The goals of vascular composite allotransplantation for hand are to maximize functional status and psychosocial wellbeing and to improve quality of life. Candidates are carefully vetted by transplant programs through an extensive evaluation process to exclude those patients with contraindications and to select those that are most likely to attain functional or quality of life benefit from transplant. Patient choice for any treatment, however, requires that candidates be able to understand the risks, benefits, and alternatives before choosing to proceed. This (...) study aimed to understand patients’ knowledge and perceptions about treatment options for hand loss, including hand transplant. This study will be used to inform a standardized education approach and develop conversation aids for use by clinicians and patients throughout the treatment decision process. Ten individuals who had experienced hand amputation or had congenital limb loss were interviewed to better understand previous and current decisions about treatment, experiences in adjusting to their treatment, and perceptions about hand VCA. From this qualitative interview data, four findings emerged: knowledge and education around VCA as a treatment option; adaptation of individuals with limb loss; fear of risk associated with transplantation; issues of aging and overuse injuries to existing limbs. Results suggests that there is opportunity for expanding education about all treatment options for patients with new loss, long-term loss, and congenital limb loss. Establishing a baseline of knowledge about all options–prosthetics, rehabilitative strategies, and VCA—can help patients evaluate their values and goals of treatment. Issues associated with aging, including overuse and injury, and adaptability over the life course should be included in considerations about treatment choices. Data indicate the need for routinely assessing patient preferences about treatment choice so patients can plan for their future as they adapt and age and as technology for treatments change. To assure that thorough information is provided for current and future decision-making, education about treatment choices and selection procedures for VCA should be standardized. (shrink)

Innovations in information technologies have facilitated the development of new styles of research networks and forms of governance. This is evident in genomics where increasingly, research is carried out by large, interdisciplinary consortia focussing on a specific research endeavour. The UK10K project is an example of a human genomics consortium funded to provide insights into the genomics of rare conditions, and establish a community resource from generated sequence data. To achieve its objectives according to the agreed timetable, the UK10K project (...) established an internal governance system to expedite the research and to deal with the complex issues that arose. The project’s governance structure exemplifies a new form of network governance called ‘pop-up’ governance. ‘Pop-up’ because: it was put together quickly, existed for a specific period, was designed for a specific purpose, and was dismantled easily on project completion. In this paper, we use UK10K to describe how ‘pop-up’ governance works on the ground and how relational, hierarchical and contractual governance mechanisms are used in this new form of network governance. (shrink)

What would you do if your neighbors kept their dog permanently caged, never letting her out to exercise or relieve herself, in a crate so narrow that she could not turn around or lie down with her legs outstretched? You'd probably call the police and have them charged with animal cruelty. In California, that is how the vast majority of breeding sows and veal calves are treated -- and it's legal.

A ranch owner in San Diego County disposes of 30,000 nonproductive egg-laying hens by feeding them into a wood chipper. Live hens are dumped into the shredder, some likely to hit feet first, some breast first. Sound like a scene from a horror movie? It's a true story. One would surely expect the ranchers to be prosecuted, but California humane slaughter laws do not cover unproductive egg-laying hens.

For the past month, the nightly television news has been showing us animals being slaughtered. Governments in 10 Asian countries have killed more than 25 million ducks and chickens to stem the spread of avian flu. China has drowned thousands of civet cats suspected of spreading Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the often-lethal disease usually abbreviated to SARS. Here in the United States, more than 700 dairy cows, so far, have been killed in order to contain any possible spread of mad (...) cow disease. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:My StoryDawn Ruggeroli–CollinsMy story starts on October 17, 1981. I was 17–years–old and was riding home from a night with friends at the Roundup Rodeo in Simonton, Texas. The girl who was driving was a friend of a friend, so unfortunately I did [End Page E5] not know her well enough to realize that she was drunk. I have very little recollection of the accident, nor of the few (...) days that followed. However, I do recall being very aware that I was paralyzed.For some reason, I had for the previous few years been reading books by women who had spinal cord injuries as a result of some type of accident. I read Joni Eareckson’s book “Joni” and “The Other Side of the Mountain” about Jill Kinmont, and saw the movies about both women. Additionally, my mother bought me “Karen,” and “With Love, from Karen” the story of Karen Killalea, who has cerebral palsy. It seemed to me that reading these books prepared me for dealing with my disability in a positive way rather than “woe is me.”I’m actually one of the luckiest people you’ll ever know! While I have a C–4/C–5 SCI, it is pretty incomplete and as a result I’m pretty mobile. I wear an ankle–foot orthotic (AFO) on my right foot and use a cane. I do have Brown–Séquard syndrome, with better sensation on my right side and better function on the left. So, I was right–handed the first 17 years of my life and I’m now a leftie.A couple of days after my accident, while I was still in the intensive care unit (ICU), one of the nurses felt that it was important for me to realize that I would probably be paralyzed for the rest of my life; never to walk again. So she took it upon herself to deliver this message personally. Well, I wasn’t having any of that! I yelled and screamed and threw the biggest tantrum that one can throw while one’s head is clamped down by Gardner–Wells tongs. Given how well I have recovered, I have often thought how it would be to find Judy, walk up to her, and ask if she remembers me.My dad has often told me that he thinks I went through the grieving process pretty quickly after my accident. It wasn’t always easy, and I did have my down moments, but for the most part I think he’s right. I’ve always been a positive person and that helped get me through this and many other trying times in my life. I think at the time I also had a fear that no one would want to be around me if I was stuck in a wheelchair and was a Debbie Downer. I was only 17 after all.When I went away to college I was still mainly using a wheelchair. When I told a friend that I didn’t want to be in a dorm with all of the disabled students, she laughed and asked me why I didn’t want to be with “my people.” Aside from playing some wheelchair basketball, I had never really hung out with other people with disabilities. I was briefly involved with a disabled support type of group but many of them had really negative attitudes. I didn’t stick around for very long after I learned that one of the guys said to one of the women that she would be really attractive if it weren’t for “that wheelchair.” This coming someone in a wheelchair himself!During my second year at Michigan State I had my first realization that people don’t just see me as someone with a disability. A friend was talking with an acquaintance from the other side of our dorm and she mentioned me. The acquaintance said “oh, Dawn in the wheelchair?” and her response was “yeah, I guess she is in a wheelchair.” When she relayed this conversation to me later I was really moved that she didn’t see me as someone in a wheelchair first... (shrink)

The diminution of emphasis on the arts and the humanities and the corresponding increased emphasis on business and STEM disciplines has resulted in a normative conception of national progress that excludes aesthetic education. Scholars in the arts and the humanities have responded to this marginalization either by calling for more esotericism or by underscoring the importance of aesthetic education to the future of democracy and humanity. These arguments have failed to capture the public’s attention. In this essay, I argue that (...) there is a third way: aesthetic educators should challenge the normative understanding of national progress. To this end, I return to the dawn of the split between scientific inquiry and humanist understanding to highlight French Enlightenment debates around the understanding of progress. Specifically, I call attention to the writings of the French philosopher Germaine de Staël because in the adaptation of her notion of progress lies possible hope for the future of the humanities and the arts. (shrink)

argue that natural selection does not explain the genotypic arid phenotypic properties of individuals. On this view, natural selection explains the adaptedness of individuals, not by explaining why the individuals that exist have the adaptations they do, but rather by explaining why the individuals that exist are the ones with those adaptations. This paper argues that this ‘Negative’ view of natural selection ignores the fact that natural selection is a cumulative selection process. So understood, it explains how the genetic sequences (...) that individuals inherit and that are responsible for their complex (and co-adapted) adaptations first arose in the gene-pool. (shrink)

Controversies surrounding social media platforms have provided opportunities for institutional reflexivity amongst users and regulators on how to understand and govern platforms. Amidst contestation, platform companies have continued to enact projects that draw upon existing modes of privatized governance. We investigate how social media companies have attempted to achieve closure by continuing to set the terms around platform governance. We investigate two projects implemented by Facebook (Meta)—authenticity regulation and privacy controls—in response to the Russian Interference and Cambridge Analytica controversies surrounding (...) the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Drawing on Goffman’s metaphor of stage management, we analyze the techniques deployed by Facebook to reinforce a division between what is visible and invisible to the user experience. These platform governance projects propose to act upon _front-stage data relations:_ information that users can see from other users—whether that is content that users can see from “bad actors”, or information that other users can see about oneself. At the same time, these projects relegate _back-stage data relations_—information flows between users constituted by recommendation and targeted advertising systems—to invisibility and inaction. As such, Facebook renders the user experience actionable for governance, while foreclosing governance of back-stage data relations central to the economic value of the platform. As social media companies continue to perform platform governance projects following controversies, our paper invites reflection on the politics of these projects. By destabilizing the boundaries drawn by platform companies, we open space for continuous reflexivity on how platforms should be understood and governed. (shrink)

Even though researchers regularly use neutral affect induction procedures as a control condition in their work, there is little consensus on what is neutral affect. This article reviews five approaches that researchers have used to operationalize neutral AIPs: to produce a minimal affective state, in-the-middle state, deactivated state, typical state, or indifferent state. For each view, the article delineates the theoretical basis for the neutral AIP, how to assess it, and provides recommendations for when and how to use it. The (...) goal of the article is to encourage researchers to state their theoretical assumptions about neutral affect, to validate those assumptions, and to make appropriate conclusions based on them. (shrink)

Both definite descriptions and pronouns are often anaphoric; that is, part of their interpretation in context depends on prior linguistic material in the discourse. For example: A student walked in. The student sat down. A student walked in. She sat down. One popular view of anaphoric pronouns, the d-type view, is that pronouns like ‘she’ go proxy for definite descriptions like ‘the student who walked in’, which are in turn treated in a classical Russellian or Fregean fashion. I argue for (...) a novel version of the d-type view in which anaphoric definites are restricted existential quantifiers that presuppose discourse uniqueness, which is uniqueness of discourse referent in the context, rather than uniqueness of object in the world. In other words, the anaphoric definites ‘the student’ and ‘she’ in and presuppose that there is a single object under discussion that is a student who walked in. I further argue that, by contrast, non-anaphoric definites are restricted existential quantifiers that presuppose worldly uniqueness, that is, that there is a unique object in the world that satisfies the descriptive information. The semantics for anaphoric and non-anaphoric definites accounts for the differences in truth conditions in discourses involving the two different types of definites, improving on existing accounts. It is further supported by crosslinguistic data. The semantics is formally implemented in a static system employing quantifier domain restriction in the style of Stanley and Szabo :219–261, 2000) and extended to account for bridging definites and donkey sentences. (shrink)

In the multi-faceted trajectory of post-Kantian thought, Schelling—both the person and his philosophy—has always been a controversial figure. Popular historical accounts focus on his precocious interventions as part of the ‘Jena set’, initially building on Fichte's philosophy of the ‘I’, but quickly coming to challenge his predecessor's philosophical dominance. In the crucial period of the late 1790s, Schelling's most notable intervention was to develop a philosophy of nature alongside the Kantian and Fichtean theories of transcendental subjectivity, which caught the attention (...) of Goethe and led to his appointment, at the age of twenty-three, as professor of philosophy at the University of Jena. But Schelling's life and philosophical work continued well beyond this well-documented period, culminating in a late system in which he developed key ideas surrounding freedom, existence, modality and the history of human consciousness that all revolved around a distinction between what he called negative and positive philosophy. This distinction, and his insistence on the need for the development of the latter mode of philosophy, came to challenge some of the core assumptions of the largely rationalist German idealist project and it remains, to this day, perhaps the most powerful alternative to the Hegelian system that rose to dominance already within Schelling's own lifetime, but also well beyond it. (shrink)

Some photographs show determinate features of a scene because the photographed scene had those features. This dependency relation is, rightly, a consensus in philosophy of photography. I seek to refute many long-established theories of photography by arguing that they are incompatible with this commitment. In Section II, I classify accounts of photography as either single-stage or multi-stage. In Section III, I analyze the historical basis for single-stage accounts. In Section IV, I explain why the single-stage view led scientists to postulate (...) “latent” photographic images as a technical phenomenon in early chemical photography. In Section V, I discredit the notion of an invisible latent image in chemical photography and, in Section VI, extend this objection to the legacy of the latent image in digital photography. In Section VII, I appeal to the dependency relation to explain why the notion of a latent image makes the single-stage account untenable. Finally, I use the multi-stage account to advance debate about “new” versus “orthodox” theories of photography. (shrink)

Photography is valued as a medium for recording and visually reproducing features of the world. I seek to challenge the view that photography is fundamentally a recording process and that every photograph is a record—a view that I claim is based on a ‘single-stage’ misconception of the process. I propose an alternative, ‘multi-stage’ account in which I argue that causal registration of light is not equivalent to recording and reproducing an image. Intervention or non-intervention by photographers is more sophisticated than (...) the traditional view allows. Using the multi-stage account, I describe four models for producing photographic images and pictures. (shrink)

This article discusses the development and application of various types of corporate social monitoring systems. Boycotts are a relatively simple form of social monitoring system which aim to produce changes in corporate social behavior. Boycotts may be organized by a single group, or by a number of groups simultaneously. Rating systems may be organized around a single issue, such as the Sullivan Principles rating scheme, or may include multiple companies and multiple issues, such as shopping guides or ethical investment systems.Monitoring (...) systems may be unidimensional or multidimensional, qualitative or quantitative, and absolute or relative. Consumers and investors appear to be the groups most likely to be targeted in these schemes. The importance of these monitoring systems appears to be increasing as both consumers and investors become more interested in using social criteria in decision-making. (shrink)

Humans are living in damaged landscapes within a new geographical epoch known as the Anthropocene. The COVID-19 outbreak fuels uncertainty, instability, and ambiguity for humans. This viral disaster has been blamed for losing and further exacerbating ecological imbalance, and prompts a need to re-examine multispecies relations and, in particular, human exceptionalism. The authors, by applying a new theoretical assemblage that brings the new materialist turn entangled with Buddhist philosophies into our stories and diffractions of child-virus bodies, have been prompted to (...) raise two questions about how multispecies justice could disrupt environmental sustainability education. The questions we will engage with in the paper include: Can we explore these new theoretical assemblages (east-west) with child-virus relations as a means for raising multispecies justice that critiques the universalisation of human forces in the Anthropocene? What possibilities does the pandemic offer to rethink multispecies relations as an entangled ecological crisis by exploring what a ‘new normal’ in post-COVID-19 sustainability education could emerge? (shrink)

I. Logic, rationality and ideology Herbert Marcuse once claimed that the ‘“rational” is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.’ He echoed a widespread folk belief that a world in which people were rational would be a better world. This could be taken as an optimistic empirical conjecture: if people were more rational then probably the world would be a better place (a trust that ‘virtue will be rewarded’, so to speak). (...) However, it is also worth considering a stronger hypothesis: that if something did not reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression then it would not constitute rationality. On this view there is no mere correlation between rationality and a propensity toward reduction in ignorance and the rest, it is the propensity to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality and oppression which in part constitutes rationality. Call this a broad conception of rationality, because it expands beyond the epistemic goal of reducing ignorance, and reaches out to moral concerns like oppression. (shrink)

This study investigated the effect of gender stereotypes on evaluator judgments of unethical behavior. Subjects were working adults who completed a mailed survey in which they evaluated unethical behavior depicted in written scenarios. Sex of the transgressor in the scenarios was manipulated. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses indicated that there are no stable differences in evaluations of men and women across scenarios. These results suggest that evaluators do not hold different standards of ethical behavior for men and women, they do (...) not make different causal attributions for the behavior of men and women, nor do evaluators treat men and women differently when an ethical transgression has been committed. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This paper aims to understand Hegel’s claim in the introduction to hisPhilosophy of Mindthat mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel’s naturalism. I suggest that Hegel’s approach to naturalism should be understood as ‘formal’, and argue that Hegel’sLogic, particularly the section on the ‘Idea’, provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an interpretation of Hegel’s (...) method in which life plays a central role. In the second part of the paper, I develop Hegel’s method by providing a reading of Hegel’s Subjective Spirit, focusing on the sections ‘Anthropology’ and ‘Phenomenology’ in particular, arguing that they display the dialectic between life and cognition outlined by Hegel’s Idea. (shrink)

Self-portrait photography presents an elucidatory range of cases for investigating the relationship between automatism and artistic agency in photography— a relationship that is seen as a problem in the philosophy of art. I discuss self-portraits by photographers who examine and portray their own identities as artists working in the medium of photography. I argue that the automatism inherent in the production of a photograph has made it possible for artists to extend the tradition of self-portraiture in a way that is (...) radically different from previous visual arts. In Section I, I explain why self-portraiture offers a way to address the apparent conflict between automatism and agency that is debated in the philosophy of art. In Section II, I explain why mirrors play an important function in the production of a traditional self-portrait. In Sections III and IV, I discuss how photographers may create self-portraits with and without the use of mirrors to show how photography offers unique and important new forms of self-portraiture. (shrink)

The translation of both ‘bedeuten’ and ‘Bedeutung’ in Frege's works remains sufficiently problematic that some contemporary authors prefer to leave these words untranslated. Here a case is made for returning to Russell's initial choice of ‘to indicate’ and ‘indication’ as better alternatives than the more usual ‘meaning’, ‘reference’, or ‘denotation’. It is argued that this choice has the philosophical payoff that Frege's controversial doctrines concerning the semantic values of sentences and predicative expressions are rendered far more comprehensible by it, and (...) that this translational strategy fulfills the desiderata of offering a translation which is acceptable both before and after Frege introduced the distinction between sense and reference or, as this paper would have it, between the sense of an expression and what it indicates. (shrink)

Children’s literature was first published in the eighteenth century at a time when the philosophical ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on education and childhood were being discussed. Ironically, however, the first generation of children’s literature (by Maria Edgeworth et al) was incongruous with Rousseau’s ideas since the works were didactic, constraining and demanded passive acceptance from their readers. This instigated a deficit or reductionist model to represent childhood and children’s literature as simple and uncomplicated and led to children’s literature being overlooked (...) and its contribution to philosophical discussions being undermined. Although Rousseau advocates freeing the child to develop, he does not feel that reading fiction promotes child development, which is a weakness in an otherwise strong argument for educational reform. Yet, rather ironically, the second generation of children’s writers, from Lewis Carroll onwards, more truly embraced Rousseau’s broader philosophical ideas on education and childhood than their predecessors, encouraging and freeing readers to imagine, reflect and actively engage in ontological enquiry. The emphasis had changed with the child being embraced in education and society as active participant rather than passive or disengaged recipient. Works deemed to be seminal to the canon of children’s literature such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan and The Chronicles of Narnia challenge readers to work through conflicts many of which can be identified retrospectively as exhibiting postmodern characteristics. By exploring moral and spiritual dilemmas in their writing, Carroll, Barrie and Lewis’s works can be regarded as contributing to discussions on theodical postmodernism. The successes of The Lord of the Rings and Narnia films suggest that there is an interest in exploring moral dilemmas, fulfilling a need (perhaps for tolerance and understanding) in society at large. Children’s literature has an almost divine power to restore, to repair and to heal, all characteristics of theodical postmodernism but differing from the more widely held conception of postmodernism which pulls apart, exacerbates and exposes. Children’s literature therefore offers a healthy and constructive approach to working through moral dilemmas. In their deconstruction of childhood, these authors have brought children’s literature closer to aspects of enquiry traditionally found in the domain of adult mainstream literature. As the boundaries between childhood and adulthood become more fluid, less certain, debate is centring around whether the canon of children’s literature itself has become redundant or meaningless since there are no longer any restrictions on which subjects can be treated in children’s literature. Despite the fact that children’s literature clearly engages with difficult issues, it continues to be left out of the critical equation, not given serious attention, disregarded as simplistic and ignored in contemporary philosophical discussions concerning morality, postmodernism and the future of childhood. With children’s literature coming closer to mainstream literature, and exhibiting prominent features of postmodernism, however, it is only a matter of time before philosophical discussions actively engage with children’s literature and recognise its contribution to the resolution and reconciliation of ontological dilemmas. When this occurs, philosophy and children’s literature will re-engage, enriching contemporary investigations of existence, ethics and knowledge and fruitfully developing thought in these areas. This paper aims to contribute to this process. (shrink)

The author explores how the discursive practices of social texts relate to the subjectivities of readers. Employing Dorothy Smith's notion of femininity as textually mediated discourse, the author analyzes how teenage girls read the depictions of femininity in the glossy advertisements of fashion magazines. Through interviews with 48 girls aged 13 to 17 years, she explores both why and how young girls negotiate “what it means to be a woman.” Most young girls in her study draw on stereotypical meanings of (...) adult femininity. By giving these stereotypes truth status, these readers valorize not only patriarchal meanings of womanhood but also naturalize associations between femininity and the commodities through which this femininity is expressed as the everyday doing of gender. The author concludes by discussing implications of this study for both a feminist theory and a feminist politics of culture. (shrink)

Can epistemologies anchor processes of social inequality? In this paper, we consider how epistemological dominance in science, engineering, and health fields perpetuates disadvantages for students who enter higher education with alternative epistemologies. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Native American students enrolled at two US research universities who adhere to or revere indigenous epistemologies, we find that epistemological dominance in SE&H degree programs disadvantages students through three processes. First, it delegitimizes Native epistemologies and marginalizes and silences students who value them. Second, (...) in the process of imparting these dominant scientific epistemologies, SE&H courses sometimes require students to participate in pedagogical practices that challenge indigenous ways of knowing. Third, students encounter epistemological imperialism: most students in the sample are working to earn SE&H degrees in order to return to tribal communities to “give back,” yet, because the US laws regulating the practice of SE&H extend onto tribal lands, students must earn credentials in epistemologies that devalue, delegitimate, and threaten indigenous knowledge ways to practice on tribal lands. We examine how students navigate these experiences, discuss the implications of these findings for SE&H education, and describe how epistemological dominance may serve as a mechanism of inequality reproduction more broadly. (shrink)

The welfare mother is a powerful symbol of the supposed irresponsible, sexually promiscuous, and immoral behavior of the poor. Resting on dominant ideologies of race, class, and gender, the welfare mother suggests not a poor mother but a bad mother. Based on interviews with 34 mothers receiving public assistance, this article explores how women receiving assistance claim for themselves an identity as good mothers by defining the appropriate responsibilities of mothers to prioritize, protect, discipline, provide for, and spend time with (...) their children. The material realities of poverty combined with work requirements now attached to public assistance exacerbate contradictions between these roles and create difficulties for these mothers. This article explores these contradictions and examines the possibilities for and limits of their use as resistance strategies. (shrink)

Based on interviews with a random sample of white women who are in a second marriage, this article examines changes in women's marital power across marriage, divorce, and remarriage. In some marriages, women's market work is not considered a resource and hence does not have a positive effect on marital power, particularly when husbands are employed in low-status occupations. Conversely, women who are domestically oriented do not necessarily suffer a loss of power. Hochschild's concept of “economy of gratitude” illuminates the (...) way that marital power is affected by the meanings couples assign to women's paid and unpaid labor. Furthermore, women's previous market work and marital and divorce experiences affect the meaning of their paid and unpaid labor upon remarriage, as well as their desire for each. (shrink)

Social scientists have provided rich descriptions of the ascendant cultural ideologies surrounding motherhood and paid work. In this article, I use in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of 40 employed mothers to explore how they navigate the “intensive mother” and “ideal worker” ideologies and construct their own accounts of good mothering. Married mothers in this sample construct scripts of “extensive mothering,” in which they delegate substantial amounts of the day-to-day child care to others, and reframe good mothering as being “in (...) charge” of and ultimately responsible for their children’s well-being. Single mothers describe extensive mothering in different ways, and their narratives suggest less accountability to the “intensive mothering” model. Mothers in this sample also justify employment in novel ways: They emphasize the benefits of employment for themselves—not only their children—and they reject the long work hours imposed by an ideal worker model. The article ends with the implications of extensive mothering for the motherhood and employment literatures and for gender equality. (shrink)

This paper aims to address some methodological issues related to case-based research in the philosophy of contemporary sciences. We focus on the selection processes by which philosophers pick or generate a particular set of papers to conduct their case-based research. We illustrate how to use various quantitative and qualitative methods to improve the epistemic features of the selection processes, and help generate some potential case-based hypotheses for further philosophical investigation.

Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 86-89.

While agreeing with Bergès on the importance for philosophy of reading the works of women such as Roland, Gouges, and Grouchy, her account of them as committed to the concept of liberty as non-domination, articulated by Philip Pettit, is questioned. It is argued that their views are more accurately described as involving a commitment to the tradition of positive liberty, that was criticised by Berlin in his famous essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. The republican writings of Catharine Macaulay are shown (...) to be part of the context in which these women wrote, and similarities between her philosophical outlook, which involves a clear commitment to positive liberty, and the positions developed by the French authors are explored. It is argued that, in general, it is methodologically problematic to uncritically apply concepts that were developed by intellectual historians who failed to include works written by women in their histories, in order to understand the philosophical commitments of neglected works by such women. (shrink)

Traces women's defence of their moral and spiritual equality with men, from the works of Christine de Pizan, through Marguerite of Navarre, Madeleine de Scudéry, Arcangela Tarabotti, to Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft, arguing that although she appears not to have been aware of these precursors, the arguments they developed paved the way for her feminism.

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.—Benito Mussolini. The whole [school] system should be blown up … I feel like a prophet toda...