The Spirit of the Laws is, without question, one of the central texts in the history of eighteenth-century thought, yet there has been no complete, scholarly English-language edition since that of Thomas Nugent, published in 1750. This lucid translation renders Montesquieu's problematic text newly accessible to a fresh generation of students, helping them to understand quite why Montesquieu was such an important figure in the early enlightenment and why The Spirit of the Laws was, for example, such an influence (...) upon those who framed the American constitution. Fully annotated, this edition focuses attention upon Montesquieu's use of sources and his text as a whole, rather than upon those opening passages towards which critical energies have traditionally been devoted, and a select bibliography and chronology are provided for those coming to Montesquieu's work for the first time. (shrink)

This paper articulates a radical feminist analysis of psychotherapist-patient sexual exploitation, a problem that has affected an estimated one million North American women. I argue that such exploitation is rooted in misogynous attitudes that pervade the major institutions in contemporary culture, including the mental health professions. I examine ways that mental health professionals use sexist constructs and language to blame victims for their abuse. Through textual analysis of a series of letters and articles by prominent psychiatrists, I show that the (...) male writers attempted to silence victims and their female advocates by subjugating the women's voices to their rhetorical control and by indirectly drawing on the power of deeply-held cultural stereotypes of women. This analysis of therapist-patient sexual exploitation and the blaming of its victims points to the broader problem of oppressive androcentric bias in psychiatry's ideology, epistemology, and discourse. The article closes with a suggestion for correcting psychiatry's harmful biases and with recommended strategies for preventing psychotherapist-patient sexual exploitation. (shrink)

The apparent tension between the moral codes of the Old and New Testaments constitutes a perennial problem for Christian ethics. Scholars who have taken this problem seriously have often done so in ways that presume sharp discontinuity between the Testaments. They then proceed to devise a system for identifying what is or is not relevant today, or what pertains to this or that particular social sphere. John Howard Yoder brings fresh perspectives to this perennial problem by refuting the presumption of (...) intratestamental discontinuity. Throughout multiple scattered works on the Old Testament, Yoder offers a coherent and provocative narration that culminates in the way of Christ and establishes the ethical continuity of the entire biblical canon. This essay presents the basic parameters of Yoder's Old Testament narration, suggests points where revision is needed, and highlights several implications for social ethics. (shrink)

This content analysis examines online accounts of choices of marital and child surnames to understand the predominance of exclusively patrilineal surnames. I demonstrate how surnaming processes present the classic tension between commitment to self and others as moral dilemmas of self versus family, children, and spouse. Social and cultural mechanisms create an either/or exclusive framing and a false dichotomy where women’s selves and others’ needs are incompatible. I also show how some parents reconceptualize family, children, and expectations for men and (...) women, which helps reconfigure dilemmas into a both/and inclusive framework and permits outcomes integrating self, family, children, and partnership. This study illustrates how maintaining a system that promotes giving fathers’ surnames to children as the only proper choice feeds the inertia of micro- and macro-structures that reflect and reinforce gendered differences in moral responsibility regarding self-sacrifice for family, children, and spouses. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer is one of the leading philosophers in the world today. His philosophical hermeneutics has had a major impact in a wide range of disciplines, including the social sciences, literary criticism, theology and jurisprudence. Truth and Method, his major work, is widely recognised to be one of the great classics of twentieth-century thought. In this book Georgia Warnke provides a clear and systematic exposition of Gadamer's work, as well as a balanced and thoughtful assessment of his views. Warnke (...) gives particular attention to the ways in which Gadamer's work has been taken up and criticised by literary critics, social theorists and philosophers, such as Hirsch, Habermas and Rorty. She thus provides an introduction to Gadamer which demonstrates the relevance of his work to current debates in a variety of disciplines. This book will be invaluable to students and specialists throughout the humanities and social sciences, as well as to anyone who is interested in the most important developments in contemporary thought. (shrink)

This dossier article contains four short and varied contributions from activists and other service and healthcare providers who have been agitating and working on the frontlines of HIV/AIDS in Ireland since the early 1980s. The dossier contains: (1) a history, by Bill Foley, of the early collective efforts of a group of gay men to provoke government action and healthcare under the umbrella of Gay Health Action (GHA) (2) a speech delivered by Dr. Erin Nugent to government officials on (...) the re-branding of HIV Ireland in 2015; (3) a brief history, recounted by Noel Donnellan, of ACT UP Dublin since it was revitalized in 2016 by a small cohort of dedicated activists from a dormant group into a vibrant collective that has achieved great legislative change with regards to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP); and (4) a polemic, written by Thomas Strong, on living with HIV as a queer man in Ireland that demonstrates the ways in which HIV stigma not only thrives in but molds and shapes twenty-first-century gay men’s communities, both in real life and online. (shrink)

This book offers a fresh analysis of the account of Peripatetic ethics in Cicero's On Ends 5, which goes back to the first-century BCE philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon. Georgia Tsouni challenges previous characterisations of Antiochus' philosophical project as 'eclectic' and shows how his reconstruction of the ethics of the 'Old Academy' demonstrates a careful attempt to update the ancient heritage, and predominantly the views of Aristotle and the Peripatos, in the light of contemporary Stoic-led debates. This results in both (...) a hermeneutically complex and a philosophically exciting reading of the old tradition. A case in point is the way Antiochus grounds the 'Old Academic' conception of the happy life in natural appropriation, thus offering a naturalistic version of Aristotelian ethics. (shrink)

Jean Grondin’s starting point in his impressive book is what Hans-Georg Gadamer refers to as the universal claim of hermeneutics. Gadamer is better known for the limits his hermeneutics seems to place on universal claims. Against the reliance the Enlightenment placed on the insights of a reason common to humanity, Gadamer stresses the prejudiced and partial character of attempts to understand meaning. And against more contemporary attempts to ground Enlightenment conceptions in universal human competencies, he stresses the historicity and finitude (...) of human knowledge. Our attempts to understand the meaning of texts, conversations, historical events, and social actions and practices are conditioned by the horizon of our language, our own historical experiences, and our assumptions and expectations. Still, Gadamer ends his Truth and Method by stressing not only the linguistic character of understanding but the infinite capacity of all languages to find and express new dimensions of meaning. “Language,” he writes, “forestalls any objection to its jurisdiction. Its universality keeps pace with the universality of reason.”. (shrink)

Thomas Reed argues that the Christian, if apprised of Plantinga's central claims in Warranted Christian Belief, should be agnostic regarding Christianity's central tenets. Reed models his argument on Plantinga's own argument against naturalism, according to which naturalists have a built-in defeater for their epistemology. Reed bases his argument on the contention that if Christian theism cannot be shown or demonstrated, rational Christians should refrain from believing. Not only does Reed's contention not follow, but he confuses logically possible defeaters with actual (...) defeaters and ignores Plantinga's claims regarding the Aquinas/Calvin model and the proper basicality of belief in God. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics - one of the seminal philosophies of the 20th century - has had a profound influence on a wide array of fields, including classical philology, theology, the philosophy of the social sciences, literary theory, philosophy of law, critical social theory and the philosophy of art. This collection expands on some of these areas and takes his hermeneutics into yet new fields including narrative medicine, biotechnology, the politics of memory, the philosophy of place and the non-verbal language (...) of the body. And, building on Gadamer's well-known discussions with Heidegger, Habermas and Derrida, Inheriting Gadamer sets him in dialogue with Mahatma Gandhi, Christine Korsgaard, Charles Mills and others. In these ways, the volume holds fast to a Gadamerian virtue: cultivating our important philosophical traditions while embracing the constant need to re-think their meaning in new circumstances and in relation to new knowledge. (shrink)

Richard Rorty challenges the traditional use of hermeneutic understanding to defend the methodological autonomy of the social sciences, claiming that hermeneutics is part of both social and natural science and, moreover, that it exposes the limits of ?epistemologically centered philosophy?. Hermeneutics is interested in edification rather than truth, in finding new ways of speaking rather than adjudicating knowledge claims or securing the grounds of rational consensus. Although Rorty refers to Gadamer's ?philosophical hermeneutics? as support for this position, Gadamer's own analysis (...) points in a different direction. First, it distinguishes the social from the natural sciences as forms of practical, not theoretical, knowledge. As hermeneutic analyses, the social sciences participate in an on?going dialogue about values and forms of life. Second, the goal of this dialogue is cognitive and normative agreement. Indeed, hermeneutics is an act of integration which tries to expand consensus between different cultures and historical perspectives by mediating their claims to truth. (shrink)

The objective of the paper is the methodological presentation of the basic principles towards a critical interdisciplinary approach for studying the history of monuments restoration, valid for different cultures. The proposed integrated framework offers the possibility to study and document monuments restoration in various spatial levels e.g. global, continental, international, national, regional, and local. The conceptual and methodological aspects are based on the following fundamental pillars a) the development of science and technology, including relevant history of education, b) the evolution (...) of the restoration philosophy, c) the incorporation of the above in restoration projects at a lower level, d) the infiltration of the above in restoration interventions at the lowest level. The author expects that the above successive and/or parallel levels of scientific branches can contribute effectively to the analysis, synthesis and comparative assessment of the aspects and criteria that influenced monuments restoration timeline. The challenge for the researcher of the monuments restoration history is the adjustment of the whole process to his own –under research- level in such a way as to take advantage of all theinterdisciplinary inputs creating, thus, inventive links and stimulating new information and knowledge. The above are briefly tested in the case study of Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece. Such an inductive approach will enable all disciplines to devote their finest efforts towards understanding, documenting and studying monuments restoration history and, thus, support effectively a sustainable future for the world’s cultural heritagel audience. (shrink)

In this engaging, highly detailed and meticulously researched account of late twentieth century technological dreaming and development, W. Patrick McCray traces the links between United States advocates of space colonies in the 1970s, and promoters of nanotechnology in the 1980s and 1990s. McCray does a compelling job of elucidating the personal, scientific and ideological ties between the groups, the substantive roles played by many individuals and institutions in both movements, and the enduring importance of past space glory in the American (...) imaginary.To write this “contemporary history”, McCray has brought together an impressive collection of archival material, including many documents from what were previously disparate personal collections and records. He has conducted interviews with many of the key actors and drawn on contemporary media reports and popular publications, the academic and grey literature.McCray’s focus is on a select group of people he dubs “visioneers”—a neo .. (shrink)

It is expected that industrial heritage actually tells the story of the emerging capitalism highlighting the dynamic social relationship between the “workers” and the owners of the “production means”. In current times of economic crisis, it may even involve a painful past with lost social, civil, gender and/or class struggles, a depressing present with abandoned, fragmented, degraded landscapes and ravaged factories, and a hopeless future for the former workers of the local (not only) society; or just a conquerable ground for (...) controversial investments. This is certainly an emotionally charged subject matter, with multiple readings and interpretations. However, this view is only partial when facing landscape during its historical evolution process. A diachronic study, thus, embraces all resources that probably gave rise to a variety of human activities; all of them embody heritage values -“subjectively” or “objectively” perceived- their evaluation, though, is a matter of an on-going process of the civil society. Greece's landscape accommodates a diversity of diachronic productive practices that may overlap historical periods, technological evolutions and social transformations. Pre-, early and industrial exploitation of resources does not remain firm but vary according to time and the needs of each society. The comparative scale of certain resource exploitation is highlighted as the key for the assessment methodology in close relation to the specific frame of a local landscape and a historical period. Even though archaeological evidence may possibly reveal and document continuity in a range of sustainable productive processes without conflicts, great controversies emerge when new investments are “offered” as an antidote to economic crisis -not harmonized to the local scale, traumatizing thus the “spirit” of the landscape. Suggestions for incompatible productive use and investment planning imply irreversible and irreparable effects on the environment, society and economy of a region and are only faced through social awareness. Case studies of passive and/or active involvement of local communities, in synthesizing and enhance landscape’s “spirit”, its diachronic industrial heritage and the embedded tangible and intangible values, will support a pragmatic -not a suspended- step towards a sustainable future. Quoting Neil Cossons (TICCIH Congress 2012) “Industrial imperialism ensures its position and protects its future not by the conquest of distant lands as by the securing of its sources of raw materials ... The modern world is as much under the control of the major industrial powers as it ever was during the colonial era”; if such a case can the industrial heritage sector remain apolitical? (shrink)

Commentators have compared Hans-Georg Gadamer’s focus on tradition in Truth and Method to his focus on solidarity in his later work in order to suggest that the latter signals a move away from ontological toward ethical and political concerns. This paper, however, is guided by Gadamer’s own view that his work, both early, late, and in Truth and Method, was always concerned with ethical and political issues. I therefore want to challenge the idea that his so-called politics of solidarity marks (...) a new direction in his work. His politics of solidarity does mark a new direction in discussions of solidarity insofar as he disconnects it from any necessary grounding in preexisting affinities such as religion and nationality. Gadamer’s later work may also be more explicitly concerned with the question of differences and the other than is Truth and Method. Nevertheless, I want to argue that rather than signaling a new direction for Gadamer, both his politics of solidarity and his concern with otherness highlight important features already present in his earlier account of tradition. Indeed, I think attention to this earlier account discloses a political dimension to Gadamer’s thought that is more sophisticated than his remarks on solidarity. Attention to this dimension of his earlier account allows us to challenge the now standard objection that it undermines possibilities for critical reflection. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill’s famous “harm principle” has been popular in the limitation of freedoms within human rights jurisprudence. It has been used formally in court cases and also informally in legal argumentation and conversation. Shortly, it is described as a very simple principle that amounts to the notion that persons are at liberty to do what they want as long as their actions do not harm any other person or society in general. This article questions whether it is legitimate to (...) use the harm principle in cases concerning the limitation of religious freedom within education. For example, can the exemption of a learner from sex education be denied based on the argument that such an exemption will cause harm? In order to answer this question, the meaning, origin and use of the harm principle are investigated. This article also discusses four main criticisms against the use of this principle in general and in cases of religious freedom of learners in education. (shrink)

In this book, one of Italy's most important and original contemporary philosophers considers the status of art in the modern era. He takes seriously Hegel's claim that art has exhausted its spiritual vocation, that it is no longer through art that Spirit principally comes to knowledge of itself. He argues, however, that Hegel by no means proclaimed the "death of art" but proclaimed rather the indefinite continuation of art in what Hegel called a "self-annulling" mode. With astonishing breadth and originality, (...) the author probes the meaning, aesthetics, and historical consequences of that self-annulment. In essence, he argues that the birth of modern aesthetics is the result of a series of schisms—between artist and spectator, genius and taste, and form and matter, for example—that are manifestations of the deeper, self-negating yet self-perpetuating movement of irony. Through this concept of self-annulment, the author offers an imaginative reinterpretation of the history of aesthetic theory from Kant to Heidegger, and he opens up original perspectives on such phenomena as the rise of the modern museum, the link between art and terror, the natural affinity between "good taste" and its perversion, and kitsch as the inevitable destiny of art in the modern era. The final chapter offers a dazzling interpretation of Dürer's _Melancholia_ in the terms that the book has articulated as its own. _The Man Without Content_ will naturally interest those who already prize Agamben's work, but it will also make his name relevant to a whole new audience—those involved with art, art history, the history of aesthetics, and popular culture. (shrink)

‘Neokantianism and Platonism’ indicates an important issue of Neo-Hellenic Philosophy during the 1920s and the 1930s. The protagonist was Johannes Theodorakopoulos. His Heidelberg dissertation Platons Dialektik des Seins (1927) follows the Neokantian theories of judgement (of Emil Lask and Heinrich Rickert) and explores Plato’s theory of judgement with emphasis on Philebos’ categories of peras and apeiron. Theodorakopoulos’ prolegomena to the Greek translation (1929) of Paul Natorp’s Platos Ideenlehre are relevant here. Nevertheless, Theodorakopoulos developed a personal interpretation of Plato’s philosophy and (...) almost demoted the Neokantian interpretation, as is clear in his Introduction to Plato (1941, in Greek) as also in his Heidelberg Vorlesungen 1969 entitled Die Hauptprobleme der Platonischen Philosophie. Besides, other interpretations of Plato came forward. Evangelos Papanoutsos wrote his Tübingen dissertation Das religiöse Erlebnis bei Platon (1926) under the supervision of Adickes. Konstantinos Georgoules, an earlier student of Husserl and Heidegger, published a translation of Plato’s Politeia (1939, in Greek) with a rather philological introduction.The Marxist Demetres Glenos, an opponent of Neokantianism, proposed a realistic interpretation of Plato’s Sophistes (1939, in Greek). Basileios Tatakes (an adherent of Henri Bergson) presented Plato’s philosophy as a reconciliation of reason and mysticism. (shrink)

Philosophical anthropology, as Helmuth Plessner has explored it, vindicates its relative priority towards ethics, because it can set out the anthropological prerequisites for considering the moral subject as the embodied person. This claim, however, is still an open question. Walter Schulz has argued that the prevalence of science in contemporary life brings ethics to the fore and forces philosophical anthropology to an auxiliary exploration of ‘leading figures of thehuman’. Jürgen Habermas endorses Plessner’s exploration of the issue of the body, in (...) order to oppose biotechnological naturalism. Thus, he enlarges his discourse on ethics through the ethics of the human species by defining the moral agent as the embodied person. Nevertheless, philosophical anthropology is a broader theoretical endeavour that cannot be reduced to ethics. (shrink)

Despite the proliferation of specialised agencies designed to reduce the prevalence of refugees worldwide, the number of individuals fleeing persecution is increasing year on year as endemic violence in countries such as Iraq, Somalia and the Syrian Arab Republic continues. As a result, media broadcasts and political dialogues are saturated with discussions about these “persons of concern”. Fundamental questions nonetheless remain unanswered about what meaning these actors attribute to the label ‘refugee’ and what intent, other than paucity of knowledge, might (...) be driving the term’s use or manipulation. Though this is evidently important in the public arena, where incorrect conflations fuel mistrust and misunderstandings, the ramifications of these divergent understandings at the level of multi-lateral politics have yet to be critically explored. This article applies Barthes’ theory of the multiple orders of the sign to address this. Using the case study of the negotiations preceding the invocation of the Cessation Clause for Rwandan refugees, it illustrates how the word refugee is susceptible to numerous, simultaneous understandings, and discusses the implications of these manifold interpretations for how durable solutions are envisaged and negotiated in the refugee regime. In the case of Rwandan refugees in Uganda, this has meant that over a decade of stalemated discussions between the Governments of Uganda and Rwanda and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees over their future have been broken by a series of bilateral concessions that, whilst diminishing the political significance attached to this protracted caseload, have failed to address the continuing precarity of their situation. By conceptualising the word refugee as a sign according to the Saussurean model of semiotics, this paper therefore argues that despite the term’s established legal-normative definition, its inherent malleability makes it susceptible to processes of political instrumentalisation. This elevates the refugee as a rhetorical figure above the refugee as a physical-legal body entitled to certain forms of assistance. (shrink)

This book explores the thought of - and is dedicated to - David Frisby, as one of the leading sociologists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Presenting original examinations of his unique social theory and underlining his interdisciplinary approach to the critical interpretation of modern metropolitan society and culture, it emphasises Frisby's legacy in highlighting the role of the social researcher as a collector, reader, observer, detective and archivist of the phenomena and ideas that exemplify the modern metropolis (...) as society. With contributions from sociologists, historians of the city, urban geographers, cultural theorists, architectural historians, architectural theorists and urban designers, The Detective of Modernity constitutes a wide-ranging engagement with Frisby's profound legacy in social and cultural theory. (shrink)

Background: Increasing use of genetic technologies in clinical and research settings increases the potential for misattributed paternity to be identified. Yet existing guidance from the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Biomedical and Behavioral Research and the Institute of Medicine (among others) offers contradictory advice. Genetic health professionals are thus likely to vary in their practice when misattributed paternity is identified, and empirical investigation into the disclosure of misattributed paternity is scarce. Given the relevance of this ethical (...) dilemma and its significance to users of genetic services, this study aimed to investigate the attitudes of lay people with regard to the disclosure of misattributed paternity. Methods: An online questionnaire was hosted and advertised through Amazon's Mechanical Turk to 200 United States residents aged 18 years or older. Respondents were asked to rate (via a Likert scale) the ethical permissibility of possible actions a clinician may carry out when misattributed paternity is identified. Data analysis consisted of preliminary descriptive analysis, chi-squared analysis, and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Results: There was no clear majority support for many of the options surveyed across different contexts, with only six out of ten scenarios displaying some general consensus. Men were more likely to support scenarios where the father is informed of paternity. Importantly, participants' views varied according to whether the desires of the father were previously expressed, suggesting that perceptions of the permissibility of a clinician's action will depend on the interests of all parties affected. Conclusions: This sample of the general public showed attitudes that were, at least to some degree, at variance with some professional guidelines. We give arguments for why at least some of these attitudes might be justified. We argue that case-specific judgments should be made and outline some of the relevant ethical considerations. While general guidelines ought to be considered, context-specific moral judgments cannot be avoided. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Wild Justice: A Study of Euripides’ HecubaGeorgia Ann MachemerMossman, Judith. Wild Justice: A Study of Euripides’ Hecuba. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. xiv 1 283 pp. Cloth, $55. (Oxford Classical Monographs)Judith Mossman’s monograph on Euripides’ Hecuba deserves its accolades. It is well-written, well-argued, and shows a quality sometimes lacking in today’s publish-or-perish world, scholarly integrity. Sceptical of the theses she seeks to refute, Mossman nevertheless adopts no arrogant poses, (...) but carefully weighs the merits of each position before casting it aside. Having found questions in a vast array of comparative and critical material, she meticulously develops answers from the ancient evidence itself, comprehensively drawing into one orbit not just classical Greek poetry and Attic tragedies, but also a variety of prose works, both early and late. In no way arbitrary, her comment avoids easy solutions garnered from contemporary fields of thought and faces even intractable textual problems head-on. With its sights high, the book never wanders wide of the mark, claiming neither too much nor too little. Nor does it pretend to [End Page 134] a fashionable last word on its subject, preferring rather to advance a tradition of interpretation so that those who later raise objections will happily find themselves engaged in a dialogue with its author in the common search for new insights.Dr. Mossman’s obvious admiration for Hecuba is affirmed by the play’s history as a select text in the Byzantine manuscript tradition, and, as she demonstrates in her “Epilogue” (210–43), by the esteem accorded it in subsequent ages, especially the Renaissance, which considered it an ancient type of the then popular revenge tragedy. As I lack the background, however, to judge her winning treatment of Hecuba’s Renaissance heritage, I shall confine my remarks here to her presentation of the play’s internal dramatic excellence. This I found to be well conceived, thorough, and convincing.The opening chapters on antecedent myth, the structural unity of spoken dialogue with conjectured stage spectacle, and the dramatic integration of the chorus serve as a suitable warm-up for the more controversial topics of the later chapters. Of these preliminary exercises I was most taken by Mossman’s reconstruction of the play’s original staging and its possible effect on the contemporary audience (chapter 2). It was a good idea to pay attention to this experiential dimension at the outset. By doing so the author alerts her readers not only to the natural indeterminacy of dramatic texts, but also to the enormous gap between our literary readings of ancient plays and our perusal of them as vehicles for performances, ancient or otherwise. Mossman plays this critical game well. What she says is lucid and enlivening. Nevertheless, the heart of her discussion lies elsewhere, in the chapters on Euripides’ “rhetoric as a characterizing force” (94), Polyxena’s heroic sacrificial death, and the justice of Hecuba’s savage revenge.In these chapters Mossman successfully takes up the cudgel, first against the rhetorical formalists who argue that characters in Greek tragedies are often poorly motivated, inconsistent, generalized types that have been created largely without regard to individualizing details of the plot, a view sometimes wrongly attributed to Aristotle (see especially the excursus on Aristotle, 138–41); she then counters Nicole Loraux’s post-Freudian, feminist belief in the erotic nature of Polyxena’s sacrifice (Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman, tr. Anthony Forster [Harvard 1987; orig. publ. Paris 1985] 56–61); and finally she argues against the many who, like Martha Nussbaum (The Fragility of Goodness [Cambridge 1986] 408, 414–16) claim that in the play’s second half Hecuba degenerates into subhuman brutality.As regards character development, Mossman contends that what we see in ancient drama is never a change of ethos, but the interplay of ethos and events and the delineation of “successive emotions which arise in response to successive situations” (102). As in the rhetorical handbooks, speeches must be judged by their appropriateness to type of both speaker and addressee and to the specifics of the individual case. Using these ancient principles, Mossman reviews the speeches of the play and, by means of their opposing and... (shrink)

As health care systems have been recast as innovation assets, commercial aims are increasingly prominent within states’ health and medical research policies. Despite this, the reformulation of notions of social and of scientific value and of long-standing relations between science and the state that is occurring in research policies remains comparatively unexamined. Addressing this lacuna, this article investigates the articulation of ‘actually existing neoliberalism' in research policy by examining a major Australian research policy and funding instrument, the Medical Research Future (...) Fund. We identify the MRFF and allied initiatives as a site of state activism: reallocating resources from primary and preventive health care to commercially-oriented biomedical research; privileging commercial objectives in research and casting health as a “flow on effect”; reorganising the publicly funded production of health and medical knowledge; and arrogating for political actors a newly prominent role in research grant assessment and funding allocation. We conclude that rather than the state’s assumption of a more activist role in medical research and innovation straightforwardly serving a ‘public good’, it is a driver of neoliberalisation that erodes commitments to redistributive justice in health care and significantly reconfigures science-state relations in research policy. (shrink)

The paper starts by setting the stage for two perennial pairs of problems about the receptacle: “metaphysics / physics” and “matter / space”. Then it provides a close reading of 49a6-50a4 that reinforces the reconstructionist interpretation, but also deviates from Cherniss in some respect. When applying the proposals Plato makes in 49a6-50a4, it reveals a Plato in search of a feature-placing language or language without particulars : though not formulating it himself, Plato provides all necessary material for doing so. Having (...) argued ex negativo and against the exclusivity-thesis regarding the first debate about the receptacle, the paper offers a new piece of evidence for the space interpretation of the receptacle—though not breaking new ground—because my LWOP thesis presupposes the interpretation of the receptacle as space and argues against the material-substrate reading. Throughout the paper, I have consciously operated with a less Aristotle-centered framework than those most often applied, a procedure that does justice to Plato’s different ontology and semantics of the sensible phenomena. My Plato does not pave the way to Aristotle in this passage because he does not wish to do so. (shrink)

The central Platonic concept of the mixture is to be situated in the entire transmission of Methexis: ascending from the level of the participation of the sensible things in the forms to the participation of the forms and finally to the participation of the two Platonic Principles. “Mixture” designates on the one hand the relation between the μέγιστα γένη in the Sophist and on the other hand the one between the Limit and the Unlimited in the Philebus . Thereupon the (...) essence of the Mixture is to be examined and rehabilitated as metaphor, namely as transformation of a sensible image in a philosophical one . Our guiding question will be: W hy can the Mixture be legitimated as a better candidate than the Methexis in the frame of the Sophist? The Mixture is to be regarded as well-founded transformation of Methexis in the context of the equioriginal “greatest kinds” . In our interpretation of the Philebus that restores the disputed unity of this Platonic dialogue, we are about to show how the philosopher Plato “saves” the beautiful phenomena: The fourfold division is to be construed as the place where the beautiful appearances are generated. To them does the philosopher return after his ascent to the σύμφυτον two Platonic Principles. They are no longer degraded as “rolling about in the midregion between being and not-being” , but are rather reevaluated as “procreation” .Der in den späteren platonischen Dialogen zentrale Begriff der Mischung wird zunächst in die ganze Übertragung der Methexis eingeordnet: von der Ebene der Teilhabe des W ahrnehmbaren an der Idee zu der innerideellen Teilhabe aufsteigend und von daher zu der Teilhabe der zwei platonischen Prinzipien. Einerseits wird die Beziehung der μέγιστα γένη untereinander, andererseits diejenige zwischen der Grenze und der U nbegrenztheit im Philebos als Mischung bezeichnet . Daraufhin wird ihr W esen als Metapher behandelt und rehabilitiert, nämlich als Transformation eines sinnlichen Bildes in ein philosophisches . Zur Leitfrage unserer Ausführung wird: W arum kann die im Rahmen des Dialogs Sophistes eingeführte Mischung der größten Gattungen miteinander als ein besserer Kandidat als derjenige der Teilhabe gerechtfertigt werden? Die Mischung wird als eine wohlbegründete Verwandlungsform derTeilhabe in den ideellen Zusammenhängen der gleichursprünglichen größten Gattungen betrachtet . Bei unserer die umstrittene Einheit des Philebos wiederherstellende Interpretation wird aufgezeigt, wie der Philosoph Platon die schönen Phänomene rettet: Die vierfache Einteilung des Ganzen wird als Ort der Genese der schönen Erscheinungen interpretiert. Ihnen wendet sich der Philosoph nach dem Aufstieg zum σύμφυτον der zwei platonischen Prinzipien zu, nicht länger sie als “zwischen dem Sein und dem Nicht-Sein herumschweifend” degradierend , sondern als “Zeugung” würdigend .Pojam miješanja, koji je središnji u kasnijim Platonovim dijalozima, ponajprije se smješta u cjeloviti kontekst transponiranja methexisa: od ravni sudjelovanja osjetilnog u ideji uzlazno k sudjelovanju među idejama te odatle k sudjelovanju dvaju platoničkih principa. S jedne strane se kao miješanje označava međusobni odnos μέγιστα γένη, s druge pak onaj između granice i neograničenosti u Filebu . U tu se svrhu razmatra i rehabilitira bit miješanja kao metafore, naime kao transformacija osjetilne slike u filozofijsku . Glavnim pitanjem našeg izvođenja postaje: zašto se uzajamno miješanje “najviših rodova”, koje se uvodi u okviru dijaloga Sofist, može opravdati kao bolji kandidat od sudjelovanja? Miješanje se razmatra kao dobro utemeljena forma preinake sudjelovanja u odnošenjima jednako izvornih “najviših rodova” . U našoj se interpretaciji, koja nanovo uspostavlja osporavano jedinstvo Fileba, prikazuje kako filozof Platon spašava lijepe fenomene: četvorostruka podjela cjeline interpretira se kao mjesto nastajanja lijepih pojava. Njima se filozof vraća nakon uspona k onom σύμφυτον dvaju platoničkih principa, ne degradirajući ih više kao one koji se “potucaju između bitka i ne-bitka” , već ih cijeni kao “rađanje”. (shrink)

Review on Aristoteles: De Memoria et Reminiscentia, Übersetzt und erläutert von R. A. H King, 158 S., Akademie Verlag, Berlin, 2004.

At the start of his account of hermeneutic experience, Gadamer quotes Heidegger: “Our first, last and constant task is never to allow our fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves.” Heidegger’s “fore-structures” reflect our practical pre-understanding and ongoing engagement with our world or “the things themselves.” Yet, if so, how can we work these fore-structures (...) out in terms of them? Gadamer claims to take his answer to this question from Heidegger and to appeal, like him, to the hermeneutic circle. However, I argue that Gadamer takes the question more seriously than Heidegger does by supplementing recourse to the hermeneutic circle with an appeal to dialogue. I also explore concerns about this supplement. Gadamer conceives of understanding as a dialogue in which we test our fore-meanings against those of others and come to a consensus with others about a subject matter (Sache). Yet, dialogue can just as easily reinforce or even exaggerate our fore-meanings as test them For its part, consensus is as easily to be feared as sought. (shrink)

The explanation versus understanding debate was important to the philosophy of the social sciences from the time of Dilthey and Weber through the work of Popper and Hempel. In recent years, with the development of interpretive approaches in hermeneutics, phenomenology, and language analysis, the problematic has become absolutely central. The broad literature to which it has given rise, while still split along "analytic" versus "continental" lines, shows increasing signs of a reunification in philosophy. G. H. von Wright's important book, Explanation (...) and Understanding, originally published in 1971, is a good example of this trend.In Understanding and Explanation, Karl-Otto Apel takes von Wright's work as a point of departure for a rigorous, penetrating analysis of the issues involved. After reviewing the failure of earlier discussions to resolve these issues, Apel develops his own approach in light of the turn from logico-semantic to pragmatic analysis of language in post-Wittgensteinian philosophy. In doing so, he constructs bridges that reach back to themes and positions of the German tradition of the Geisteswissenschaften, but from strikingly new angles.Karl-Otto Apel holds the chair for social philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. His book is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

Violence against women is a growing health problem, especially when perpetrated in intimate relationships. Despite increasing attention, there is little comparative evidence on the different types of violence involved and there is a paucity of research on sexual femicides. This study examines cases of violence against women in northern Italy, focusing on sexual and non-sexual femicides and comparing them with rape that does not result in femicides. The sample included 500 women who were victims of sexual and non-sexual femicides, and (...) of rape. Results show sexual femicides mostly involved unknown victims or women who were prostitutes. Sexual femicidal offenders used improper weapons to kill their victims, acted in secluded locations, and fled the crime scene; their crime was more likely the result of predatory intentions, with antisociality and sexual deviance being the most significant factors related to this type of femicide. The criminal and violent pattern that characterized sexual femicides in this study shared significant similarities with the pattern of violence involved in rape. Rape victims were in fact mostly unknown, or involved in a brief relationship with their killer. When the victim was known it was more likely that the abuse occurred at home and in front of the woman’s children. Rapists were often under the effect of alcohol or drugs. Non-sexual femicides mainly involved known victims, and they were more often committed in the context of domestic disputes. It was not seldom that the long relationship between the victim and perpetrator was likely to be characterized by contentiousness, suggesting that the woman was often victim of an oppressive climate of emotional tension and domination. Morbid jealousy contributed to aggravating the tone of a controlling relationship. Non-sexual femicides bore more similarities to cases of rape within the pattern of intimate partner violence. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for prevention and intervention. (shrink)

rgen Habermas's response to struggles for recognition on the part of women and minority groups. Although this response expands the focus of liberal political theory from the achievement and constitutional protection of individual rights to the public deliberations and discussions of democratic citizens, the article argues that Habermas pays insufficient attention to the interpretive aspects of democratic deliberation. For Habermas the role of interpretation in feminist struggles for recognition is restricted to the clarification and self-clarification of needs. Where different groups (...) of women understand their needs differently, these differences must be procedurally resolved. In contrast, the article argues that conflicting interpretations are the source of reciprocal processes of education necessary to legitimate policy conclusions. Moreover, it argues that social identities are in general products of interpretation and that conceiving of them in this way allows for fluidity and flexibility in who we take ourselves to be. Key Words: deliberation • democratic discourse • feminism • Habermas • interpretation • Rhode. (shrink)

BackgroundSleep is a strong predictor of quality of life and has been related to cognitive and behavioral functioning. However, research has shown that most autistic people experience sleep problems throughout their life. The most common sleep problems include sleep onset delay, frequent night-time wakings and shorter total sleep time. Despite the importance of sleep on many domains, it is still unclear from first-hand accounts what helps autistic people to sleep. The purpose of this study is to explore together with autistic (...) adolescents their sleep-related practices before bedtime and during the day which contribute to a good night’s sleep.MethodsFifty-four autistic adolescents collaborated with an academic researcher in a novel adapted photo-elicitation methodology, rooted in a Lifeworld framework. The adolescents were invited to collect and analyze their data. The data were also presented in a community knowledge exchange event.ResultsSeveral self-reported practices that facilitate better nocturnal sleep were identified. Those were organized into two thematics: Evening/bedtime factors and Day time factors. These included practices such as personalized sensory and relaxation tools before bed and during night-time, engaging in a range of physical activities during daytime and accommodating personal time to engage with highly preferred and intense focus activities and hobbies. It also included spending time in predictable and fun ways with family members before bedtime.ConclusionThis is the first time that a study uses a novel methodological approach based on personal accounts elicited by photos rooted in a Lifeworld framework to describe personal sleep-related practices before bedtime and during the day to identify a “good night of sleep” in autistic adolescents. The outcomes from the current study showed that sleep facilitating factors are in a direct contrast to the sleep hygiene recommendations. Therefore, it is thus important for the sleep practitioners and healthcare providers to move beyond providing standardized sleep hygiene interventions. A Lifeworld led care model that pays attention to personal experiences, promotes sense of agency, evaluates both autism-specific strengths and struggles could and should complement biomedical approaches.Lay SummaryThis is the first study to examine autistic adolescents’ self-reported sleep habits and factors which facilitate autistic adolescents’ sleep by employing adapted photo-elicitation interviews. This study is innovative in at least three ways. First, it examines the factors that may facilitate a good night’s sleep through personal accounts of autistic adolescents. Second, this is the first sleep study to adopt a collaborative, flexible approach to understanding positive sleep factors in the lives of autistic adolescents. This study employed a personalized approach into collecting, categorizing, coding, and analyzing qualitative data allowing autistic adolescents and the researcher to work together across key stages of data collection and data analysis. Third, we adopted a theoretical framework that allows us to consider autistic adolescents in both agency and vulnerability positions when it comes to their sleep difficulties. Our results highlight that sleep should be treated individually and in relation to the environmental and personal factors that affect each autistic person. Hence, researchers and professionals may benefit from working collaboratively with autistic adolescents with the aim to identify individual strengths and adopt a positive narrative around sleep. Furthermore, it is important to further examine both the daytime and evening factors that may affect bedtime and the quality and quantity of sleep as well as the role of intense focused interests and physical activities that cultivate positive feelings and help autistic people to relax before bedtime. (shrink)

Over the past decades, science education researchers have suggested Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE) teaching interventions for science classes. In this article, we argue that IBSE’s basic principles can be traced back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s work Emile or On Education (1762). First, we will look at IBSE’s rationale. Then we will turn to Emile and outline Rousseau’s educational ideas concerning science education. We will show that Rousseau’s suggested practices for science education are very similar to those of IBSE. Yet despite their (...) vivid similarities, Rousseau seems to pursue epistemic virtues, whilst IBSE aims at epistemic skills. However, nurturing epistemic skills might be seen as the first step for cultivating an epistemically virtuous character. So, embracing Rousseau’s ideal for full character development could further inspire IBSE’s proposals. (shrink)

For many deliberative theorists, the importance of a public exchange of reasons lies in its capacity to improve the quality of democratic decision making. The 1831-1832 debate over abolishing slavery in Virginia in the state’s House of Delegates raises the question of whether it can do so on its own. The bigotry of those opposing the abolition of Virginian slavery was matched only by the prejudice of those advocating for its end. This paper examines James Bohman’s sophisticated defense of deliberative (...) democracy but argues for the value of negative and disclosive experience. (shrink)

Since 2010, I have been organizing David Frisby’s archive. While there are two identical copies of the David Frisby Electronic Archive, in Glasgow and in Athens, each archive holds single hard copies of the original documents. As Tanya Frisby intended, the primary aim of the archive is to invite further explorations of Frisby’s social theory close to, but not necessarily limited to, Simmel studies. In this context, this article introduces and discusses Frisby’s last unpublished writings on streets and suggests that, (...) if placed in the wider context of his work, they suggest various ways of deciphering ‘modern society’. (shrink)

Though Plato's Phaedo does not focus on pleasure, some considerable talk on pleasure takes place in it. Socrates argues for the soul's immortality and, while doing so, hopes to highlight to his companions how important it is to take care of our soul by focussing on the intellect and by neglecting the bodily realm as far as is possible in this life. Doing philosophy, so his argument goes, is something like dying, if we grant that death is the separation of (...) the soul from the body and notice that genuine philosophers wish nothing else than to be detached from the bodily realm. For indulging into bodily pleasures has detrimental consequences on the soul, impeding the search of truth and distorting reality, and so philosophers should undertake to purify themselves from all bodily concerns and gratifications and love the objects of learning and knowledge without deviation and distraction. On the contrary, ordinary people fall for the bodily realm as the only real domain that should therefore be of priority and of their earnest concern. (shrink)