This volume argues that Bonhoeffer's early work, particularly his Christocentric anthropology, grounds his later expressed commitments to responsibility and faithfulness in a ""world come of age."" Ellison suggests, in fact, that a concern for otherness permeates all of Bonhoeffer's work: a Christian self-defined by its orientation towards otherness.

The contest between “Lockeian liberalism” and “classical republicanism” as explanatory frameworks for the intellectual history of the American Revolution, and therefore of the present-day United States, has been one of the longest running and most distinguished in recent U.S. historiography. It also has major implications for the history of political thought in the North Atlantic Anglophone world more widely. Yet this debate was merely suspended when it was held to have ended in an ill-defined compromise. Although some U.S. historians expressed (...) doubts and qualifications, attention in U.S. historiography moved on to other themes while leaving the initial problem unsolved. This article reopens the question; it suggests that a historicization of both these two categories is now both possible and necessary, and that their supersession will advance understanding of the Revolution. It seeks to help solve this problem by the same means that the debate began: that is, by re-establishing a link between U.S. and U.K. historiographies. (shrink)

Much ink has been spilt in consideration of the once pervasive reliance on military metaphors to depict the relationships between science and religion in the nineteenth century. This has resulted in historically sensitive treatments of secularization; and the realization that the relationship between science and religion was not a bloody war between intellectual nation states, but a protracted divorce of former partners. Moreover, historians of science have been encouraged to throw off the yoke of the internalism–externalism debate, and to explore (...) the cultural boundaries that impinged upon practitioners of a natural knowledge of the world. Within the historiography of nineteenth-century science, this has resulted in many new perspectives on science and natural knowledge in relation to cultural control and authority. (shrink)

J.C.D. Clark demythologizes the history of Thomas Paine, understanding the impact he has had on modern human rights, democracy, and internationalism.

"Written in clear language, this book offers a seasoned historian's effective response to postmodernism's challenge to culture and history.

This paper was motivated by what we see as an inconsistency between a 1988 paper by Brennan and Buchanan expressing concern that public choice might erode public confidence in government and previous work by Buchanan, in particular Buchanan. The one advantage we saw with the 1988 paper was that it, all by itself, is all one needs to dismiss MacLean’s depiction of Buchanan as an ideologically rigid extremist. We also found the same inconsistency occurring simultaneously in Buchanan’s writing in 1979. (...) Yet, based on Wagner, we conclude that such inconsistencies may reflect a strength in Buchanan’s scholarship. (shrink)

This article discusses a case study that explored the potential of nonfiction graphic novels to develop pre-service teachers’ understanding of agency in a social studies methods course. White pre-service teachers were aske'd to read one graphic novel and then add frames, re-narrate frames, and reflect on their decisions. The positionalities of researchers, who are White males, and participants were part of our analysis. The researchers found that pre-service teachers made revisions to the graphic novels to change the historical actors’ decisions: (...) within the constraints of the historical situation's circumstances; to better fit their own ethical framework; and to critique the author's interpretation of the historical event and the amount of agency assigned to certain historical actors. We also reported findings related to shifts in understanding related to positionality. The pre-service teachers’ revisions demonstrated their understanding of historical actors’ ability to make choices; however, for most pre-service teachers those decisions were limited by, and insignificant in comparison to, the constraints of societal structures. Most pre-service teachers viewed these structures as operating outside of the realm of ethics that they used to articulate and identify agency, and thus, these structures were not responsive to changes in individual or collective agency. Implications are provided for social studies teacher educators. (shrink)

Most, perhaps all, states have “myths of origin”: those semi-historical, semi-propagandistic accounts of their founding and (what are termed) essential purposes. There is nothing unusual in the Uni...

In 1924, Virginia Woolf wrote a short story based upon the life of Eleanor Ormerod. A wealthy spinster, Ormerod achieved notoriety in late nineteenth-century Britain as an economic entomologist. In 1904, Nature compared her to Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville. In terms of recent scholarship devoted to the history of women in science, Ormerod's career differed markedly from that of her two predecessors. The emotional or intellectual support of a brother, husband, father, or male family relation made no considerable contribution (...) to her commitment to the study of entomology. Furthermore, her life as an independent spinster offered no positive proof for Francis Power Cobbe's dictum: as she aged, Eleanor Ormerod showed no tendency to become a ‘women's rights woman’. She publicly accepted or internalized the dominant, masculine ideology of science; and by contemporary standards, she achieved success. (shrink)

Conventional accounts of the development of the Enlightenment in the English-speaking world posit an evolution. Over time, it is argued, dominant ideas of the “divine attributes,” the characteristics of the First Person of the Trinity, moved from Calvinist images of God as a stern avenger to Latitudinarian reliance on God as an indulgent parent and Deist understandings of God as a First Cause, increasingly synonymous with Nature. This chapter argues that this view is mistaken. All the chief ways of conceiving (...) God had long been available; and powerful and sustained debates in the long eighteenth century about God’s nature followed no single direction. The classic model of the Enlightenment as the advance of secularization is untenable. (shrink)

‘Mental processes are brain processes’ is not a logically necessary truth, but nevertheless certain logical conditions must be fulfilled if it is to be a candidate for the role of contingent truth. Not just anything can, conceivably, be contingently identical with anything else: a play cannot be identical with its copies, nor beauty with a beautiful object. The propagation of light may be electromagnetic radiation, but it cannot conceivably be the tri-section of a right-angle. In this paper I shall be (...) concerned with the general question of whether there are any logical barriers to mind-body identification, and I shall approach this via the more particular question of whether the mental processes of persons can conceivably be identical with the physiological processes of brains. It is my contention that identity theorists, by concentrating their attentions upon what were once called the “lower” parts of the soul rather than upon “higher” parts which are more typical of human persons, have paved a logical way for themselves which is artificially straight. (shrink)

This dissertation seeks to contribute to research in the philosophy of social science. The study focuses upon select epistemological and ontological aspects of Hannah Arendt’s work from which methodological implications are drawn pertaining to sociology. Arendt, although critical of the sociology of her time, has become increasingly cited and influential for emerging sociological research and this study seeks to contribute to this by focusing upon the problem of novelty. The aim is to explore the philosophical and methodological implications of novelty (...) for social science by working through three case studies that are theoretically pivotal for social science—action, the ‘social’, and the self—in terms of novelty as expressed in Arendt’s writing. Arendt is critical of methodology and epistemology, aiming to draw her readers to ontological concerns outlined from her preoccupation with the 'world' and social reality. In this aim, Arendt seeks to distance herself from social sciences that she claims ignore human novelty in favour of reading social regularities, tendencies and similarities. Despite her disdain for method, Arendt suggests a anti-methodological 'method' (outlined in an overlooked footnote) for keeping trained upon and for dealing with novel, anomalous events. In the seed of this method lies a unique opportunity for social science to reassess and extend its methods, addressing this oversight and in so doing bring to light the novel social object as a legitimate subject of social research. (shrink)

Alternatives to convenience sampling (CS) are needed for HIV/STI surveillance of most-at-risk populations in Latin America. We compared CS, time space sampling (TSS), and respondent driven sampling (RDS) for recruitment of men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women (TW) in Lima, Peru. During concurrent 60-day periods from June-August, 2011, we recruited MSM/TW for epidemiologic surveillance using CS, TSS, and RDS. A total of 748 participants were recruited through CS, 233 through TSS, and 127 through RDS. The TSS (...) sample included the largest proportion of TW (30.7 %) and the lowest percentage of subjects who had previously participated in HIV/STI research (14.9 %). The prevalence of newly diagnosed HIV infection, according to participants' self-reported previous HIV diagnosis, was highest among TSS recruits (17.9 %) compared with RDS (12.6 %) and CS (10.2 %). TSS identified diverse populations of MSM/TW with higher prevalences of HIV/STIs not accessed by other methods. (shrink)

In this paper I shall deal with a new form of Optimism. Rationalists once believed that it was mistaken to suppose that a world without God is a meaningless one; material progress along with the improvement of men and their institutions, indefinitely protracted, ensured that life was meaningful. More recently it has become fashionable to claim that the pessimist, the cosmic mourner, is not mistaken at all, but rather incoherent. It is not that there is no answer to his question (...) but rather that no sensible question has been asked—at least in the terms in which he poses it. The latter qualification is necessary, for no one is denying that people's lives may either possess or lack meaning. Rather what is being denied is that life as a whole, tout court and without limitation, can be said either to have or not to have sense. One cannot, it is argued, regret what could not, logically, be otherwise, and since nothing could possibly count as endowing the cosmos as a whole with meaning it is not logically possible for the cosmos as a whole to have, or not to have, meaning. The regret evinced by the pessimist becomes, therefore, a pseudo-regret. ‘… it is perverse writes Ayer, ‘to see tragedy in what could not conceivably be otherwise.’ Just as a pseudo-problem is one for which there could, logically, be no solution, so a pseudo-regret is one in which there can be no assuagement of the regretted situation. None of this is to deny, of course, that a man can experience a state of mind which might be described as ‘cosmic anguish’, but such an experience has no cognitive value: it is a state of mind, no doubt painful for the possessor, which tells us nothing about the world beyond it. That people have confused this state of mind with a judgement about the world is understandable, but mistaken. (shrink)

This paper considers prevailing environmental policy in the United States with the emphasis on liberty, markets, utilizing information, entrepreneurial discovery, and the economic analysis of political decisions. The general discussion is illustrated by the concern over global warming and policies for addressing this concern. The political incentives to confront environmental problems directly with mandates, restrictions, and subsidies ignore the power of liberty and market incentives to solve problems by fostering an impressive network of information transfer, increasing innovation, and expanding prosperity. (...) Indeed, most environmental policies systematically suppress liberty, censor the communication of information, and retard innovation and prosperity, with the result that they provide less environmental quality at greater cost than is possible. While such flawed policies might be justified in cases where pollution problems pose clear, serious, and immediate threats, we argue this is not true of global warming, and the most effective response to concerns over carbon emissions may be limiting the discretionary power of government to take direct action and rely on the indirect effects of liberty and market incentives to move us beyond the petroleum age more quickly and efficiently than will result from the direct action of government. (shrink)

Experience has always been a hallmark of activist work; my work in AIDS activism began with my family’s role as caretakers for two children whose parents died of HIV-related complications. Previously, my scholarly work critiqued political and medical establishments and their policies surrounding HIV/AIDS. At the NEH institute, I interacted with the medical world, shadowing nurses and doctors. Through this experience, I discovered the importance of interactivity as a crucial element of the critically engaged AIDS activist experience, creating a more (...) thorough understanding of the medical establishment and a more humanized portrait of hospitals and their staff. (shrink)