Admirers of Whitehead who know him best have suggested that Wordsworth had possibly a greater influence upon him than anyone except Plato. Nowhere apparently has Whitehead admitted such an influence, as he has that of Plato and Locke and that of William James, Bergson, and Alexander among traditional and contemporary philosophers But he had a predilection for poetry, and attributes to the great poets philosophical importance. They capture uniquely, he says, “a fragrance of experience”; and “… express deep intuitions (...) of mankind penetrating into what is universal in concrete fact.” As observers of nature both Wordsworth and Whitehead ascribed to animate and inanimate life a degree of feeling or satisfaction in the course of being and becoming. Like the poet, Whitehead must have found “joy in widest commonalty spread.” The multiplication table, he noted at one time, “… is no good to the realist. It shuts him up with Plato's ideas out of space and out of time” when “… like Wordsworth and the rest of us he wants to hear the throstle sing.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Introducing AestheticsJames McRaeIntroducing Aesthetics. By David E. W. Fenner. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Pp. 170.David E. W. Fenner's Introducing Aesthetics offers a comprehensive introduction to the major traditions of Western aesthetics. Fenner confines his study to Western aesthetics and does not address the aesthetic traditions of Asian philosophy. This is not, by any means, a limitation, as this restriction of scope makes Fenner's work more concise and readily (...) accessible to those unfamiliar with aesthetics.Fenner divides his book into four parts: "Experiences," "Objects and Events," "Meaning," and "Judgment." Part 1 discusses the meaning and scope of the term "aesthetic" and analyzes the significance of "aesthetic experiences" and "aesthetic properties." Here, Fenner also explains the notion of aesthetic attitude as it is understood from the traditional perspective of disinterest (which includes thinkers such as Kant, Schopenhauer, and Stolnitz) and from modern points of view (such as Bullough's psychical distance and Aldrich's impressionistic vision).Part 2 contains three chapters, which discuss the nature of aesthetic objects, the definition of "art," and the concept of creation and re-creation. The chapter that explores the definition of "art" provides a succinct explanation of the major traditions of aesthetics and art criticism: the Greek notions of imitation and representation (with sections on Plato and Aristotle), Romanticism (including Schopenhauer and Nietzsche), Expressionism (focusing on Tolstoy, Croce, and Collingwood), Formalism (particularly Moore and Bell), Anti-Essentialism (which includes Wittgenstein and Weitz), and a final section concerning perspectives on the art world (from theorists such as Danto and Dickie). The final chapter, on creation and re-creation, discusses the nature of creativity and the essential differences between fakes, forgeries, and reproductions.Part 3 is devoted to an exploration of the meaning of art. The first chapter of this section concerns the problem of art interpretation and discusses such issues as the educated viewer, the intentional fallacy, and the possibility of a pluralism of artistic interpretations. The second chapter deals with censorship and examines various approaches to balancing the freedom of artistic expression with the moral concerns of society.In Part 4, Fenner examines the theme of artistic judgment. The first chapter of this section analyzes three traditional approaches to defining the term "beauty": formalism, subjectivism, and naturalism. This chapter includes summaries of the aesthetic theories of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Dewey, to name but a few. The final chapter is devoted to a discussion of art criticism. Here, Fenner gives a detailed description of the four aspects of critical review (description, information, interpretation, evaluation) and explores the various challenges raised against the very possibility of criticism (such as emotivism). [End Page 515]Because of the clarity of its presentation and the quality of its scholarship, this book would serve well as a text for either introductory or upper-division undergraduate philosophy classes. One of the more useful features of Fenner's book is an extensive appendix that presents the history of Western aesthetics in outline form. Here, the ideas of the most important movements and philosophers of Western aesthetics are neatly summarized and presented in a chronology that clearly illustrates the historical shift in trends of thought and patterns of influence. This appendix would be an indispensable study guide for graduate students who are preparing for comprehensive examinations in the history of aesthetics. [End Page 516]Copyright © 2006 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

David Hume (1711-76) is one of the greatest figures in the history of British philosophy. Of all of Hume's writings, the philosophically most profound is undoubtedly his first, A Treatise on Human Nature. Hume on Morality introduces and assesses: Hume's life and the background of the Treatise ; the ideas and text in the Treatise ; and Hume's continuing importance to philosophy. James Baillie provides us with a map to Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise, focusing on Hume's (...) theory of the passions and morality. This book sets out its principal ideas and arguments of the Treatise in a clear and readable way and is ideal for anyone coming to Hume's work for the first time. (shrink)

This volume contains all of the presidential addresses given before the American Society for Value Inquiry since its first meeting in 1970. Contributions are by Richard Brandt*, Virgil Aldrich*, John W. Davis*, the late Robert S. Hartman*, James B. Wilbur*, the late William H. Werkmeister, Robert E. Carter, the late William T. Blackstone, Gene James, Eva Hauel Cadwallader, Richard T. Hull, Norman Bowie*, Stephen White*, Burton Leiser+, Abraham Edel, Sidney Axinn, Robert Ginsberg, Patricia Werhane, Lisa M. Newton, (...) Thomas Magnell, Sander Lee, John M. Abbarno, Ruth Miller Lucier, and Tom Regan*. Autobiographical sketches* by all of the living contributors and one recently deceased, biographical statements of the remainder, together with photographic portraits of all the contributors*, make this volume a unique record of value inquiry during the past quarter century. __. (shrink)

The eighteenth century was a time of brilliant philosophical innovation in Britain. In Of Liberty and Necessity James A. Harris presents the first comprehensive account of the period's discussion of what remains a central problem of philosophy, the question of the freedom of the will. He offers new interpretations of contributions to the free will debate made by canonical figures such as Locke, Hume, Edwards, and Reid, and also discusses in detail the arguments of some less familiar writers. Harris (...) puts the eighteenth-century debate about the will and its freedom in the context of the period's concern with applying what Hume calls the "experimental method of reasoning" to the human mind. His book will be of substantial interest to historians of philosophy and anyone concerned with the free will problem. (shrink)

Argues to reestablish the traditional role of rhetoric in education and discusses the importance of a student's ability to write a reasoned argument.

This book offers a systematic examination of the place of religion within Kant's major writings. Kant is often thought to be highly reductionistic with regard to religion - as though religion simply provides the unsophisticated with colourful representations of moral lessons that reason alone could grasp. James DiCenso's rich and innovative discussion shows how Kant's theory of religion in fact emerges directly from his epistemology, ethics and political theory, and how it serves his larger political and ethical projects of (...) restructuring institutions and modifying political attitudes towards greater autonomy. It also illustrates the continuing relevance of Kant's ideas for addressing issues of religion and politics that remain pressing in the contemporary world, such as just laws, transparency in the public sphere and other ethical and political concerns. The book will be valuable for a wide range of readers who are interested in Kant's thought. (shrink)

In response to recent critics, this is a vigorous defence of realism. The roles of abstraction, abstract objects and a priori methods are explored, demonstrating the ways in which science mirrors the world.

Book reviewed in this article: In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History. By John Van Seters. The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament. By Samuel E. Balentine. Theodicy in the Old Testament. Edited by James L. Crenshaw. Ce Dieu censé aimer la Souffrance. By François Varone. Evil and Evolution, A Theodicy. By Richard W. Kropf. ‘Poet and Peasant’ and ‘Through Peasant Eyes’: A Literary‐Cultural Approach (...) to the Parable in Luke. By Kenneth Bailey. The Biblical Foundations for Mission. By Donald Senior and Carroll Stuhlmueller. New Testament Foundations of Ministry. By Colin Kruse. Church, Ministry and Unity. By James E. Griffiss. Theology of Ministry. By Thomas Franklin O'Meara. Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology. By Colin E. Gunton. I believe in the Holy Spirit. By Yves Congar. Between Jesus and Paul. By Martin Hengel. From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background. By Frances Young. Alan of Lille: The Frontiers of Theology in the Later Twelfth Century. By G.R. Evans. Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe. By Clarissa W. Atkinson. Church, Politics and Society: Scotland 1408–1929. Edited by N. Macdougall. Renaissance and Reform: The Italian Contribution. Collected Essays, Volume II. By Frances A. Yates. Seven‐Headed Luther: Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentury, 1483–1983. Edited by Peter Newman Brooks. Ökumenische Erschliessung Martin Luthers. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer. Luther's Ecumenical Significance, An Interconfessional Consultation. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer, in collaboration with Carter Lindberg and Harry McSorley. States of Mind: A Study of Anglo‐Irish Conflict 1780 to 1980. By Oliver MacDonagh. The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth‐Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter Reform. By Gregory L. Freeze. Pusey Rediscovered. Edited by Perry Butler. Between Two Worlds: George Tyrrell's Relationship to the Thought of Matthew Arnold. By Nicholas Sagovsky. The Concept of Glaubenslehre. By Walter E. Wyman, Jr. The Existence and Nature of God. Edited by Alfred J. Freddoso. Faith and Reason. By Anthony Kenny. Logic and The Nature of God. By Stephen T. Davis. Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality. By Josef Fuchs. Morality and Conflict. By Stuart Hampshire. Realism and Imagination in Ethics. By Sabina Lovibond. Intentionality. By John R. Searle. Philosophical Papers, I: Practical Reason. By G.H. von Wright. Philosophical Papers, II: Philosophical Logic. By G.H. von Wright. A Model of Making: Literary Criticism and its Theology. By Ruth Etchells. The Return of the Goddess: Femininity, Aggression and the Modern Grail Quest. By Edward Whitmont. The Power of the Poor in History. By Gustavo Gutierrez, translated by Robert R. Barr. The God of the Xhosa. By Janet Hodgson. Our Hymn Tunes: Their Choice and Performance. By Donald Webster. The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan. By William Morgan. An Introduction to Plato's Laws. By R.E. Stalley. Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. By Kenneth M. Sayre. Plato's ‘Parmenides’: Translation and Analysis. By R.E. Allen. Politics in the Ancient World. By M.I. Finley. (shrink)

In this article I press four different objections on Forst’s theory of the ‘Right to Justification’. These are (i) that the principle of justification is not well-formulated; (ii) that ‘reasonableness and reciprocity’, as these notions are used by Rawls, are not apt to support a Kantian conception of morality; (iii) that the principle of justification, as Forst understands it, gives an inadequate account of what makes actions wrong; and (iv) that, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, Forst’s account (...) veers towards a version of moral realism that isprima facieincompatible with Kantian constructivism. I then evaluate Forst’s theory in the light of a distinction made by Sharon Street between restricted and unrestricted constructivism. I show that Forst has reason to deny that it is either the one or the other, but he is not able to show that it is both or neither. I conclude that the arguments Forst advances in support of his constructivist theory of the right to justification entail that it is a metaphysical and comprehensive conception in the relevant, Rawlsian sense. Forst’s theory of the right to justification therefore fails to fulfil one of the main stated aims. (shrink)

Notably absent from much of the psychological literature on emotion regulation are attempts to answer explicitly normative questions about the phenomenon. It is one thing to explain how emotional states are regulated. It is another thing to say something about what reasons there are to regulate our emotions, whether and why we might sometimes be obligated to regulate our emotions, and how we regulate our emotions well, or optimally. This paper is an attempt at the latter task, focused specifically on (...) a type of emotion regulation also receiving little attention in the literature—what I call dispositional emotion regulation. Dispositional regulation occurs, when it does, at some point or period of time significantly prior to the onset of affected emotional states or episodes, and by means of modifying the subject’s emotional dispositions. And it is done well, or optimally, I argue, when it is done with an aim toward achieving and maintaining a coherent and comprehensible self, in the sense Shaftesbury had in mind. (shrink)

With great energy and clarity, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-1894), author of History of the Criminal Law of England, and judge of the High Court from 1879-91, challenges John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and On Utilitarianism, arguing that ...

The objectivity of Bayesian induction relies on the ability of evidence to produce a convergence to agreement among agents who initially disagree about the plausibilities of hypotheses. I will describe three sorts of Bayesian convergence. The first reduces the objectivity of inductions about simple "occurrent events" to the objectivity of posterior probabilities for theoretical hypotheses. The second reveals that evidence will generally induce converge to agreement among agents on the posterior probabilities of theories only if the convergence is 0 or (...) 1. The third establishes conditions under which evidence will very probably compel posterior probabilities of theories to converge to 0 or 1. (shrink)

Review of: Wood, Allen W., Kant and Religion, Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 2020, 250 pp. ISBN: 978-0521799980.

This article explores the meanings of manhood as articulated by Afro-American men. Conceptualization and Q-sort methods are used to examine men's construction of manhood and men's ratings of the importance of selected attributes to being a man. Manhood emerged as a multidimensional construct with four major domains and 15 distinct clusters of ideas. The cluster of attributes rated as most important to being a man paralleled the conceptualization of manhood derived from the open-ended interviews for both professional and nonprofessional men. (...) Men's ratings of attributes in the areas of ownership, manliness, spiritual and religious, and power varied by occupational status. (shrink)

Dewey is the most influential of American social thinkers, and his stock is now rising once more among professional philosophers. Yet there has heretofore been no adequate, readable survey of the full range of Dewey's thought. This gap is filled by "Understanding John Dewey".

The purpose of this work is to critically assess Errol E. Harris’s process philosophy in the face of contemporary research in the special sciences. Harris devoted his life to grappling with the big questions concerning the relationships between nature, mind, and knowledge. His 70-plus year career was distinguished, his texts on the history of philosophy, philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and consciousness were widely published, and yet his metaphysics has until now remained excluded from mainstream discussions. This (...) book’s contention is that Harris’s work reveals as yet unnoticed connections between theories in numerous scientific disciplines ranging from psychology to cosmology and that an examination of certain theories within these disciplines may serve to strengthen his original arguments. This work maintains that the resulting metaphysics frames a transdisciplinary paradigm shift and provides a viable solution to the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

This report describes research focusing on virtues and character in teaching, by which we mean the kind of personal qualities professional teachers need to facilitate learning and overall flourishing in young people that goes beyond preparing them for a life of tests. The ‘good’ teacher is someone who, alongside excellent subject knowledge and technical expertise, cares about students, upholds principles of honesty and integrity both towards knowledge and student–teacher relationships, and who does good work . In the Framework for Character (...) Education , we considered the character of teachers to be a crucial ingredient in the development of flourishing children. This new report describes research that examined how teachers thought about, and drew upon, character strengths and virtues in their daily professional lives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 85 RUSSELL’S CONTRIBUTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE James Connelly Philosophy, Trent U. Peterborough, on k9l 1z6, Canada [email protected] Graham Stevens. The Theory of Descriptions: Russell and the Philosophy of Language. Basingstoke, uk: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. xiii, 197. isbn: 978-0230 -20116-3. £50; us$85. ver the past decade, Graham Stevens has built his reputation as a lucid, durable, and oftentimes ground-breaking historian of analytic philosophy. His latest book, (...) entitled TheTheory of Descriptions: Russell and the Philosophy of Language, will only add to that burgeoning scholarly legacy. If it has not been established already, this book will doubtless cement Stevens’ place amongst the leading Russell scholars in the world today. It may very well herald Stevens ’ arrival on the scene as a noteworthy contributor to contemporary philosophy of language as well. The central goal of the book is “to bring the historical and purely philosophical analyses of [Russell’s] work into closer alignment” (p. 3). Stevens hopes to overcome a “striking disparity” (p. 2) in the ways that Russell’s contributions to the philosophy of language have been conceived by expositors of his philosophy, on the one hand, versus philosophers of language, on the other. In particular, though contemporary philosophers of language would tend to view Russell’s enormous contribution to that subject as being “undeniable” (p. 1), and to be “bewildered” (p. 94) by any suggestion to the contrary, expositors of Russell’s philosophy have nevertheless been at pains to emphasize that Russell “was not engaged in the philosophical study of language” (p. 2). As Stevens notes, this situation is especially puzzling since “these two groups [of scholars] overlap to a considerable extent” (p. 2). Stevens’ strategy for overcoming this disparity is two-pronged. First he aims to tackle, head on, the fallacious arguments of Monk,1 Dummett,2 and others, to the effect that Russell was not engaged in the philosophy of language. According to Stevens, such arguments have principally appealed to either (1) ______ 1 Ray Monk, “What Is Analytical Philosophy?”. 2 Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language. l= 86 Reviews Russell’s dismissal of ordinary language philosophy, (2) his early, non-linguistic, conception of the nature of propositions, or (3) his view that natural language was inherently defective for philosophical purposes, and so called for replacement by a “logically perfect language”. In regards to (1), Stevens argues in a word that “[o]rdinary language philosophy has had its day” (p. 176). Over the past several decades, in other words, leading philosophers of language have come to agree with Russell in viewing ordinary language philosophy as “an outdated, and rather eccentric, relic of mid-twentieth century British philosophy” (ibid.).The classic Russell– Strawson debate over the question whether ordinary language lacks an exact logic3 has been settled decisively in Russell’s favour, as philosophers of language have transformed “the attempt to systematically specify the semantics of large regions of natural language” (ibid.) into a “central project” (ibid.). In regards to (2), moreover, Stevens notes that by this line of reasoning, absurdly, David Kaplan would not qualify as a philosopher of language since he “explicitly invokes the Russellian non-linguistic conception of a proposition as the conception appropriate for providing the content of properly context-situated indexical sentences” (p. 170). And, of course, Kaplan is not at all unique amongst contemporary philosophers of language in appealing to a Russellian conception of propositional content, as the examples of Nathan Salmon,4 Scott Soames,5 and many others show. In regards to (3), finally, Stevens argues that Russell’s dim view of natural language was grounded in his conception of logical form as non-linguistic, and that that conception, in turn, derives simply from the poverty of syntactic theory available to Russell, prior to the Chomskyian revolution in linguistics during the second half of the twentieth century. In light of the conceptual and analytic resources made available by this revolution, however, there exists “no insurmountable obstacle to assimilating Russell ’s notion of logical form to something akin to the modern notion of lf” (p. 172), where lf is conceived as one of four levels of syntactic representation within Chomsky’s Government and Binding Theory... (shrink)

James Robert Ballantyne taught oriental languages in India for sixteen years, compiling grammars of Hindi, Sanskrit and Persian, along with translations of Hindu philosophy. In 1859, for the use of Christian missionaries, he prepared a guide to Hinduism, in English and Sanskrit. Published in two volumes in 1852, Synopsis of Science was intended to introduce his Indian pupils to Western science by using the framework of Hindu Nyaya philosophy, which was familiar to them and which Ballantyne greatly respected. Volume (...) 1 proceeds through a series of aphorisms exemplifying such topics as Western logic, the workings of the body, basic astronomy, geography, the action of liquids, pneumatics, acoustics and optics. Volume 2 includes coverage of arithmetic, algebra, chemistry, botany, zoology, mineralogy and geology. The second part of each volume is a Sanskrit translation. Overall, the work serves as an excellent primary source on the educational aspects of British imperialism. (shrink)

We think the present moment is a timely one for debating the relation between evidentiary protocols and academic disciplines. Since academic practices for constituting and deploying evidence tend to be discipline-specific, the much-discussed crisis of the disciplines in recent years has given rise to a series of controversies about the status of evidence in current modes of investigation and argument: deconstruction, gender studies, new historicism, cultural studies, new approaches to the history and philosophy of science, the critical legal studies movement, (...) and so on. Unfortunately, these controversies too often devolve into oversimplified debates about who has the evidence and who does not, who did their homework and who did not, or about the dangers of an ill-defined academic relativism. Attention needs to be better and otherwise directed: at the configuration of the fact-evidence distinction in different disciplines and historical moments, for example; or at the relative function of such notions as “self-evidence,” “experience,” “test,” “testimony,” and “textuality” in various academic discourses; or at the ways in which the invoked “rules of evidence” are themselves the products of historical developments, and themselves undergo redifferentiation and reformulation. James Chandler, professor of English at the University of Chicago, is the author of Wordsworth’s Second Nature . He is currently completing England in 1819, studies in and of romantic case history. Arnold I. Davidson, executive editor of Critical Inquiry, teaches philosophy and the history of science at the University of Chicago. He is currently working on the history of horror as it relates to the epistemology of norms and deviations and is editing a collection of essays on Heidegger, philosophy, and National Socialism. Harry Harootunian, a coeditor of Critical Inquiry and professor of history and East Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago, is the author of Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokigawa and editor, with Masao Miyoshi, of Postmodernism and Japan. (shrink)

Tackling global injustice requires appropriate and effective institutions as well as cosmopolitan solidarity. This paper assumes that the ‘constitutionalized world society’ theorized by Habermas offers a viable proposal to make the protection and promotion of human rights more feasible. His account of solidarity, however, reveals a conundrum: If strong forms of solidarity grow out of shared political institutions and a related collective identity, but it is precisely those institutions that we need to enhance at the global level, then how can (...) we build sufficient solidarity to support this process? Habermas relies on a global consensus on human rights, but I argue that his version of cosmopolitan solidarity is too weak to motivate the measures needed to fully realize economic, social and cultural rights and the package of institutional reforms that he proposes. We thus need a narrative of the human condition that can lend additional support to the idea of human rights and cosmopolitan duties. I find the seeds of such a position, which I call cosmocommonism, in the work of Nancy. Having shown how this can motivate cosmopolitanism and support for human rights, I then consider in the conclusion its compatibility with the political institutions that Habermas proposes. (shrink)

To see what might be at stake in the question of Pope’s place in the poetic canon—in the question as such, before anything is said of critical theory—we must understand that late eighteenth-century England was developing a different sort of canon from the one which Pope and the Augustans had in view. As everyone knows, Pope’s classics were, well, classical. His pantheon was populated with poets of another place and time whose stature was globally recognized. One recalls the tribute to (...) these “Bards triumphant” in An Essay on Criticism : Still green with Bays each ancient Altar stands, Above the reach of Sacrilegious Hands, Secure from Flames, from Envy’s fiercer Rage, Destructive War, and all-involving Age. See, from each Climes the Learn’d their Incense bring; Hear, in all Tongues consenting Paeans ring! In Praise so just, let ev’ry Voice be join’d, And fill the Gen’ral Chorus of Mankind!14Pope’s song of praise here forms just a part of mankind’s “Gen’ral Chorus.” These are poets for all climates and languages, and for all nations, even “Nations unborn” and “Worlds…that must not yet be found” . Although I want to place adequate stress on Pope’s deep commitment to this universalized canon, it would be misleading to suggest that he was completely uninterested in the poetry of his own nation. He studied it an imitated it. He even sketched a plan for a possible history of poetry in England. It is to the point here, however, that this project remained only a sketch and that England would have no major overview of its national accomplishment until the 1770s and 1780s, when Thomas Warton issued the first three volumes of his pioneering History of English Poetry, and Johnson, his Lives of the English Poets.Building on the scholarship of René Wellek, Lawrence Lipking has offered a compelling account of the emergence of these great works at that time, buy reference to the “interested and demanding public” that called for them.15 What the public wanted and got, Lipking explains, “was a history of English poetry, or a survey of English poets, that would provide a basis for criticism by reviewing the entire range of the art. Warton and Johnson responded to a national desire for an evaluation of what English poets had achieved” . Such terms are most useful, although “evaluation” connotes a greater degree of neutrality than even Lipking’s own subsequent analysis permits. For example, among the public needs served by such work as Johnson’s and Warton’s, Lipking lists the “patriotic” and the “political” as primary. These needs are obviously related. The patriotic need expresses itself as a hunger for “a glorious national poetic pantheon” ; that is, for a specifically national rather than a global canon of classics. Such a canon would in turn serve political purposes that Lipking sees motivating “the poets” of mid-century, Thomson and Akenside and Collins and Gray and Mason and Smart,” who all “wrote variations on the mythopolitical them of Milton: sweet Liberty, the nymph who had freed English pens to outstrip the cloistered conservative rule-bound verses of less favored nations.” Politically, in other words, and this is the crucial point, “English literary history was shaped by the need for a definition of the superiority of the national character” . James Chandler, assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago, is the author of Wordsworth’s Second Nature: A Study of the Poetry and Politics . His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry was “Romantic Allusiveness”. (shrink)

An outline of the James Sprunt Lectures for 1947 delivered by Dr. J. Harry Cotton at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Va., February 23-28, 1947.

An institutional Warrant is backed by the rules of some Institution, such as a branch of law or a particular game.

Volume 27, Issue 2, June 2020, Page 184-189.

This article traces the consequences for Badiou’s political subjectivity if his understanding of the Cartesian subject is incorrect. For Badiou, the faithful subject, political and otherwise, is formed through fidelity to the appearance of an event of truth, and the process of this fidelity creates a world. These truths are immanent to the worlds in which they appear. An obscure subject, however, is faithful to a negation, while a reactive subject denies the appearance of a truth’s event. Badiou’s subject radicalizes (...) Lacan’s radicalization of the Cartesian subject, but for him both Descartes and Lacan consider the subject stable since they are caused by truth rather than by the event of a truth. However, immanent to Descartes’s philosophy is an unstable subject, thanks to the role of the imagination in the discovery of the cogito. Fidelity to this immanent Cartesian subject shows Lacan as an obscure subject and Badiou as reactive. (shrink)

David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism: Methodology and Ideology in Enlightenment Inquiry. By Demeter Tamás.