is likely that observer characteristics have been falsely attributed to physical reality and our theories of it. These errors may prevent us from understanding consciousness because they mask the actual operations of the psyche. Starting with Velmans' model of consciousness I analyse the role of cognitive models in the development of science. I then model how both the set-up of experiments and the interpretation of resulting data could be influenced to arrive at erroneous theories. Using examples I show how potential errors, due to our incomplete understanding of the conscious process, have crept into physics. These need to be corrected if we are to evolve a concept of physical reality that includes conscious experiences. (shrink)

Some recent theories of gerunds account for their hybrid properties by saying that the gerund is both a noun and a verb simultaneously. Such theories are inconsistent with the Reference-Predication Constraint (RPC), a cornerstone of Baker’s (2003) theory of lexical categories. In contrast, I defend the traditional idea that gerunds are fusions of a true verb and a syntactically distinct nominal Infl. Moreover, I give new evidence in favor of the RPC, showing how it explains the fact that nominal gerunds (...) never show subject agreement in Mapudungun, and the fact that gerunds with verb-final word order have surprising agreement properties in Lokaa. Keywords: gerunds, lexical categories, nouns, verbs, Mapudungun, Lokaa.. (shrink)

Albert the Great does not regard the creation of the world as philosophically demonstrable. In this article, it is shown why this is so: because Albert regards the temporal beginning of the world as essential to the meaning of creation, and because he holds that it is impossible to demonstrate the temporal beginning of the world, he concludes that the creation of the world is philosophically indemonstrable. Albert insists that creation must imply a temporal beginning because he thinks that temporal (...) duration can only be created if it is created at a first instant. Albert’s position necessitates a sharp distinction between creation and conservation. Particular attention is given to Albert’s De causis et processu universitatis and Summa theologiae. (shrink)

As automobile manufacturers have begun to design, engineer, and test autonomous driving systems of the future, brain imaging with functional near-infrared spectroscopy can provide unique insights about cognitive processes associated with evolving levels of autonomy implemented in the automobile. Modern fNIRS devices provide a portable, relatively affordable, and robust form of functional neuroimaging that allows researchers to investigate brain function in real-world environments. The trend toward “naturalistic neuroscience” is evident in the growing number of studies that leverage the methodological flexibility (...) of fNIRS, and in doing so, significantly expand the scope of cognitive function that is accessible to observation via functional brain imaging. While more than a decade’s worth of study in this field of fNIRS driving research has led to many interesting findings, the number of studies applying fNIRS during autonomous modes of operation is limited. To support future research that directly addresses this lack in autonomous driving research with fNIRS, we argue that a cogent distillation of the methods used to date will help facilitate and streamline this research of tomorrow. To that end, here we provide a methodological review of the existing fNIRS driving research, with the overarching goal of highlighting the current diversity in methodological approaches. We argue that standardization of these approaches will facilitate greater overlap of methods by researchers from all disciplines, which will, in-turn, allow for meta-analysis of future results. We conclude by providing recommendations for advancing the use of such fNIRS technology in furthering understanding the adoption of safe autonomous vehicle technology. (shrink)

By discussing a selection of socially engaged street artworks from the Frankfurt-based project ‘Under Art Construction’, this essay sheds light on street art’s possibilities as a form of resistance against the power of globalizing finance. The author argues that through the use of carnivalesque strategies of irony and appropriation, street art can challenge the pretense of rationality of recent policies of austerity in the eurozone. Such a challenge exposes the contingency of spending cut programs. He finally suggests that, in debunking (...) the myth of economic rationality, street art can change people’s experience of finance, while opening up a space for imagining alternative economic scenarios. (shrink)

In this essay I will explore a mode of reading I call “reading for the text.” A text is what we make of a work when reading it: roughly, a meaningful, well-structured whole with a beginning and an end. But as a mode of reading, textuality allows for constant activity, a continual shaping nd reshaping of sign-events. I will argue that reading for a sense of textuality, and for the wholeness this simple textuality entails, does not necessarily preclude awareness of (...) a fundamental lack of unity, while reading for the effect of the real, in spite of the promotion of the “realistic detail,” tends to do so. The two modes of reading are fundamentally different; yet the conflict between them is not necessarily obvious, nor should such conflict be avoided, ignored, or smoothed out.The goal of this confrontation is not to promote textual reading at the expense of realistic reading. It is the conflict between them I wish to promote. The two modes of reading can be brought to bear on the same work, although they are incompatible. As a result, activating both modes is in itself a critical endeavor: their very combination helps one to avoid the unifying fallacy. Textual and realist readings are a problematic and thereby productive combination. Mieke Bal is professor of comparative literature and Susan B. Anthony Professor of women’s studies at the University of Rochester. The author of Death and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges, her forthcoming book is Reading “Rembrandt”: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition. (shrink)

Now that the excitement created by the historicist turn in philosophy of science has cooled down, the particular questions raised by this turn do not command anymore the almost exclusive attention of practitioners in the field. Philosophers of science feel freer to embark on such different projects as, for example, an effort to reexamine—on the basis of the lessons taught and of the experience gained—the issues which dominated the scene before the historicist movement erupted. Fred Wilson’s book on the deductive-nomological (...) model of explanation is a case in point. (shrink)

In Strangers in Our Midst, David Miller develops a philosophical position that is intended to guide the complex decisions that liberal democratic states face regarding immigration policy. While it is not likely that Miller’s arguments will convince anyone who is principally committed to the kind of open borders that truly enable the free movement of people across them, Miller has much to offer to those who are either (a) trying to make sense of the position of people who object to (...) unrestricted migration or (b) are searching for a principled yet more restrictive position that to the extent possible does justice to as many of the people who have stakes in immigration policy, including not only potential immigrants, refugees, as well as economic migrants, but also the people who already live in and are attached to their nations and states. Miller also attempts to do justice to states in their relations with each other. (shrink)

The paper outlines the historical development of question about ambiguous and mysterious human nature, in particular considering the reasons and conditions for the founding of modern philosophical anthropology. Subsequently, it brings an overview of the conceptual beginnings and directions of anthropological research in Croatia. The focus is on the following questions: When did the investigations begin in the field of philosophical anthropology, in what kind of thinking environments were they shaped and what scientific achievements were reached? The presentation brings to (...) light the cognition that philosophical anthropology in Croatia got its first contours and valuable contributions to the very beginning of the contemporary renewal of this discipline, shortly after its phenomenological and scientific revivals in the ventures of Scheler and Plessner. The development of this research branch is, according to Hans Lankʼs model, divided into four main conceptual orientations. The anthropology from above shows the creative contributions of Stjepan Zimmermann, Vilim Keilbach, Rajmund Kupareo, Miljenko Belić, Ante Kusić, Josip Ćurić, Hrvoje Lasić and Ivan Koprek. The anthropology from below is illustrated by the reference to the research by Vera Ehrlich-Stein, Rudi Supek, the Institute of Anthropology, Pavao Rudan and Darko Polšek. For the anthropology from culture, the philosophical achievements of Pavao Vuk-Pavlović, Vladimir Filipović, Vjekoslav Mikecin, Esad Ćimić, Nikola Skledar, Branka Brujić, Milan Galović and Mihaela Girardi-Karšulin were delineated. Under the anthropology from history, the works of Predrag Vranicki, Milan Kangrga, Vanja Sutlić, Gaja Petrović, Hotimir Burger, Mislava Kukoč and Raul Raunić are outlined. The conclusion summarises four insights. 1. Philosophical anthropology is an under-researched and not enough appreciated field, which represents one of the most fertile currents of thought in the 20th century. 2. Creative contributions are presented in all four major orientations. 3. In the context of anthropological research, lively dialogue and a fruitful meeting of different worldviews were realised. 4. The beginnings of the development of the discipline should be moved earlier in history than previously considered, from the 1950s and 1960s to the early 1930s. The last insight points to the need for further exploration of the perceived, and so far largely neglected, continuity of anthropological themes and related ideas in the history of recent philosophy in Croatia. (shrink)

These free-wheeling, often exhilarating dialogues—which grew out of the acclaimed Carnegie Hall Talks—are an exchange between two of the most prominent figures in contemporary culture: Daniel Barenboim, internationally renowned conductor and pianist, and Edward W. Said, eminent literary critic and impassioned commentator on the Middle East. Barenboim is an Argentinian-Israeli and Said a Palestinian-American; they are also close friends. As they range across music, literature, and society, they open up many fields of inquiry: the importance of a sense of place; (...) music as a defiance of silence; the legacies of artists from Mozart and Beethoven to Dickens and Adorno; Wagner’s anti-Semitism; and the need for “artistic solutions” to the predicament of the Middle East—something they both witnessed when they brought young Arab and Israeli musicians together. Erudite, intimate, thoughtful and spontaneous, Parallels and Paradoxes is a virtuosic collaboration. (shrink)

Some have questioned why religion should be singled out for special treatment in our legal instruments, such as the US Constitution, Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Why, for example, do these documents afford protection to citizens who engage in an activity religiously, while not affording the same protection for citizens who engage in what appears to be the same activity non-religiously? To answer this question, the author explains why religion, as with other associations and practices, has been justly singled out. (...) However, he goes on to show how so-called non-religious beliefs and practices can be afforded the same protection under the law without diminishing the historical reason for religion’s specialness: the two sovereigns account. (shrink)

In the preface to the 1853 first edition of his poems, Matthew Arnold claimed that it was no longer possible to be interested in the quarrel staged in Antigone. He found the conflict between a sister’s duty to bury her brother and a king’s insistence on obedience to the laws of the state passé.1 Living in an age in which souls mattered more than bodies, and in a time when mass graves filled with murdered and mutilated bodies were not part (...) of the landscape, it was possible to find this fuss over an unburied, rotting body a bit overdone. Not living in an age in which dehumanization took the form of destroying bodily integrity, he could miss the fact that the stakes of the play concerned the.. (shrink)

This is the third of the four essays in Part II of the book on liberalism and traditionalist education; all four are by authors who would like to find ways for the liberal state to honour the self-definitions of traditional cultures and to find ways of avoiding a confrontation with differences. David Blacker’s essay on civic friendship and democratic education develops a Rawlsian conception of civic friendship, the scaffolding of which is necessarily provided by the wide range of comprehensive conceptions (...) of the good that characterize democratic societies. Thus, Blacker argues, a democratic civic education ‘allows citizens to embrace democracy on their own terms, drawing support for democracy’s requisite political conceptions from the perspectives of citizens’ many different secular and/or religious comprehensive doctrines’. For Blacker, a conception of civic friendship that is friendly to citizens’ multiple comprehensive doctrines also entails a substantial lowering of the ‘wall of separation’ between church and state so that courts might be more willing than they currently are to allow the use of state funds to support religious groups, in particular where these groups perform functions within public schools that converge with public interests. The essay concludes by proposing and defending two American educational policy initiatives that are consistent with Blacker’s politically liberal ideal of civic friendship – the revival of a ‘school stamps’ plan first proposed in the 1970s, and a modified version of a ‘clergy in the schools’ programme recently struck down by a federal circuit court in Texas. (shrink)

The minister's task in Johannine perspective is neither to entice people into accepting the gospel nor to consummate God's new creation; the ministerial vocation is to point to Christ and to the God of limitless love who sent his Son to save this world.

David Hume is best known for his work on political philosophy. However, he wrote a series of essays on money, population and international trade which must rank among the major economic writings of the 18th century. Certainly they influenced Adam Smith and have a sparkling quality that still makes them worth reading today. His statement of the so-called 'specie-flow mechanism' constituted his answer to the mercantilist concern with the maintenance of a chronic surplus in the balance of payments. He also (...) put forward what is now known as the 'theory of creeping inflation' and advocated the notion that political freedom flows from economic freedom. James Steuart was a British mercantilist, the last in a long line stretching back to the 16th century. He advocated the entire armoury of mercantilist policies: the regulation of foreign trade to induce an inflow of gold, the promotion of industry by inducing cheap raw material imports, protective duties on imported manufactured goods, encouragement of exports, particularly finished goods because they are labour-intensive, control of the size of population by emigration and immigration to keep wages low, all capped by a denial of Hume's argument that an inflow of gold will only raise prices and thus drive gold abroad. (shrink)