This article examines and analyzes Semco, a company that changed the way it viewed and treated its workers for the better. It is the contention of Semco’s CEO, that at most large corporations “everyone is part of a gigantic, impersonal machine, and it is impossible to feel motivated when you feel you are just another cog. Human nature demands recognition. Without it, people lose their sense of purpose and become dissatisfied, restless, and unproductive” (Semler, 1993, p. 109). At Semco, employees (...) were no longer just faceless drones acting as machines would. By putting more power and decision making in the hands of their employees, the company became very successful, as it was more efficient and flexible. Workers also reaped the rewards of significantly increased control and decision-making power. This improved their lives financially and personally, as they were better able to deal with stress. (shrink)

`Quantum theory' is not a single physical theory but a framework in which many different concrete theories fit. As such, a solution to the quantum measurement problem ought to provide a recipe to interpret each such concrete theory, in a mutually consistent way. But with the exception of the Everett interpretation, the mainextant solutions either try to make sense of the abstract framework as if it were concrete, or else interpret one particular quantum theory under the fiction that it is (...) fundamental and exact. In either case, these approaches are unable to help themselves to the very theory-laden, level-relative ways in which quantum theory makes contact with experiment in mainstream physics, and so are committed to major revisionary projects which have not been carried out even in outline. As such, only the Everett interpretation is currently suited to make sense of quantum physics as we find it. (shrink)

David Hume (1711-76) is the grand intellectual figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. Ironically, what is now considered his magnum opus, the ill-received three-volume A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), was rejected by Hume himself by 1751. Subsequently, when Hume first compiled his Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects two years later, he excluded the Treatise and considered this new collection of essays to be his complete philosophical writings. Hume revised the Essays and Treatises some ten times in various editions, (...) adding, modifying and deleting material. This 1777 edition incorporates his final changes which he made quite literally on his deathbed, fully aware that this edition would be the last to involve his input. As such it is considered the definitive edition of Hume's philosophical writings and should be read alongside the first definitive edition of the Treatise. (shrink)

One of the foremost scientists and thinkers of our time, David Bohm worked alongside Oppenheimer and Einstein. In Science, Order and Creativity he and physicist F. David Peat propose a return to greater creativity and communication in the sciences. They ask for a renewed emphasis on ideas rather than formulae, on the whole rather than fragments, and on meaning rather than mere mechanics. Tracing the history of science from Aristotle to Einstein, from the Pythagorean theorem to quantum mechanics, (...) the authors offer intriguing new insights into how scientific theories come into being, how to eliminate blocks to creativity and how science can lead to a deeper understanding of society, the human condition and the human mind itself. Science, Order and Creativity looks to the future of science with elegance, hope and enthusiasm. (shrink)

Perfectionism is an underexplored tradition, perhaps because of doubts about the grounds, content, and implications of perfectionist ideals. Aristotle, J.S. Mill, and T.H. Green are normative perfectionists, grounding perfectionist ideals in a normative conception of human nature involving personality or agency. This essay explores the prospects of normative perfectionism by examining Kant’s criticisms of the perfectionist tradition. First, Kant claims that the perfectionist can generate only hypothetical, not categorical, imperatives. But insofar as the normative perfectionist appeals to the normative category (...) of personality or agency, rather than a biological category of humanity, it can represent perfectionist demands as categorical imperatives. Second, Kant accepts a moral asymmetry in which we aim at our own perfection but at the happiness, rather than the perfection, of others. However, the importance of autonomy in normative perfection explains why the perfectionist should recognize a self/other asymmetry. Indeed, when we see how the normative perfectionist can answer Kant’s criticisms while respecting Kant’s own claims about the connection between rational nature and moral requirements, we can see the basis for a normative perfectionist interpretation of Kant’s own ethical theory. Insofar as Kantians and normative perfectionists both base ethical demands on an appeal to rational nature, they face a common worry that the appeal to rational nature is empty or incomplete. Normative perfectionists have more and less concessive responses to this worry, providing perfectionist explanations of various apparently non-perfectionist goods. Even if we end up being pluralists about the good, perfectionist elements play an important role. Finally, because the normative perfectionist, like the Kantian, grounds its ideals and requirements in a conception of persons as rational agents, it provides a promising account of the rational authority of perfectionist demands. This comparison of normative perfectionist and Kantian essentials gives us reason to take the normative perfectionist tradition seriously. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The structure and style of philosophy has evolved in response to philosophy's confrontation with its own limits. Are these limits real or are they just phantoms haunting the philosophical project? How do philosophy and philosophers attempt to overcome these limits, or at least come to terms with them? In "Philosophy at the Limit" David Wood pursues this theme in modern philosophers from Hegel to Derrida including Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Gadamer. He focuses on questions of philosophical style, problems with (...) dialogue and in direct communication, the structural closure of philosophical texts, and performative strategy in philosophy. "Philosophy at the Limit" is an accessible discussion of some of the complex issues that empower continental philosophy. It may appeal to students of philosophy and contemporary thought at every level, and to the general reader interested in the heart of the current debates in European thought. (shrink)

Considered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vico's oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. He demonstrates Vico's significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions. Marshall presents Vico's work as an effort to resolve a contradiction. As a professor of rhetoric at (...) the University of Naples, Vico had a deep investment in the explanatory power of classical rhetorical thought, especially that of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Yet as a historian of the failure of Naples as a self-determining political community, he had no illusions about the possibility or worth of democratic and republican systems of government in the post-classical world. As Marshall demonstrates, by jettisoning the assumption that rhetoric only illuminates direct, face-to-face interactions between orator and auditor, Vico reinvented rhetoric for a modern world in which the Greek polis and the Roman res publica are no longer paradigmatic for political thought. (shrink)

The author of this book has traced the major lines of argument over those years in a most engaging style with clear descriptions of the concepts and ideas.

Japan and the Enemies of Open Political Science argues that Eurocentric blindness is a scientific failing, not a moral one. In a way true of no other political system, Japan's greatness has the potential to enliven and reform almost all the main branches of Western Political Science. David Williams criticizes Western social science, Anglo-American Philosophy and French Theory and explains why mainstream economists, historians of political thought and postculturalists have ignored Japan's modern achievements. Williams demonstrates why the renewal of (...) social science and the nurturing of a "a philosophy of the Pacific Century" requires a sustained act of intellectual demolition. (shrink)

Food - what we eat, how much we eat, how it is produced and prepared, and its cultural and ecological significance- is an increasingly significant topic not only for scholars but for all of us. Theology on the Menu is the first systematic and historical assessment of Christian attitudes to food and its role in shaping Christian identity. David Grumett and Rachel Muers unfold a fascinating history of feasting and fasting, food regulations and resistance to regulation, the symbolism attached (...) to particular foods, the relationship between diet and doctrine, and how food has shaped inter-religious encounters. Everyone interested in Christian approaches to food and diet or seeking to understand how theology can engage fruitfully with everyday life will find this book a stimulus and an inspiration. (shrink)

If the greatness of a philosophical work can be measured by the volume and vehemence of the public response, there is little question that Rousseau's Social Contract stands out as a masterpiece. Within a week of its publication in 1762 it was banished from France. Soon thereafter, Rousseau fled to Geneva, where he saw the book burned in public. At the same time, many of his contemporaries, such as Kant, considered Rousseau to be 'the Newton of the moral world', as (...) he was the first philosopher to draw attention to the basic dignity of human nature. The Social Contract has never ceased to be read and debated in the 250 years since its publication. Rousseau's Social Contract: An Introduction offers a thorough and systematic tour of this notoriously paradoxical and challenging text. David Lay Williams offers readers a chapter-by-chapter reading of the Social Contract, squarely confronting these interpretive obstacles. The book also features a special extended appendix dedicated to outlining Rousseau's famous conception of the general will, which has been the object of controversy since the Social Contract's publication in 1762. (shrink)

This book shows how the details of the myth and the accounts of interaction between lovers are based on a carefully articulated metaphysical structure.

Descartes' ideas not only changed the course of Western philosophy but also led to or transformed the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, physics and mathematics, political theory and ethics, psychoanalysis, and literature and the arts. This book reprints Descartes' major works, _Discourse on Method_ and _Meditations_, and presents essays by leading scholars that explore his contributions in each of those fields and place his ideas in the context of his time and our own. There are chapters by David Weissman on (...) metaphysics and psychoanalysis, John Post on epistemology, Lou Massa on physics and mathematics, William T. Bluhm on politics and ethics, and Thomas Pavel on literature and art. These essays are accompanied by others by David Weissman and by Stephen Toulmin that introduce the idea of intellectual lineages, discuss the period in which Descartes wrote, and reexamine the premises of his philosophy in light of contemporary philosophical, political, and social thinking. (shrink)

Tradition and revelation are often seen as opposites: tradition is viewed as being secondary and reactionary to revelation which is a one-off gift from God. Drawing on examples from Christian history, Judaism, Islam, and the classical world, this book challenges these definitions and presents a controversial examination of the effect history and cultural development has on religious belief: its narratives and art. David Brown pays close attention to the nature of the relationship between historical and imaginative truth, and focuses (...) on the way stories from the Bible have not stood still but are subject to imaginative 'rewriting'. This rewriting is explained as a natural consequence of the interaction between religion and history: God speaks to humanity through the imagination, and human imagination is influenced by historical context. It is the imagination that ensures that religion continues to develop in new and challenging ways. (shrink)

David Bridges; What’s the use of Meetings?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 9, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 7–25, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.

Tribe, David I was disappointed, but not surprised, by criticisms of my 'On science, good, bad and ugly' , which may also have prompted the appearance in the same issue of other articles confirming points in mine. While I don't agree with many details, Massimo Pigliucci's 'Science needs philosophy' directs timely attention to 'an over-enthusiastic embrace of science' and a scientism which 'leads to nihilism'.

The Modern Philosophical Revolution breaks new ground by demonstrating the continuity of European philosophy from Kant to Derrida. Much of the literature on European philosophy has emphasised the breaks that have occurred in the course of two centuries of thinking. But as David Walsh argues, such a reading overlooks the extent to which Kant, Hegel, and Schelling were already engaged in the turn toward existence as the only viable mode of philosophising. Where many similar studies summarise individual thinkers, this (...) book provides a framework for understanding the relationships between them. Walsh thus dispels much of the confusion that assails readers when they are only exposed to the bewildering range of positions taken by the philosophers he examines. His book serves as an indispensable guide to a philosophical tradition that continues to have resonance in the post-modern world. (shrink)

In God and Mystery in Words David Brown uses the way in which poetry and drama have in the past opened people to the possibility of religious experience as a launch pad for advocating less wooden approaches to Christian worship today. So far from encouraging imagination and exploration, hymns and sermons now more commonly merely consolidate belief. Again, contemporary liturgy in both its music and its ceremonial fails to take seriously either current dramatic theory or the sociology of ritual. (...) Yet this was not always so. Imagery and hymns mattered, liturgial msic encouraged a sense of drama, sermons required rhetoric. In a characteristically stimulatling and inspiringly expansive study, that ranges from ancient Greek drama to modern poetry, from the meaning of the Logos to the history of vestments, David Brown pleads for a much wider focus on the kind of factors that aid experience of God. (shrink)

The orphaned son of an Anglican clergyman, David Hartley was originally destined for holy orders. Declining to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, he turned to medicine and science yet remained a religious believer. This, his most significant work, provides a rigorous analysis of human nature, blending philosophy, psychology and theology. First published in two volumes in 1749, Observations on Man is notable for being based on the doctrine of the association of ideas. It greatly influenced scientists, theologians, social reformers (...) and poets: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who named his eldest son after Hartley, had his portrait painted while holding a copy. Volume 2 is particularly concerned with human morality and the duty and expectations of mankind. Here the author is keen to show that scientific observation is not necessarily in conflict with religious conviction. (shrink)

The orphaned son of an Anglican clergyman, David Hartley was originally destined for holy orders. Declining to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, he turned to medicine and science yet remained a religious believer. This, his most significant work, provides a rigorous analysis of human nature, blending philosophy, psychology and theology. First published in two volumes in 1749, Observations on Man is notable for being based on the doctrine of the association of ideas. It greatly influenced scientists, theologians, social reformers (...) and poets: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who named his eldest son after Hartley, had his portrait painted while holding a copy. In Volume 1, Hartley utilises Newtonian science in his observations. He presents a theory of 'vibrations', explaining how the elements of the nerves and brain interact as a result of stimulation, creating 'associations' and emotions. (shrink)

If we do not, at some point in our life, face death—thinking hard and straight about it—we turn away from our authenticity. If that facing rejects irrational faith, dogmas, mystification, and personal immortality, is there yet a path free of despair? David Martin argues that participatory pantheism—the experience of the secular and the sacred both as a unity and as a mystery—provides such a path.

This article is about the rights of the Roma in Sweden and the level of discrimination that Roma are facing. The aims and objectives of the article is theoretical and practical understanding of the situation of the Roma and their human rights through our research and analysis of reports from international organizations, civil society organizations, deep interviews and data from the collected 57 questionnaires. The data is collected during the two study visits in November 2016 and February 2017. The article (...) sumarises the actual situation of the Roma in Sweden and shows new data I have collected while visiting Göteborg, Stockholm, Vänersborg and Trollhättan. I did 4 deep interviews with representatives from Civil Right Defenders, Kronan School and members from UNHCR Sweden. The interviews were composed out of 22 questions about the current condition of Roma in Sweden, implemented projects for improving the Roma human rights, discrimination, police harasment, Roma register, legal remedies against discrimination, financial benefits if persuing education, non-governmental organization working for and with Roma, equitable representation of Roma in the state bodies, affirmative actions, Romani political parties, allocated funds for projects improving the Romani situation, system of minority right protection, equality of Roma among the Swedish citizens. The questionnaire about discrimination is composed out of 15 questions about the forms of discrimination, feeling or witnesing discrimination, discrimination in delivering services, discrimination in employment, and reporting discrimination. (shrink)

This article provides a comprehensive survey of the views of a number of experts on the real costs of the automobile. The costs of the automobile are extensively categorized, and the most significant of these categories are analyzed and quantified. The article also includes a case study on the costs of the auto industry in Ontario, as well as an extensive bibliography.

A striking feature of the songs of Sappho and Alcaeus is their constant use of ‘deictic’ signals to establish a setting in a specific location in time and space. This article examines the created worlds of Sappho and Alcaeus, drawing on cognitive methodologies, in particular Text World Theory. It argues for the importance of a methodological distinction between the circumstances of performance of the songs, and the cognitive world they create. The locations established by the songs are designed to assimilate (...) to, or mirror, the plausible/potential circumstances of actual performance, but are distinct from them, and are just as constructed as the artful lyric locations of Horace or Thomas Gray. Close readings of the songs show how Sappho and Alcaeus use ‘location’ as a tool in their poetics, exploiting the interaction between the world created by the songs and the circumstances of their performance. (shrink)

The problem of unknowing is central to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. This paper argues that psychoanalysis is a contemporary site of apophatic discourse. Pseudo-Dionysius observed that: “If one considers these texts with a reverent eye one will see something that brings about unity and manifests a single empathy.” By casting a “reverent eye” on psychoanalysis, we can see that psychoanalytic theory and practice are saturated with apophatic maneuvers. The intuition of apophasis at work in each of the traditions (...) of psychoanalysis accounts for their family resemblance. (shrink)

James K. A. Smith’s book Awaiting the King interrogates the religious nature of contemporary politics and the political nature of Christian practice, and in doing so draws Augustine out of the ivory tower to which many have confined him, putting the late-antique theologian into a conversation with a host of contemporary voices.

One has it that earlier circumstances and the laws of nature uniquely determine later circumstances, and the other has it that past present and future all exist tenselessly in a ‘block universe,’ so that the passage of time and associated changes in the world are illusions or at best merely apparent.

Before being executed by the Nazis at the age of 39, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had produced enough material, according to Howell, to fill 16 volumes of theological reflections. Nevertheless, Howell noted, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is not a household name. That is unfortunate. One of Bonhoeffer's most inspiring efforts-from the perspective of mass media ethics-centered around his unfinished attempt to define "what is meant by telling the truth." As is often the case with truly outstanding thinkers, his reflections in this regard appear even (...) more timely today than when he composed them well over 50 years ago. (shrink)