This article enquires into the curriculum advocated in the only ancient Greek treatise concerning education that has survived in its entirety, entitled On the Training of Children. The treatise was highly influential in Europe from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, and thus exhibits certain assumptions concerning the purpose of curriculum that lie behind the development of western education and may still be influential today. The inquiry is conducted in three stages: the intended recipients of the curriculum are identified; its (...) elements are enumerated and evaluated; and its aims are inferred from the text. I conclude that the curriculum was intended for wealthy, privileged boys, that philosophy (though not independent theorising) was the most valued subject of study and that the aim of the curriculum was to instil in the recipients aristocratic values and modes of behaviour. Finally, some topics are suggested for reflection, in response to these conclusions, upon existing curricula. (shrink)

A number of passages in ancient texts suggest that for much of the archaic and classical periods Eleia was considered a sacred and inviolable land, immune from invasion. While contemporary scholars, referring to the work of Georg Busolt and Eduard Meyer, reject the testimony of Polybios, Strabo, Diodoros and Phlegon in regard to the Eleian asylia, a careful examination of Busolt’S arguments reveals that they are highly speculative. MEYER offers little in addition. Instances of Eleian warfare in the ancient sources, (...) furthermore, are not the conclusive evidence against the asylia that they appear at first glance. (shrink)

Against the position of professor rex martin ("the review of metaphysics," xxv, December 1971) it is argued that there is a conceptual link between disobedience and destruction of authority, As socrates argues; that socrates does not take obedience to law to be an absolute principle of action; that socrates in the two dialogues about his trial does not contradict himself on the question of obedience to the court; that socrates' argument from piety does not undermine his arguments from injury and (...) agreement. (shrink)

James Moore states that "some of the most distinctive and central arguments of Hutcheson's philosophy - the importance of ideas brought to mind by the internal senses, the presence in human nature of calm desires, of generous and benevolent instincts - will be found to emerge in the course of these writings.""--Jacket.

Suivant une perspective de sociologie pragmatique des transformations, cet article explore, à travers l’engagement discursif et pratique des figures de l’irréversibilité, une diversité de formes de bifurcations et d’ouvertures d’avenir qui prennent corps dans des micromondes. Il plaide pour la nécessité de rendre intelligible la manière dont s’élaborent, en contexte, de nouvelles prises individuelles et collectives sur des mondes constamment en train de se refaire. L’enquête sociologique s’ouvre à de nouvelles cosmologies moins exclusives où se jouent les capacités de reconfiguration, (...) de rebondissement ou de rupture, ainsi qu’à un agir démocratique qui se forme et se réforme dans ces interstices qui hantent les régimes autoritaires et défient les prophéties déterministes. (shrink)

With its over 40 000 denominations worldwide, Christianity undoubtedly remains the most fragmented of the religions of the world. One of the main causes of the said fragmentation is apparently the practice of tithing, which both genuine clergy and many shady characters that have disguised themselves as ministers of religion in society regard as the quickest way of accumulating wealth or making money. Anybody who views television programmes on religion and listens to religious leaders who give Christian preaching on various (...) radio stations nowadays cannot fail to observe the aggressive way in which such leaders opportunistically manipulate their followers and listeners to pay tithes using what has come to be generically known as ‘prosperity gospel’. Given the extent to which it has fragmented and continues to fragment the Christian Church, as well as to taint the image of Christianity as a religion, the question asked by many people today about tithing is: Are the Christians as obligated to pay tithes as the Jews under the Mosaic Law? Using typology for its interpretative tool and arguing both scripturally and historically, this article argues that Christians are not obligated to pay tithes because tithing, as part of the temple worship system whose existence ended with Christ’s free self-offering as a sacrifice to God on the cross, foreshadowed free offering to God by Christ’s followers, not obligatory giving by law.Contribution: This article contributes to the general debate on tithing as practised in the Christian Church today. The article argues that there is no scriptural proof anywhere to validate payment of tithes to the New Testament Church or its ministers. (shrink)

The English philosopher Herbert Spencer was a colossus of the Victorian age. His works ranked alongside those of Darwin and Marx in the development of disciplines as wide ranging as sociology, anthropology, political theory, philosophy and psychology. In this acclaimed study of Spencer, the first for over thirty years and now available in paperback, Mark Francis provides an authoritative and meticulously researched intellectual biography of this remarkable man that dispels the plethora of misinformation surrounding Spencer and shines new light (...) on the broader cultural history of the nineteenth century. In this major study of Spencer, the first for over thirty years, Mark Francis provides an authoritative and meticulously researched intellectual biography of this remarkable man. Using archival material and contemporary printed sources, Francis creates a fascinating portrait of a human being whose philosophical and scientific system was a unique attempt to explain modern life in all its biological, psychological and sociological forms. _Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life_ fills what is perhaps the last big biographical gap in Victorian history. An exceptional work of scholarship it not only dispels the plethora of misinformation surrounding Spencer but shines new light on the broader cultural history of the nineteenth century. Elegantly written, provocative and rich in insight it will be required reading for all students of the period. (shrink)

Federal and state budgetary constraints continually challenge Medicaid. The effects of benefit cuts are common: long waiting lists for community‐based services, skeletonized drug formularies with unstable access to long‐term prescriptions, no psychiatric therapy for people immobilized by depression, and no more than fourteen days of acute hospitalization. Reimbursements may be so low that providers cannot hire qualified staff and must reduce services, close facilities, or refuse to take Medicaid altogether. Misguided efficiency policies may afflict some groups of patients as well. (...) Decisions to narrow access rights to publicly funded health care promote the perception that more broadly inclusive programs would be unwisely and unfairly generous. They also risk characterizing disability rights as “special,” confined to a narrow class of people who charitably ought not to be expected to provide for themselves. In contrast, on a philosophical view we have been exploring—one that addresses problems of justice under circumstances of injustice by pursuing rather than reducing inclusion—efforts like these are unjust. (shrink)

Attitudes toward mission agencies in general, and toward the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in particular, were assessed using two 10-item scales completed by 833 recently ordained Anglican clergy from the UK. Clergy were generally positive toward mission agencies and willing for their churches to engage with them, but more reluctant to form personal links. Most clergy felt agencies should give priority to the relief of poverty and to development needs, rather than to spreading specifically Christian beliefs. (...) Results for the USPG indicated more uncertain responses than for mission agencies generally, which probably indicated a lower visibility for this agency among some clergy, especially evangelicals. (shrink)

Physics in Oxford, 1839-1939 offers a challenging new interpretation of pre-war physics at the University of Oxford, which was far more dynamic than most historians and physicists have been prepared to believe. It explains, on the one hand, how attempts to develop the University's Clarendon Laboratory by Robert Clifton, Professor of Experimental Philosophy from 1865 to 1915, were thwarted by academic politics and funding problems, and latterly by Clifton's idiosyncratic concern with precision instrumentation. Conversely, by examining in detail the work (...) of college fellows and their laboratories, the book reconstructs the decentralized environment that allowed physics to enter on a period of conspicuous vigour in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially at the characteristically Oxonian intersections between physics, physical chemistry, mechanics, and mathematics. Whereas histories of Cambridge physics have tended to focus on the self-sustaining culture of the Cavendish Laboratory, it was Oxford's college-trained physicists who enabled the discipline to flourish in due course in university as well as college facilities, notably under the newly appointed professors, J. S. E. Townsend from 1900 and F. A. Lindemann from 1919. This broader perspective allows us to understand better the vitality with which physicists in Oxford responded to the demands of wartime research on radar and techniques relevant to atomic weapons and laid the foundations for the dramatic post-war expansion in teaching and research that has endowed Oxford with one of the largest and most dynamic schools of physics in the world. (shrink)

Comte’s ideas were spread in Britain through the medium of J S Mill’s System of Logic. Positivism in this version was much like the original in France: it was an historical theory about the classification of knowledge through three progressive stages. Progress referred to both scientific knowledge and civilisation. Comte’s system omitted the subject of psychology, but Mill’s followers, G H Lewes and Alexander Bain, remedied this by incorporating this discipline into the Comtean canon as an evolutionary doctrine.Comte had excluded (...) psychology from the ranks of the sciences because it lacked independence. That is, the mind’s ability to alter its environment by use of volition or will meant that it was not the sort of phenomenon that was analyzable using scientific method. Lewes, in countering this idea, based psychology in biology so as to emphasise those aspect of the discipline that were analogous to other sciences. Lewes saw the mind as the brain and regarded volition as very much like a reflex action or an instinct that might be beyond the mind’s control. Lewes also faulted Comte or classifying knowledge in an intellectual system that was not drawn from science. In place of Comte’s stages, Lewes substituted Herbert Spencer’s empirically-based notion of “ascending complexity”. This developmental thesis was not based upon natural selection, but upon the theory that both biological organism and the mind developed increased functionality as they evolved.Leslie Stephen’s positivism, unlike Lewes’, was not based upon data from neurophysiology. Instead it was a philosophical defence of a secular school of philosophy that began with Hume and Bentham and stretched forward to Lewes and Spencer. Rather perversely for a self-proclaimed member of a school that included Bentham, Stephen’s chief purpose was to attack utilitarianism, which he regarded as the opposition to evolutionary philosophy. Utilitarianism, Stephen argued, attributed too great a role to the intellect at the expense of the feelings. In his view, the latter were the important factors in decision-making and they were analogous to instincts and not subject to a utilitarian calculus. (shrink)

PawPrints On Our Souls is dotted with belief facts, supported by quotes by prominent doctors, philosophers, writers, and celebrities, to build a strong case against vivisection, factory farming, and other animal abuses. Pawprints can be read in any order: Each fact and quote is separated by a double-space... So there's lots of white space for easy reading...

Pour relever le défi de l’irruption dans notre modernité d’une violence radicale, il faut, selon Éric Weil, inscrire la cohérence des discours dans l’espace premier du langage et de sa négativité créatrice. S’il est possible, alors, de procéder à une mise en ordre logique des divers types d’intelligibilité élaborés dans l’histoire, c’est en subordonnant l’ensemble de ces catégories concrètes aux deux catégories formelles du sens et de la sagesse, de la compréhension et de la vie selon la compréhension. La philosophie (...) se comprend ainsi dans le tout de la réalité qui se révèle en elle : sa systématicité dialogique a pour corollaire une ouverture sans réserve à l’extériorité du monde et de l’histoire. Cette transcendance dans l’immanence, à l’épreuve de la relativité de la condition, est-elle susceptible de rencontrer et d’accueillir l’attestation religieuse d’une transcendance absolue? C’est la question que l’on se risque à poser pour finir. In order to face the challenge of the irruption in our modernity of a radical violence, one must, according to Eric Weil, inscribe the coherence of discourses into the primary space of language and of its creative negativity. If it is possible, then, to proceed to put in logical order diverse types of intelligibility elaborated through history, it has to be by subordinating the whole of those concrete categories under the two formal categories of meaning and wisdom, of comprehension and of life in accordance with comprehension. Philosophy is thus understood within the whole of reality that reveals itself in it ; its systematic dialogical character has as a corollary an unreserved opening to the external character of the world and of history. Is this transcendence in immanence, while being proof resistant to the relativity of the condition, able to meet and receive the religious testimony of an absolute transcendence? Such is the question that is risked at the end. (shrink)

There has long been a history of studies investigating how people (“ordinary people”) perform on tasks that involve deductive reasoning. The upshot of these studies is that people characteristically perform some deductive tasks well but others badly. For instance, studies show that people will typically perform MP (“modus ponens”: from ‘If A then B’ and ‘A’, infer ‘B’) and bi-conditional MP (from: ‘A if and only if B’ and ‘A’, infer ‘B’) correctly when invited to make the inference and additionally (...) can discover of their own accord when such inferences are appropriate. On the other hand, the same studies show that people typically perform MT (“modus tollens”: from ‘If A then B’ and ‘not-B’, infer ‘not-A’) and biconditional MT badly. They not only do not recognize when it is appropriate to draw such inferences, but also they will balk at doing them even when they are told that they can make it. Related to these shortcomings seems to be the inability of people to understand that contrapositives are equivalent (that ‘If A then B’ is equivalent to ‘If not-B then not-A’). [Studies of people’s deductive inference-drawing abilities have a long history, involving many studies in the early 20th century concerning Aristotelian syllogisms. But the current spate of studies draws much of its impetus from Wason (Wason, 1968; see also Wason & Johnson-Laird, 1972). ] The general conclusion seems to be that there are specific areas where “ordinary people” do not perform very logically. This conclusion will not come as a surprise to teachers of elementary logic, who have long thought that the majority of “ordinary people” are inherently illogical and need deep and forceful schooling in order to overcome this flaw. (shrink)