This pedagogical reader of the Greek text of Plato?s Gorgias, originally published for students in Victorian England, is an immensely helpful textbook for the student of the Greek language and literature. Edited by the prominent W. H. Thompson.

I believe the time is come for a re-estimation of the status of minds in the universe. I use the word mind quite naïvely at first, in the belief that it has a nucleus of meaning that is sufficiently clear. I do not wish its meaning to be restricted to the phenomena of clear consciousness, still less of self-consciousness.

Almost all the existing modern systems of Ethics deal with formal definitions, and at bottom repeat more or less the same thing about them in slightly different words. In this work these are a side issue, and therefore are treated briefly. Their treatment in Section I is based upon the author's theoretical works the Theory of Order and the Theory of Reality, but will be intelligible to those who are not acquainted with those works. The chief concern is moral teaching (...) - that is, the practical element. (shrink)

This paper describes a new course in Medical Technology and Critical Decisions, part of the Technology Studies Program at Wellesley College, established with the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's New Liberal Arts Program. The course uses the dramatic new options in medicine presented by technology to individuals and society as a vehicle for promoting general technological literacy in liberal arts students. The course motivates the study of the scientific principles on which the technology rests and the mathematical principles (...) of a methodology for making rational choices. A case in point is the decision of a pregnant woman whether or not to undergo amniocentesis, a procedure used to determine the genetic make-up of a fetus from cells in the amniotic fluid. The course introduces students to the underlying notions of genetics; the physical principles behind the ultrasound imaging technique used to position the needle that draws the fluid; the probability and statistics needed to understand the risks to the woman and fetus both of having and of not having the procedure; and the methodology of decision analysis, increasingly used by genetic counselors to help prospective parents incorporate their personal values into the decision-making process. (shrink)

The aporias of time that Paul Ricœur identifies in the conclusion to his three-volume Time and Narrative offer a fecund starting-point from which to consider how the poetics of narrativity figures in a philosophy of the will. By setting the poetics of narrativity against the aporetics of temporality, Ricoeur highlights the narrative art’s operative power in drawing together incidents and events in answer to time’s dispersion across the present, the past, and the future. In turn, the confession of the limits (...) of narrative opens the way to a broader consideration of the idea of the unity of history in the absence of a meta-historical plot. This idea calls for a reflection on the ethical and political imperative of making freedom a reality for all. By taking the theory of freedom’s actualization as a touchstone, I argue that the vision of a reconciled humanity that for Ricœur is the intended object of the poetics of the will acquires the force of a directive idea. The capacity to refashion the real from within thus proves to be decisive for drawing out the connection between the aporetics of temporality, the poetics of narrativity, and Ricœur’s philosophical anthropology. (shrink)