Philosophers have had an interest in language from the earliest times but the twentieth century, with its so-called 'linguistic turn' in philosophy, has seen a huge expansion of work focused specifically on language and its foundations. No branch of philosophy has been unaffected by this shift of emphasis. It is timely at the end of the century to review and assess the vast range of issues that have been developed and debated in this central area. The distinguished international contributors present (...) a clear, accessible guide to the fundamental questions raised by the philosophers about language. Contributions include Graeme Forbes on necessity, Susan Haack on deviant logics, Paul Horwich on truth, Charles Travis on Wittgenstein, L.J. Cohen on linguistic philosophy, Ruth Kempson on semantics and syntax and Christopher Hookway on ontology, to name but a few. A wide range of topics are covered from the metaphysics and ontology of language, language and mind, truth and meaning, to theories or reference, speech act theory, philosophy of logic and formal semantics. There are also articles on key figures from the twentieth century and earlier. Based on the foundation provided by the award-winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics this single volume provides a collection of articles that will be an invaluable reference tool for all those interested in the area of philosophy of language, and also to those in cognitive science and psychology. All the articles have been thoroughly revised and updated. This volume gives a unique survey of topics that are at the very core of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Radical democratic political theorists have used the concept of constituent power to sketch ambitious models of radical democracy, while many legal scholars deploy it to make sense of the political and legal dynamics of constitutional politics. Its growing popularity notwithstanding, I argue that the concept tends to impede a proper interpretation of civil disobedience, conceived as nonviolent, politically motivated lawbreaking evincing basic respect for law. Contemporary theorists who employ it cannot distinguish between civil disobedience and other related, yet ultimately different, (...) modes of political illegality. The essay also examines Jürgen Habermas’ recent contributions to a theory of mixed or dualistic constituent power, conceding that Habermas avoids many theoretical and political ills plaguing competing radical democratic theoretical retrievals. Nonetheless, Habermas’ attempt to salvage the idea of constituent power as part of... (shrink)

Climate activists have recently engaged in widely publicized acts of politically motivated lawbreaking. This article identifies and critically analyzes two seemingly overlapping but in fact divergi...

Synaesthesia is a neurodevelopmental condition characterised by anomalous sensory perceptions and associated alterations in cognitive function. This chapter summarises what is known about the familial transmission of synaesthesia and its genetic underpinnings. Early familiality studies showed evidence for a strong genetic predisposition, a highly skewed female: male ratio, and an absence of male-to-male transmission. These patterns supported an early hypothesis of a single-gene X-linked dominant mode of inheritance with male lethality. Subsequent analyses in larger samples indicated that the mode of (...) inheritance was likely to be more complex, with both the strong female skew and absence of male-to-male transmission brought into question. We review in detail the first whole genome linkage scan for auditory-visual synaesthesia and a subsequent family linkage study on coloured sequence synaesthesia. Together these results suggest linkage to five chromosomes but give no support for linkage to the X-chromosome. We discuss candidate genes within these regions and potential implications for the aetiology of synaesthesia. We also discuss the implications of these pioneering genome scans for our understanding of synaesthesia and of how different synaesthetic phenotypes may arise from different genetic predispositions interacting with other genes and with the environment. (shrink)

This study investigates the relations among Machiavellianism, the stakeholder orientation, and Italian managers' support for corporate social and environmental reporting (SER). These relationships have not previously been investigated among a sample of experienced managers but have important implications. As anticipated, Machiavellianism had a strong negative association with the support for SER. Machiavellianism was also negatively related to the stakeholder orientation, which in turn was positively correlated with the support for SER. Support for the stakeholder orientation partially mediated the association between (...) Machiavellianism and SER. The findings advance our understanding of the motivations for sustainability reporting by documenting that managers' fundamental personality traits and economic ideologies are closely associated and are important determinants of normative support for social and environmental disclosures. We further suggest that the results support the case for mandated compliance‐with‐standard sustainability reports coupled with a requirement that such reports be independently audited. (shrink)

This article argues that traditional, regulative principles of research ethics offer insufficient guidance for research in the narrative study of lives. These principles presuppose an implicit epistemology that conceives of research participants as data sources, a conception that is argued not tenable for narrative research. The case is made by drawing on recent discussions of research ethics in the qualitative and narrative research literature. This article shows that narrative ethics is inextricably entwined with epistemological issues--namely, issues of narrative ownership and (...) the multiplicity of narrative meaning. Finally, practical recommendations are made for the ethical treatment of research participants in narrative research. The article concludes by situating our approach with respect to the broad range of contemporary perspectives on research ethics. (shrink)

Are we responsible for our misdeeds in dreams? The obvious answer would seem to be ‘No’. Dreams catch us with our defences down: just those critical and discriminative abilities which are distinctive of our waking lives as responsible moral agents seem out of play when we dream; el sueño de la razón produce monstruos . Moreover, if we are responsible for our dreamt misdeeds, then parity of reasoning demands that we be praised for dreaming noble dreams. But that is absurd. (...) Moral credit should not come that easily, and so neither should moral blame. (shrink)

This paper explores privation in the Statesman, first from a methodological point of view, and then politically. I begin (§1) with the Rule of Bisection (262a–e): classes should be bifurcated by form, which apparently excludes division by positive and negative terms (e.g. human and non-human). The significance of the restriction is debated. I argue that the correct interpretation must take into account the preponderance of privative terms in the subsequent divisions of animals. According to one definition, humans are two-footed, non- (...) interbreeding, hornless land animals; according to another, they are featherless, two-footed land animals (264d–266e). On my reading of the rule, classes should be bifurcated with reference to constitutive features of the resulting subclasses; while negative properties never satisfy this requirement, privations are in some cases partly constitutive of the target class in division. This insight allows me to offer a charitable reading of the Eleatic Stranger’s definitions of the human herd, which others have disparaged, as relevant for political theory (§2) and tightly linked with the Myth of the Ages (268e–274d) that follows these divisions (§3). In the final section, I sketch a unified outlook on the dialogue as concerned with effective political collaboration, under the supervision of a statesman who expertly integrates each member into the self-protective fabric of society (§4). (shrink)

Abstract: William Conklin takes on Hegel’s interpretation of Sophocles’ Antigone in this essay. Hegel asked what makes human laws human and what makes divine laws divine? After outlining Hegel’s interpretation of Antigone in the light of this issue, Conklin argues that we must address what makes human law law? and what makes divine law law? Taking his cue from Michel Foucault’s “What is an Author?”, the key to understanding Sophocles’ Antigone and Hegel’s interpretation to it, according to Conklin, is (...) the relationship between legal authority and an author. Antigone’s divine law opposes Creon’s human law in terms of whether the sense of legal authority presupposes an author. Antigone’s tribe recognises divine laws as nested in an impersonal Fate or Moira common to the Helenes as experienced through rituals and other personal experiences. Such an unwritten law lacks an author “whose origin we know not when”. The city-state’s citizens recognize authority in terms of whether a law has a source in a juridical representer of an invisible author. The invisible author is the city-state external to the representers. The representers interpret human laws in a manner which tries to access the invisible author. What becomes important is that philosophical consciousness observes how the characteristics of the two senses of legal authority clash. (shrink)

The useful publication of Judith N Shklar's final undergraduate lectures at Harvard provides an opportunity to take a careful look at her reflections on political obligation, a matter always of gre...

In this paper William Carroll argues that the alleged conflict between creation and science has its origin in a mistaken comprehension of the meaning of “creation”and the extent of explication that natural sciences can offer. Carroll explains that creation, a metaphysical and theological notion, affirms that everything which exists depends on one single cause which is God. But, on the other side, the object of study of natural sciences is the realm of changing things. Whereas creation speaks to the (...) cause of existence itself, evolutionary biology, cosmology and other natural sciences focus on phenomena subject to change.In contrast, creation should not be understood as the change from nothingness to something, but as a theological and metaphysical dependence in the order of being. This does not mean, however, that the theological and metaphysical approaches are incompatible with those of natural sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS El Primer Principia del Obrar Moral y las Normas Especificas en el Pensamiento de G. Grisez y!. Finnis. By AURELIO A.NSALDO. Roma: Pontificia Universita Lateranense, 1990. Pp. xiii+ 255. This unusually excellent and important doctoral dissertation was written in Rome at the Istituto Giovanni Paolo II per Studi su Matrimonio e Famiglia, a component of the Lateran University. The author currently teaches at the Ateneo Romano della (...) Santa Croce in Rome. The volume is of special importance for three reasons: (1) it provides a comprehensive, detailed, and accurate account of the moral theory developed by Germain Grisez and John Finnis over the past quarter century (Joseph Boyle has also made important contributions to this theory, and Ansaldo has noted these); (2) it defends Grisez and Finnis against many of the criticisms which have been unjustly leveled against their thought; and (3) it raises some critically import· ant issues by way of constructive criticism. In what follows I will briefly comment on the first and second features of Ansaldo's work and discuss more fully the third important component of his scholarly study. In the first part of his work (pp. 3-100), Ansaldo offers readers a splendid synthesis of the thought of Grisez and Finnis. He has carefully studied everything written by these authors from 1964 to 1988. He has included important material from Finnis that had escaped even my attention, and I have tried to study everything these authors have written. He has also succeeded in presenting their thought comprehensively and faithfully. He understands what they think, appreciates it, and presents it accurately. In short, he does justice to their thought. In this respect his study is quite superior to another doctoral dissertation, Russell Hittinger's A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory. Hittinger's work has been severely criticized, and rightly so, not only by Grisez but by others (e.g., Robert George and William Marshner) ; it seriously misrepresents the work of Grisez and Finnis. A criticism of this sort cannot be levelled against Ansaldo's work; it provides an accurate and very scholarly account of their thought. In the second part of his study (pp. 103-229) Ansaldo offers a critical assessment of the work of Grisez and Finnis. Here he first shows that many of the criticisms leveled against their thought are unjust and unfounded, particularly those offered by such writers as Veatch, Rittinger, Flicken, Bourke, et al. These writers charge that Grisez and Finnis fail to show how moral principles are rooted in metaphysics and anthropology, that they completely separate ethics from metaphysics, natural law from human nature, etc. Ansaldo, by a patient and thorough BOOK REVIEWS 888 examination of their thought and the thought of St. Thomas, defends Grisez and Finnis from these misguided criticisms. He shows, first of all,,that Grisez and Finnis are correct (and fully in accord with St. Thomas) in holding that our krwwledge of the primary principles of natural law is not derived from our knowledge of metaphysics or of human nature. By referring to appropriate texts of Grisez and Finnis, Ansaldo shows conclusively that these authors explicitly recognize the intimate rela· tionship between ethics and metaphysics, between natural law and human nature. They fully and explicitly recognize that, were our na· ture other than it is, namely, the nature of human beings, the goods pedective of us would be other than what they actually are. When these goods are grasped by practical reason, they serve as starting points or principles of purposeful human action. Nonetheless, our practical krwwledge of these goods, is not epistemologically derived from or dependent upon prior knowledge, speculative in character, of human nature. In short, in contrast to their critics and in conformity with St. Thomas, Grisez and Finnis are correct in holding that our practical understanding of the primary principles of natural law is not dependent upon our prior understanding of metaphysics or human nature. At the same time they explicitly acknowledge and defend the truth that onto· logically ethics is grounded in metaphysics and anthropology. "Our authors," Ansaldo writes, " have always sought not only to respect but even more to defend and explain the fact that the basis... (shrink)

This Article argues that a particular political theory underlies the judicial interpretation of ‘equality before the law’. The Canadian Courts at the date of writing have elaborated two tests for the signification of ‘equality before the law’. The Article traces the two tests to the utilitarian political theory outlined by John Stuart Mill. The one test sets out the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ or ‘social interests’ as the criterion for adjudicating equality. The second test identifies the reasonable relationship (...) of an alleged statutory classification vis-à-vis the statutory purpose. The Article offers an alternative approach based upon democratic theory. Examples of the two tests and the alternative approach are drawn from judicial constitutional interpretations in the USA and Canada. (shrink)

Difficult to know and impossible to forget, Ludwig Wittgenstein is remembered as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. He published only one book in his lifetime - a masterpiece that moulded the evolution of philosophy and baffled his teachers. Spanning most of his life, from his early encounters with Bertrand Russell in Cambridge to a final trip to New York via the Russian Front, Wittgenstein: The Crooked Roads tracks the journeys of a tortured soul. William Lyons, Professor Emeritus (...) of Philosophy, Trinity College, Dublin, has written a moving and philosophically acute journey through successive decades of Wittgenstein's career. The play received its world premiere on 19 April 2011 at the Riverside Studios. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:176 BOOK REVIEWS tianity came into being. To take one example: God's involvement with and reaction to genuine novelties introduced into the world as a result of the initiatives of human freedom, rightly renders suspect the conception of God as immutable. But what immutability really claimed was not anything like inertia or unconcern, but only that God was not mutable in any of the ways characteristic of finite realities (...) striving to transcend their limitations. Immutability was predicated as a property of deity whose essence was Pure Actuality-the consummation of all mutation. What this meant to preclude from God was only change that amounted to some sort of further perfecting of his intrinsic being-leaving the way clear for the possibility at least of relational change vis-a-vis a world of creatures. There is no reason why contemporary experiences of God's saving activity in Christ must be articulated only in the conceptual and linguistic categories of the past. But seemingly there ought to be some means of showing that such newer articulations do not repudiate truths achieved in the past and handed on in authentic living tradition. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. WILLIAM J. HILL, 0.P. The Church: Communion, Sacrament, Communication. By ROBERT KRESS. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. Pp. iv + 217. $9.95. One of the results of the recent synod is certain to be more attention to deepening our understanding of the church as communion. Robert Kress's fine volume cannot help but be a useful contribution to that discussion. As he succinctly states, "the Church is the communion of believers who exist as the sacrament of Christ, who is the sacrament of God, who is the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (p. 59). For Kress any ecclesiology that does not root the church in the triune, perichoretic (a favored word) life of God is a radically truncated one. As a theandric (another favored word) reality, the Church must mirror its ground or source. If that ground is a dynamic, joyous unity-in-diversity, this should be reflected in the life and structures of the ecclesial community. Such is the context in which the author reflects on a variety of themes that are reflective of the post-Vatican II agenda: the relationship among local, regional, and universal churches; the understanding of the church as sacrament; the tension between holiness and office; the meaning of leadership in a community best understood as a perichoretic communion of gifted members. To each of these topics Kress brings a grasp of the BOOK REVIEWS 177 tradition, a wide acquaintance with the relevant theological literature, and a willingness to make provocative judgments ("yes" to the ordination of women; " no " to the new egalitarianism-a church conceived without administrative, pastoral authority.) Kress particularly cherishes the church as "the memory and tradition of Christ." His commitment to this tradition has both rooted him and freed him. He draws knowledgeably on Aquinas and Augustine, Rahner and Heidegger, von Balthasar and the Shepherd of Hermas. Lawrence Cunningham is correct: this book is radically conservative. There is one area where I felt that there was a certain lack. Kress's treatment of the church as sacrament and of the seven sacraments contained much that was valuable: his stress on the sacramentality of ecclesial life as such, his historical analysis of "sacrament", his phenomenolog·y of the nature of Christian worship. Yet all of this seemed strangely abstracted from the liturgical praxis of the Christian community. This lack is especially visible in his admittedly tentative salvation-historical correlation of the sacraments with our sharing in the religious experience of Jesus (pp. 147-148). To make that correlation, especially in the case of Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist, without an exp1icit reference to the initiatory, communal dimension of these sacraments is certainly problematic. I would like to make a final comment, not on the substance of the book, but on its editing and proofing. There are a number of errors, the most obvious of which is the elimination of the umlaut from Heribert Miihlen's name. (There is a curious inconsistency, too, in the use of the umlaut. It is used in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Denial of PeterRené Girard, Mimetic Desire, and ConversionWilliam E. Cain (bio)Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.—René GirardI believe in commitment … We must be committed to one position and follow it through.—René GirardIn many books and essays throughout his long career, (...) the literary critic and cultural theorist René Girard presented, developed, and extended provocative ideas about, and insights into, mimetic desire. Our desires are not our own, Girard emphasizes; they do not come from within. We form our desires on the desires that we perceive in others; they are our models; we imitate them. Always, we seek to be aligned with the words and deeds of an envied model or, more generally, with those of a dominant group or crowd. [End Page 101]As Girard defines it, desire is extremely potent and controlling. We cannot resist its force, and all too often it propels individuals and societies into rivalry, hatred, and violence. There are descriptions of this formidable power in Sophocles, Shakespeare, and other great writers of the Western tradition, as Girard has demonstrated. But, even more, Girard maintains that we witness the operation, that is, the revelation, of mimetic desire—its origins, its consequences—in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.The temptation and sin of Adam and Eve, the story of Joseph and his brothers, the judgment of Solomon, the story of Job, the crucifixion of Jesus—these are some of Girard's recurring examples. However, the Biblical episode that may have mattered the most to him, one that he invoked repeatedly, is the Denial of St. Peter.The details of this story differ somewhat from one gospel to the next—Girard prefers the version of it in the gospel of Mark—but the core of it is this: At the Last Supper, Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times; Peter swore that he would not, but when the time of testing came, he did. When others confronted him, the fearful Peter, desiring to belong, desperate to be safely within the group, denied that he knew who Jesus was: "I do not know the man you speak of" (Mark 14:71).1Girard's explications of the Denial bring into focus his theory of mimetic desire. His reiterated point about St. Peter is really a point about us—that we are the same as this disciple: We would have betrayed Jesus too. In New Testament studies, some have claimed that "the story about Peter is simply a concretizing of the general denial of all the disciples."2 In our own times of test and trial, we have acted and will act as Peter did.Consider Girard's treatment of the Denial in Le Sacrifice (2003; English trans. 2011).3 The mob that calls for Jesus's death, Girard explains, "is constituted and nourished by swallowing up everything that passes within its reach. It is the black hole of violent mimeticism; where mimeticism is most dense, the mob emerges."4"The major example," he continues, "is that of Peter's denial":Peter cannot help but imitate their hostility. If we psychologize this denial, if we attribute it to the suggestible temperament of the apostle, we seek to prove (unconsciously) that in Peter's place, we would not have denied Jesus. It should be recalled that before his denial Peter, too, vows never to deny Jesus. He is too preoccupied with the opinion others have of him not to blindly adopt the politically correct attitude of the milieu at the center of which he has the misfortune of finding himself.5 [End Page 102] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1."All the actors and witnesses of the crucifixion," Girard concludes, "are already hostile to Jesus or they become so, for mimeticism spares no one."6We cannot resist the influence of the mob: Inevitably we succumb to it. No more than Peter would we have remained steadfast. There is nothing inherent in Peter as an individual that explains why he... (shrink)

Adapt!: On a New Political Imperative, by Barbara Stiegler, reveals how neoliberalism in the 1930s took the shape of an entire social philosophy; it also shows how her book must be updated today. As Stiegler reviews, Walter Lippmann insisted that major state and social institutions must be reformed to support neoliberal aims of capital priority and rapid growth, the primacy of technical experts, management of mass opinion to insulate those inviolable ends, and courts equipped with neoliberal jurisprudence and authority to (...) secure the entire complex. Stiegler’s brilliance, however, falls below her discernment of new phases in this evolution. The last third of this paper explores the formation of supplements that intensify the regime. White triumphalism, spiritual callousness, denials of climate change, evasion of planetary circuits of imperial power, and aspirational fascism grow together in several countries as sacrosanct ends of neoliberal capitalism face inflows and obstacles its leaders can neither admit nor control. (shrink)

The Notion of ‘civilisation’ in European and post-Enlightenment writings has recently been reassessed. Critics have especially reread the works of Immanuel Kant by highlighting his racial categories. However, this Paper argues that something is missing in this contemporary literature: namely, the role of the European legal culture in the development of a racial and ethnic hierarchy of societies. The clue to this missing element rests in how ‘civilisation’ has been understood. This Paper examines how one of the leading jurists of (...) the 19th and 20th centuries, George W. Hegel (1770-1831), took for granted a sense of a legal culture that excluded indigenous inhabitants of the Americas as legal persons worthy of legal protection. -/- Such an exclusionary legal culture represented a crucial feature of ‘civilisation’ according to Hegel. This Paper identifies a series of factors which Hegel highlighted as instrumental in constituting a civilised society: Bildung, an ethos, a written legal culture, a self-creative author (the state), territorial knowledge, and a hierarchy of societies. Hegel emphasized the need of jurists to analytically “leap” from a traditional society to a legal culture before the jurist could identify a law. The traditional societies of the Americas, according to Hegel, were considered lawless because they lacked a European sense of a legal culture. Why Hegel characterised traditional communities as lacking a legal culture is then explained. The Paper ends by suggesting that the features of a legal culture that Hegel highlights remain with us today. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe contention that abortion harms women constitutes a new strategy employed by the pro‐life movement to supplement arguments about fetal rights. David C. Reardon is a prominent promoter of this strategy. Post‐abortion syndrome purports to establish that abortion psychologically harms women and, indeed, can harm persons associated with women who have abortions. Thus, harms that abortion is alleged to produce are multiplied. Claims of repression are employed to complicate efforts to disprove the existence of psychological harm and causal antecedents of (...) trauma are only selectively investigated. We argue that there is no such thing as post‐abortion syndrome and that the psychological harms Reardon and others claim abortion inflicts on women can usually be ascribed to different causes. We question the evidence accumulated by Reardon and his analysis of data accumulated by others. Most importantly, we question whether the conclusions Reardon has drawn follow from the evidence he cites. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 155 Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later. By JANET SMITH. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. xvi + 425. $42.95 hardcover; $17.95 paper. This is an ambitious and important study. I will first offer an overview of the volume to indicate its scope and note some of its major features. I will then respond briefly to some of the major criticisms Smith makes of (...) the argument against contraception advanced by Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and myself. The work contains 8 chapters and 4 appendices. Chapters 3 and 4, as Smith says, "provide an analysis of Humanae Vitae itself and thus constitute the heart of the hook" (p. xi). Since this is so I will first summarize briefly Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 and then center atten· tion on the two central chapters and the four appendices. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the context for Humanae Vitae. The first chapter is devoted largely to an account of the so-called " Minority " and "Majority" documents of the Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population, and Birth Rate, while the second seeks to summarize Catholic teaching on Christian marriage prior to the encyclical. This summary draws principally from Pius XI's Casti Connubii and from nn. 47-52 of Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes. Smith takes up in some detail the issue of the" primacy" of procreation, concluding that Gaudium et Spes " seems to sidestep " this issue which, in her judgment, is irrelevant to the question of contraception. She thinks that this central document of Vatican II sent " mixed signals " on the question of contraception, although she believes that several passages " can very plausibly he read to support the position that contraception is portrayed as a violation not only of the procreative good of marriage hut also of the values of conjugal love" (p. 66). Chapter 5 deals with a wide range of theological issues: the biblical foundations for the teaching found in Humanae Vitae, the relevance of the concept of munus for this teaching, the possibility of acting " in good conscience " in a way contrary to its teaching, and the infallibility of the teaching. Of special value is the extended discussion of the con· cept expressed by the Latin term munus. Smith examines the rich meaning of this term in several magisterial documents, including Gaudium et Spes as well as Humanae Vitae. While a munus implies duties, it is essentially a noble, honor-bringing "gift" or "reward," signifying a vocation and sublime honor. Paul VI, in developing the integral vision of marriage in his encyclical, uses this concept to show that God, in giving to spouses the munus of handing on new life, has conferred on them the honor of sharing with him in the work of bring· 156 BOOK REVIEWS ing new life into the world. Smith shows beautifully how the rich theological meaning of this term helps " illuminate and enrich " the teaching of the encyclical. Chapters 6 and 7 investigate the arguments presented by dissenting theologians after Humanae Vitae to justify their repudiation of its teaching. In Chapter 6 Smith considers the views of Charles Curran and Bernard Haering, while in Chapter 7 she examines the proportionalist approach to moral issues developed by Joseph Fuchs, Richard McCormick and others. She provides intelligent criticism both of Curran and Haering and of proportionalist thought, focusing on the repudiation of specific moral absolutes. In Chapter 8 Smith provides a very helpful summary of Pope John Paul II's understanding of the human person, human sexuality and marriage. In particular, she takes up his notion that in marriage and in the act proper rto it man and woman make a " gift " of themselves to one another. Simultaneously to choose to give themselves to each other in the marital act and to contracept is then seen to involve an inner contradiction, a falsification of the " language of the body " (pp. 230258 ). Smith also takes up some of the major criticisms levelled against John Paul II's thought, in particular Lisa Sowle Cahill's, which charges him with an overromantic view of love and a failure to recognize that... (shrink)

Many philosophers take the point of Plato's Euthyphro to be an indictment of attempts to ground morality in religion, specifically in the attitudes of a deity or deities. It has been argued cogently in recent essays that Plato's case is far from conclusive. This essay suggests instead that the Euthyphro can be read more narrowly as raising critical questions about a specific religious virtue, Piety. Then it presents the ingredients of a reply to those questions. The reply proceeds by suggesting (...) that one need not accept the standards of definition used by Plato, and that one can provide an explanation of what Piety is by embedding Piety in a more comprehensive picture of the human, the divine, and the relations between the two. The picture makes use of a doctrine of divine sovereignty and a doctrine concerning love between God and humans. (shrink)

In this brief note, we respond to Gottlieb and Lasser's (2001/this issue) critical commentary on our work on narrative research ethics. We argue that their concern for privileging voices needs to be balanced against the risk of exploiting some research participants, that conflicts of interest are best resolved through appropriately prioritizing ethical principles and in consultation with others, and that the researcher's ability to protect participants from harm can be enhanced through appropriate clinical training and access to clinical expertise. We (...) welcome Gottlieb and Lasser's specific recommendations for ethical practice in narrative research and encourage further ethical reflection by other researchers in this area. (shrink)

This volume offers evidence for a more classical and philosophically-optimistic interpretation of Wallace Stevens than former studies have made. It examines his collected essays, his letters, journals and poems, existing scholarship, and the philosophic tradition in which he should be located.

The paper offers a new reading of the argument against poetry in Plato’s Republic 10. I argue that Socrates’ corruption charges rely on the tripartite theory of the soul, and that metaphysical doctrines play a role only in the first charge, which demonstrates that the poets are not qualified to teach by reducing tragic poetry to mimetic skill. This accusation clears the way for two corruption charges: the strengthening of appetite, and the softening of spirit (i.e., ‘the greatest charge’). The (...) former focuses on the dangerous association between the poets and the largest appetitive class in the city (hoi polloi), while the latter focuses on the corruption of the educated elite (hoi epieikeis). (shrink)

The main result is that for sets ${S \subseteq \omega + 1}$ , the following are equivalent: The shuffle sum σ(S) is computable.The set S is a limit infimum set, i.e., there is a total computable function g(x, t) such that ${f(x) = \lim inf_t g(x, t)}$ enumerates S.The set S is a limitwise monotonic set relative to 0′, i.e., there is a total 0′-computable function ${\tilde{g}(x, t)}$ satisfying ${\tilde{g}(x, t) \leq \tilde{g}(x, t+1)}$ such that ${{\tilde{f}(x) = \lim_t \tilde{g}(x, t)}}$ (...) enumerates S.Other results discuss the relationship between these sets and the ${\Sigma^0_3}$ sets. (shrink)