Abstract:Human and animal research both operate within established standards. In the United States, criticism of the human research environment and recorded abuses of human research subjects served as the impetus for the establishment of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, and the resulting Belmont Report. The Belmont Report established key ethical principles to which human research should adhere: respect for autonomy, obligations to beneficence and justice, and special protections for vulnerable individuals and (...) populations. While current guidelines appropriately aim to protect the individual interests of human participants in research, no similar, comprehensive, and principled effort has addressed the use of (nonhuman) animals in research. Although published policies regarding animal research provide relevant regulatory guidance, the lack of a fundamental effort to explore the ethical issues and principles that should guide decisions about the potential use of animals in research has led to unclear and disparate policies. Here, we explore how the ethical principles outlined in the Belmont Report could be applied consistently to animals. We describe how concepts such as respect for autonomy and obligations to beneficence and justice could be applied to animals, as well as how animals are entitled to special protections as a result of their vulnerability. (shrink)

Introduces the basic tenents of Buddhism, and discusses the religion's influence on Asia and Western thought through stories and illustrations.

In The Teaching Self: Contemplative Practices, Pedagogy, and Research in Education, a rich collection of voices from diverse settings illustrates the ways in which first-person experiences with contemplative practices lay a foundation for contemplative pedagogy and research in teacher education.

The legendary Greek figure Orpheus was said to have possessed magical powers capable of moving all living and inanimate things through the sound of his lyre and voice. Over time, the Orphic theme has come to indicate the power of music to unsettle, subvert, and ultimately bring down oppressive realities in order to liberate the soul and expand human life without limits. The liberating effect of music has been a particularly important theme in twentieth-century African American literature. The nine original (...) essays in Black Orpheus examines the Orphic theme in the fiction of such African American writers as Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, James Baldwin, Nathaniel Mackey, Sherley Anne Williams, Ann Petry, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, and Toni Morrison. The authors discussed in this volume depict music as a mystical, shamanistic, and spiritual power that can miraculously transform the realities of the soul and of the world. Here, the musician uses his or her music as a weapon to shield and protect his or her spirituality. Written by scholars of English, music, women's studies, American studies, cultural theory, and black and Africana studies, the essays in this interdisciplinary collection ultimately explore the thematic, linguistic structural presence of music in twentieth-century African American fiction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Making the "One" ImpossibleJane Gallop (bio)The last paragraph of the first chapter of Mother Tongues presents the book's argument. "What I hope to argue in this book," writes Johnson, "is that the plurality of languages and the plurality of sexes are alike in that they both make the 'one' impossible" [25]. While I am not convinced that Mother Tongues actually demonstrates the similarity between the plurality of languages (...) and the plurality of sexes, my reading nonetheless does find its thesis in this sentence. I would say that Johnson's project in this book is to "make the 'one' impossible," that throughout this book, Johnson continually and consistently argues against the "appeal" of "the 'one'"—repeatedly locates herself in, and exhorts us to join her in, resistance to the powerful seductions of "the 'one.'"In the sentence I just quoted, the word "one" is in quotation marks because the word is not quite the proper name for what Johnson is talking about. When I use the phrase "the 'one'" here, as I do in my title ("Making the 'One' Impossible"), and as I will do throughout this paper, the word "one" will always be in quotation marks, scare quotes.In Mother Tongues, "the 'one'" goes by a number of different names. In the last paragraph of the first chapter, for example, where we found our thesis, it is called "universality." Under that guise, we might recognize the politics of this resistance to "the 'one'" (a politics we are, at this point in critical history, all more than ready to climb on board for). Johnson's resistance to "the 'one'" in Mother Tongues, however, usually appears—I'm happy to say—in other, less politic, more perverse guises.The most widespread elaboration of Mother Tongues's resistance to "the 'one'" is through its active interest in the practice of translation. The theory and practice of translation elaborated in this book is one I'd like to call insubordinate translation. At a number of places, Johnson looks at multiple translations of a text along with the original, not in order to determine which is closer to the original, but in order to enlarge the network of meaning. At times, Johnson productively follows meanings which appear in a translation but are not in the original.The first time this occurs is in the first chapter, in a section entitled "Translation." Johnson is looking at two different English translations of Kafka's The Trial: an "old translation" she "happened to have on hand" and "a more recent edition" in which the old translation "had been revised." Studying the first sentence of the novel in the original and the two translations, Johnson seizes on the word traduce, which she finds in the old translation but not the revision and proclaims: "The translation... is thus even better than the original" [16, emphasis added].The next chapter of Mother Tongues gives us a sense of where, theoretically, this insubordination comes from: "the theory that transformed literary studies utterly transformed the practice of translation. Translating Derrida or Lacan became an art in itself" [32]. "An art in itself" suggests a primary creation, not secondary. (We would certainly want to recall here that Johnson herself translated Derrida's Dissemination). [End Page 77]In the third chapter, "The Task of the Translator," we find Johnson comparing an English translation of Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator" to the German original. At one point she ponders the associations of "light" in the word lightly, which is translating the German fluchtig, associations that are not in the original. She concludes: "We have no way of talking about these creations ex nihilo of translation" [57]. Like the earlier "an art in itself," the phrase "creations ex nihilo" again makes translation a primary rather than secondary art. We may have "no way of talking about" these creations, but Mother Tongues does talk about them, regularly, throughout the book.The fifth chapter opens with an epigraph from a letter Benjamin wrote to Horkheimer, or rather an English translation of that letter. The conclusion to the first section of the chapter returns to the word apprehend, which appears in this epigraph: "the psychological... (shrink)

Can we understand other minds ‘from the inside’? What would this mean? There is an attraction which many have felt in the idea that creatures with minds, people, invite a kind of understanding which inanimate objects such as rocks, plants and machines, do not invite and that it is appropriate to seek to understand them ‘from the inside’. What I hope to do in this paper is to introduce and defend one version of the so-called ‘simulation’ approach to our (...) grasp and use of psychological concepts, a version which gives central importance to the idea of shared rationality, and in so doing to tease out and defend one strand in the complex of ideas which finds expression in this mysterious phrase. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Statue of Augustus from Prima Porta, the Underground Complex, and the Omen of the Gallina AlbaJane Clark ReederThe new excavations of the villa of Livia at Prima Porta have focused attention on the architecture and art of this imperial villa. The statue of Augustus from Prima Porta and the garden paintings from the underground complex have long been the most famous exemplars of their types. Recently new studies (...) have treated these works of art in relation to their setting. 1 But there is one source of information in particular which has not received the scrutiny in this regard that it might and that is the remarkable omen which gave the villa its name in antiquity, ad Gallinas. Although this omen is sometimes mentioned to explain the odd name, scholars have not examined in any detail the relationship of the omen to the art and architecture of the villa. In fact, the omen of the gallina alba is the foundation augurium of the villa-garden itself. 2In this essay I intend to examine the ancient literary sources concerning the villa; the only information given by the sources about the villa comes in fact by way of the omen. First the individual components of the omen and the surrounding body of augury and myth will be examined and illustrated where possible in the monuments. Secondly I hope to illuminate the symbolic interrelationships between this augural imagery and the iconography of three features of the art and architecture of the villa-garden: the statue of Augustus, the underground complex, and the laurel grove. This imagery and symbolism played an essential [End Page 89] role not only in the decoration of the villa, but formed an important part of Augustan ideology.The iconographical connections of the statue of Augustus and the underground complex of the villa-garden should be sought first of all in the ideology inherent in the statue itself. 3 Two attributes in particular give this message: the laurel branch in hand and the cuirass. Since one knows how important the laurel was as an age-old symbol of Apollo and as a new emblem of Augustus and since one is aware how pervasive the Apollonian propaganda became in Augustan ideology, 4 it is no wonder that H. Kähler (1959, 12–13; 28; pl. 32) found the laurel integral to the sacral character of the statue’s image and hence restored the laurel branch in the hand of Augustus on the statue from Prima Porta.Kähler is not the only scholar to attach the laurel to the Prima Porta statue of Augustus. 5 E. Simon restored a laurel branch in the left hand of Augustus rather than the right and in a recent summary of Augustan art this view was adopted. 6 There is also numismatic evidence for Augustus holding a laurel branch in connection with the triumph. While the certainty of a particular statue type behind the coin image is more problematic, 7 the coin in fact represents the historical event itself. On the reverse of a denarius from the great Actium series of coins Octavian is [End Page 90] represented as Triumphator and Imperator standing in the quadriga and holding a large laurel branch in his right hand. 8 On the obverse Victory, standing on the ship’s prow, holds a palm in her left hand and in her right the laurel crown which Octavian would have worn in the triumphal procession. Likewise Tiberius in the Augustan tradition stands in the triumphal quadriga and holds a laurel branch in his right hand on an aureus of a.d. 13/14. 9 At least one scholar (Neudecker 1988, 90) believes that the program of the statue of Augustus of Prima Porta is probably to be seen in connection with the triumphal ceremony.If Augustus indeed held a laurel branch in hand, the branch could only have come from the famous laurel grove of the villa of Livia ad Gallinas. The foundation augurium and legend of the Augustan laurel branch and indeed of the villa-garden itself as mentioned above is the omen of the gallina alba from which the villa took its name in antiquity... (shrink)

After retirement, older people often find themselves far from their children and grandchildren, and many spend their last years isolated and alone. As traditional concepts of family and social institutions fragment, social networks weaken, leading to an epidemic of loneliness, and substance abuse and suicide in developed countries. In fact, life expectancy in the US has dropped for the past few years, in large part due to a dramatic increase in suicide and drug overdose. None of these social problems is (...) likely to be solved by metformin. They point to a crisis of identity and meaning, an existential crisis. In this context, one might wonder if we are already seeing the effects of tinkering with our lifespan. There are many more conclusions one could draw about the implications of longevity, many of which have been elegantly described in Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, published by the President’s Council on Bioethics, which I used as a reference for this talk. I hope I have been successful in providing a 10,000-foot view of the questions of efforts to extend human longevity and its implications that will provoke thought and discussion. I would like to end these reflections by turning back to my favorite transhumans. The reason we love superheroes is not for their superior strength or intelligence, but their characters. They use their powers to protect and serve humanity rather than dominate or annihilate it. It is not their gadgetry that makes them great, but how they use it to save the vulnerable. Even as a small child I knew that if everyone acted the way they did, the world would be a better place. The moral of every story was that the “enhancement” humanity needed would not come as the fruit of technology, but of virtue. (shrink)

Book II of the Treatise minutely anatomizes the passions Hume dubbed “indirect.” As the account of pride, humility, love, and hatred unfolds, principles are uncovered, causes are exhaustively examined, experiments carried out, difficulties presented and solved. The barrage of detailed description and theorizing threatens to overwhelm even the most devoted of readers. By contrast, Hume’s explicit treatment of the direct passions appears perfunctory. Indeed, Hume states: “None of the direct affections seem to merit our particular attention except hope and (...) fear.” Desire and aversion, though usually mentioned first as examples of the direct passions, receive no separate analysis. (shrink)

The recent article by R. P. Saller on Roman dowry in the Principate makes some interesting and important suggestions about the function of dowry and its role in the devolution of property. I am in broad agreement with a good deal of what he says, and would not dispute his views that dowry was, as shown by the requirement of collatio dotis, regarded as in a sense part of a woman's patrimony, and that the rules for the recovery of dowry (...) show that the purpose of giving dowry was not held to rest on one single principle, but included provision both for the expenses of the wife's maintenance during marriage and for a possible remarriage after divorce or widowhood. However, his remarks on both points need some qualification and amplification. Briefly, I hope to show that the oddities and anomalies noticed by Saller in the rules governing the recovery of dowry at the end of a marriage are apparent rather than real, since these rules rest, not on conflicting views about the purpose of dowry, but on the fact that the husband had full legal ownership of the dowry during marriage, together with the right of the wife or her pater to an actio rei uxoriae for recovery of dowry; that the rules for collatio dotis applied only if the woman herself chose to claim a share in her father's estate on intestacy beyond the amount of her dowry; that the use of the dowry for the wife's support was an equitable, rather than a legal, requirement. (shrink)

In this article we illustrate, and argue for, the importance of researching the social context of health professionals’ ethical agendas and concerns. We draw upon qualitative interview data from 20 nurses working in two occupational health sites, and our discussion focuses mainly upon aspects of the shifting ‘ethical context’ for those nurses with a health promotion remit who are working in the British National Health Service. Within this discussion we also raise a number of potentially substantive issues, including the risks (...) of colluding in ‘double standards’, and the tensions between the practitioner and managerial roles in nursing. Overall, we hope to pose questions about the best ways to understand the ethical agency and responsibilities of health professionals. (shrink)

This book encourages readers to acknowledge humanity's contribution to the environmental crisis, proposing a way forward by exploring the power of ordinary people to bring about large-scale cultural change. Is it possible for humankind to change its ways and shed the belief that the planet is ours to do with as we like? Internationally acclaimed philosopher of education Jane Roland Martin argues that "humancentrism" is a learned affair, and what is learned can be unlearned. Turning to the past to (...) see how large-scale cultural change has occurred, she discovers a pattern in the achievements of such historical luminaries as Martin Luther, Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks and Greta Thunberg that we too can follow. Drawing on history, philosophy, and literature as well as the natural and social sciences and hoping to mobilize readers to effective action, Martin employs an accessible and powerful rhetoric, with each chapter beginning with a scene from history written in dialogue form. This book calls on young and old to avert a looming tragedy of Aristotelian proportions--the demise of the "Mother Nature" that made it possible for our species to flourish. Thoroughly interdisciplinary in its approach, it will appeal to students and teachers as well as general readers interested in environmental studies, philosophy, and education. (shrink)

The great Western political and social philosophers had no doubts about the importance of education. Feminist philosophers of the past also understood the significance for their own projects of educational theory and philosophy. Today, however, there is an education gap in the feminist philosophy text. Books in the field pay little attention to the subject of education and rarely cite feminist research in this area. Widely circulated bibliographies of feminist philosophy and overviews of the field have tended, in turn, to (...) make this whole area of feminist philosophical research invisible. The feminist theorist/activist Charlotte Bunch once wrote that feminist theory must, among other things, hypothesize how to change what is to what there should be. She did not say – nor would I – that every feminist who puts forward an account of what there should be must also address the practical issue of how to achieve the hoped‐for results. One wonders, however, if it is possible to achieve the transformations of marriage, family, reproduction, workplace, science, society, not to mention gender itself, that feminist philosophers espouse without effecting a correspondingly great transformation of this culture's educational theory and philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 32-39 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetics, Epistemics, and Feminist Theory Jane Duran Recent feminist analysts of aesthetics and analytic aesthetics in particular seem to have come to the conclusion that the redemption of formulated aesthetic theory from the feminist point of view is a difficult and recondite task. 1 If analytic aesthetics now looks problematic, qua fruitful philosophical enterprise, its future (...) appears bleaker still when the intersection of the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy and the larger feminist project, frequently articulated in other than analytic terms, is examined.In this essay I will assume that there is some future for analytic aesthetics, and I will not dispute the basic assumption that any portion of analytic theory is somewhat immiscible with feminist points of view. My concern, rather, will be to try to show what it is specifically in the nature of analytic theory, both aesthetic and otherwise, which renders it of dubious value to the feminist critique (at least on first blush). Although in the past feminist theorists have tried to characterize the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy on the whole in rather striking terms,it is not clear that these terms have been precise enough. 2 Further, it is not clear that analytic modes are obviously unusable for feminist theory or for the development of a still nascent feminist aesthetics, although what one wants to say here is that this task is a terribly danger-fraught one. 3My goal here is twofold: first, to articulate what precisely it is aboutanalytic aesthetics (or any portion of analytic theory, for that matter) thatmakes it a hindrance — at least preliminarily — to the development of feminist views. In order to do this I will need to examine a relatively uncharted area in the literature, that is the parallel between much of analytic aesthetic theory and analytic epistemology. The second portion of my task will runsomewhat contrary to conventional wisdom: having delineated the mostmasculinist parts of analytic endeavors, I inquire if there is, indeed, anypart of rigorously articulated analytic theory that could lend itself to the development of a feminist aesthetic. [End Page 32] Analytic Philosophy and Aesthetics Analytic aesthetics, like analytic philosophy taken as a whole, has often proceeded as if the development of conceptual clarification and theoretical rigor could do much to "solve" or dissolve aesthetic problems. George Dickie's introductory work, for example, presents the student with a number of difficult areas in aesthetics, and then proceeds to address these areas in much the same manner that other contemporary texts employ for the discussion of issues in ethics, epistemology, or metaphysics.In discussing symbolism, Dickie first attempts to clarify the use of theterm, and then notes that there are problematic areas with regard to whether or not a work of art can both contain a symbol and serve itself as a symbol simultaneously. A symbol "stands for" in some establishable way that which it symbolizes. A symbol serves to transfer someone's thought to something other than itself, and the transfer is not a random association. The transfer depends upon certain features of the symbol which give it a place in a certain meaning system. 4I cite this material as exemplary because the flavor of analytic aesthetics is remarkably similar to the flavor of analytic philosophy as a whole. We sometimes need to remind ourselves that the techniques of analysis developed in the earlier part of this century relied on breakthroughs in logic and formal representation which allowed for a certain precision in matching symbol to thing signified. The original hope of philosophers working at the time of Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore had been to develop something close to a logically perfect language with a one-to-one relationship between signifier and signified. However without merit this somewhat arcane task, its goals infused much of the philosophizing that followed it, and even the ordinary language school was, of course, indirectly an offshoot of this work. Nicholas Wolterstorff, for example, notes that "analytic philosophy was to be 'scientific philosophy'....The goal of the analytic philosopher... (shrink)

Lines of argument to support the notion that global bioethics can use work from feminist epistemology are set out, and much of the support for such contentions comes from specific cases of ethical issues in indigenous cultures. Theorists such as Kuhse, Arizpe, Egnor and Bumiller are cited, and it is concluded that local feminist epistemologies often conflict with standard ethical views, but that the failure to incorporate feminist thought undercuts hopes to establish a viable bioethics on an international scale.

What kind of things are damaged art-objects? Are they junk, trash, mere stuff? Or do they remain art by virtue of their distinguished provenance or still discernible design? What kind of powers do such things have as material bodies and forces? Instead of attempting to locate proper concepts for salvaged art-things, this essay, from a perspective centered on the power of bodies-in-encounter – where “power” in Spinoza’s sense is the capacity to affect and be affected – attempts to home in (...) on the presence of a material vibrancy in the hope of better understanding the postures, reactions, and comportments that damaged art pieces inspire as we engage with them. This article proposes that even so-called “inanimate” things convey specific degrees of animacy even if not all of them qualify under the biological definition of life. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine some contentions advanced by B. A. O. Williams in his books Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry and Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy . In particular I shall be concerned with the claims he makes about the nature of ethics—namely that it cannot be ‘objective’ or ‘realistic’ and that we may not hope for rational convergence in ethical judgments. My claims will be that Williams's case on these matters is importantly (...) unclear and incomplete and that we lack cogent reasons to accept the conclusions he offers us. But a good deal of scene-setting is necessary before we can pose the questions I wish to address. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Right Thing to DoJane RogersIn stark contrast to getting my graduate degree in bioethics in which I discovered that I am inclined to favor an ethics based on my religious beliefs, in nursing school I learned that I had to take my religion out of nursing care. As a bioethics student, I read in my textbook, Bioethics: A Systematic Approach, that “… just because an action is rationally (...) allowed does not mean that everyone agrees one ought to act in that way.” Yet often in nursing I found that we nurses knew what was best for our patients, even if they did not. At least, we believed that we did. This general paternalistic belief spread into every area of the care we gave except for one, and that was religion. [End Page 208]As student nurses, we learned to separate our religion from our care to focus on the patient’s religion or spiritual needs. Our patients should never know of our religious beliefs or even if we had a lack of them. We needed to be completely neutral on all religious issues and focus solely on the patient’s preference. If our patients needed spiritual care, we would find someone to provide it and we would incorporate it into the nursing plan of care. Providing care of the whole patient including their religious needs was the definition of a good nurse. Certainly I wanted to be a good nurse, so I swore I would always include the spiritual needs of my patients as part of my care, while never expressing my own.As fate would have it, as a new nurse I found myself overwhelmed running around just trying to give medications, admit and discharge patients, start IV’s, insert catheters, note doctor’s orders and get my charting done. My time was engaged in trying to calm confused and combative patients, running to grab an emesis basin for a patient to throw up in or answering the phone, so thinking about religion or spiritual care for my patients most of the time amounted to “God help me and my patients get through this shift.” My goal of being a good nurse was starting to look dismal as I realized I had no idea if I could find the time or means and ways to incorporate religion into the care I gave, or if it even mattered if I did.Fortuitously for me, most of my patients never mentioned religion, although at times they did leave some nonverbal clues. I could see a rosary laying on a bedside table or a bible or prayer book next to them in bed. While I would make sure their religious item was always within reach, I remained respectful yet distant in religious matters, never offering any spiritual care or assistance. I was quite accepting of my first Mormon patient wearing the garment under the traditional hospital gown. I was appalled when an unconscious Jehovah Witness patient was nearly given blood. When a minister or priest came to visit, I’d excuse myself quickly so that the work of their God could do what I could not or should not do. Occasionally I was asked by family members to call in a minister or a priest or chaplain and I did that with a great feeling of satisfaction as I was surely providing the spiritual care they requested.Eventually however I did start to indulge in highly spontaneous and random acts of religion. These were always done secretly. The patient or family must never know. Thinking it would help I once covertly gave a patient a special rosary I had with Lourdes water in it thinking it might heal him. I waited to see a miracle. It never came. Despite the absence of that miracle I was still hopeful that perhaps my prayers or another rosary could heal or at least help some of my patients. After all, as a nurse I witnessed lots of healings that astounded me. People I never thought would get better sometimes did anyway.Although I was cognizant that some healing was the direct result of superb medical intervention and excellent nursing care, there were always... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Scott Joplin and the Quest for IdentityEarl Stewart and Jane DuranIn his innovative work I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity, Ted Gracyk does much to dismantle notions of cultural authenticity and theft as they are currently articulated by some critics. Explaining that such concepts are less monolithic than some have claimed, Gracyk writes:While popular musicians often "pick up" the music of other cultures, (...) such practices are culturally, politically, and morally complex. In discussing such issues, I hope to show that they are even more complex than is typically thought. Here, I borrow an insight from Michelle Moody-Adams, who argues that prevailing positions in social and cultural anthropology assume that cultures are internally integrated wholes and that each culture is fundamentally a set of self-contained and discrete practices and beliefs. The same assumptions infest discussions of appropriation in cultural studies, folk-lore studies, and ethnomusicology. But these assumptions are highly questionable.1Gracyk's overall point is that what has frequently been simplified as "theft" or "inauthentic" is not susceptible to such easy formulation; indeed, Gracyk contends there is scarcely such a thing as a pure musical tradition.Gracyk's sophisticated argument is one, however, that itself admits of gradations and emendations. While it is no doubt accurate that there is very little that might count as artistically or culturally pure (hence, very little that can justifiably be claimed to have been stolen), some work is much more evocative of a cultural point of view than other efforts, and some work is much more centrally located within a given culture and its traditions than other musical work. In this article we shall make the twofold argument that much of the work of Scott Joplin is located in a tradition that is manifestly African derived, and that the composition of such work had, as one of its motivators, the desire to make a cultural statement. Thus, more so than some of Gracyk's exemplars, Joplin's work is strongly culturally attached, and its attachment needs to be duly noted.IThe origins of Joplin's work speak to the concerns of the nineteenth century and of the period immediately subsequent to emancipation. Most of [End Page 94] the black leadership of the time was united in its belief that a nationalist art would serve in the reconstruction of the image of African Americans. During the latter part of the nineteenth century many of these leaders saw the spiritual as the ideal folkloric basis for a serious black artistic expression. In music this notion was given strong support as a result of a concurrent interest on the part of European composers in African American music—an interest fed by the aesthetic of romanticism, which encouraged artistic investment in the strange, unusual, primitive, and exotic.Most classically trained African American composers attempted to comply with the vision of these black leaders by constructing a more or less European-style music tinctured with African American folk elements. The result would be a set of works that to this day has failed to be adopted by the African American community at large.Scott Joplin tried a different approach. He sought to create an African American musical expression that would be predicated upon an African American vernacular style—ragtime. Joplin essentialized his music in many ways. First, by choosing ragtime as a stylistic paradigm he assured the preservation of black rhythm. Second, to promote continuity and coherence he often employed rhythmic relationships between contrasting sections. Third, he frequently employed African American folk idioms like pentatonicism and call-and-response (antiphony) as interregnal devices in the structure of his melodies. Fourth, to assure an intrastructural linkage with the African American vernacular music of his day, he frequently used phrase structures that were consistent with those employed in folk music, particularly the black spiritual, for example, aaab. In his opera, Treemonisha, he based his libretto largely on black dialect, thus linking it with black literary tradition. These are but a few of the devices Joplin employed to assure a strong cultural essentialism to his music. As a result, Joplin has been acknowledged as one of the great icons of... (shrink)

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the lands that are now the United States (the forty-eight contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii), there must have been many hundreds of distinct languages. Fewer than two hundred remain, and the future of these is decidedly insecure, even where the remoteness of the location (in the case of Inuit in Northern Alaska) or the large size of the speech community (in the case of Navajo in the Southwest) might seem to protect the (...) community from language loss. Yet even this vastly reduced reservoir of linguistic diversity constitutes one of the great treasures of humanity, an enormous storehouse of expressive power and profound understandings of the universe. The loss of the hundreds of languages that have already passed into history is an intellectual catastrophe in every way comparable in magnitude to the ecological catastrophe we face today as the earth's tropical forests are swept by fire. Each language still spoken is fundamental to the personal, social and - a key term in the discourse of indigenous peoples - spiritual identity of its speakers. They know that without these languages they would be less than they are, and they are engaged in the most urgent struggles to protect their linguistic heritage. The goal of this paper is to review the contexts and practices of this struggle, in the hope that people everywhere will support it. (shrink)

In this book Jeffrey A. Gauthier attempts to link Hegelian moral and political theory to contemporary feminist theory in a way that he hopes will prove useful to feminism. The book is divided into three parts: the first develops Gauthier’s interpretation of Hegel in relation to Kantian procedural ethics, the second applies this interpretation to feminist philosophical criticisms, and the third deals more specifically with extending de Beauvoir’s use of Hegel’s master/slave dialectic to issues of victimization and self-realization in feminist (...) debates. (shrink)

The events of 2020 have shaken the core of bioethics in a way that we hope will pave a new and equitable, though perhaps uncomfortable, path forward. We would like to thank those who responded to o...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.1 (2000) 25-48 [Access article in PDF] Postcolonialism's Archive Fever Sandhya Shetty and Elizabeth Jane Bellamy Jacques Derrida. Archive Fever. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. ________. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1976. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 271-313. (...) 1. Reading the Subaltern Archivally--or, Back to Antiquity Many readers of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" have been disturbed by Spivak's controversial answer to her own question, which is that "no scene of speaking" can arise for the subaltern woman; no discursive space can emerge from which she could formulate an "utterance." 1 One way of rephrasing Gayatri Spivak's highly resonant question might be, Can there be such a thing as a "postcolonial archive"? The purpose of our essay is to demonstrate just how crucial the concept of an "archive"--perhaps even a "postcolonial archive"--is for a more sympathetic understanding of Spivak's now notorious "silencing" of the subaltern woman. The underread and scarcely commented-on third and fourth sections of Spivak's essay raise the question, Can we approach the gendered subaltern more productively if our project is to recover not "lost voices" but rather lost texts? In the process of unpacking the textual complexities underlying Britain's 1829 abolition of sati (the widow's self-immolation on her husband's funeral pyre), Spivak pushes us further back in time when she observes intriguingly that "the archival... work involved here is indeed a task of 'measuring silences'" [286, our emphasis]. 2 We contend that her [End Page 25] choice of the term "archival" is highly motivated and can serve as the long-overdue occasion for a return to the largely unread sections of "Can the Subaltern Speak?"We can think of at least two risks involved in our undertaking. For one thing, revisitations to well-known essays can often seem more regressive than innovative. We are well aware that we may have to overcome a certain indifference on the part of readers who, feeling confident that they know it well, judge that "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (now over ten years old) has had its theoretical "moment" and should now give way to more current efforts to locate nonelite, subaltern subjectivity within a politics of resistance. A second concern is that because our project of reading the subaltern woman "archivally" must necessarily reexamine and justify Spivak's career-long engagement with Derrida and with deconstruction, we must be aware of the extent to which her deconstructive feminism has been prematurely and unfairly associated with the supposed political shortcomings of Derridean deconstruction, the regrettable result being an almost reflex aversion to her deconstructive theory within both feminism and postcolonialism. Despite these risks, however, we hope that our use of the archive as the governing principle for our return to Spivak's essay can pave the way for a more sympathetic reading of Spivak's "silent" subaltern. Our essay will argue that "Can the Subaltern Speak?" deserves a foundational or canonical status within postcolonial theory and should experience a "staying power" on the current critical scene as far-reaching and significant as Edward Said's Orientalism.Spivak's essay at one point refers quite literally to the concept of an archive, that is, the colonial "archive" of the East India Company, consisting of the "correspondence among the police stations, the lower and higher courts, the courts of directors, the prince regent's court," and so on [298]--all the documents instrumental in British law's recodification of sati from "ritual" to "crime" (also, we might add, the archive of subaltern historiography). 3 However, as Foucault's concept of the archive reminds us, the [End Page 26] archive is not just "that whole mass of texts that belong to a single discursive [in this case, legal] formation," but can also be conceptualized more abstractly as the "law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events... (shrink)

Watershed planning has typically been approached as a technical problem in which water quality and quantity as influenced by the hydrology, topography, soil composition, and land use of a watershed are the significant variables. However, it is the human uses of land and water as resources that stimulate governments to seek planning. For the past decade or more, many efforts have been made to create democratic planning processes, which, it is hoped, will be viewed as legitimate by those the plans (...) regulate. This article uses a case study of the Cache River watershed in southernmost Illinois to analyze the complicated historical and political economic context of a specific watershed planning process that occurred from 1993 through 1995. This article assesses the claims made about the democratic, grass-roots, deliberative nature of the planning process and casts doubt on the legitimacy of its outcomes. It also proposes an alternative form of governance that would be both democratic and capable of generating outcomes viewed as legitimate by most affected parties. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Pantheology of Pandemic: Sex, Race, Nature, and The VirusMary-Jane Rubenstein (bio)I. PunitheologyThe explanations started pouring in even before the virus attained “pandemic” status in March of 2020: we were being punished. According to a vocal subset of Evangelical pastors and ultra-Orthodox rabbis, the death-dealing virus was divine retribution for the sins of (who else?) LGBT-identified people and their allies, who aggressively violated what the pastors and rabbis (...) called “the order of nature.”1 Meanwhile, their left-leaning counterparts argued that the sin in question wasn’t so much sexual as ecological: in the words of one Roman Catholic commentator, the coronavirus was God’s punishment for “our unfettered domination attitude toward nature.”2At the same time, an equally vocal throng of secular environmentalists called the virus nature’s own punishment for our manifold violations against her—in particular, the extractivism, pollution, alleged overpopulation, deforestation, carbon emissions, and industrial slaughterhouses that allowed the zoonotic strain to break out among humans in the first place.3 Depending on whom [End Page 5] you ask, then, the disaster we’ve come to encapsulate as COVID-19 is either godly or natural retribution for our manifold sins against “nature.”Although these sacred and secular punitheologies are not equivalent, they bear striking similarities to one another thanks to the monotheistic heritage of the concept of “nature” itself. As we will see, whether it is invoked by pastors, politicians, activists, or scientists, “nature” in the Western-descended world is presented as singular, nonwhite, and feminine; morally normative; and prone to abuse. Nature is often capitalized, often maternalized, and reliably distinguished either from a disembodied male God, a universalized “humanity,” or both. Nature, in short, carries immense ideological freight. Specifically, it installs and polices the work of what Kelly Brown Douglas calls “theo-ideology”: a “sacred legitimation” for a social order that seeks to present itself as unquestionable.4 And “nature” does this unparalleled ideological work thanks to the freedom it keeps promising from ideology: “your” way of being might be constructed, distorted, historical, subjective, contingent, artificial, cultural, or indeed sinful, but “ours” is natural—which is to say universally, even transcendently, true.Whether it comes from the mouths of angry clerics or righteous ecologists, then, the call to get right with nature is a call to adhere to one or another self-concealing social arrangement—to a set of interests and values whose power derives from its seeming so “natural.” For this reason, many contemporary thinkers recommend abandoning the term altogether. Donna Haraway suggests we try the non-binary and carefully pluralized “naturecultures”; Bruno Latour proposes “critical zones,” and Timothy Morton pivots to ecological practice which, he insists, can only function if we let go of the romantic delusion of “nature.”5Regardless of nature’s conceptual integrity, it is important to attend to the term in order to account for its rhetorical force and ubiquity—for the polyphibious presence of “nature” within the left and right-wings of science, religion, and politics alike. In this article, I will decode some of the recent, theologically [End Page 6] retributive appeals to nature within early, informal, literary responses to the COVID-19 outbreak in the US. In the process, I hope to unearth some of the mythic norms of race and gender that this concept both entrenches and conceals in the American imagination. Finally, I will ask what happens when we start messing with these categories, beginning with the mirroring chasms between humans and nature, and nature and God. How might we start to think pantheologically about this unrelenting pandemic, and why would anybody want to?II. Sins against NatureAs Catherine Keller noticed as early as April 2020, American pundits across the political spectrum immediately attributed COVID-19 to the relentless justice of an angry God.6 It is perhaps America’s favorite theological maneuver: explaining natural and social disasters as the product of divine vengeance. From Jonathan Edwards’s spider to Fred Phelps’s funeral protests, American preachers and political commentators have got a long-standing knack for putting the fear of God into a suffering nation. (Even my home insurance policy washes its hands of... (shrink)

This paper engages in a comparative study between the vital materialism in the works of political theorist Jane Bennett (primarily, The Enchantment of Modern Life) and the ontology of flesh in the late works of the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (“The Intertwining—The Chiasm,” “Eye and Mind”). There are striking echoes in their descriptions of the aesthetic experience of enchantment. I show how both thinkers reject philosophical accounts of form as extra-material. The reconfigured matter-form relationship in each onto-story leads to a (...) phenomenology of enchantment with the world. The stakes of the latter are ethical and political for Bennett, who argues in The Enchantment of Modern Life that the mood of enchantment also applies to fetishized commodities and is necessary for more just social, political, and economic reconfigurations. Finally, I gesture towards a Merleau-Pontean intervention on this question through his analogy between works of art and commodities in “Marxism and Philosophy.” Can the ontology of flesh and its implicit theory of perception help us understand both commodity fetishism and enchantment? In reading Bennett and Merleau-Ponty alongside each other on the phenomenology of enchantment with worldly objects, my hope is to find grounds for drawing on the rich phenomenology of perception found in Merleau-Ponty’s late works as a resource for conversations around political aesthetics more broadly. (shrink)

This essay sets out from a reading of two photomontage projects by South African artist Jane Alexander, ?Adventure Centre? (2000) and ?Survey: Cape of Good Hope? (2005?09), one of Alexander's ongoing ?survey? projects, and remarks on the overwhelming impulse on the part of critics and interpreters to anthropomorphize the figures appearing in the photomontage images. It goes on to explore the hypothesis that Alexander's work in fact resists or refuses these attempts at anthropomorphization, and that this resistance is (...) connected with the more openly political aspects of her work, as well as with a more general refusal of anthropomorphism by photography. The second part of the essay frames a possible engagement with Alexander's photomontages through terms offered by Walter Benjamin's ?Little History of Photography,? and looks at Benjamin's peculiar concern with a kind of anti-portraiture: a photographic genre that would feature the human face in an anonymous way, without being concerned with identity. The essay closes with a consideration of the genre of the photographic survey historically, and traces an impulse, evident in the survey, to treat the human as only one of many figural elements composing the crypto-industrial landscape. (shrink)

The word “forgiveness” and its verbal form, “forgiving,” may appear to have one and the same meaning whenever it is used. But the first thesis of this essay is that several distinct kinds of human activity are denominated by this word, and their differences are philosophically important. The second thesis of this essay is that some of the human activities denominated by this word have a close connection with hope, more specifically with hoping-in-a-person. The third thesis of this essay (...) is that, because of this connection, some kinds of forgiving have important communal aspects that are often overlooked. The essay develops its three theses through discussions of the expression “forgive and forgot,” a theme from Charles Bosk’s study, Forgive and Remember, a scene from Jane Austen’s, Emma, and a description of forgiving by theologian and spiritual writer, Louis Every. (shrink)

my comments focus on jane addams's methode of ethical deliberation, as understood through Dr. Fischer's detailed explication, especially as offered in chapter 2, "An Evolutionary Method of Ethical Deliberation." As Fischer points out, this explication is of one iteration of Jane Addams's method, a particularized response to how Jane Addams believed the settlement residents should respond to the many labor strikes in Chicago during the 1890s. I offer my comments from the perspective of both a scholar, seeking (...) to better apply Addams's insights to my own work, and an educator, seeking to better integrate Addams's work into my teaching. My hope is to flesh out more clearly my own understanding and, in so doing... (shrink)

Since 9/11, citizens of all nations have been searching for a democratic public philosophy that provides practical and inspiring answers to the problems of the twenty-first century. Drawing on the wisdom of past and present pragmatist thinkers, Judith M. Green maps a contemporary form of citizenship that emphasizes participation and cooperation and reclaims the critical role of social movements and nongovernmental organizations. Starting with empowering processes of storytelling, truth and reconciliation, and collaborative vision-questing that allow individuals to give voice and (...) new meaning to their loss, anxiety, and hope, Green frames cooperative inquiries to guide transformative actions. From this "second strand" of the democratic experience, leaders and participating citizens can help to shape a more desirable democratic future. In dialogue with Richard Rorty, Judith Butler, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Elie Wiesel, Viktor Frankl, Cornel West, and other contemporary thinkers, Green defines the need for deeper understanding and fulfillment of the potentials of the democratic ideal. Drawing insights from Thomas Jefferson, Walt Whitman, William James, John Dewey, Jane Adams, and other earlier thinkers, Green frames a pragmatist understanding of emerging realities and possibilities, growing wells of shared truths, multifaceted histories, and mutually transformative experiences of citizenship. Employing examples from America's complex history and from recent world events, Green locates four sites for effective citizen activism: government at all levels, nonprofit organizations, issue-focused campaigns and social movements, and daily urban living. Green shows how citizens can revive social hope and deepen the democratic experience by drawing on their own knowledge and developing their capabilities through inclusive civic participation. (shrink)

This welcome volume offers a rich presentation of the ideas of Jane Addams, with emphases upon her contributions to the Pragmatic movement. It is divided into two parts. Chapters 1–4 “provide a historical and theoretical foundation for Addams’s social philosophy,” and chapters 5–9 “discuss how Addams applied her social theories to a variety of social issues” including pacifism, race and diversity, socialism, education broadly conceived, and religion. There is also an introduction, an afterword, and an extensive bibliography. It is (...) the author’s hope that his study will spur further work on the role of Addams, and other women, in the history of Pragmatism and American philosophy; and I anticipate.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetics and Humean Aesthetic Norms in the Novels of Jane AustenEva M. Dadlez (bio)IntroductionThe eighteenth century, Paul Oskar Kristeller tells us, in addition to crystallizing what we now call the fine arts, is also marked by an increased lay interest both in the arts and in criticism.1 Amateurs as well as philosophers ventured critical commentary on the arts. Talk concerning taste or beauty or the sublime was so (...) much a part of general discourse that even novelists of that era incorporated such subjects in their work. Henry Fielding "was able to construct a novel on the true and false sublime in art," according to Samuel Monk, "and to draw an analogy between the sublime in art and the sublime in character."2 So we shouldn't find it surprising that perspectives on aesthetics are sometimes presented in the novels of Jane Austen.3 This subject matter ranges from descriptions of skill in the execution and sensitivity in the appreciation of particular arts to general observations about beauty and taste and what is requisite for the apprehension of the former and the possession of the latter.Consider the following catalog of arts and beauties. Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey contain many references to the beauties of nature, both cultivated and wild. Taste in music is a topic in Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, and Lady Susan. A taste for poetry and literature is the lot of the heroines of Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility. Taste and talent for drawing is exhibited by characters in Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Northanger Abbey. Both Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park contain discussions of the merits of effective reading, that is, reading well aloud. Mansfield Park even comments on [End Page 46] acting ability, albeit rather disapprovingly. More general reflections on taste and beauty, as well as their connection to morality, are equally typical.It is possible to venture several different arguments about the philosophical perspective into which such observations best fit. Kantian analyses have already been ventured in the literature. Anne Crippen Ruderman calls our attention to the Kantian flavor of the connection Austen draws between a sensitivity to natural beauty and one's moral disposition, for instance, and David Kaufman compares Austen to Kant, though primarily in regard to ethics.4 Nonetheless, in this article I will argue that the strongest correlations and correspondences are in fact between Austen's and Hume's positions on aesthetics. Evidence in support of a Kantian analysis will first be canvassed and later compared with claims in favor of a Humean alternative.I will establish that the positions on taste and beauty and delicacy that are explicitly stated in or can be inferred from Austen's novels fit a Humean model—and fit it with a fair degree of precision. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate a correspondence strong enough to serve as the staging area for the further speculations that constitute the second thesis of this article. A great deal has already been said by philosophers about the capacity of literature to elicit moral reactions from the reader. Fictions can present ethical endorsements and invite us to adopt ethical perspectives by making it true in the world of the work that some course of action is right or some character is laudable. They can do this not by telling us that an act is right or a person meritorious but by showing us the rightness of the action and the commendability of the individual—by asking us to imagine traits that call forth our own approval and commendation. I will contend that aesthetic norms can be treated in much the same way as moral norms. That is, I will claim that the fiction of Jane Austen, in addition to evidencing the conscription of a Humean aesthetic, so engages and educates us that we are led imaginatively to adopt certain aesthetic perspectives in the course of its contemplation: not just by being told what is aesthetically pleasing or commendable, but by being made to feel pleasure and to experience commendation; not just by being told what constitutes discriminating taste, but by being led... (shrink)

It is a mixed pleasure to see F. Matthias Alexander acknowledged in the fall 2007 issue of Education and Culture ("Dewey, women, and weirdoes: Or, the potential rewards for scholars who dialog across difference," 23[2], 27-62). As a professional descendant of Alexander who has been teaching the Alexander Technique (AT) for 30 years, I am glad to see Cunningham et al. including him in the list of positive influences in John Dewey's life. However, I believe Cunningham's contribution to this article, (...) "Shared explorations of body-mind: The reciprocal influences of Dewey and F. M. Alexander," falls short in its acknowledgement of Alexander and in one important aspect is incorrect. In this response, I hope to set the .. (shrink)

The tragedy of heterosexuality is this: modern straightness dooms once-hopeful, loving couples to share dull, frustrating, and lonely lives together. After all, men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and what’s a heterosexual to do about it? Against this dismal state of affairs, Jane Ward’s The Tragedy of Heterosexuality offers a scholarly, empathetic intervention from the perspective of queer culture. Ward’s book reveals that the titular tragedy is rooted in the misogynistic ideology permeating straight culture, according to which (...) women are at once objects of desire and derision. In a culture animated by this antimony, women and men are very different creatures and, by the same token, they are bound to struggle... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article brings together Toni Morrison, Jane Jacobs, and Howard Hodgkin to consider the stress they each place on “contact,” albeit through their distinctive media of literature, urban planning, and oil paint, respectively. The article begins with Morrison's account of the stranger as not foreign or unusual but “random.” Morrison views literature as a means of bringing readers into controlled contact with others and especially with those others one might fear, avoid, or overlook. Morrison sets the stage for (...) thinking about contact in relation to the concept of randomness. Part 2 turns to Jacobs, who investigates city sidewalks as sites of interpersonal contact that affect the safety, health, solidarity, responsibility, and freedoms of those living in urban environments. Part 3 turns to Hodgkin and his obsession with the frame as an invitation to touch. The figures brought together in this article serve as touchstones for how to create, foster, or enlarge sites for contact. Together they might help us to expand the parameters of what contact might mean, how it might occur, and where it can happen. (shrink)

BetweenContent and and and Expression:AffectensitiesThe book hopes only to engender lines of flight. [P]repare to dance … responding and contributing to a rhythm that moves you-me-book with the...

Analytic philosophers have a tendency to forget that they are human beings, and one of the reasons that P. F. Strawson’s 1962 essay, “Freedom and Resentment”, has been so influential is that it promises to bring discussions of moral responsibility back down to earth. Strawson encouraged us to “keep before our minds...what it is actually like to be involved in ordinary interpersonal relationships”, which is, after all, the context in which questions about responsibility arise in the first place. In this (...) essay I explore what we can learn about ordinary interpersonal relationships from three works of literature – Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. My intention is to try to heed Strawson’s advice without imposing upon the data any particular theoretical agenda, and my hope is that the data collected will prove useful for future theorizing about responsibility. (shrink)

Saskia Sassen today and Jane Adams more than 100 years ago are both social scientists and public philosophers of reconstruction. Both offer defining contributions to a philosophical tradition that will be identified here as “radical pragmatism”. Sassen’s theoretical stance “before method” serves as a key to understand Addams’s locally embedded urban activist projects as a form of social scientific inquiry. Sassen introduces the concept of “territory making” as a spark of hope against rampant and destructive global trends of (...) “expulsions”, which her approach reveals. In this article this concept of “territory making” will be explored in various contexts and with particular attention to Addams’s Hull house project. It will be shown how a pragmatist brand of human imagination is critical in “territory making”. This leads to reconsidering the role of art in social transformation projects. (shrink)

The role of culture in shaping folk psychology and mindreading has been neglected in the philosophical literature. This paper shows that there are significant cultural differences in how psychological states are understood and used by drawing on Spaulding’s recent distinction between the ‘goals’ and ‘methods’ of mindreading to argue that the relations between these methods vary across cultures; and arguing that differences in folk psychology cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the cognitive architecture that facilitates our understanding of psychological states. (...) The paper concludes that any good account of social cognition must have the conceptual resources to explain how culture affects our understanding of psychological states, and that this explanandum should not be an after-thought but instead a guiding feature for those accounts. (shrink)

The pervasive use of contracts in healthcare is a source of unease for many healthcare ethicists and patient advocates. This commentary examines the use of such contracts with individuals in rehabilitation settings who have complex medical and behavioural issues. The goals of this paper are to examine the many factors that can lead to contract use, to discuss some legal and ethical implications of contract use, and to assess contract use in light of concerns about health equity. The paper concludes (...) with some practical alternatives to the use of such contracts, and refers specifically to tools that might be borrowed from the field of behavioural therapy. (shrink)