Chamberlin insists on its validity in contributing to our thinking about the place of ethics in international affairs and in clarifying both the dangers and potential areas of cooperation inherent in many international relationships.

The mental patients' liberation movement, which started in the early 1970s, is a political movement comprised of people who have experienced psychiatric treatment and hospitalization. Its two main goals are developing self-help alternatives to medically-based psychiatric treatment and securing full citizenship rights for people labeled "mentally ill." The movement questions the medical model of "mental illness," and insists that people who have been labeled as "mentally ill" speak on their own behalf and not be represented by others who claim to (...) speak "for" them. The movement has developed its own philosophy, and operates a variety of self-help and mutual support programs in which ex-patients themselves control the services that are offered. Despite obstacles, the movement continues to grow and develop. (shrink)

This book attempts to relate a theory of liberty to the practice of education, and to work out the implications of beliefs about freedom for our schools and classrooms. The author makes a plea for greater respect for children and argues for greater democracy in education.

Taking Parenting Public makes a compelling case that parenting has become dangerously undervalued in America today. It calls for a new investment—both personal and public—into the work of raising children and argues that we are all "stockholders" in the next generation. With a foreword by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, Taking Parenting Public crosses boundaries to bring together thinkers from diverse fields spanning the political spectrum. It features contributions from distinguished experts in economics, political science, public policy, child development, (...) public health, history, and the media. While recent books have focused on working mothers or absent fathers, Taking Parenting Public is the first volume to take a comprehensive look at the common struggles of parents. These essays go beyond the usual chest-beating about busy parents torn between work and family demands to suggest bold solutions. Instead of the typical call for "parent replacement"—more child care, more after school programs and more mentors—the contributors offer fresh strategies for "parent replenishment," ways to put mothers and fathers back into the lives of their children not only as economic providers, but also as emotional and moral providers. (shrink)

This article examines the racial politics that reshaped psychoanalytic psychotherapy and ushered in a community mental health paradigm during the U.S. Civil Rights Era. Policymakers in the 1960s adopted the language of social justice to condemn psychoanalysis for its inability to treat psychotics and its unwillingness to treat black patients; yet the community psychiatry model of treatment that replaced it compounded the denial of the black subject’s clinical needs. Challenging the extant historiography that appraises psychoanalysis as a victim of neoliberalism (...) and psychopharmacology, this paper examines how and why Freudian practitioners beat their own retreat from the specter of desegregation. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that Christianity enjoins its followers to practice universal, unconditional forgiveness. But universal, unconditional forgiveness is regarded by many as morally problematic. Some Christian scholars have denied that Christianity in fact requires universal, unconditional forgiveness, but I believe they are mistaken. In this essay, I show two things: that Christianity does enjoin universal, unconditional forgiveness of a certain sort, and that Christians, and perhaps other theists, are always justified in exercising unconditional forgiveness. Though most philosophers treat forgiveness (...) as grounded in our beliefs about the offender's current state, I argue that we might more fruitfully ground forgiveness in hope for the wrongdoer. Christianity's commitment to the existence of an omnipotent God who is concerned about the moral status of His creatures always justifies such hope and thus always justifies forgiveness. (shrink)

Most of Europe's indigenous myths are divided into two large traditional currents, one common to all of the conquering peoples who came down from the North during the two millenniums which preceded our era, the other inherited from more or less confused Alpine and Mediterranean substrata. This proposed classification, debatable perhaps because it is too schematic, has become such a classic that we no longer need to show the abundant arguments on which it is based. But it does explain so (...) many contrasts, contradictions, or anachronisms in the history of the West that it is always fitting to return to it. (shrink)

Much of Barnes’s critique depends on a misunderstanding of my position and, where we do substantively disagree, Barnes’s arguments fail to take into account important distinctions. As a result, his arguments are not persuasive. In my reply, I begin by clarifying my position and then proceed to address specific points of disagreement, identifying those distinctions that Barnes needs to take into account in critiquing my view.

Neo-Kantian constructivism aspires to respond to moral skepticism by compelling agents to act morally on pain of irrationality. According to Christine Korsgaard, a leading proponent of constructivism, we construct all reasons for action by following correct deliberative procedures. But if we follow these procedures we will find that we only have reasons to act in morally permissible ways. Thus, we can show the skeptic that he is rationally constrained to act morally. Unfortunately, as I argue in my first chapter, this (...) strong response to moral skepticism renders deliberate immoral action unintelligible. This result is problematic since we often do interpret ourselves and others as deliberately choosing to do wrong. I further suggest that this problem follows from central commitments of Korsgaard’s constructivism, so that any adequate account of immoral action must abandon constructivist metaethics in favor of moral realism, a suggestion reinforced by the argument of my second chapter. There, I call attention to Kant’s solution to a similar problem in his own account of morality. I argue that Korsgaard’s constructivist commitments prevent her from embracing Kant’s solution. I proceed in my third chapter to argue that there is a further tension between Korsgaard’s response to moral skepticism and her work in non-ideal theory. In particular, Korsgaard maintains that, when confronted with injustice, the virtuous person may have reason to do what is wrong in the name of morality. She thus relies on the assumption that one can deliberately do wrong. I argue that this assumption undermines the response to skepticism that motivated Korsgaard’s constructivism in the first place. But despite the problems with constructivism, we may worry that moral realism fails to offer an adequate response to moral skepticism. Indeed, Korsgaard rejects realism in part because she believes that realists simply refuse to respond to moral skepticism. I thus conclude by arguing that moral realists can offer adequate responses to moral skepticism. In fact, I believe Korsgaard’s response is no more effective than those suggested by some moral realists. (shrink)

Despite recommendations for a more reflexive and theoretical turn to interviewing, the analysis of language and speech still occupies center stage. This study attempts to advance our understanding of the interview by including the use of gesture, gaze, and other embodied resources in concert with speech. Looking at a focus group interview evaluating community policing policy, I show how inclusion of embodied conduct offers a more robust approach to co-constructed meaning in the interview than looking at language practices alone. More (...) explicitly, I investigate how an interviewee’s narrative includes gestures to solicit an affiliative stance from other interviewees and how ambiguous metacommunicative norms in the focus group influence the contributions of other police participants. I show how jurisdictional boundary and professional identity emerge in and through the integration of embodied conduct and sociocultural solidarity. (shrink)

How did it become possible to philosophize about history? Man has generally sought to locate himself in natural space rather than in historical time. The various oriental philosophies give no place to history. “Humanistic” Greece herself, in other respects so eager to explore human conduct in all its characteristic dimensions and in all its aspects, prudently recoiled from anything which might give value to time or cause history to appear as the specifically human mode of existence. No other culture, perhaps, (...) carried so far the concern for harmonizing human relationships, and yet the idea of progress was completely lacking in it. The organization of the terrestrial city always remained the central point of the reflection of Greek poets and philosophers, who were almost all teachers and law-givers—but they never thought to situate the true destiny of man in the historical world, much less to grant man a place in the universe which would make him forget the precariousness of his condition and his subordination to that which surpasses him. And, if we listen to Aristotle: “The life of moral virtue,” he says, “is happy only in a secondary degree. For the moral activities are purely human, ανθρωπικαι.” Naturally, “it is true that, being a man and living in the society of others, he chooses to engage in virtuous action, and so will need external goods to carry on his life as a human being, πρos τo ανθρωπɛνɛσθαι.” But we must take care not to assert “that man is superior to the other animals … since there are other things far more divine in their nature than man, for instance, to mention the most visible (ϕανɛρωτατα), the things of which the things of which the celestial system is composed.” Aristotle was referring to the stars—and, indeed, it was in the circular motions of the luminaries, much more than in the human domain, that the classic Greeks saw that which is manifested in being with the greatest splendor. If we limit ourselves to the specifically human—as do those whom Plotinus designates under the frankly disdainful term oι ανθρωπικωτɛρoι—we risk losing contact with the Good that revolves in the cosmos and is our sole guaranty against the senseless non-being which threatens us from every side. Under these conditions the question of knowing whether or not history has meaning, and whether or not it is provided with an appropriate logic which expresses the profound structure of our being, appears meaningless. (shrink)

When he hears about automation, automatic factories, and unmanned manufacture, the worker wonders with a certain anxiety what will be his fate in an industry which is undergoing transformation and whether the trade from which he draws his livelihood today does not risk becoming useless tomorrow and leaving him without work. No doubt he has been told that the machine will never be able to replace man entirely, that there is no danger of unemployment, since new machines create new jobs, (...) and that he will be freed of heavy labor and fatigue, thanks to the automatized factory. But these arguments are not all valid for the man whose job is eliminated or modified and who must find another situation or adapt himself to a different kind of work. It makes no difference if the over-all perspectives are reassuring—they are less so on the individual's level. The economy may continue to experience a cycle of full employment, but the individual may have to face the depressing hunt for a new job or start at the bottom in a different trade. (shrink)

The Middle Ages, and in particular the twelfth century, with its monks who were philosophers, theologians, and mystics, hung upon biblical thought and through it did its thinking, its loving, and its acting. The Old and the New Testaments were studied and meditated upon together, though the Old Testament was more often commented upon than was the New. Both offered two successive stages, represented by the law and by grace. For the men of the twelfth century Holy Scripture was the (...) basis of their symbolic mentality. Through Scripture they could distinguish a duality of meanings which can be stated precisely under the terms “letter” and “spirit.” This double terminology was comprehended on two different levels and depended on the degree of the individual's evolution. Saint Bernard understood it very well when he alluded to the ordinary mode of seeing and to the spiritual mode. The heart's vision sees in the mind (Sermon XLV, 5, on the Song of Songs. Just as that hearing which is not of the body but which belongs to the heart understands what the ears could not hear, there are, according to Saint Bernard, three kinds of language to which three modes of understanding correspond: the mode of the hireling, that of the son, and that of the wife (Sermon VII, 2, on the Song of Songs)? The first stays on the threshold to knowledge, the second crosses it, but only the wife penetrates into true knowledge which designates a knowledge acquired more by intuition than by learning and which Saint Jerome called “scientia secretorum.” This stimulates another way of thinking and of loving and coincides with a new dimension of being. In regard to the comprehension of symbolic content, three steps or successive stages are involved here. (shrink)

The modern engineer, because of his tendency to express himself in language which, even in reference to very simple things, systematically retreats into mathematical symbolism—strictly incomprehensible to the average man—enrols himself, unconsciously or deliberately, in a jealously closed caste in which those we call “technocrats” shut themselves up. This is the caste which seeks to be the sole elite and necessary heir of the former nobility in the new social “pattern.”.

There has often been criticism of the use which was made by certain sociologists toward the beginning of the century (Lévy-Bruhl in particular) of the adjective “primitive” to characterize the level of culture of peoples whom we formerly called “savage.” The term “archaic” perhaps creates fewer difficulties, but its etymology nevertheless involves the inconvenience of intimating that the societies in question might be closer to the origins than ours. Certain anthropologists, attempting to find an objective criterion which would permit us (...) to draw a line of demarcation between the so-called primitives and ourselves, use the term “peoples without writing” to designate the former—that is, they refer to a technique. It is true that there might be good grounds for specifying this criterion. Indeed, graphic representation can consist of rudimentary signs such as one sees on the messagesticks of the Australians or in the sketched stories, such as those with which the North American Indian covered animal skins. We can speak of writing from the moment that definite characters of precise conventional meaning appear; but from the pictogram to the abstract sign there are still many transitions. For example, in the pre-Columbian epoch, the writing system of the Aztecs “constituted a compromise between the ideogram, phonetism, and simple drawing.” Egyptian hieroglyphics were not yet totally freed from their pictographic origins. In the evolution which led to our modern system, the first step was taken when syllabic representation was adopted. But writing ceased to be reserved for specialists and truly became a widespread institution when the alphabet was invented; and that discovery, made no doubt toward the year 1800 b.c. by the Semitic peoples, came more than three thousand years after the first step. In general, the term “peoples without writing” does not in itself specify that it must be understood as meaning “peoples without an alphabet”; thus there is some doubt about civilizations like that of the Aztecs, endowed with a rather elaborate pictographic system. There would be good reason, moreover, to ask ourselves if the technique of writing really constitutes a reliable criterion for establishing a distinction between societies which stagnate in archaism and those which open up to history. Certain writers, such as Marcel Griaule or M. Gurvitch, would be inclined to refute it and to seek other technical criteria, such as the use of machines or reference to creative characteristics. (shrink)

If we wish to speak of the widening of the idea of causality, we must first specify the exact meaning of this concept, the modification of which is now being considered by many contemporary philosophers and scientists. In order to shed light on the classical concept of causality, it is almost impossible to avoid approaching it from the genetic point of view. Without a historical perspective we have only a very limited understanding of the content of the classical concepts by (...) which this philosophic as well as scientific tradition has been constituted. By showing the deep and tenacious roots of our belief in rigorous determinism, we shall better understand certain types of resistance which today are opposed to any attempt at making determinism more flexible. (shrink)

Attempts to reconstruct the “psychology” of a past era always have a specious side which should properly be mistrusted. Was the “Renaissance man” a visualizer? Arguments for and against this thesis have been found, but nothing can be solved, because it will always be impossible to prove that a phenomenon, even if it is very widespread and completely characteristic of a given period, is symptomatic of a particular psychic constitution of the men of that time. If the writings and the (...) art of the sixteenth century seem to us to include the elements of a complete logic of figurative thought, which would certainly be of interest for the history of intellectual methods, the fact as such must not be translated into terms of the psychology of individuals. (shrink)

The tolerance which the Islamic tradition showed—not in theory alone but in practice as well—toward the infidels, the “protected” (dhimmi) Jews and Christians, is well known. In several places in the Koran, Mohammed proclaimed the inalienable right of these two “Peoples of Scripture” to worship the common God of Abraham in their very imperfect fashion. The passages in question ordinarily mentioned Christians and fetus, and the imprecations which in another context (in the “Sura of the Cow,” for example) the Prophet (...) hurled against the Jews of Medina who would not recognize him, in no way altered the cardinal principle developed later by the commentators in the hadith (“tradition”). The two categories of dhimmi were placed under the same legal and political control. In conformity with the “pact” of Caliph Omar (the second successor to Mohammed) the dhimmis had to recognize Moslem supremacy, lavish many signs of subordination and respect upon the true believers, behave as loyal subjects, and above all, pay tribute. By this means the free exercise of their cult under the protection of Islam was assured. (shrink)

Are country people destined to disappear in the near future as a result of the constant advance of technical and urban civilization? Having discovered that three-fourths of mankind are country people, American ethnologists and sociologists are studying their “urbanization” and their “industrialization” throughout the world in an effort to see to what extent there is compatibility—or incompatibility—between their traditional “cultures” and the demands of industrial production and of life in a mass society. European writers appear to be less perturbed by (...) this dilution of peasant civilizations through contamination from the cities. They are concerned rather with the gradual disappearance of country people themselves, drawn into the cities by the rural exodus. (shrink)

This paper examines the life and work of T. C. Chamberlin, a prominent glacial geologist who developed an interest in interdisciplinary earth science. His work on the geological agency of the atmosphere informed his understanding of climate change and other terrestrial phenomena and led him to propose a new theory of the formation of the Earth and the solar system.Chamberlin's graduate seminar at the University of Chicago in 1896 contained all the themes that informed his research programme over (...) the next three decades. These included the carbon dioxide theory of climate change in its relationship to diastrophism and oceanic circulation, the role of water vapour feedbacks in the climate system, and the relationship between multiple glaciations, the climate system, and the formation of the planet. (shrink)