The term "interest" lacks a precise antonym. In English, we have "disinterested" and "uninteresting," but we want for a term that denotes robust opposition to interest. The same appears to hold true in every other language (as far as we know). Interest's missing antonym reflects not merely a widespread lexical oversight, but a misrecognition of interest's complete and exact meaning. More importantly, the idea that interest has no opposite expresses a certain refusal to acknowledge the power of the impulse to (...) extinguish interest, for the self and for others. Why then do we foreclose interest's possibility, degrade our (and others') capacities to experience interest, and destroy interest's objects? Why do we decline what interest proffers - which includes creative and subjective being, thinking, and relating - in favor of more primitive modes of survival, thoughtlessness, and nonbeing? Why do relationships - with ourselves, with others, with objects - toward which genuine interest draws us seem sometimes, if not often, unbearable? These questions are difficult. Their answers, even more so. Misinterest: Essays, Pensées, and Dreams attempts to approach them in an honest way, without making them fascinating, mysterious, boring, obscurantist, or fascinatingly mysteriously boringly obscurantist. Outwardly, Misinterest is concerned with dreams and forgetting and Eros and soaring dogs and groups and suicidal suburban teenagers and sex and jury duty and Nazis and fathers and hatred and holy parrots and fundamentalists and plagues and other things that may or may not be interesting. Ultimately, however, it seeks, like Jules Renard, "en restant exact" (in remaining true/real), to shed light on the establishment of misinterest, missingness, and mystery where and when they need not be, and, thus, on the psychic, familial, and political forces that compel us not to be when and where we ought. (shrink)

A unifying theory of general anesthetic-induced unconsciousness must explain the common mechanism through which various anesthetic agents produce unconsciousness. Functional-brain-imaging data obtained from 11 volunteers during general anesthesia showed specific suppression of regional thalamic and midbrain reticular formation activity across two different commonly used volatile agents. These findings are discussed in relation to findings from sleep neurophysiology and the implications of this work for consciousness research. It is hypothesized that the essential common neurophysiologic mechanism underlying anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is, as with (...) sleep-induced unconsciousness, a hyperpolarization block of thalamocortical neurons. A model of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is introduced to explain how the plethora of effects anesthetics have on cellular functioning ultimately all converge on a single neuroanatomic/neurophysiologic system, thus providing for a unitary physiologic theory of narcosis related to consciousness. (shrink)

Authority in Morals: An Essay in Christian Ethics. By Gerard J. Hughes On Human Nature. By Edward O. Wilson Democracy and Ethical Life. By Claes G. Ryn The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. By Quentin Skinner. 2 vols. Phenomenology and the Social World: the Philosophy of Merleau‐Ponty and its Relation to the Social Conscience. By Laurie Spurting Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies. By Ted Benton Christianity and the World Order. By Edward Norman. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979, £3.50. The (...) Stoics. Edited by John M. Rist Descartes. By Margaret D. Wilson Physicalism. By K.V. Wilkes Kierkegaard as Educator. By R.J. Manheimer Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. By Søren Kierkegaard, translated and edited by Howard and Edna Hong Parables of Kierkegaard. Edited by Thomas C. Oden Thomas Carlyle: ‘Cahinist without the Theology’. By Eloise M. Behnken The Praise of 'Sons of Bitches’. By James V. Schall The Inner Eye of Love. By William Johnston The River Within. By Christopher Bryant The Religious Imagination and the Sense of God. By John Bowker Old Testament Theology: A Fresh Approach. By Ronald E. Clements What is a Gospel? By Charles H. Talbert Urchristliche Prophetic. By Gerhard Dautzenberg Amphttochii Icontensis Opera. Edited by Cornells Datema Man and Nature in the Renaissance. By Allen G. Debus The Church in Late Victorian Scotland 1874–1900. By Andrew L. Drummond and James Bullock. Ppix, 342, Edinburgh, The St Andrew Press, 1978, £10.50. From Office to Profession: The New England Ministry 1750–1860. By Donald M. Scott Bemard‐Lazare: Anti‐Semitism and the Problem of Jewish Identity in Late Nineteenth Century France. By Nelly Wilson. (shrink)

Background The consistency of codes governing disclosure of terminal illness to patients and families in Islamic countries has not been studied until now. Objectives To review available codes on disclosure of terminal illness in Islamic countries. Data source and extraction Data were extracted through searches on Google and PubMed. Codes related to disclosure of terminal illness to patients or families were abstracted, and then classified independently by the three authors. Data synthesis Codes for 14 Islamic countries were located. Five codes (...) were silent regarding informing the patient, seven allowed concealment, one mandated disclosure and one prohibited disclosure. Five codes were silent regarding informing the family, four allowed disclosure and five mandated/recommended disclosure. The Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences code was silent on both issues. Conclusion Codes regarding disclosure of terminal illness to patients and families differed markedly among Islamic countries. They were silent in one-third of the codes, and tended to favour a paternalistic/utilitarian, family-centred approach over an autonomous, patient-centred approach. (shrink)

Peckham claims that my "behavior" in dealing with the quotations in Natural Supernaturalism is the same, in methodology and validity, as the interpretative behavior of Booth's waiter. But the great bulk of the utterances in my quotations—and no less, of the utterances constituting Peckham's own essay—do not consist of orders, requests, or commands. Instead, they consist of assertions, descriptions, judgments, exclamations, approbations, condemnations, and many other kinds of speech-acts, the meanings of which are not related to my interpretative behavior, even (...) in the indirect way in which the meaning of Booth's order is related to the future behavior of his waiter. M. H. Abrams, author of Natural Supernaturalism and The Mirror and the Lamp and Class of 1916 Professor of English at Cornell University, responds in this essay to Morse Peckham's "The Infinitude of Pluralism" . Morse Peckham, in his Critical Response, was commenting on issues raised by the forum on "The Limits of Pluralism" , to which M. H. Abrams contributed. Previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Rationality and Imagination in Cultural History: A Reply to Wayne Booth" and "The Deconstructive Angel". (shrink)

If we reject τις, which appears only in derivative manuscripts, then the sentence is notable in the following ways. First, the position of τι—not that it separates ἕκαστος from ὑμν, but because we expect it, if present at all, to appear as πρός ὃ τι … and ἓαστός τι in itself is a conspicuously discordant juxtaposition—hence presumably the corruption to ἓαστός τις. Second, the sense: the sentence must surely mean not that each juryman has a criterion, but that each has (...) a different criterion, that he would like to see satisfied. (shrink)