All modern critics have read verses 128–36 of Pseudo-Scymnus’ iambic Periodos to Nicomedes (c.133–110/109 b.c.e.) as a description of the personal autopsies of the author. However, close analysis of both the literary dynamics of the poem and the syntax of the lacunose text that precedes this passage shows that this cannot be the case. This article proposes that Timaeus of Tauromenium (c.350–260 b.c.e.) is a superior candidate for the referent of these lines, and offers a coherent approach to emending the (...) manifestly corrupt text. This reinterpretation makes better sense of the extant text of the Periodos, and allows these verses to be read as a second-century witness to Timaeus’ autoptic prowess. (shrink)

Distinguished contributors take up eminent scholar Daniel R. Schwarz’s reading of modern fiction and poetry as mediating between human desire and human action. The essayists follow Schwarz’s advice, “always the text, always historicize,” thus making this book relevant to current debates about the relationships between literature, ethics, aesthetics, and historical contexts.

How important is atheism for Jewish history and Jews for the history of atheism? Modern Jewish histories have tended to focus on Jewish secularization rather than atheism, and historical surveys of atheism in the West have tended to neglect the Jewish experience which is subsumed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is possible to make the case that the secularization narrative privileges social change over Jewish intellectual engagement with non-belief, and that just as Jewish and Christian conceptions of theism differ, so (...) do their atheisms. Jewish historical attitudes towards atheism are complicated and have shifted over time. Here, skeptical tendencies, that is, attitudes and ideas that would be associated later with atheism, will be considered alongside claims about atheism per se. (shrink)

In all facets of our lives, humans construct meaning to understand their place in the world and their relationships to one another and to broader environments. Within this semantic web, words, stor...

From Nietzsche's early writings to those marking the end of his intellectual life, the dynamics of what he called "physiology" permeate virtually every facet of his philosophical enterprise. In the following investigation, these dynamics are explored as an interpretive key to not only the dominant themes but also the philosophical motive underlying Nietzsche's philosophy. This motive is described in terms of his diagnosis and attempted cure for the disease of nihilism. In this we maintain that Nietzsche's foremost philosophical task is (...) that of a cultural physician. ;In pursuit of this theme, Nietzsche's "clinical standpoint" is explored and applied with regard to Socrates and Jesus Christ as two case studies in decadence. These two "cases" are a simultaneous physiological investigation into both the ancient Greek and Hebrew cultures. ;This investigation concludes with a detailed analysis of the physiological significance of the Revaluation of all Values, Eternal Recurrence, the Overman and Dionysus as integral to curing the sickness of nihilism. (shrink)

Corporate Strategy has emerged as a central metaphor for private-sector enterprise. Given inherent imperfections in markets, one important question to consider is how well the practice of Corporate Strategy contributes to social welfare. An account of the implicit morality of free markets is developed as a standard against which two particular, second best solutions to market imperfections — namely, American federal antitrust policy and Corporate Strategy — are compared. Corporate Strategy is subsequently evaluated in terms of the fundamental principles of (...) Rawls' theory of justice. In both analyses, Corporate Strategy is found to depart significantly and systematically from the standards of social justice. An alternative principle, grounded in the concept of duty, is introduced as a means for reconceptualizing Corporate Strategy. (shrink)

Why has comedy become one of our most abiding ethical preoccupations as well as a dominant mode of political critique? It is suggested that comedy appeals to contemporary persons because it provides an apt social-aesthetic form through which to face up to living with others at a time when it is hard to bear others or otherness. The article outlines an ethics of modern individuality by developing a theory of comedy as more about building social bonds and finding out what (...) could be shared knowledge and experience than the toppling of dominant modes of thought or repudiating our mutuality with others. Drawing on Georg Simmel’s ‘The Law of the Individual’, the article develops a Simmelian reading of Freud’s Jokes to argue that comedy is one solution to resolving our mutual un-alikeness by way of forging knotted paths toward recognising how we could be alike. (shrink)

Deaths of Despair (DoD), or mortality resulting from suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related liver disease, have been rising steadily in the United States over the last several decades. In 2020, a record 186,763 annual despair-related deaths were documented, contributing to the longest sustained decline in US life expectancy since 1915–1918. This forum feature considers how health humanities disciplines might fruitfully engage with this era-defining public health catastrophe and help society better understand and respond to the crisis.

This commentary on Martin Eger's “A Tale of Two Controversies” focuses on three criticisms: first, the shifting status of the claims of creationism in the article; second, new developments in moral philosophy which run counter to Eger's discussion; and third, the inadequate treatment of pedagogical and curricular principles.

This chapter contains sections titled: I. II. III. IV. V. VI.

Epidemiology is a science of disease which specifies rates . Evolution is a science of life which specifies changes . ‘Evolutionary Epidemiology’ is a synthesis of these two sciences which combines the empirical power of classical methods in genetical epidemiology with the interpretive capacities of neo-darwinian evolutionary genetics. In particular, prevalence rates of genetical diseases are important data points when reformulated for the purpose of analysis in terms of their evolutionary frequencies. Traits which exceedprevalences beyond the rates of mutation or (...) evidence unusualrange of phenotypic reaction are of special interest. This is because traits which did not confer advantages in the environment of evolutionary adaptation cannot accede, through natural selection, to anything but low rates of genomic prevalence.Evolutionary epidemiology is, in all of medicine, of particular promise in ongoing efforts to better understand psychopathology. Many complexities of phenotypic adjustment arise when new developmental demands are placed on an ‘old’ genome. The new and complex biosocial ecology of human mass society now evokes different phenotypes than those in the prehistorical ecology to which the genome is structurally and functionally better adapted. Some of these new phenotypes are darwinian failures. In this paper, the theoretical implications of evolutionary epidemiology are extended and some tentative points of clinical application are offered. (shrink)

This volume offers a set of concise and accessible introductions to the seminal figures in the historical development of the just war tradition. In what, if any, circumstances are political communities justified in going to war? And what limits should apply to the conduct of any such war? The just war tradition is a body of thought that helps us think through these very questions. Its core ideas have been subject to fierce debate for over 2,000 years. Yet they continue (...) to play a prominent role in how political and military leaders address the challenges posed by the use of force in international society. Until now there has been no text that offers concise and accessible introductions to the key figures associated with the tradition. Stepping into this breach, Just War Thinkers provides a set of clear but detailed essays by leading experts on nineteen seminal thinkers, from Cicero to Jeff McMahan. This volume challenges the reader to think about how traditions are constituted--who is included and excluded, and how that is determined--and how they serve to enable, constrain, and indeed channel subsequent thought, debate, and exchange. This book will be of much interest to students of just war tradition and theory, ethics and war, philosophy, security studies and IR. (shrink)

This book excavates the political thought embedded in Heidegger’s philosophy. Though keenly aware of the controversy over Heidegger’s National Socialism, Ward highlights the political ramifications of Heidegger’s thought as opposed to entering the polarized debate concerning the “Heidegger Case.” Chapter 1 accesses Heidegger’s political thought via the distinction Heidegger made between science and philosophy. This leads to Heidegger’s view that modern “culture,” is basically “... superficial and merely contemporary. ‘Liberalism’ will be its political embodiment”. Chapter 2 pursues these themes with (...) special emphasis on Heidegger’s opposition to any naturalistic or biological interpretation of human beings, and this in contrast with the racism of National Socialism. The third chapter describes how, for Heidegger, the rank of a people can be determined in terms of how that people comes to terms with the question of Being. Those who have not fallen away from this question still stand at the highest rank, while those who have are spiralling into decline. As in chapter 2, Nietzsche looms large in this chapter, and one gets the distinct impression here that Heidegger has taken up the Nietzschean project of restoring an order of rank sans physiologie. In chapter 4, Ward articulates “the decisive difference between Heidegger’s National Socialism and that of the National Socialists themselves”. This difference is explored through Heidegger’s interpretation of work—both physical and intellectual—as a means to understanding Heidegger’s critique of Marxism, the role of the university, and, therewith, the primarily philosophical foundation of the sciences within the spiritual mission of the German people. (shrink)

A new proof of the impossibility of a universal quantum-classical dynamics is given. It has at least two consequences. The standard paradigm “quantum system is measured by a classical apparatus” is untenable, while a quantum matter can be consistently coupled only with a quantum gravity.

The papers by Mele, Randels, and Schrag call attention to the proper work that the concept of loyalty can perform. All threeauthors argue that loyalty is not taken seriously enough in modern corporations. As Mele, Randels, and Schrag independently ascribespecial status to the concept of loyalty, their analyses converge along numerous conceptual margins. Along these margins, a singularconception of loyalty comes into focus. Along these margins, we can see Simultaneously why each author assigns extraordinary status to loyalty and why, ironically, (...) each turns the special concept of loyalty over to the service of conventional management thinking. Mele,Randels, and Schrag leave it for us to ponder whether this ironic twist is unique to the concept of loyalty. (shrink)

Integrating concepts of maintenance and of origins is essential to explaining biological diversity. The unified theory of evolution attempts to find a common theme linking production rules inherent in biological systems, explaining the origin of biological order as a manifestation of the flow of energy and the flow of information on various spatial and temporal scales, with the recognition that natural selection is an evolutionarily relevant process. Biological systems persist in space and time by transfor ming energy from one state (...) to another in a manner that generates structures which allows the system to continue to persist. Two classes of energetic transformations allow this; heat-generating transformations, resulting in a net loss of energy from the system, and conservative transformations, changing unusable energy into states that can be stored and used subsequently. All conservative transformations in biological systems are coupled with heat-generating transformations; hence, inherent biological production, or genealogical proesses, is positively entropic. There is a self-organizing phenomenology common to genealogical phenomena, which imparts an arrow of time to biological systems. Natural selection, which by itself is time-reversible, contributes to the organization of the self-organized genealogical trajectories. The interplay of genealogical (diversity-promoting) and selective (diversity-limiting) processes produces biological order to which the primary contribution is genealogical history. Dynamic changes occuring on times scales shorter than speciation rates are microevolutionary; those occuring on time scales longer than speciation rates are macroevolutionary. Macroevolutionary processes are neither redicible to, nor autonomous from, microevolutionary processes. (shrink)

George Rupp's Beyond Existentialism and Zen, in its typological-structural analysis and model of religious pluralism, proffers an alternative to the dominant Kantian models (e.g., by John Hicks and Sarvepalli Radhakrish nan). The question for Rupp is not which religion is true and how to decide that issue-answered in the Kantian approach in terms of an unknowable Ding an sich that all religions, albeit imperfectly, try to approximate or conceptualize (i.e., God or the Transcendent)-but rather how do religions represent, at least (...) in principle, a structural possibility for salvation or human flourishing, however different and incompatible their distinct prima facie truth claims might be. Although the potential for a radically relativistic model is implicit in Rupp's approach, it is argued here that his Hegelian assumptions lead him to accept relativism only in a provisional ("critical") way; for Rupp, under ideal epistemic conditions (e.g., the Peircian "end of inquiry"), one final conceptualization of ultimate reality will emerge as absolute truth. In the final part of this essay a version of the relativistic model implicit in Rupp's approach is defended against both the Kantian model of Hicks et al. and Rupp's Hegelian-Peircian model, which, it is argued, is incompatible certainly with the spirit of his own typological-structural analysis, if not with the letter. In challenging what Rupp calls the truth of Zen, it is further argued that not only is more than one salvific structural possibility available to us through the different world religions but also that realizing these possibilities is principally a human responsibility, and that the cosmos is quite indifferent to and compatible with several possibilities, from the most destructive to the most conducive to human well being and flourishing. (shrink)

La imagen del jorobado que aparece aquí y allá en el corpus benjaminiano, una imagen que el mismo Benjamin califica como el prototipo de la distorsión es también el prototipo del sujeto necesitado de perdón. Una lectura crítica de los lugares en los que Benjamin refiere a esta “imagen distorsionada” ofrece la posibilidad de levantar una teoría del perdón que no reduce el perdón a una forma jurídica, a una particular dinámica emocional, o a un intercambio de condiciones morales, sino (...) que la dota además de una clara dimensión corporal que está simplemente ausente en la mayoría de las consideraciones a propósito del perdón desarrolladas en el siglo XX. (shrink)

Why would businesses advocate for a tax increase? They may take such a position, this article argues, when tax cuts threaten their long-term economic interests. In 2012, Kansas eliminated taxes on many business owners but destabilized the economy and exposed small business to the harshness of market forces. Small businesses rely more on state services than large businesses and are more situated in local communities. The literature suggests two main reasons for small businesses’ “enlightened self-interest” perspective. First, many benefited only (...) marginally from the tax cuts. Second, the savings were offset by fiscal damage to state services that small businesses rely on. They advocated for higher taxes on themselves neither out of altruism nor entirely out of self-interest but recognizing that they had to pay taxes in order to stabilize the economic environment. In that position, small businesses in Kansas may occupy the moderating political role once occupied by a now-fractured corporate elite. (shrink)

The paper offers contextual and integrating comments about sex, evolution and psychopathology as a point of departure toward a new and more scientific understanding of human neurosis. The evolved roots of neurotic behavior are firmly linked to theorems of evolution, which is emerging as the basic science of psychopathology. Evolutionary tenets serve to: 1) redefine key aspects of neuroses, 2) place neurotic behavior in a broad and integrated evolutionary context, and 3) pose basic questions for all psychopathology. Readers who wish (...) to expand, clarify or confirm elements of might well consult basic books in either field as a passing familiarity with psychiatry and biology is assumed. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore utilitarian conceptions of personhood which for a long time have been employed as part of a rational moral justification for the termination of pregnancy. Michael Tooley's desires-based rights approach to personhood presented in his work Abortion and Infanticide is considered and, it is argued, is found wanting when one considers unconscious adults and their ability to desire life. This article will offer that unconscious sleeping individuals only have the potential to regain the capacity to value (...) their own life and, as such, under Tooley's formula for personhood, temporarily lose their status as a person. Following this, John Harris's utilitarian views on the status of the sleeping adult will be considered and deconstructed to show that, like Tooley, his ascription for personhood falls down at the sleeping adult. This article illustrates that utilitarian conceptions of personhood leave the sleeping adult human devoid of the rights of a person and hence render the value of this consquentialist theory, with regard to the idea of personhood, in severe doubt. The paper argues that utilitarian conceptions of personhood do little more than obstruct the worthy debate over the morality of abortion. (shrink)

Hybrid metaethical theories attempt to incorporate essential elements of expressivism and cognitivism, and thereby to accrue the benefits of both. Hybrid theories are often defended in part by appeals to slurs and other pejoratives, which have both expressive and cognitivist features. This paper takes far more seriously the analogy between pejoratives and moral predicates. It explains how pejoratives work, identifies the features that allow pejoratives to do that work, and models a theory of moral predicates on those features. The result (...) is an expressivist theory that, among other advantages, is immune to embedding difficulties and avoids an overlooked difficulty concerning attitude ascriptions that is lethal to most other hybrid theories. (shrink)

This is the first modern book to describe Francis Bacon's jurisprudence. He has long been famous as a scientist, philosopher, politician and literary giant, but his career as one of England's greatest lawyers and jurists has been largely overlooked. Bacon's major contribution to Anglo-American jurisprudence is presented in such a way as to be suitable to specialists and non-specialists alike. The purpose is to restore Bacon to his rightful place as England's first true critical and analytical jurist, and to describe (...) how his legal thought related to his other great intellectual achievements. (shrink)