In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 40-53 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Analysis David E. W. Fenner The "raw data" that aesthetics is meant to explain is the aesthetic experience. People have experiences that they class off from other experiences and label, as a class, the aesthetic ones. Aesthetic experience is basic, and allother things aesthetic — aesthetic properties, aesthetic objects, aesthetic attitudes — are (...) secondary in their importance to aesthetic experiences. 1Considering aesthetic experience as the raw data that philosophical aesthetics seeks to explain is a relatively recent phenomenon. This was certainly not the focus in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Aesthetic judgment was the focus of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Kant: "How do we make meaningful judgments (hopefully real ones) about the aesthetic quality of (certain) objects and events?" But with George Santayana, John Dewey, and Jerome Stolnitz, the focus changes. Now the interest is in the aesthetic experience: what makes those experiences we label "aesthetic" special? Why do we separate those experiences from others?The movement from the Taste Theories to those focused on aesthetic experience is not a movement that is over and done with — far from it. There is still (and I think there will always be) a tension between these two very basic aspects of philosophical aesthetics. And, although I claim that aesthetic experience is the most basic thing that aesthetics studies, I recognize that this is challengeable and only true from a certain temporal viewpoint.I recently taught the most rewarding undergraduate course in aesthetics. The reason that it was so rewarding was that the students carried the class with deep and insightful discussions, and they were not shy about challenging what was coming out of my mouth. One of the challenges that informed our entire semester focused on the tension between experience and judgment. I lectured comfortably about aesthetic experience as our "raw data," and I lectured equally comfortably about how taking an aesthetic view of an object or event meant focusing primarily, if not exclusively, on [End Page 40] what is available to us through simple sensory acquaintanceship with the object. "Aesthetics," I said, "is about the sensuous aspects of our experiences." And so we could, for instance, take an aesthetic view of a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph which precluded our experiences being mired in the themes that the more famous Mapplethorpe photos take as their content. "Mapplethorpe is a great photographer," I argued, "and one can see this if one is willing to focus strictly on what meets your eye when you look at the picture." In short, I held the position that the aesthetic view is the formal one.Without saying more, what I did was conflate two different things. On the one hand, I argued that aesthetic experience is a natural part of life that aesthetics seeks to explore. On the other, I argued that appreciating something aesthetically was to appreciate its formal qualities, those qualities that one could access simply through looking, hearing, touching, for example. But these really are two different things.Aesthetic experiences, if we are to treat them as "raw data," must be explored without pre-conception, prejudice, or limitation. And, truly enough, the vast majority of aesthetic experiences are not focused exclusively, in terms of their contents, on formal or simple-sensory matters. Aesthetic experiences are, first, experiences. They are complex things, having to do with things as tidy as the formal qualities of the object under consideration and with things as messy as whether one had enough sleep the night before, whether one just had a fight with his roommate, whether one is carrying psychological baggage that is brought to consciousness by this particular aesthetic object. Later in this essay, I want to explore some of this complexity.The other side of what was happening in my class, the formal focus on the sensory as the basis for an aesthetic viewing, is not the substance of "aesthetic experience" per se. It is rather the basis of what we might call "aesthetic analysis." Aesthetic analysis has to do with separating out from our... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Was There So Much Ugly Art in the Twentieth Century?David E.W. Fenner (bio)Two of the most common challenges that teachers of aesthetics have to face in their classrooms today are, first, the presumption that since "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "there's no disputing taste," every aesthetic judgment is as good as every other one. The second is that the content from which aesthetics courses (...) commonly draw for examples and for the impetus for contemporary philosophy of art theory — and by this I mean art from Post-Impressionism to the present — is made up of "stuff I could have done when I was four years old." The substance behind these two challenges — that aesthetic judgment is highly or perhaps exclusively subjective and that twentieth-century art does not demonstrate care of technique, or that it is simply ugly1 — are intimately connected. This connection is the focus of this essay. The answer to the question, "why was there so much ugly art in the twentieth century?" may be that the tradition of showing beauty to be a highly or purely subjective phenomenon renders beauty apparently less valuable than if it were objective in character, and so we have, in the twentieth century, a move away from the production in art of beauty to that which is simply "artistic" or "artistically important." I want to come at this thesis not through a discussion about either the location or the reality of aesthetic properties. Instead, I want to focus on the "ugly art."Students in aesthetics courses tend to take one of three positions regarding modern art, and by "modern art," I mean art from Post-Impressionism to the present, including Pop Art, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and the rest: 1. They deny the value of it, together with claims about their artistic abilities during their kindergarten years. 2. Because they know something of the history and progression of twentieth-century art, or because they have an experiential basis for approaching modern art conceptually, they actually appreciate and value it. 3. They think they ought to value it (the way so many of us feel when buying our very first tickets to the [End Page 13] opera), and they do their level best to act in accord with what they see as their aesthetic obligation. Those of the first camp will probably voice their positions early in aesthetics courses, and at that point the challenge for the teacher is raised.Teachers in aesthetics courses, when faced with this challenge, tend, I think, to take one of three positions in response: 1. They use the authority of their office to stifle the discussion, hoping that students of the first camp will over the course of time and exposure at least move to being students of the third camp. 2. They embrace the complaint, discuss it, give it due regard (after all, those teachers probably read Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word themselves), but leave the final decision about the merit of modern art open and unsettled. I presume this is the majority position, at least in philosophical courses of aesthetics. 3. They seek to impart to students — through exposure, discussion, and the eloquence they can muster of descriptions of their own positive, valuable experiences with modern art — some sense of its merit. In this essay, I will sketch out yet another way to deal with the challenge, one that focuses on the history of aesthetics itself.The HistoryThe history of aesthetic judgment — that is, with the correctness of particular aesthetic judgments — begins with Aristotle.2 He said that an object is aesthetically good — or, actually, beautiful — if it is ordered, symmetrical, and definite, and if it demonstrates each of these virtues to a high degree.3 This analysis we call "formal," because it focuses on the presence in the object of certain aesthetic properties, ones that have to do with the form (as distinguished from the content) of the object. The more basic the cited aesthetic properties, the better, because the strength of the power of one's judgment, along with the power of evidence that can be cited in support of that judgment... (shrink)

The ability to gain knowledge from text in widely different subject matter areas is key to academic success and lifelong leaming. The process of attaining critical understanding of ideas in text requires a robust repertoire of leaming or study strategies, metacognitive knowledge for regulating their use, and willingness to apply them. Although much is known about the basic design of leaming environments to develop higher-order thinking skills and motivation to learn, educators have, in general, not changed their practices to reflect (...) new knowledge. The lack of procedures that are easy for teachers to administer and provide results that teachers may use in their classrooms for assessment of complex cognitive skill development is a major obstacle to widespread adoption of new approaches. This paper describes a new technology, referred to as HyLighter, and a pedagogically sound implementation of this technology, referred to as the Interaclive Annotation Model. This approach suggests a promising direction for improving the quality of instruction and promoting active reading (i.e., an approach to the development of leaming ability that combines reading with critical thinking and a range of learning-to-Iearn skills) for students in higher education across academic disciplines. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE OF BEING: ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN METAPHYSICS AND THEOLOGY HELMUT HOPING University of Tubingen, Germany Introduction T:HE PHILOSOPHY of the twentieth century has been o no small extent a critique of metaphysics. Admittedly, philosophical programs have been developed in which the tradition of metaphysics survives. Yet the position of metaphysics in the modern age is disputed even today-as is demonstrated by the recent controversy between Jiirgen (...) Habermas and Dieter Henrich about the possibility of metaphysics after Kant.1 Since 1 See J. Habermas, "Ruckkehr zur Metaphysik: Eine Tendenz in der deutschen Philosophie?" Merkur 439/440, 39 (1985): 898-905; "Metaphysik nach Kant," in K. Cramer et al., eds., Theorie der Subjektivitiit: Dieter Henrich zum 60. Geburtstag (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), 425-443. (Both articles are reprinted in J. Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken: Philosophische Aufsiitze [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988], 18-34; 267-279.) Henrich replied to Habermas's critique in the article "Was ist Metaphysik, was Moderne?: Thesen gegen Jurgen Habermas," Merkur 440, 40 (1986): 495-508 (reprinted in D. Henrich, Konzepte: Essays zur Philosophie der Zeit [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987], 11-43). On the controversy between Habermas and Henrich, see V. Gerhardt, " Metaphysik und ihre Kritik: Zur Metaphysikdebatte zwischen Jurgen Habermas und Dieter Henrich," Zeitschrift fur philosophische Forschung 42 (1988) : 45-70. Habermas's notion of a " return to metaphysics " undoubtedly has a certain diagnostic value; after all, there has indeed been a recent " discovery " of metaphysics. But Habermas 's criticism of the concept and content of metaphysics-i.e., his thesis that after Kant metaphysics is impossible-not only contradicts the self-understanding of modern philosophy for which metaphysics is essential; it also fails to recognize the metaphysical implications of his own theory of communicative action. See W. C. Zimmerli, "Kommunikation und Metaphysik: Zu den Anfangsgrunden von Habermas ' ' Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns,' " in W. Oelmuller, ed., Metaphysik heute? Kolloquien zur Gegenwartsphilosophie, vol. 10 (Paderborn: SchOningh, 1987), 97-111. 189 190 HELMUT HOPING metaphysics has been indispensable for the self-understanding of philosophy in the modern age up until Hegel, this controversy cannot be reduced to the simple disjunction: either the "end of metaphysics" or the "return to metaphysics "-as Habermas has suggested. The task of philosophy today lies in a metaphysical form of thinking that remains possible even after the critique of metaphysics in Kant and Heidegger. Until recently, the current debate about metaphysics has not been adequately addressed by theology. That is surprising because metaphysics is also indispensable for theology.2 But in the light of the modern critique of metaphysics, the self-understanding of theology and its relationship to metaphysics cannot remain unchanged -just as the self-understanding of metaphysics itself cannot remain unchanged. Yet at least in the realm of Catholic theology, the traditional doctrine of the praeambula fidei has not been abandoned. The aim of the following reflections is to show that the determination of the relationship between metaphysics and theology depends upon how metaphysics understands the " difference of Being" that is given with the manifold of beings. I will introduce four different understandings of the " difference of Being": that which is found in Aquinas's metaphysics; that in Kant's transcendental philosophy; that in Heidegger's thinking of Being; and that in the metaphysics of the absolute projected by Henrich. In some concluding reflections, I will then try to draw out some implications of these understandings of the " difference of Being " for the determination of the relationship between metaphysics and theology. I. Metaphysics of God and Creation : Theological Difference (Aquinas) It is well-known that Thomas Aquinas defines metaphysics as the science of being qua being. The subject-matter that dis2 See W. Kasper, " Zustimmung zum Denken: Von der Unerlasslichkeit der Metaphysik fiir die Sache der Theologie," Tiibinger Theologische Quartalschrift 169 (1989) : 257-271. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN METAPHYSICS & THEOLOGY 191 tinguishes metaphysics from all other sciences is the ens inquantum est ens 3 or the ens commune.4 Contrary to later concepts of metaphysics, this is not an abstract-universal, for " the term ' a being' [ens], which is applied to a thing by reason of its being [esse], designates the same thing as the term which is applied... (shrink)

We shall argue that there is adequate moral justification for capital punishment with linkage, that is, with linkage to keeping non‐murderers from dying. We present the argument with two aims in mind. The first is to question the conventional wisdom, seldom challenged even by proponents of capital punishment, that being an abolitionist is closely connected to having a civilized respect for human life. This conventional wisdom, we hope to show, is somewhat off the mark. To this end we exhibit (...) structural similarities between so‐called lifeboat dilemmas and the public's relationship to a murderer. In a lifeboat dilemma one must choose between saving this life or that, since the lifeboat will not hold both persons. Now if this life were an innocent's and that one a murderer's, a choice to save the latter would not be met with accusations of callousness towards human life. We hope to project everyone's intuitions about this case onto the more baffling case of a society's relationship to the murderers and dying innocents in its midst. (shrink)

We shall argue that there is adequate moral justification for capital punishment with linkage, that is, with linkage to keeping non-murderers from dying. We present the argument with two aims in mind. The first is to question the conventional wisdom, seldom challenged even by proponents of capital punishment, that being an abolitionist is closely connected to having a civilized respect for human life. This conventional wisdom, we hope to show, is somewhat off the mark. To this end we exhibit (...) structural similarities between so-called lifeboat dilemmas and the public's relationship to a murderer. In a lifeboat dilemma one must choose between saving this life or that, since the lifeboat will not hold both persons. Now if this life were an innocent's and that one a murderer's, a choice to save the latter would not be met with accusations of callousness towards human life. We hope to project everyone's intuitions about this case onto the more baffling case of a society's relationship to the murderers and dying innocents in its midst. (shrink)

But Williams had created a field of historical study, where his white counterparts had not. Single-handedly and without the blessing or approval of the academic community, Williams had called attention to the importance of including Afro-Americans in any acceptable and comprehensive history of the nation long before the historians of various groups of European-Americans or Asian-Americans had begun to advocate a similar treatment for their groups. And if Williams did not impress the white professional historians, he gave heart and encouragement (...) to future Afro-American historians. When the History of the Negro Troops appeared in 1887, nineteen-year-old W. E. B. Du Bois was a college senior at Fisk University and editor-in-chief of the student magazine, The Fisk Herald. In the columns of the Herald Du Bois wrote, "At last we have a historian; not merely a Negro historian, but a man who judged by his merits alone has written a splendid narrative. The Herald congratulates George W. Williams, and the race, which may justly be . . . [proud] of him."1 Many years later, Carter G. Woodson, the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and of the Journal of Negro History, described Williams' History of the Negro Troops as "one of the most valuable accounts of the Civil War."2 With words like these from Du Bois and Woodson, on whose shoulders much of the second stage of Afro-American historiography would rest, it is not too much to say that George Washington Williams was responsible for the beginnings of Afro-American historiography. · 1. The Fisk Herald, January 1888, p. 8.· 2. Woodson's appraisal of Williams was found among his papers and made available to me by Dr. Charles H. Wesley when he was executive director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which had been founded by Woodson in 1915. John Hope Franklin, president-elect of the American Historical Society, has written a biography of George Washington Williams. He is the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago and the author of, among other works, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North. (shrink)

Carlston looks at the problem of nationalization of industries as a problem in organization arising with the increasing interdependence of national economies. He uses this as a "hard case" through which to study the structure of world society, the motivating values of action in world society, and the role of law as an organizing process in that society. By exploring this "hard case" Carlston hopes to clarify basic concepts, justify a new theoretical approach to international law, and point out the (...) basic deficiencies of legal positivism as a philosophy of international law. This book should prove a landmark in the philosophy of international law.--W. G. E. (shrink)

L'ordre du discours is the inaugural lecture read by Foucault when he became the successor of J. Hyppolite at the Collège de France. The booklet is a good introduction to the work of the author. It gives a summary of his key ideas, with here and there a couple of suggestive examples. At the end we find an outline of the work the author hopes to fulfill in the future. Foucault sees human history and human civilization as a big effort (...) of discourse-creation. To engage in a discourse though, is a dangerous activity. This danger might be avoided by diminishing the quality of the discourse. It is, however, tricky to escape discourse itself. Foucault now, analyzes the mechanisms by which civilization tries to maintain the quality of the discourse while at the same time protecting the individual against the dangers of it. The author mentions three series of mechanisms: 1) Exclusion: Not every thing can be said. Things are prohibited of entering the discourse. Societies also exclude persons such as the fools from human discourse. Finally, human talk is divided between true and false talk, of which only true talk is to be taken seriously. 2) Appropriation of the unknown: Certain forms of discourse have been given priority, such as commentaries, pieces written by known authors and pieces fulfilling the formal characteristics of a discipline. 3) Limitation of speakers: Not everybody is allowed to use all forms of discourse. Rituals make sure that only appropriate persons talk. The existence of societies protecting a monopoly on certain forms of discourse or the attempt of doctrinal groups to impose orthodoxy are two further examples of the attempt to limit the possible speakers. This being the case, Foucault claims that his philosophical method will not try to find the truth of a discourse, but rather he will in the future show that there is a discontinuous variety of discourses; that a discourse is essentially a violation of the world of things and that we cannot hope to understand the inner meaning of a discourse. The two most provocative ideas put forward in this booklet are that truth is not in the first place an act of intelligence but an act of the will. Foucault talks of a will to truth. The second provocative idea is that all discourse is a violation of the world of the things. To sacrifice the search of truth for the search of the structure of discourse is the essence of structuralism, of which Foucault is the philosophical standard-bearer.—W. V. E. (shrink)

In his previous book, La philosophie et les experiences naturelles, A. De Waelhens claims that great philosophers in the past have not only been in dialogue with their predecessors but also that each great philosopher benefited from a confrontation with a non-philosophical experience. This previous book forms the theoretical justification for the present one. Here the author studies the problem of psychosis, with the hope and the intention of contributing to the further development of philosophy. Insofar as philosophy is (...) fascinated with the obligation "Learn to know yourself" or the search for an answer for the question "Who am I," insofar so claims the author, contemporary philosophy cannot afford to bypass psychoanalysis. The book has six chapters and a conclusion, but could easily be divided in three parts. The first part is a survey of the general approach to psychosis and schizophrenia by a selected group of European psychiatrists. The author indicates the crucial shortcomings of each approach and shows how there is among them a gradual turning away from a physiological interpretation of schizophrenia and psychosis towards a psychological one. In Part II, the author uses mainly the theory of Lacan and his disciples to present a coherent theory of psychosis. The crucial concepts are 1) the Oedipus-complex, 2) the mirror stage, 3) the foreclosure of a reference to the father. The Oedipus-complex is well known from Freud’s works although it receives here a more structural interpretation. The mirror stage refers to the events around 6-8 months when the child has to appropriate himself as a unified body, not just a collection of partial elements. This task can be noticed easily when one observes the attitude of the child towards the mirror. Hence the name. In order to perform this task successfully the child needs the support of the mother. The function of the mother is still more important for the third problem: a reference to the father. A healthy development of the child requires that the mother is capable of recognizing and of acknowledging the part played by the father in the creation of the child. This is done in our culture by giving the child the name of the father. Mothers of psychotics often are emotionally unable to tolerate that. They want to situate their child exclusively in relation to themselves: they foreclose any reference to the father. Psychosis is therefore related to the foreclosure of the name-of-the-father. These three crucial concepts allow the author to explain the crucial symptoms of schizophrenia, and to compare it with paranoia and paraphrenia. The third part of the book is a philosophical discussion of the problem of psychosis. The author offers the continental philosophical tradition as a better intellectual framework to study psychosis than the physical framework that Freud used in his Project for a Scientific Psychology and that he never completely abandoned. In the conclusion A. De Waelhens summarizes the direct philosophical consequences of the study of psychosis, the most fascinating being that one has to recognize the priority of language in the constitution of the subject, and that there is a meaningful relation between the way I relate to myself, the things and other people. Two improvements could be made in the book. The first is pedagogical: i.e., a critical bibliography of the crucial works of Lacan and his school and of the phenomenological tradition would have been very helpful for any reader not familiar with one of the two streams of thought. A second improvement would be the inclusion in Chapter One of a discussion of the development which has taken place in the U.S.A. in the explanation of schizophrenia. It is parallel with the development in Europe. A useful reference is E. G. Mishler and N. E. Walker: "Family Interaction Processes and Schizophrenia: A Review of Current Theories," in International Journal of Psychiatry, July 1966, Vol. 2, Number 4. Although the book is difficult, it is very insightful and provocative and it certainly merits translation.—W. V. E. (shrink)

This book contains three essays: "The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Physiognomic Likeness in Life and Art" by Gombrich, the renowned art historian and critic; "The Representation of Things and People" by psychologist, Julian Hochberg; and "How Do Pictures Represent" by philosopher, Max Black. The book is based upon lectures delivered in the Johns Hopkins 1970 Thalheimer Lectures, where, taking off from the question "how there can be an underlying identity in the manifold and changing facial expression of (...) a single individual," there is an interdisciplinary attempt at clarifying the problem of representation. Gombrich’s central thesis is that the key to artistic representation is empathy and projection, which is guided by the interlocking display of the permanent and mobile features of the object represented. Perceptual activity and empathy rely more on the muscular imitation than on passive visual reception. He holds that what is singled out as the likeness-factor uniting the permanent and mobile features in, for example, the photograph of the four-year old Lord Russell and such factors in the ninety-year old Russell is the "general tonus, the melody of transition from given ranges of relaxations to forms of tenseness." Hochberg’s essay spells out the position that perception is purposive behavior, wherein the purpose is the information sought and behavior is the "succession of glances in different directions." Holding that perceptual activity is grounded in expectations, he lays aside Gombrich’s muscularity-thesis in favor of a learned expectation of feature characteristics. Black’s essay is a conceptual analysis of "depiction," or more precisely, of "P displays a subject S if and only if R, where R ‘will constitute the necessary and sufficient condition for P displaying S'." The essay, which proceeds in a Wittgensteinian Investigations-type fashion ends where the reader would hope it begin. He concludes that the problem can only be adequately answered by moving from logical investigation to the world of the artisan and art lover. To arrive at this conclusion he debunks six candidates that claim to meet the depiction conditions: causal history, selective information, intention, mimesis, resemblance, and "looking-like." At best, depiction may be considered a "cluster" concept of all six. Further determination, he holds, requires knowledge of the purpose of a particular depiction, and this takes us out of logic and into art; and so Black stops, unfortunately.—W. A. F. (shrink)

Over the last three decades, the application of evolutionary theory to the human sciences has shown remarkable growth. This growth has also been characterised by a ‘splitting’ process, with the emergence of distinct sub-disciplines, most notably: Human Behavioural Ecology (HBE), Evolutionary Psychology (EP) and studies of Cultural Evolution (CE). Multiple applications of evolutionary ideas to the human sciences are undoubtedly a good thing, demonstrating the usefulness of this approach to human affairs. Nevertheless, this fracture has been associated with considerable tension, (...) a lack of integration, and sometimes outright conflict between researchers. In recent years however, there have been clear signs of hope that a synthesis of the human evolutionary behavioural sciences is underway. Here, we briefly review the history of the debate, both its theoretical and practical causes; then provide evidence that the field is currently becoming more integrated, as the traditional boundaries between sub-disciplines become blurred. This article constitutes the first paper under the new editorship of the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, which aims to further this integration by explicitly providing a forum for integrated work. (shrink)

At the outset, and for virtually all people, bribery appears to be a crime per se. That is, there are no exceptions. You bribe someone or accept a bribe from another person, you are a criminal. Our claim, in sharp contrast, is that matters are quite a bit more complicated than that. Let us see, gentle reader, if we can bribe you into reading this material with an open mind on the basis of this hopefully interesting and challenging introduction to (...) the subject. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION G. Soros I was hoping to deliver a paper at the Wuhan Conference on Karl Popper's philosophy, but business interfered. ...

Five faculty members in the College of Business at Northern Illinois University received a grant from the James S. Kemper Foundation to integrate ethics into the graduate business curriculum. This was the second phase of a comprehensive program to integrate ethics into the business curriculum. Each faculty member taught a required course in the MBA program. The faculty members represented each of the five functional departments in the College of Business.This paper describes the ethics content, materials, and approaches that were (...) used to cover ethics by each of the five faculty members. Hopefully, this description will help other faculty and universities integrate ethics more effectively into the business curriculum. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:KARL ASCHENBRENNER, 19x 1-1988 Karl Aschenbrenner was born in Bison, Kansas, on November 20, 1911. He received the A. B. degree from Reed College in 1934 and his graduate degrees at Berkeley (M. A., 1938; Ph.D., 194o). After two years as an instructor at Reed College, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve (Lieutenant in Meteorology ) from 1943 to 1946. From 1946 to 1948, he taught in the (...) Department of Speech at Berkeley and thereafter in the Department of Philosophy until his retirement in 1978. His teaching was devoted mainly to aesthetics and to the history of philosophy, most notably his course on Kant. For many years he was active as a trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics, and from 1961 as a member of the Journal's founding executive committee and, after incorporation, of the Board of Directors. Karl's first two years of attachment to theJournal coincided with service as chairman of the Department of Philosophy. This conjunction enabled him to be extraordinarily helpful in dealing with problems of bringing the Journal to birth--problems of funding, editorial appointments, publication policies, and business arrangements with the University of California Press. He welcomed the opportunity offered the Philosophy Department of collaborating in the publishing venture recommended by a special committee of the American Philosophical Association in 1958. The recognition early won by the Journal for its articles and reviews answered to his hope and work for success. At the annual meeting of the Board of Directors in San Francisco in 1987, the twenty-fifth birthday of the Journal was celebrated as was his twenty-seven years of diligent care for theJournafs excellence. Karl was a regular contributor to the philosophy series published by the University of California prior to three books issued by D. Reidel: The Concepts ofValue(1971), The ConceptsofCriticism(1974) and AnalysisofAppraisiveCharacterization (1983). He received Guggenheim, Fulbright, and NEH fellowships. Despite a physically disabling stroke in 1979, he continued his trips to Budapest which he began in 1972. He was concerned to study a non-IndoEuropean language spoken by people of European culture and had selected the Magyar tongue spoken in Hungary. He learned the language to test theories he advanced about appraisive concepts. He discovered in the structure of Magyar a mode of valuing embodied in verb usage differing significantly [333] 334 from the special appraisive vocabularies of English and German. Besides his lectures in Hungary, he responded to invitations to lecture received from universities in England, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania. Shortly after his return to Budapest on his eleventh trip, he died of a massive stroke on July 4, 1988. He is buried there in a city he loved, especially for its music. He is survived by Marie, his wife of fifty-one years, and three children: Lisabeth, an attorney in Los Angeles; Peter, a judge in Fairbanks; and John, a composer in New York. E. W. STRONG... (shrink)

The great object of Augustus in celebrating Ludi saeculares in 17 b.c. was to encourage the belief in himself and the consequent active loyalty to himself, as the restorer of the pax deorum,—the good relation between the divine and human inhabitants of Rome. So far he had tried to attain this end by the ancient usual and proper means, i.e. by carrying out the various regulations of the ius diuinum, so many of which had long been neglected. But in that (...) year he determined to undertake a special celebration, with the design of more effectually stamping the impression already made on the minds of the people; and it so happens that we have more detailed knowledge of this celebration than of any other Roman rite of any period. This is fortunate, for it stands on the margin between an old and a new régime, like the Aeneid of Virgil, who had died two years earlier: that great religious poem was just becoming known, and there is an allusion to it in the hymn of which I am going to speak. The Ludi were the outward or ritualistic expression of the idea immortalized by the poet, that a regeneration is at hand of Rome and Italy, in religion, morals, agriculture, government: old things are now to be put away, a new and glorious era is to open. Henceforward the Roman was to look ahead of him in hope and confidence, trusting in Augustus, the Aeneas of the actual State. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:274 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY poisoning, spying, etc., which would render postwar mutual confidence impossible, shall not be countenanced. It is mainly with an eye to these preliminary articles that Professor Wilhelm Miiller argues for Kant's relevance to contemporary political problems. Miiller begins by drawing an analogy between the Peace of Basle (1795) and the Treaty of Versailles: in both instances, it is claimed, secret reservations at the treaty table, (...) the identification of defeated nation with "guilty" nation, and the deprivation of an entire "guiltless" people of "the most primitive right to live" helped lay the foundations for future wars. Miiller sees in the willful dispersion, through motives of revenge and greed, of the possessions of conquered nations after both World Wars a "reversion to the wildest barbarism." He defends Kant's stricture against standing armies as being "simply and logically irrefutable" in spite of Kant's toleration--understandable in 1795--of limited and voluntary militias adequate for national defense. He infers from Kant's warning against national economic dependency the urgent need to exclude international capitalism from world politics. He suggests that Kant's principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of nations has been violated in the splitting of East from West Germany. And he insinuates that the present form of government in the U.S. is democratic and republican only in name, being in actuality a capitalist oligarchy whose two-party system tends to degenerate into a one-party system. Professor Miiller is entitled to his views. The reader, however, is entitled to a more objective exposition of Kant's essay and perhaps even to hope for a more critical and searching appraisal of Kant's doctrines. One opportunity for the latter surely offers itself in regard to Kant's analogy between personal and international morality. The analogy might conceivably break down over the difficulty of assigning collective moral and legal responsibility. If, as Kant maintains, a state is a moral person, it should follow that it and not merely its constituent members taken singly has moral responsibility for what it undertakes. Leaving aside the question of whether or not Kant thought through the implications of his premise, it is clear that Professor Miiller has not done so. Whereas he considers atrocious the branding of the German people as guilty of international crime in either World War, he allows himself the judgment that the "Christian" people of Europe and America were guilty of mass-murder on both occasions. The inconsistency is evident. Left unexamined and even unmentioned are the following: Kant's well-known ethical principles--the concept of practical reason, the phenomenal-noumenal duality, the notion of design in nature, the doctrine of the Categorical Imperative binding on any rational will--upon which he explicitly grounds Perpetual Peace; his efforts to refute the notion of theoretical conflict between morality and politics; his misleading use of the language of the social contract theorists throughout the essay; his proposal, anticipatory of later British philosophers, that the principle of publicity is a necessary if not sufficient condition of morally proper legislation. Perpetual Peace deserves more than Professor Mfiller has given it. PETER FUSS University of California, Riverside The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812-1848. Edited by Francis E. Mineka, with an Introduction by F. A. Hayek. Two vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Routledge g: Kegan Paul. Pp. xxvii + 784. $20.00.) These two volumes of early correspondence are the first volumes to appear of a projected new edition of Mill's collected works. If the subsequent volumes maintain the high level of competence achieved here, the new edition will prove a valuable assistance to nineteenth- BOOK REVIEWS 275 century scholars. Of the 537 letters published, 238 have never before been in print, and 72 others have hitherto appeared only in part. Most of the work of assembling the letters was done by F. A. Hayek, but the extremely useful annotation was prepared by Francis E. Mineka. We are told that he and Dwight N. Lindley are planning an edition of the later letters (1849-1873). The earliest letter extant (printed in facsimile and hitherto unpublished) was written, at the age of 6, to Bentham. It... (shrink)

In Italy, at the end of the tenth century, a pedant named Regulus (?) who had a copy of the De Verborum Significatu (or had made extracts from one), wishing to read Plautus (so often quoted by Festus), took the opportunity of an illness to appeal to certain prelates whose church-library contained a MS. of the comedian. Through their stupidity he received not Plautus, but Plato, i.e. Chalcidius' translation of the Timaeus. Disappointed, but not deterred, he wrote the following letter (...) (in a sort of rhyming prose, affected by the litterati of that time) on the fly-leaf and returned the MS. (now Bamberg. Class. 18), hoping that by much repetition he might hammer into their dull heads the difference between PL-AU-TUS and PL-A-TO and yet save them from chagrin and resentment (the material for the letter was supplied by Festus, although the opening illustration comes from Chalcidius). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:27 Franciscan Studies 63 (2005) FRANCISCAN INSTITUTE MEDAL HONOREES The Franciscan Institute Medal for 2005 was awarded to two scholars of international renown in the world of Franciscan studies: David Flood, OFM and David Burr. Both honorees are known throughout the world particularly for their scholarly work on Peter John Olivi – a friar of the late 13th century whose critical importance for Franciscan history has now come to (...) be appreciated largely thanks to the work of these two scholars. The Medals were conferred at an Academic Convocation in connection with the Feast of St. Bonaventure in July 2005. David Flood, OFM is the 17th recipient of the Franciscan Institute Medal. David Burr is the 18th recipient of the Franciscan Institute Medal. MICHAEL BLASTIC 28 DAVID E. FLOOD, OFM 17th Recipient of the Franciscan Institute Medal Official Citation It is both an honor and a joy for me to celebrate and recount some of the significant contributions of Brother David Flood, OFM, to Franciscan studies and life. Brother David has been a member of the St. Joseph Province of the Friars Minor in Montreal, Canada, since 1950. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Laval University, Quebec City, studied theology at the Friars Convent in Montreal, and was ordained in May, 1958. He also received a M.A. in English and Literature from the University of Montreal in 1959. From 1958 until 1961 he taught English Literature at St. Francis College in Biddeford, Maine, and while teaching he published studies on English topics including Keats and Beckett. Between 1961 and 1965 while residing in Cologne, Germany, he studied with Kajetan Esser, OFM, at Mönchengladbach, while reading philosophy and history at the University of Cologne. He received his doctorate from that university in 1965 with the dissertation Die Regula non Bullata der Minderbrüder (published in 1967 by Dietrich Coelde Verlag). Returning to Canada, he taught church history in Montreal from 1965-1966. In 1967-1968 he held a fellowship at the Institute for European History in Mainz, working on a critical edition of Peter Olivi’s Rule Commentary (published by Franz Steiner Verlag, 1972). During the 1970’s and 1980’s, David worked with various Franciscan groups, especially the Franciscan Federation, in North America while residing in Chicago, Illinois. From time to time during that period he returned to Mönchengladbach for Franciscan research and writing. After returning to Montreal in 1991, he began working with Gedeon Gál, OFM, in 1994, and visited the Franciscan Institute regularly as they worked together on the Chronicle of Nicholas Minorita (The Franciscan Institute, 1996). He also worked on the exegetical works of Peter Olivi with Gedeon, publish- FRANCISCAN MEDAL 29 ing a critical edition of Olivi’s Principles of Sacred Scripture, and Postilla ’s on Isaiah and 1 Corinthians (The Franciscan Institute, 1997). He became a permanent member of the Franciscan Institute in January, 1998, and continued working on editions of Olivi’s exegetical works, completing the Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (The Franciscan Institute, 2001). David is presently completing work on the edition of Olivi’s Commentary on the Book of Genesis which he hopes to complete within a year. In addition to his work on textual editions and scholarly papers, David has lectured widely in North America and Europe, as well as in Africa. He just recently returned from a semester in Rome where he taught a course on the Regula non Bullata at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Medievali at the Antonianum. The bibliography of David’s publications number more than fifty entries and includes a significant number of critical text editions, each of which is recognized as a quality example of medieval text editing. In addition to his edition of the Early Rule and Olivi’s Rule Commentary, David also has published editions of the Rule commentaries of Hugh of Digne (1980), David of Augsburg (1993), and John of Wales (2002). In addition to the exegetical texts and the Rule Commentary of Olivi, David edited Olivi’s Quaestio de Mendicitate, and together with David Burr, his fellow honoree this evening, he published an edition of Olivi’s Sixteenth Question on Evangelical Perfection dealing with poverty... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jack W. Meiland INTERPRETATION AS A COGNITIVE DISCIPLINE Interpretation is the fundamental method of the humanities. The humanist is concerned first to understand what a text, a speech, a work of art, means; and interpretation has this understanding as its goal. All of the other activities and aims of the humanist depend on interpretation. One cannot properly appreciate a work of art until one grasps what it means. Nor (...) can one appropriately evaluate it until this condition is met. Moreover, the importance of interpretation reaches far beyond the humanities into everyday life, where we interpret what we hear and read in order to grasp meanings. Its importance reaches into the sciences: the social sciences where one must interpret this individual behavior and that institutional practice, and the natural sciences where one must interpret the results of one's experiments. Because interpretation is of such fundamental and pervasive importance in our lives, it is urgent for us to understand what interpretation is and what it should aim at. In this article, I investigate the activity of interpretation by focusing on the interpretation of literary texts and by beginning with the views of E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Eleven years ago, Hirsch published Validity in Interpretation, a book which delves into the nature of interpretation in great detail.1 Richard Palmer has said that Hirsch's book is "the first full-dress treatise in general hermeneutics written in English," and continues, "In the years to come, it will undoubtedly take its place among the significant American works on the theory of interpretation. In a systematic and carefully argued presentation, the book challenges some of the most cherished assumptions that have guided literary interpretation for some four decades."2 1 think that Palmer's prediction has been fulfilled. Hirsch's book remains a decade later one of the very few systematic American works in this field,3 and it has been widely read, much used in university courses, and has significantly influenced thought on its subject. Validity in Interpretation presents a carefully worked-out position buttressed by philosophically-informed 23 24Philosophy and Literature and systematic argumentation in a way which reveals the fundamental questions at issue. Although there have been scattered criticisms of Hirsch's views,4 in my opinion there has not so far appeared the kind of searching critique which this book deserves in view of its attempt to deal with these issues so seriously and at such a fundamental level and in view of the influence which the book has had. The necessity for a critique is now reinforced by the recent publication of another book by Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation, more than half of which is devoted to a further explication and defense of these same views.5 In undertaking to reply to Hirsch's position, I hope not only to cast doubt on that position but also, and mainly, to provide better foundations for the view which I hold. It is one of the great merits of Hirsch's work that it facilitates that constructive effort by attacking the issues at such a basic level, enabling us to come to grips with them immediately. In what follows, I will describe Hirsch's view, make clear what kind of position he holds, and defend his view against criticisms which I consider misguided. Then we will be in a position to assess his contentions and to defend an alternative theory. Hirsch's view is, briefly, that the interpretation of a literary work should aim at re-creating (or, as he sometimes puts it, "re-cognizing") the meaning which the author of that work intended the work to have. He opposes all views which ignore authorial meaning; views which hold that the meaning of a work may change through the ages, so that the work may have one meaning at one time and another meaning at another time; views which hold that the work may have meaning in virtue of its relation to the interpreter's interests, to the needs and problems of the interpreter's times or the spirit of his age, or in fact to anything except the author's intended meaning.6 The first point that must be... (shrink)

What if in discussion the critic refuses to recognize an emotionally expressed argument of her interlocutor as an argument, accusing him of having presented no argument at all. In this paper, we shall deal with this reproach, which taken literally amounts to a charge of having committed a fallacy of non-argumentation. As such it is a very strong, if not the ultimate, criticism, which even carries the risk of abandonment of the discussion and can, therefore, not be made without burdening (...) oneself with correspondingly strong obligations. We want to specify the fallacies of non-argumentation and their dialectic, i.e., the proper way to criticize them, the appropriate ways for the arguer to react to such criticism, and the appropriate ways for the critic to follow up on these reactions. Among the types of fallacy of non-argumentation, the emphasis will be on the appeal to popular sentiments. Our aim is to reach, for cases of non-argumentation, a survey of dialectical possibilities. By making the disputants themselves responsible for the place of emotion in their dialogues, we hope to contribute to a further development of the theory of dialectical obligations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 477 (p. 32), although some might consider him to have been an important historian of logic. I am not certain that citing Carnap and Heideggar (p. 75) can do much to clarify Vires. When one reads 'Henrique Estienne' and "Hipotiposes pirronicas" (p. 266) in an Italian book he is a bit taken aback and wonders whether the author has done his homework. The writer missed a golden (...) opportunity to connect Galileo to the tradition, for his still unpublished Quaestiones on logic and the De motu (both written before 1600) have many interesting comments which tie in directly with the material developed in this volume. This could have provided an excellent bridge to the next'century, when the analytic method began to take a more central role in scientific and methodological discussions. There is still room for a number of studies on the evolution of the analytic method during the Renaissance. Unfortunately Crescini's study barely scratches the surface of this immense subject. Let us hope that his book will at least have the effect of encouraging others to treat the matter with more care, in greater depth, and more exhaustively. The volume is provided with a preface by Giorgio Radetti, who claims more for it than it actually provides, as well as noting that it is the first part of a more comprehensive study by the same author on the formation of the analytic method in Cartesian philosophy (p. 5). The book has a useful index, but unfortunately no bibliography. CHARLESB. ScxiMrrr The University of Leeds Le thomisme et la pens#e italienne de la Renaissance. By Paul Oskar Kristeller. Conference Albert-le-Grand 1965. (Montr6ah Institut d'~tudes m~di~vales, and Paris: Vrin, 1967. Pp. 287. $6) Surprisingly little is known about the later history of Thomism. This brief but very rich lecture by Professor Kristeller, renowned historian of Italian Renaissance philosophy, examines one period in the later career of St. Thomas' thought. This study, based chiefly on unpublished source material, shows that Thomas was very much present to both the humanists and to the academic philosophers during the Renaissance. Such leading humanists as Lorenzo Valla, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and Marsilio Ficino, quote St. Thomas frequently and with approval. Even the unfavorable attitudes of Ermolao Barbaro or Baptista Mantuanus show that Thomas was already the most celebrated of mediaeval philosophers. The professors of philosophy at Italian universities, such as Pierre Pomponazzi, speak of Thomas with great respect and regard his theology as in conformity with the truths of faith, even when they reject his philosophy as being in disaccord with the authentic teaching of Aristotle. St. Thomas made a continuous contribution to the development of Renaissance theology and philosophy. Yet the principal Italian thinkers did not follow him strictly nor fall under his exclusive influence. Thomas is merely one of the most important sources, not the prevailing influence, in Renaissance thought. Ficino, for example, is,178 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY in accord with Thomas on certain important points, but his own theology is more in the spirit of Plato and Augustine. Professor Kristeller's vast learning is at the service of admirably balanced conclusions. Not everyone will agree with all his interpretations; Ficino perhaps did not imagine himself to be "constructing a system of philosophy" (p. 96) since the very title of his work, Theologia platonica, suggests that he continues, with new materials, the labor of mediaeval theolo#ans. And Ficino's doctrine of the continuity of the supernatural life of the soul in this world and the next (p. 120) seems to be completely in accord with Thomas. But the author's very careful scholarly method and sound general conclusions are beyond criticism. Two hitherto unpublished Latin texts are printed in critical edition at the end of the French lecture, the Opus aureum in Thomistas by Baptists Mantuanus, which is anti-Thomas, and the Opusculum ad Laurentium Medicem on beatitude, by Vincentius Bandellus, which is pro-Thomas. Like Professor Kristeller's fine lecture, these new texts are a permanent contribution to scholarship. PAUL J. W. MILLER University of Colorado The Anatomy of Leviathan. By F. S. McNeilly. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968. Pp... (shrink)

Defends confrontational modes of citizenship as a means to reinvigorate democratic participation and regime accountability. A growing number of people are enraged about the quality and direction of public life, despise politicians, and are desperate for real political change. How can the contemporary neoliberal global political order be challenged and rebuilt in an egalitarian and humanitarian manner? What type of political agency and new political institutions are needed for this? In order to answer these questions, Confrontational Citizenship draws on a (...) broad base of perspectives to articulate the concept of confrontational citizenship. William W. Sokoloff defends extra-institutional and confrontational modes of political activity along with new ways of conceiving political institutions as a way to create political orders accountable to the people. In contrast to many forms of democratic theory, Sokoloff argues that confrontational modes of citizenship (e.g., protest) are good because they increase the accountability of a regime to the people, increase the legitimacy of regimes, lead to improvements in a political order, and serve as a means to vent frustration. The goal is to make the word citizen relevant and dangerous to the settled and closed practices that structure our political world and to provide a hopeful vision of what it means to be politically progressive today. William W. Sokoloff is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. (shrink)

Adolf Grünbaurn’s criticisms of psychoanalytic theory are the most sustained and powerful effort in our time to make the philosophy of science useful, useful in the pursuit of theories and evidence and useful in the relief of suffering. His work shows, I think, that some important claims that psychoanalytic theory has achieved certain scientific goals at best express unjustified hopes. These failures will not discourage those who think that the goals of the human sciences are radically different from those of (...) the natural sciences. But, like Professor Griinbaum, I don’t think there is a relevant difference, here. Psychoanalytic theory, like any field of science, strives for at least approximately true descriptions of causes, that are justified in light of the data.Still, I think that there is a core of psychoanalytic theory that is empirically justified. Moreover, most people whose theoretical commitments are psychoanalytic are now fully committed to no more than this core. In responding to his paper, ‘The Role of the Case Study Method in the Foundations of Psychoanalysis,’ I’ll start by sketching this core, indicating why I take it to embody the same scientific goals as familiar, well-justified natural-scientific theories. My view of the goals of theorizing is so basic to my failure to be converted by Professor Griinbaum that this prelude will be the longest part of my comments. If it turns out that he doesn’t want to convert someone with this kind of theory, i.e., that these claims for psychoanalysis are acceptable to him - that will itself be significant as clarifying the aims of his important work. (shrink)

While reflecting recently on what the historian means by greatness, I was led to examine Croce's theory of economic action. It seemed to promise an answer to the troublesome problem of the relationship between greatness and moral goodness. How those hopes were disappointed will be explained presently, but Croce's theory must first be considered on its merits. I shall confine the discussion as far as possible to Croce's philosophy of the practical, avoiding any detailed reference, e.g. , to the somewhat (...) artificial parallelism within the dialectic of the spirit between the forms of theoretical and those of practical activity. Since, however, Croce teaches—and his practice is in accordance with his teaching—that any severance of part from whole does violence to philosophy, it will be necessary to touch on certain larger questions before we close. (shrink)

Ryle's recent retirement after almost a half-century of study, teaching and writing might well be regarded as the end of an era. A large segment of the philosophical world has come to regard him as the embodiment of the spirit of Oxford. His clear and informal style, his gift for fresh analogies and striking similes, his mastery of the epigram, have set new literary standards for philosophical writing. Largely responsible for inaugurating the B. Phil. and D. Phil. programs after World (...) War II for the benefit of graduate students from abroad, Ryle both as Waynflete professor of metaphysics and editor of Mind has enormously influenced the thinking of Anglo-American philosophers. Apart from his Concept of Mind, Dilemmas and Plato's Progress, his writings have taken the form of reviews, short articles or essays addressed to specific philosophical issues. Though many of these have become minor classics and have graced innumerable anthologies, it is only now that we have virtually the whole of this important segment of his writings available in book form. With the exception of four essays published originally in French, the papers in these two volumes have been published previously in English, mostly in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Analysis or Mind. They range in time from his early days at Oxford to 1968 and cover a wide range of topics, mainly in the areas of philosophical methodology, the philosophy of logic and the philosophy of mind. Only the fields of moral, political and aesthetic philosophy are comparatively neglected. The first volume contains his critical essays on individual thinkers. They include studies on Plato, Locke and Hume as well as his pieces on such contemporary thinkers as Husserl, Heidegger, Carnap, Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore and John Anderson, who dominated the Australian scene during the first half of this century. The second volume contains 37 pieces dating back to 1929. It is worth mentioning that despite their brevity, Ryle's introductions to these volumes throw considerable light on his philosophical development. While professional philosophers will be happy to have these collected papers in their present form, we hope they will soon become available in less costly editions for student use.--A. B. W. (shrink)

To reduce the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Granich et al. 1 ( 2009 ) have proposed a new strategy for universal voluntary HIV testing immediately followed by antiretroviral therapy. Although this proposal is likely to benefit the partners of those affected and thus promote public health, it is by no means clear that it benefits the infected people themselves and indeed it may be harmful. Since the proposal involves an intervention that is not clinically indicated, it falls (...) foul of the normal ethical standards of clinical medicine, which is to act in the best interests of patients. Neither is it a measure that would be imposed under the protection of public health law on people who are seen as representing such danger to others that significant restrictions in liberty are appropriate. Thus, the proposal represents a third category of public health measure. We argue that a coherent ethical framework including a robust process is appropriate to proposals of this kind and that medical research offers a useful model since some research, like this proposal, is motivated not by the interests of the individual participants but by the common good. We outline some possible elements of such an ethical framework. (shrink)

[W]e know when a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found. They forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along. … They became satisfied with themselves. Unity and common understanding there had been, enough to overcome rot and dissolution, enough to break through their obstacles. But the mockers came. And the deniers were heard. And vision and hope faded. And the custom (...) of greeting became "What's the use?" And men whose forefathers would go anywhere, holding nothing impossible in the genius of man, joined the mockers and deniers. They forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along.Within the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hope Draped in Black: Decolonizing Utopian StudiesCaroline Edwards (bio)What does utopian studies have to learn from critical race theory, Black studies, and ideas of Black futurity? While utopian scholars have begun unpicking the colonial entanglements of utopianism’s origins (particularly as a literary genre grounded in pelagic crossings to the New World that have advocated slavery, extractivism, and eugenics to name a few notable examples across the utopian canon), (...) few, if any, have incorporated the perspectives, aesthetics, and theoretical work of Black scholars themselves.1 The following are a few brief remarks organized around keywords (in a nod to Raymond Williams, a fierce advocate of utopian thinking) that attempt to sketch an answer to these questions, with a focus on my own area of utopian study: utopian literary and cultural production in the contemporary period.ProgressWe might start by considering the literary utopia’s most prolific period, from roughly 1880 to 1915. In a deluge of utopian narratives, many of them penned by amateur writers, we find the emergence of a genre that is thoroughly [End Page 498] rooted in industrialized progress. Whatever their perspective on capitalism and waged labor, these works privilege advanced industrialization as the primary means to eliminate poverty and disease, thereby liberating workers into automated futures of post-scarcity abundance. Examples include Edward Bellamy’s highly rationalized system of pneumatic delivery (Looking Backward: 2000–1887 [1888]), Mary E. Bradley Lane’s chemical production of food from waste products (Mizora: A World of Women [1890] 1999), H. G. Wells’s titanic hydro-powered engineering (Men Like Gods [1923]), Edward Bulwer Lytton’s lithic limitless energy, Vril (The Coming Race [1871]), or the ubiquitous electricity that powers Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett’s clean city (New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future [1899] 2011), Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Marchant’s advanced Martian society (Unveiling a Parallel: A Romance [1893]), and Alexander Bogdanov’s advanced scientific culture on the red planet (Красная звезда [Red Star (1908) 1984]). Indeed, many notable dystopian novels begin with the same premise of highly automated societies that focus, rather, on the awfulness of life without purpose (Anna Bowman Dodd’s The Republic of the Future; Or, Socialism a Reality [1887], E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” [1909], Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano [1952]). While they are far from uncritical of the telos of historical progress (most of the works highlight the class and gender inequalities of their own time), utopian novels in this period tend to view the utopian process as one of harnessing historical progress in a more equitable direction; they rarely question the Hegelian premise that history moves through contradictory forces in a dialectical series of stages.In his 2016 book Hope Draped in Black, Joseph R. Winters explores the lasting damage that ideas of historical progress have wrought on Black writers, artists, and thinkers. While notions of racial uplift are loaded with a linear narrative of Black progress such conceptions, he writes, “are mediated by melancholy, loss, and a recalcitrant sense of tragedy” (6–7). Building on Adorno and Horkheimer’s landmark critique in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) as well as the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, Winters notes thatmodern notions of progress and freedom are inherently flawed and problematic because they rely on and are intertwined with practices and conditions—capitalism, colonial expansion, racial hierarchies, endeavors, and incentives to usurp and possess that earth—that are harmful to non-Europeans, working-class bodies, women, and other groups.(2016, 8) [End Page 499]Examining the relationship between melancholy and hope in Black literary and aesthetic traditions, Winters explores how writers such as Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison incorporate jazz into their works, using its discordant, improvisational structures to imagine time out of joint (the Derridean deferral of justice announced by the arrival of the specter of old King Hamlet, who returns) (Derrida 1994). Here, Winters writes, “the past can always haunt and disturb the present [so that] the present is always a site of potential breaks and ruptures that can signify both dislocation and pain as well as novelty and possibility” (2016, 25). If we are to contemplate the almost overwhelming task of decolonizing utopian studies, then... (shrink)

“The apocalypse of hope” and other comparable flourishes in the writings of Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre on political violence strike an alarming tone. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon advocates the way of revolutionary violence as the inevitable consequence of colonialism and its systematic exploitation of colonized natives. In his role of agent provocateur, Sartre’s preface to Fanon’s influential and controversial work characteristically dramatizes this redemptive promise of violence: “to gun down a European is to kill two (...) birds with one stone…there remains a dead man and a free man.” This notorious pronouncement constitutes itself as an act of violence—we must feel threatened—meant to incite the latent counter-violence behind, in Sartre’s diagnosis, the false consciousness of bourgeois toleration and understanding. Could Sartre’s bold statement be spoken today without violent condemnation? This statement claims that, against the dehumanization of colonial oppression, only revolutionary violence allows for the colonized natives to constitute a “people” and recreate themselves in the image of a new humanity forged from the experience of liberation. For Fanon in particular, the recreation of humanity is impossible without the birth of a national consciousness and a revolutionary culture. As Fanon writes, “[w]e believe that the conscious, organized struggle undertaken by a colonized people in order to restore national sovereignty constitutes the greatest cultural manifestation that exists.” This reach toward a new humanism through the praxis of revolutionary violence points directly to the problem of beginnings. As Arendt observes in On Revolution, “[r]evolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.” Anti-colonial violence, for Fanon, inaugurates the beginning of political life; the colonized native reconstitutes himself as a βίοσ πολιτικόσ capable of both speech and praxis. For Sartre, anti-colonial violence reveals the dialectical necessity of world history in its struggle towards genuine universality and the utopia of a “classless” society. (shrink)

In this tour-de-force, Elvira Basevich examines this paradox by tracing the development of W.E.B. Du Bois's life and thought and the relevance of his legacy to our troubled age. She adroitly analyzes the main concepts that inform Du Bois’s critique of American democracy, such as the color line and double consciousness, before examining how these concepts might inform our understanding of contemporary struggles, from Black Lives Matter to the campaign for reparations for slavery. She stresses the continuity in Du Bois’s (...) thought, from his early writings to his later embrace of self-segregation and Pan-Africanism, while not shying away from assessing the challenging implications of his later work.This wonderful book vindicates the power of Du Bois’s thought to help transform a stubbornly unjust world. It is essential reading for racial justice activists as well as students of African American philosophy and political thought. (shrink)

We critically evaluate the ways in which competence in medical ethics has been evaluated. We report the initial stage in the development of a relevant, reliable and valid instrument to evaluate core critical thinking skills in medical ethics. This instrument can be used to evaluate the impact of medical ethics education programmes and to assess whether medical students have achieved a satisfactory level of performance of core skills and knowledge in medical ethics, within and across institutions.

This paper is perhaps an impressionistic response to accounts of the extraordinary set-theoretical activity being undertaken by W. Hugh Woodin (mathematician) and colleagues in the present moment, in the context of the mathematical ontology proposed and elaborated by Alain Badiou (philosopher). The argument presented is that the prevailing and sustained incoherence of the mathematical ontology (i.e. set theory) underscores a contemporary deficit of humanity’s symbolic organization which, in turn, yields confusion and conflict in terms of subjective orientation. But a new (...) axiom (conjectured as yet) promises to realize a coherent set theory, i.e. stable, consistent and complete. This remarkable (and completely unexpected) development offers hope for the pursuit of a modern (i.e. non-hierarchical) symbolic, and a consequent resolution of the general subjective disorientation. (shrink)

Some people have found my distinction between meaning and significance useful. In the following revision of that distinction, I hope to improve its accuracy and perhaps, therefore, its utility as well. My impulse for making the revision has been my realization, very gradually achieved, that meaning is not simply an affair of consciousness and unconsciousness. In 1967, in Validity in Interpretation, I roundly asserted that “there is no magic land of meanings outside human consciousness.” 1 That assertion would be (...) true if, godlike, we could oversee the whole of human consciousness, past, present, and future. But we language users, being limited creatures, intend our verbal meanings to go beyond what we can pay attention to at any moment. We intend our meanings to transcend our momentary limitations of attention and knowledge. Hence there is a land of meanings beyond past and present human consciousness—the land of the future. What I should have said originally is that there is no magic lance of meanings beyond the whole extent of human consciousness, past, present, and future. This correction of my original statements leads to a deepening of the concept of meaning.In 1960 I first proposed the analytical distinction between two aspects of textual interpretation. One of them, meaning, was fixed and immutable; the other, significance, was open to change.2 I acknowledged that significance, changeable or not, is the more valuable object of interpretation, because it typically embraces the present use of texts, and present use is present value. But I argued that, in academic criticism, the significance and use of a text ought to be rooted in its fixed meaning, since otherwise criticism would lack a stable object of inquiry and would merely float on tides of preference. The claim that one reader’s opinion is as valid as another’s would then be right, despite any indignant protest to the contrary. I did not wish to dissuade people from floating on the tides of preference if that was what they wished to do. I intended to provide a firm justification for those who wished to pursue historical scholarship. 3 I also assumed that even those who did not pursue historical scholarship might sometimes wish to exploit the possibility of historically fixed meaning. In my experience, even antiauthorial theorists sometimes with to regard their own texts as having a historically fixed meaning and will complain if someone misunderstands that meaning. 1. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation, p. 4.2. See my “Objective Interpretation,” PMLA 75 : 463-79.3. See, for instance, W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy,” in Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry, which ends:We submit that this is the true and objective way of criticism, as contrasted to what the very uncertainty of exegesis might tempt a second kind of critic to undertake: the way of biographical or genetic inquiry …. Our point is that such an answer to such an inquiry would have nothing to do with the poem “Prufrock”; it would not be a critical inquiry. Critical inquiries, unlike bets, are not settled in this way. Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle. [P. 18] E. D. Hirsch, Jr., professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of numerous works, including Validity in Interpretation and The Aims of Interpretation. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Against Interpretation?”, “The Politics of Theories of Interpretation, and “Stylistics and Synonymity”. (shrink)

In Landscapes and Labscapes Robert Kohler emphasized the separation between laboratory and field cultures and the creation of new "hybrid" or mixed practices as field sciences matured in the early twentieth century. This article explores related changes in laboratory practices, especially novel designs for the analysis of organism-environment relations in the mid-twentieth century. American ecologist Victor Shelford argued in 1929 that technological improvements and indoor climate control should be applied to ecological laboratories, but his recommendations were too ambitious for the (...) time. In the postwar period Frits W. Went, plant physiologist at the California Institute of Technology, created a new high-tech laboratory, dubbed a "phytotron", in the hope that it would transform plant sciences by allowing for unprecedented control of environmental variables. Went's aspirations, the research conducted in his laboratory, and its impact in initiating an international movement, are considered. Went's laboratory can be seen as a "hybrid culture" evolving in the laboratory, complementing and intersecting with some of the field practices that Kohler describes. It was also a countercultural movement against the reductionist trends of molecular biology in the 1950s and 1960s. By considering the history of the laboratory in relation to field sciences, we can explore how new funding sources and cross-disciplinary relations affected the development of field sciences, especially in the postwar period. (shrink)

Twenty-five years ago Paul Wilpert called for a thorough re-examination of our knowledge of the content of Aristotle's lost workDe Philosophia. Expressing his reservations about the validity of our current reconstruction of the work, he wrote: ‘On the basis of attested fragments, we form for ourselves a picture of the content of a lost writing, and this picture in turn serves to interpret new fragments as echoes of that writing. So our joy over the swift growth of our collection of (...) fragments is clouded by the thought that we are not thereby really nearing the original character of the work, but we are entangling ourselves ever more tightly in a picture we ourselves have created.’ As a corrective Wilpert called for a critical retracing of our steps since 1830 to establish a more secure reconstruction of this important lost work.Since then there have been numerous, searching analyses of the ideas and fragments ofDe Philosophia, but at least one venerable old theory has escaped critical reappraisal: namely, the theory that inDe PhilosophiaAristotle discussed his doctrine of a fifth element, i.e. his belief that the heavenly bodies are composed of an element distinct from the four earthly elements, earth, water, air, and fire. This theory has become so widely accepted that it has virtually become a fact. When support is needed, most modern authors simply cite one or both of the two modern authorities on the early Aristotle, namely W. Jaeger and E. Bignone. The more meticulous restate the traditional evidence with complete confidence that this evidence proves their case. If Wilpert's hope for a firmly grounded reconstruction of theDe Philosophiais ever to be achieved, one of the importantdesideratatoday is a critical re-examination of the evidence for the fifth element in this work. (shrink)

This article aims to present the utopia in the aesthetic horizon of Ernst Bloch and T. W Adorno, from the dialectical approach of Principle Hope and Aesthetic Theory. We started from the origin and deployments of the concepts of Pre-appearance and Enigma and their connections to utopia. The pre-appearance notion is closely linked to daydreams which are art modelers. As art modelers, daydreams anticipate a better world which art anticipates by the Pre-appearance of the visible. In Adorno, we start (...) from the relationship between the content of truth and Enigma to find a link between that relationship and the utopia. So, our interpretative hypothesis is that in the aesthetic horizon Bloch and Adorno utopia approaches these two philosophers. (shrink)