Over the course of three decades, in works spanning questions of theory, technique, and clinical practice, Charles Brenner has emerged as one of the preeminent analysts of his generation, a thinker whose probing estimation of mental conflict has promoted the evolutionary growth of analysis as theory even as it has clarified the clinical import of analysis as therapy. In _Psychoanalysis: The Science of Mental Conflict_, distinguished theorists and clinicians pay homage to Brenner by presenting original essays that converge in their (...) estimation of analysis as "the science of mental conflict." In sections that encompass "The Theory of Psychoanalysis," "The Concepts of Psychoanalysis," "The Technique of Psychoanalysis," "The Clinical Practice of Psychoanalysis," "The Teaching of Psychoanalysis," and "The Application of Psychanalysis," the contributors show how the perspective of conflict - broadened and refined by the clinical findings of recent decades - offers a vehicle for creative theory-building and, as such, a conceptual handle for apprising the indications for, and action of, psychoanalytic therapy. Arnold Richards' comprehensive overview of Brenner's ranging contributions to theory and practice, along with Martin Willick's critical introductions to the various sections of the book, round out a collections whose scope is complimented by its unusual coherence and thematic unity. Taken together, the essays comprising this book present readers with a cogent summary of current psychoanalytic thinking, along with an exciting preview of where it is heading in the future. As such, this volume will be welcomed not only by analysts, but by all mental health professionals who draw on, and learn from, the psychoanalytic assessment of conflict in mental life. It is a work that follows Brenner's own example in promoting the critical understanding of a generation of theorists, clinicians, and educators. (shrink)

Recognizing the growing interdependence of the European Union and the importance of codes of conduct in companies’ operations, this research examines the effect of a country’s culture on the implementation of a code of conduct in a European context. We examine whether the perceptions of an activity’s ethicality relates to elements found in company codes of conduct vary by country or according to Hofstede’s (1980, Culture’s Consequences (Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA)) cultural constructs of: Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity/Femininity, Individualism, and Power (...) Distance. The 294 individuals, who participated in our study, were from 8 Western European countries. Their responses to our 13 scenarios indicate that differences in the perceptions of ethicality associate primarily with the participants’ country as opposed to their employer (i.e., accounting firm), employment level, or gender. The evidence also indicates that these country differences associate with Hofstede constructs of Individualism and Masculinity. (shrink)

This celebratory Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprises some 23 articles by friends, former students and colleagues, many of whom first presented their papers at the international "Presocratics and Plato" Symposium in his honor. The conference was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies, Parmenides Publishing, and Starcom AG, with endorsements from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. While Kahn's work reaches far beyond the Presocratics and (...) Plato, it is in these subject areas that the distinction of his scholarship has come to be regarded as virtually unrivaled. The articles contributed to this volume are by some of the most renowned scholars working on these topics today, their breadth and depth bearing witness to his profound impact and influence on the discipline of Ancient Greek Philosophy._ Charles Kahn taught Classics and Philosophy at Columbia University from 1957 to 1965, and has since been teaching in the Philosophy Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He spent a year as Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and had additional Visiting Fellowships at Balliol College, Oxford and Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a term as Visiting Professor at Harvard. He is the recipient of several prestigious research grants, from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of _Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, The Verb “Be” in Ancient Greek, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and Essays on Being_. His latest book,_Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue_, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. _ Contributors: Julia Annas Sarah Broadie Lesley Brown Tomás Calvo-Martínez Diskin Clay John M. Dillon Dorothea Frede Arnold Hermann Carl A. Huffman Enrique Hülsz Piccone D. M. Hutchinson Paul Kalligas Vassilis Karasmanis Aryeh Kosman Anthony A. Long Richard McKirahan Susan Sauvé Meyer Alexander P.D.Mourelatos Satoshi Ogihara Richard Patterson Christopher J. Rowe David Sedley Richard Sorabji. (shrink)

Effective Altruism is a movement and a philosophy that has reinvigorated the debate about the nature of beneficence. At base, it is the consistent application of microeconomic principles to beneficent action. The movement has exposed that many forms of giving do little good (or do active harm), but others do tremendous good. Questioning Beneficence uses Effective Altruism as a launchpad to ask hard questions about beneficence more generally. Must we be Effective Altruists, or is Effective Altruism and the ideas driving (...) the movement a mistake? How much should we give and-if anything-how should we give it? What are the respective roles of different kinds of institutions? Is charity anti-democratic and do billionaire philanthropists have too much power? Is Effective Altruism just utilitarianism in disguise? Questioning Beneficence is written by four philosophers, each with distinct points of view. It introduces a new standard for debating ideas in philosophy as each author poses and answers three questions and each of his three co-authors responds to those questions in turn. Finally, the first author replies to his co-authors' responses. Throughout the book, there is a spirit of curiosity, intellectual risk taking, and truth-seeking, rather than point-scoring and one-upsmanship. Questioning Beneficence demonstrates what open-minded, real dialogue over an important issue can be at its very best. (shrink)

Students in two classes in the fall of 2004 making extensive use of online courseware were logged as they visited over 500 different “learning pages” which varied in length and in difficulty. We computed the time spent on each page by each student during each session they were logged in. We then modeled the time spent for a particular visit as a function of the page itself, the session, and the student. Surprisingly, the average time a student spent on learning (...) pages was of almost no value in predicting how long they would spend on a given page, even controlling for the session and page difficulty. The page itself was highly predictive, but so was the average time spent on learning pages in a given session. This indicates that local considerations, e.g., mood, deadline proximity, etc., play a much greater role in determining student pace and attention than do intrinsic student traits. We also consider the average time spent on learning pages as a function of the time of semester. Students spent less time on pages later in the semester, even for more demanding material. (shrink)

This volume is a Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprised of more than 20 papers presented at the conference "Presocratics and Plato: Festschrift Symposium in Honor of Charles Kahn", 3-7 June 2009. The conference was held at the European Cultural Center of Delphi, Greece, and was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies and Parmenides Publishing, with endorsement from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. Contributors: Julia (...) Annas - University of Arizona; Sarah Broadie - University of St. Andrews; Lesley Brown - University of Oxford; Tomás Calvo-Martínez - Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Diskin Clay - Duke University; John M. Dillon - Trinity College, Dublin; Dorothea Frede - Humbolt University, Berlin; Arnold Hermann - HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies; Carl A. Huffman - DePauw University; Enrique Hülsz Piccone - Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; D.M. Hutchinson - St. Olaf College; Paul Kalligas - National and Kapodistrian University, Athens; Vassilis Karasmanis - National Technical University, Athens; Aryeh Kosman - Haverford College; Anthony A. Long - University of California, Berkeley; Richard McKirahan - Pomona College; Susan Sauvé Meyer - University of Pennsylvania; Alexander P.D. Mourelatos - University of Texas at Austin; Satoshi Ogihara - Tohoku University, Japan; Richard Patterson - Emory University; Christopher J. Rowe - Durham University; David Sedley - University of Cambridge; Richard Sorabji - University of Oxford. (shrink)

This book is the scholarly & fully annotated edition of the award-winning _The Illustrated To Think Like God.__ _To Think Like God_ focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held that (...) true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods. The Pythagoreans sought to approach this otherwordly knowledge by studying numerical relationships, believing them to govern the universe, and that those who know the number of a thing know its true nature. Yet their quest was a hopeless one, bogged down by cultism, numerology, political conspiracies, bloody uprisings, and exile. Above all, number did not turn out as the most reliable of mediums; it was certainly not a key to the realm of the divine. Thus, their contributions to philosophy's inception, while much better-publicized, was not the most significant. That particular role was reserved for an unusual challenge and the elaborate reaction it provoked. The challenge came from Xenophanes, who had argued that reliable truth was beyond mortal reach, because even if by accident a human being should state what is exactly the case, he had no way of knowing that he did, all things being susceptible to opinion. This dilemma is sure to have bothered a legislative mind like that of Parmenides, and we find him introducing techniques for testing the veracity of statements. These methods were meant to be carried out by reasoning and argument alone, without relying in physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, which was deemed untrustworthy. Reason was that one faculty shared by gods and humans alike. In time, Parmenides' ingenious arguments have earned him the titled of the first logician and metaphysician whose influence on subsequent thinkers was immeasurable. Parmenides taught us that philosophy was not about claims but about proof, which also makes him the father of theoretical science -- which, curiously, began as a quest into the mind of God. "Arnold Hermann makes a genuine contribution to Presocratics studies. This book, which is both an introduction to Pythagoras and Parmenides and a scholarly study, will interest novices and experts alike. Hermann's multi-leveled approach and his careful analyses of alternate views make his work a useful teaching tool, while his systematic inquiry into Pythagoreanism, the poem of Parmenides, and the development of early Greek thought will well repay the attention of scholars. — Patricia Curd_,_ _Purdue University_ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." — Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.,___ __Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College_ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." — Walter Burkert_, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich_ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Somaesthetics, Education, and the Art of DancePeter J. Arnold (bio)This essay has two related purposes. The first is to explicate what dance as an art form should minimally comprise if it is to be taught as a distinctive aspect of education in the school curriculum. The second and main purpose is to argue that dance, if taught in accordance with what is outlined, is not only an efficacious (...) means in the development, understanding and promotion of somaesthetics, a new term in aesthetic theory, but an example of itsvery embodiment. Put differently it will be upheld that the practice of danceis not only an excellent vehicle in the promotion of somaesthetics but a paradigm case of what it is.But what is somaesthetics? Briefly put, in common with the thinking of some noted philosophers in the past, it can be said that somaesthetics is as much concerned with the idea of being a person and living well as with the development of rational thought and the development of the intellect. It emphasizes, in particular, that the soma in the form of its physical skills, senses and pleasures plays no less a part in the living of a full life than conceptual understanding and the imaginative use of language.1 Richard Shusterman, upholding these sentiments, refers to somaesthetics asthe critical and meliorating study of the experience and use of one's body as a locus of sensory aesthetic appreciation and creative self-fashioning. It is....devoted to the knowledge, discourses, practices, and bodily disciplines that structure such somatic care or can improve it.2Although such values and concerns are known to many educationists, they are rarely acted upon or taught in a deliberate or systematic way. Even within the realms of dance and sport more could be done than is done somaesthetically to educate in the interests of what it is to be a whole person. [End Page 48]Before embarking on the task of exemplifying dance as a form of somaesthetics, it will be helpful first to say a little about education and the idea of dance as a valued human practice; and second, to say something about the aesthetic in relation to art.Education and the Art of Dance as a Valued Human PracticeWhat is clear about the idea of dance as an art form is that it is more than the human body making rhythmical and patterned movements in space. It can be more accurately described as a coherent and complex range of actions in which intentions are physically expressed in terms of a meaningful performance that is artistic in nature and not merely aesthetic in appeal.It is my view that these elements of what constitutes dance best come together and are most readily grasped when it is seen as a valued form of human practice. Following Alistair MacIntyre, I take the term "practice" to meanany coherent and complex form of socially established co-operative human activity through which goods internal to that activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved are systematically extended.3The idea of the arts as forms of practice is helpful in at least two important ways. First, it draws attention to the fact that an art, like medicine, the law, or sport, is a distinctive form of life with its own standards, values, and procedures. Second, it recognizes, in keeping with the idea of education, thatthe internal goods of an activity, like the art of dance, will enlighten and enlarge the powers of the participant. MacIntyre undoubtedly recognizes the connection between the idea of a practice and the concept of education when he observes the proper end of education isto help to discover activities whose ends are not outside themselves — The critical ability which ought to be the fruit of education serves nothing directly except itself, no one except those who exercise it — above all the task of education is to teach the value of activity for its own... (shrink)

Through the thickets of recent debates, I take two facts as clear enough starting points. The first is that Heidegger’s participation in National Socialism, and especially his remarks and pronouncements after the war, were, and remain, horrifying. The second is that Heidegger remains of the essential philosophers of our century; Maurice Blanchot testifies for several generations when he refers to the “veritable intellectual shock” that the reading of Being and Time produced in him.5 And Emmanuel Levinas, not hesitating to express (...) his reservations about Heidegger, can nevertheless bring himself to say that a person “who undertakes to philosophize in the twentieth century cannot not have gone through Hiedegger’s philosophy, even to escape it.”6 In this century, perhaps only Ludwig Wittgenstein has had a comparable impact and influence on philosophy. I do not mean to deny that one can reject the over seventy volumes of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe as worthless, that one can, as with Wittgenstein, find that his work is obscure, indulgent, impossible to read, that nothing in it contributes to philosophy. But both Heidegger and Wittgenstein write in anticipation of this reaction, recognizing that their desires, differently articulated, to overcome philosophy will help to determine how their writing is received. Stanley Cavell’s characterization of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations describes Heidegger as well:Philosophical Investigations, like the major modernist works of the past century at least, is, logically speaking, esoteric. That is, such works seek to split their audience into insiders and outsiders ; hence they create the particular unpleasantness of cults ; hence demand for their sincere reception the shock of conversion.7When combined with Heidegger’s political engagement, the particular unpleasantness of cults and indifference are more than joined. Thus it can seem as though one must either exculpate Heidegger, explain away his relation to Nazism as an aberration from the outside, or reject his thought entirely, declare that his books should no longer be read. In an attempt to begin to confront these issues, Critical Inquiry is publishing this symposium. 5. Maurice Blanchot, “Thinking the Apocalypse: A Letter from Maurice Blanchot to Catherine David,” trans. Paula Wissing, p. 479 of this issue.6. Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. Richard A. Cohen , p. 42. See also the last line of Gadamer, “ ‘Back from Syracuse?’ “ p. 430.7. Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy , p. xvi; hereafter abbreviated CR. Arnold I. Davidson, a coeditor of Critical Inquiry, is associate professor of philosophy and member of the Committees on General Studies in the Humanities and on the Conceptual Foundations of Science at the University of Chicago. His most recent contribution to Critical Inquiry is “Sex and the Emergence of Sexuality”. (shrink)

Definitions I presented in a previous article as part of a semantic approach in epistemology assumed that the concept of derivability from standard logic held across all mathematical and scientific disciplines. The present article argues that this assumption is not true for quantum mechanics (QM) by showing that concepts of validity applicable to proofs in mathematics and in classical mechanics are inapplicable to proofs in QM. Because semantic epistemology must include this important theory, revision is necessary. The one I propose (...) also extends semantic epistemology beyond the ‘hard’ sciences. The article ends by presenting and then refuting some responses QM theorists might make to my arguments. (shrink)

Fascinating illustrations contribute to this illuminating and award-winning account of how and why philosophy emerged and make it a must-read for any inquisitive thinker unsatisfied with prevailing assumptions on this timely and highly relevant subject._ By taking the reader back to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy more than 500 years B.C., the author, with unparalleled insight, tells the story of the Pythagorean quest for otherwordly konwledge -- a tale of cultism, political conspiracies, and bloody uprisings that eventually culminate in (...) tragic failure. The emerging hero is Parmenides, who introduces for the first time a technique for testing the truth of a statement that was not based on physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, but instead relied exclusively on the faculty we humans share with the gods: the ability to reason. "Figures from Anaximander to Zeno, the ruins where they lived and thought, and the paradoxes and thought-experiments they proposed are depicted among the [many] well-chosen color illustrations. The results read like an introductory textbook, but one that has been lovingly written, lavishly laid-out and crisply printed-- making it engaging enough to draw in readers to whom it has not been assigned." - _ Publishers Weekly___ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." - _ Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College___ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." - _ Walter Burkert, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich___ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

In accordance with ethical principles and standards, researchers conducting studies with children are expected to seek assent and respect their dissent from participation. Little attention has been given to assent and dissent in research with toddlers, who have limited cognitive and emotional capabilities. We discuss research with toddlers in the context of assent and dissent and propose guidelines to ensure that research with toddlers still adheres to ethical principles. These guidelines include designing engaging studies, monitoring refusal and distress, and partnering (...) with parents. Research with toddlers requires flexibility and creativity to respect toddlers in the context of their developmental capabilities. (shrink)

1. Die Hymnen des Rigveda, herausgegeben Oldenberg von Hermann. Band.I. Metrische und Textgeschichtliche Prolegomena. Berlin, 1888. 14 Mk.2. Vedische Studien, Pischel von Richard und Karl F. Geldner. Stuttgart, 1888–1889. 12 Mk.

Biologists, historians, lawyers, art historians, and literary critics all voice arguments in the critical dialogue about what constitutes evidence in research and scholarship. They examine not only the constitution and "blurring" of disciplinary boundaries, but also the configuration of the fact-evidence distinctions made in different disciplines and historical moments the relative function of such concepts as "self-evidence," "experience," "test," "testimony," and "textuality" in varied academic discourses and the way "rules of evidence" are themselves products of historical developments. The essays and (...) rejoinders are by Terry Castle, Lorraine Daston, Carlo Ginzburg, Ian Hacking, Mark Kelman, R. C. Lewontin, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Mary Poovey, Donald Preziosi, Simon Schaffer, Joan W. Scott, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith. The critical responses are by Lauren Berlant, James Chandler, Jean Comaroff, Arnold I. Davidson, Harry D. harootunian, Elizabeth Helsinger, Thomas C. Holt, Francoise Meltzer, Robert J. Richards, Lawrence Rothfield, Joel Snyder, Cass R. Sunstein, and William Wimsatt. (shrink)

2020 Gradiva Award Nominee, Best Edited Book Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Their Experience of Desire, Ambition and Leadership considers how these factors can be understood, nurtured, or thwarted and the subsequent impact on women's identity, authority and satisfaction. Psychoanalysis has long struggled with its ideas about women, about who they are, how to work with them, and how to respect and encourage what women want. This book argues that psychoanalytic theory and practice must evolve to maintain its relevance in (...) a volatile landscape. Each section of the book begins with a chapter that reviews contemporary ideas regarding women, as well as psychoanalytic history, gender bias, and societal norms and deficits. Three composite clinical stories allow our distinguished contributors to discuss the contexts within which individual experience can be affected, and the role that clinical work may have to mobilize and advance passion and vitality. In their discussions, the interplay of clinical psychoanalysis, sociopolitical context, and understanding of gender, combine to offer a unique perspective, built on decades of scholarship, personal experience, and clinical expertise. Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Their Experience of Desire, Ambition and Leadership will serve as a reference for all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as gender studies scholars interested in the progress of psychoanalytic theory regarding women in the 21st century. Contributors to this book include: Rosemary Balsam, Brenda Bauer, Andrea Celenza, Diane Elise, Adrienne Harris, Dorothy Holmes, Nancy Kulish, Vivian Pendar, Dionne Powell, and Arlene Richards. (shrink)

What exactly are we conscious beings? Do we have immaterial souls, souls that are substances and can survive the destruction of our physical bodies? Richard Swinburne has recently given an affirmative answer to the latter question on the basis of a strikingly simple Cartesian argument. This paper shows why Swinburne’s argument ultimately fails, owing to an instructive dilemma concerning the logical possibility of conscious beings’ surviving bodily destruction. Perhaps we do have substantial immaterial souls, but Swinburne’s Cartesian argument, we (...) shall see, does not cogently deliver the conclusion that we do. (shrink)

Offering a unique and wide-ranging examination of the theory of knowledge, the new edition of this comprehensive collection deftly blends readings from the foremost classical sources with the work of important contemporary philosophical thinkers. Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches, 3/e, offers philosophical examinations of epistemology from ancient Greek and Roman philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus); medieval philosophy (Augustine, Aquinas); early modern philosophy (Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Kant); classical pragmatism and Anglo-American empiricism (James, Russell, Ayer, Lewis, Carnap, Quine, (...) Rorty); and other influential Anglo-American philosophers (Chisholm, Kripke, Moore, Wittgenstein, Strawson, Putnam). Organized chronologically and thematically, Human Knowledge, 3/e, features exceptionally broad coverage and nontechnical selections that are easily accessible to students. An ideal text for both undergraduate and graduate courses in epistemology, it is enhanced by the editors' substantial general introduction, section overviews, and up-to-date bibliographies. The third edition offers expanded selections on contemporary epistemology and adds selections by Thomas Reid, Richard Rorty, David B. Annis, Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, Ernest Sosa, Barry Stroud, and Louise M. Antony. Human Knowledge, 3/e, offers an unparalleled introduction to our ancient struggle to understand our own intellectual experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Women Englishing Homer RICHARD HUGHES GIBSON Seven kingdoms strove in which should swell the womb / That bore great Homer; whom Fame freed from tomb,” so begins the fourth of “Certain ancient Greek Epigrams ” that George Chapman placed at the head of his Odyssey at its debut in 1615.1 The epigram was no mere antiquarian dressing for the text. It suggests a historical parallel with the (...) translator’s own feat—for this Odyssey appeared on the heels of Chapman’s 1611 Iliad, the first complete English translation of Homer directly from the Greek. Indeed, the title page of that Iliad boasted, “Never before in any language truly translated” (italics mine). In “Englishing ” Homer (as he put it), Chapman had vanquished not only local rivals but also the whole international field.2 Through Chapman, England bore Homer anew. Yet within a few decades challengers appeared. An octogenarian Thomas Hobbes published an Odyssey translation in 1675 and an Iliad the following year. Alexander Pope’s versions (Iliad, 1715–1720; Odyssey, 1726) were bestsellers in the next century, yet others soon enough sought to better them, including the poet William Cowper (Iliad, 1791; Odyssey, 1809). The rate of Homeric production then intensified in the nineteenth century, becoming in Edith Hall’s apt phrase a “national pastime” in Victorian Britain—and, I would add, in the United States too.3 In the 1860s, a new English Iliad or Odyssey debuted nearly every year, making Matthew Arnold, then Professor of Poetry at Oxford, seem prescient in selecting “On Translating Homer” as the topic for his 1860 lecture series. Anglo-American output of new English Homers has been steady ever since. The opening decades arion 26.3 winter 2019 of our century have been especially high-yielding—more than ten new Iliads and eight new Odysseys have appeared in print alongside fresh editions of twentieth-century favorites. Digital versions now circulate, too. To Chapman we might thus reply: Once seven Greek cities strove to be Homer’s nurse; now seventy tomes vie to be his English verse. Run down the complete bibliography, and a pattern already hinted in my list of notables becomes pronounced: name after name after name belongs to a man. Flip around a bit, and one can often find traces of women in these volumes. Hobbes, for example, argued in the preface to his translations that women have as “just” a “pretence” (in the sense of “claim”) as men to the moral education afforded by heroic poems, though one might cynically read this as a marketing strategy.4 Pope readily acknowledged his debt to the scholarship of Anne Le Fèvre Dacier, Homer’s first French female translator, and listed prominent female supporters in the subscription lists at the front of his editions.5 Women thus long factored into the business of “Englishing” classical texts, though almost exclusively as paying audience members. For more than four centuries, Homer’s English audience listened to a boys’ choir. That tune has only just begun to change thanks to the efforts of three women: the classicist and nonfiction writer Caroline Alexander, who became the first woman to publish a complete English Iliad in 2015; Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, who published the first English Odyssey by a female translator in 2017; and the poet Alice Oswald, whose selective translation of the Iliad, Memorial, appeared in 2011.6 By virtue of their appearance in such short order, these books have been, and surely will be henceforth, grouped together. And rightly so: ending the male monopoly on the English channel to Homer is a major development. The Homeric epics have not only shaped Western culture; they enjoy enduring prestige. You still need to know Homer to fancy yourself “well-read.” These three books are thus 36 on women englishing homer potent symbols. They mark the passage of English-speaking women from the audience of male efforts to curate and transmit tradition to participants in those endeavors—from the subscription lists, we might say, to the title page. We sell these translations short, though, if we allow their collective meaning to obscure the patent differences in Alexander’s, Wilson’s, and Oswald... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Richard Shusterman T. S. ELIOT ON READING: PLEASURE, GAMES, AND WISDOM Eliot frequently speaks of poetry as essentially a game or amusement whose first and foremost function is to give pleasure. "The poet," says Eliot, "would like to be something of a popular entertainer... would like to convey die pleasures ofpoetry.... As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career but a (...) mug's game" (TUPTUC, p. 154). ' Surely much ofthe point and appeal ofthese remarks is their deflationary contrast to the overlofty claims made for poetry since romanticism, claims which continue to be heard in Arnold's ideas of poetry as criticism of life and surrogate of religion and which extend to modernism with Richards's claim that "poetry is capable of saving us." In mordant debunking of the poet's putative status as world legislator, prophet, and savior, Eliot says he would be pleased to secure for the poet "a part to play in society as worthy as that of the music hall comedian." But Eliot's idea of poetry as an amusement or game is much more than an ironic rhetorical ploy against romantic attitudes. It contains a positive and complex view of what poetry is and how it satisfies. Eliot wants to remind us of "that simple truth that literature is primarily literature, a means of refined and intellectual pleasure."2 However, he also realizes that this truth is really not all that simple to understand or elucidate properly; for it does not mean (though it might seem to suggest ) that literature is a mere means to obtain some external end of pleasure. Nor does it mean that in aiming essentially at pleasure, literature is confined to satisfying our sensual or emotional faculties, and is 2 Philosophy and Literature therefore not significandy connected with improving thought or communicating wisdom, for the pleasure is described as intellectual pleasure. Because of the likely misunderstandings that it is apt to provoke, Eliot's claim that literature is a refined game, that "poetry is a superior amusement," is not confidendy offered as an adequately "true definition, but because if you call it something else, you are likely to call it something still more false" (SW, p. ix). But what substance or value is there in Eliot's preferred view? The idea of poetry as a superior game or amusement is developed in many ways throughout the Eliot critical corpus. We cannot consider them all, but the first we should consider concerns the character of pleasure or enjoyment derived from poetry. If poetry is a refined game, and since games are activities, the pleasure (enjoyment) of poetry would be that ofan activity rather than that ofa pleasant sensation. Eliot's idea of poetic pleasure is thus fundamentally Aristotelian.3 Such pleasure is not a separate sensation or pleasant feeling external to and identifiable apart from the game played, but rather represents the attendant zest or satisfaction with which the game is played or the activity pursued. For Aristotle, "pleasure completes the activity" by the dual and reciprocal action of making it more rewarding and thus promoting it. Our pleasure intensifies our interest in the activity which makes us better pursue it, while displeasure conversely impedes it, as does submitting to the alien pleasures from other activities. If the pleasures of different activities can conflict and impede their respective activities, then these pleasures must be distinguishable and are so in terms of the activities to which they attend. Our enjoyment of an activity thus logically depends on the constitutive structure of that activity and is inseparable from it. We therefore distinguish the pleasures of different games by the different game-activities to which they are bound. One may enjoy tennis, cricket, and football and perhaps feel similar pleasurable sensations from each. But the enjoyment of each game is clearly distinguishable and understood not in terms of these sensations but in terms of the different activities which constitute the formal object or ground of that pleasure. Different games or, more generally, different activities are differendy enjoyable, and each has what Aristotle calls its own "proper pleasure." One could not get the pleasure of playing tennis from playing... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Flight of DesireThe Conversion of Sherman AlexieScott Richard Lyons (bio)Sherman Alexie's audacious arrival onto the Native American literary scene in the early 1990s felt like the start of something new—but it was also the end of something old: namely, the Native American Renaissance (NAR).1 Younger by a generation than the graying canonized figures of preceding decades—N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, among others—Alexie assumed (...) the pose of an enfant terrible and suggested that his elders were trying a bit too hard to produce an ultimately inauthentic sense of traditionalism. "We've been stuck in place since House Made of Dawn," he complained to an interviewer in 1997.2 Rather than presenting his readers with sick and/or depressed Indians caught between two worlds who discover healing in cultural restoration—the dominant plotline of NAR novels—Alexie's innovative characters played basketball and blues guitar, obsessed about their crushes and classes, and worried more about fitting into the modern world than healing it with some spiritual return to ancient Indian wisdom. Stylistically and thematically, Alexie was always closer to the likes of a George Saunders or Junot Diaz than he was to the serious modernists who had [End Page 27] inspired his NAR predecessors, and his political outlook more closely resembled the "identity politics" of younger Indian academics than the "sovereignty" discourses of twentieth-century tribal councils. Alexie wielded humor and pathos to great effect and always seemed to have his finger on the pulse of newer audiences, including those of us who call Indian reservations home. Alexie's influence on everyday Native American culture has been underestimated.Born to Salish parents in 1966 and raised on and off an eastern Washing-ton reservation, Alexie has published (as of this writing) twenty-six books of poetry, fiction, and memoir, much of which has been lauded for its dark humor and tender compassion in the face of serious and challenging topics—sexual abuse, chemical addiction, parental abandonment—as well as for its "reservation realism": the sense, often reiterated by Alexie himself, that his work speaks more authentically to real Indian life than most Native American works. His first published fiction was a collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), followed two years later by his first novel, Reservation Blues (1995). In 1996 Alexie published his second novel, Indian Killer, which moved in a different, darker direction. Departing reservation settings for the city of Seattle and supplanting his humor with a horror sensibility, Indian Killer is about a serial murderer who scalps his white male victims and the subsequent racial tensions that arise. In keeping with Alexie's identity politics, a significant theme of the novel is "ethnic fraud"—the claiming of false Indian identity by non-Indians—a topic that received serious treatment during the 1990s and that supplies another layer of meaning to the novel's title.3 But Indian Killer is primarily about the murder of white men, and the most that anyone could say about the moral questions it raises is that Alexie seems to have left them for the reader to decide. Arnold Krupat decided to call Indian Killer a "warning to whites."4 A decade later, Alexie published two short books, each having a foothold in the lucrative young adult (YA) genre: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) and Flight (2007). The former was immensely successful, critically and commercially, while the latter has barely been written about at all and has not sold as well. What explains this difference? Is True Diary simply a better book than Flight?Whenever we identify some literary text as good, great, better—or worse—than some other texts, we are obliged to answer the big, implicit question: What makes literature good? For René Girard, the answer to that question was simple: Great literature always announces the "novelistic [romanesque] truth," not the "romantic [romantique] lie" about the mediation of mimetic desire.5 The truth is that our desires are never just our own. We always imitate the desires of others, which leads to mimetic rivalry with those same models, who... (shrink)

By the start of the Victorian period the school of British economists acknowledging Adam Smith as its master was in the ascendancy. 'Political Economy', a catch-all title which ignored the diversity of viewpoints to be found amongst the discipline's leading proponents, became associated in the popular mind with moral and political forces held to be uniquely conducive to the progress of an increasingly industrialised and competitive society. 'Political Economy' served in turn as the focus for critics of equally diverse moral (...) and political persuasions, who sought to challenge the materialism of contemporary society and offer their own assessments of the profound social changes of the time. In the introductory essay to the collection of readings from such 'critics of capitalism', the editors review the principles of the early economists, the way in which these principles were appropriated and applied by their Victorian successors and the contrasting modes which critics of popular economic ideas assumed. Subsequent extracts from the writings of the Owenite Socialist John Bray, Carlyle, Marx and Engels, J. S. Mill, Ruskin, Arnold, T. H. Green, William Morris and G. B. Shaw, demonstrate both the breadth of the possible grounds for ideological opposition to the prevailing philosophy and the shifting nature of the debate as 'Political Economy' itself was revealed as incapable of explaining or responding to the changing conditions of the 1870s. Headnotes to the extracts describe the genesis of individual debate and discuss distinctive stylistic features. Annotation in the form of footnotes and endnotes has been designed to gloss obscure allusions and arguments. In making more accessible the socio-economic writings of those authors now better known for their imaginative work, this volume will enable readers to reach a more profound appreciation of the central role such work played in developing the moral vision embodied in their more lastingly popular books and essays. (shrink)

Magda B. Arnold's theory of emotion is examined from three historical viewpoints. First, I look backward from Arnold to precursors of her theory of emotion in 19th century introspectionist psychology and in classical evolutionary psychology. I try to show that Arnold can be regarded as belonging intellectually to the cognitive tradition of emotion theorising that originated in Brentano and his students, and that she was also significantly influenced by McDougall's evolutionary view of emotion. Second, I look forward (...) from Arnold to the influence she had on Richard S. Lazarus, the theorist who deserves the most credit for popularising the appraisal approach to emotion. Here, I try to document that Lazarus’ theory of the stress emotions preserved most assumptions of Arnold's theory. Finally, I look back at Arnold from today's perspective and address points of success of the appraisal paradigm in emotion psychology, as well as some remaining problems. (shrink)