Much of contemporary visual culture can be traced directly to the work of Eadweard Muybridge, photographer and film pioneer. His work is powered by an extreme obsessionality, excess and ordinariness that enabled him to negate all preconceptions and to re-conceptualize the dynamics of corporeal and urban forms. He created a moving-image projector, the Zoopraxiscope, for his sequences of human and animal movement, thus construction the first identifiably cinematic space for his images' projection to spectators--Edited summary from back cover.

Stephen Darwall's The Second-Person Standpoint converges with Emmanuel Levinas's concern about the role of the second-person relationship in ethics. This paper contrasts their methodologies (regressive analysis of presuppositions versus phenomenology) to explain Darwall's narrower view of ethical experience in terms of expressed reactive attitudes. It delineates Darwall's overall justificatory strategy and the centrality of autonomy and reciprocity within it, in contrast to Levinas's emphasis on the experience of responsibility. Asymmetrical responsibility plays a more foundational role as a critical counterpoint (...) to 'mean-spirited' reciprocity than Darwall's laudable distinction between accountability and revenge, and responsibility even founds this distinction. The experience of being summoned to asymmetrical responsibility amplifies the meaning of 'authority', which is a presupposition for Darwall. Finally, asymmetrical responsibility helps develop decentred reasoning, invites risk beyond the boundaries of reciprocity at moments when autonomy appears endangered, reconciles respect and care at the experiential level, and presses to extend the scope of moral obligation. (shrink)

The problem with liberal democracy, according to Barber, is that liberal political dieory and liberal institutions inevitably subvert democratic values. Hence, Barber concludes, if democracy is to have a future, it must sever its connection with liberalism. This, in a nutshell, is die theme of Strong Democracy. Barber is not simply a democrat; he is a communitarian. Like so many critics of liberalism across die political spectrum from Burke to Marx, he regards liberal individualism as a corrosive (...) that dissolves die civic bond, leaving men psychically isolated, politically alienated, and powerless. He labels liberal democracy a “diin dieory” of democracy, because it treats public life as a means to privatistic ends. (shrink)

In his great aria "La calumnia," Don Basillo, the music master of Rossini's Barber of Seville, graphically describes how evil whispers grow, with appropriate watering, into truly grand and injurious calumnies. For the less conniving among us, the same lesson may be read with opposite intent: in adversity, try to contain. The desire to pin evil deeds upon a single soul acting alone reflects this strategy; conspiracy theories have a terrible tendency to ramify like Basillo's whispers until the runaway (...) solution to "whodunit" becomes "everybodydunit." But conspiracies do occur. Even the pros and pols now doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald [202] acted alone; and everybody did do it on the Orient Express. 2.. (shrink)

Creating education systems that promote democratic sustainability has been the concern of political thinkers as diverse as J. S. Mill, Dewey, Benjamin Barber and Derek Bok. The classic dichotomisation of democratic theory between deliberative democrats and Schumpeterian democrats suggests that education in the service of democracy can be constructive—that is, provide a student with the skills necessary to elect her leaders without changing her nature—or reconstructive—that is, fundamentally and radically reshape the student to produce a citizen whose goals are (...) transformed to be congruent with society. Michael Oakeshott, who has written extensively both on political regimes and on the purpose of liberal education, offers a third way to assess the connection between government and education. Despite his own dismissal of civic or political education as fundamentally vocational and thus beyond the boundaries of the liberal arts, this paper provides a potentially surprising Oakeshottian defence of political education within the liberal arts with reference to the importance he places on experience as a pedagogic tool. Thus, Oakeshott's educational philosophy has a certain resonance with the recent calls to locate the relevance of liberal arts within the burgeoning development of experiential civic engagement programmes in American universities. (shrink)

Stephen Barber _Artaud: The Screaming Body_ London: Creation Books, 1999 ISBN 1840680091 126 pp.

Antonin Artaud's novelised biography of the 3rd-century Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is simultaneously his most accessible and his most extreme book. Written in 1933, at the time when Artaud was preparing to stage his legendary Theatre of Cruelty, Heliogabalus is a powerful concoction of sexual excess, self-deification and terminal violence. Translated by Alexis Lykiard and with an introduction by Stephen Barber.

l i ver Cromwell delivered history's most famous rebuke to the heroworshiping that irons all subtlety into flawless cardboard: Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at al l ; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it. Helena Cronin, in The Ant and the Peacock , displays a raw talent clearly equal (...) to that of our finest portraitists, but has placed herself into a position even worse than Mr. Lely's. Cromwell's painter at least faced the subject himself; Cronin has produced an uncritical gloss upon a false and simplistic view that never was more than a caricature of Darwinian theory. (shrink)

Descartes' Meditations is one of the most thoroughly analyzed of all philosophical texts. Nevertheless, central issues in Descartes' thought remain unresolved, particularly the problem of the Cartesian Circle. Most attempts to deal with that problem have weakened the force of Descartes' own doubts or weakened the goals he was seeking. In this book, Stephen I. Wagner gives Descartes' doubts their strongest force and shows how he overcomes those doubts, establishing with metaphysical certainty the existence of a non-deceiving God and (...) the truth of his clear and distinct perceptions. Wagner's innovative and thorough reading of the text clarifies a wide range of other issues that have been left unclear by previous commentaries, including the nature of the cogito discovery and the relationship between Descartes' proofs of God's existence. His book will be of great interest to scholars and upper-level students of Descartes, early modern philosophy and theology. (shrink)

Introduction [Nancy L. Rosenblum] I. Varieties of Liberalism Today 1. The Liberalism of Fear [Judith N. Shklar] 2. Humanist Liberalism [Susan Moller Okin] 3. Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent [Benjamin R. Barber] II. Education and the Moral Life 4. Undemocratic Education [Amy Gutmann] 5. Civic Education in the Liberal State [William Galston] III. Moral Conflict 6. Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in J. S. Mill’s Thought [Richard Ashcraft] 7. Making Sense of Moral Conflict [Steven Lukes] 8. Liberal Dialogue (...) Versus a Critical Theory of Discursive Legitimation [Seyla Benhabib] IV. Repairing Individualist and Communitarian Failings 9. Cross-Purposes: The Liberal--Communitarian Debate [Charles Taylor] 10. Democratic Individuality and the Meaning of Rights [George Kateb] 11. Pluralism and Self-Defense [Nancy L. Rosenblum] 12. The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought [Stephen Holmes]. (shrink)

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

¿Cómo entiende Jean-Luc Marion la relación entre conocer y amar, especialmente en el contexto histórico que él esboza a partir de la relación entre metafísica y la fenomenología de la donación? Este artículo sugiere que el fenómeno de aferrarse a sabiendas a una falsedad, especialmente como lo analiza San Agustín y lo desarrolla Marion, puede servir como camino para responder a dicha pregunta. La verdad ilumina de un modo que acusa a quien se aferra a una falsedad (veritas redarguens); en (...) el contexto histórico de la metafísica, quien queda así expuesto por la luz es el yo “demiúrgico”, cuyas pretensiones trascendentales divinas incluyen intenciones eróticas tan fuertes como las que se encuentran en el pensamiento pre- y post-metafísico. El análisis del fenómeno del apego al error sugiere que la estructura de la confessio agustiniana es intrínseca a cualquier compromiso filosófico con la verdad. (shrink)

This paper investigates scalar implicatures and downward entailment in child English. In previous experimental work we have shown that adults’ computation of scalar implicatures is sensitive to entailment relations. For instance, when the disjunction operator or occurs in positive contexts, an implicature of exclusivity arises. By contrast when the disjunction operator occurs within the scope of a downward entailing linguistic expression, no implicature of exclusivity is computed. Investigations on children’s computation of scalar implicatures in the same contexts have led to (...) a slightly different picture. In particular it has proven difficult to demonstrate that children compute scalar implicatures (in non- downward entailing contexts) using the Truth Value Judgment task, a technique that has been used successfully in showing children’s sensitivity to other semantic phenomena. Adopting a different experimental technique called the Felicity Judgment task, however, we demonstrated children’s knowledge of the prerequisites to the computation of scalar implicatures (Chierchia, Crain, Guasti, Gualmini and Meroni, 2001). (shrink)

"In this engaging study Professor Clark sets out to show that there are good philosophical reasons for theism, and Christian theism in particular. He travels the breadth of our intellectual engagement with the world, from ethics to scientific knowledge, and his journey is vigorously argued, fresh, lively and readable. He explores the assumptions which underpin our philosophical and everyday thinking alike, examines the construction of the arguments used to support them, and tests the sturdiness and the makeup of their props (...) and foundations." --Cover. (shrink)

Drawing on Protestant scholasticism, Puritan "precisionism," and virtue ethics, "Virtue Reformed" offers a comprehensive rereading of the ethical position of ...

Drawing on modern physics and ancient metaphysics, Stephen H. Webb constructs a philosophy of Christian materialism based on the unity of matter and spirit in the incarnation.

Lately I've been giving a great deal of thought to the nature of human (and other organic) abilities. In part, this is connected to my recent research into multiple personality and the need to explain, not only the partitioning of abilities and skills among alternate personalities, but also the enhanced levels of functioning that some of them exhibit (and for that matter, the exceptional performances of "nonmultiples" in hypnotic and other sorts of dissociative states). My interest in this topic is (...) also connected to my ongoing study of savants and prodigies, who apparently have much to teach us about the limits (and perhaps also the latency) of human abilities. At bottom, I suppose, it connects with my general and longstanding concern with problems of psychological explanation, particularly in light of the gross inadequacies of trendy computational theories of the mind. (shrink)

teach a course at Harvard with philosopher Robert Nozick and lawyer Alan Dershowitz. We take major issues engaged by each of our professions—from abortion to racism to right-to-die—and we try to explore and integrate our various approaches. We raise many questions and reach no solutions.

The core thesis of this essay is that “progressive Confucianism” is a clear and viable category, a label for many though not all contemporary Confucians, which succeeds in capturing what is useful about so-called “liberal” Confucianism without suffering from various problems to which I show “liberal Confucianism” falls prey. The essay begins with examples of progressive Confucians being labeled as “liberal” in ways that are misleading. I next turn to the use of “liberal” by influential twentieth-century New Confucians and then (...) look at some contemporary theorists who are often labeled “liberal Confucians.” Overall, for reasons having to do both with content and with rhetoric, I argue that even some Confucians who have been content to be called “liberal Confucians” should resist this label and identify as progressive Confucians instead, although others with “dualcommitments” may still prefer “liberal Confucian” or even “Confucian liberal.” The essay concludes with some further clarification of the senses in which progressive Confucians use the idea of “progress.” . (shrink)

Leslie Stephen was an English biographer, and a writer on philosophy, ethics and literature. He was educated at Eton, King's College, London, and then Trinity College in Cambridge, where he remained as a fellow and a tutor for his entire career. He was also a keen mountaineer, taking part in first ascents of nine peaks in the Alps. He served as the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and in 1871 he became editor of the Cornhill Magazine. (...) During his eleven-year tenure he wrote two successful books on ethics, of which this work, published in 1882, was one. It was widely adopted as a standard textbook on moral philosophy, and became one of the most influential publications on the ideas of evolutionary ethics that had been inspired by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. (shrink)

Karl Barth and the displacement of natural law in contemporary Protestant theology -- Development of the natural-law tradition through the high Middle Ages -- John Calvin and the natural knowledge of God the Creator -- Peter Martyr Vermigli and the natural knowledge of God the Creator -- Natural law in the thought of Johannes Althusius -- Francis Turretin and the natural knowledge of God the Creator.

Leslie Stephen was a writer, philosopher and literary critic whose work was published widely in the nineteenth century. As a young man Stephen was ordained deacon, but he later became agnostic and much of his work reflects his interest in challenging popular religion. This two-volume work, first published in 1876, is no exception: it focuses on the eighteenth-century deist controversy and its effects, as well as the reactions to what Stephen saw as a revolution in thought. Comprehensive (...) and full of detailed analysis, this is an important work in the history of ideas. Volume 1 contains a thorough discussion of the arguments for and against deism, and of the state of theology at the end of the century. Volume 2 focuses on eighteenth-century moral philosophy, political philosophy, literature, and on the literary and religious reactions to the revolution in thought. It also discusses utilitarianism in depth. (shrink)

This was one of SCSS president Stephen M. Krason’s “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns that appeared in Crisismagazine.com and The Wanderer. At a time when there is increased discussion about the need for criminal justice reform, he points to several areas that must be addressed: overcriminalization, vagueness of laws, the decline of mens rea, too much readiness on the part of American police to arrest, excessive incarceration, and prosecutorial abuse.

'Roman England': R.G. Collingwood's Correspondence with Harold Bruff, compiled and introduced by Stephen Leach.

Iowa's Rochester Cemetery is one of the most unusual and biodiverse prairies left in America, boasting more than 400 species of plants--337 of them native to the region--on its thirteen-and-a-half acres. Among them are fifteen massive white oaks that stood watch as the surrounding landscape was converted into farmland after Euro-American settlers arrived in the 1830s. The cemetery is the last resting place of these pioneers and their descendants, down to the present. Graves and wildflowers are scattered across the hills (...) that geologists consider sand dunes; these are held in place by the deep roots of the plants and people. Pioneer cemeteries have been recognized as important prairie remnants and seed banks ever since Aldo Leopold, another Iowa native, called attention to them in his landmark essays of the 1940s, as he developed the new field of ecological restoration. At Rochester Cemetery, the drama of the prairie's survival continues to this day, in a controversy that flares up as reliably as spring's shooting stars. To botanists across the country, this place is a pilgrimage site. To local residents, it is either a source of pride or a shameful weed lot. To the photographer and writer Stephen Longmire, it is a place where the stories of the rural Midwest are written on the land--a long exposure, extending back to the days when Meskwaki Indians camped nearby and wildfire held back the forest. In the creative tension between people and place, Rochester's prairie holds its native ground. Historic cemetery plantings grow wild among the native wildflowers, and bright plastic flowers decorate modern graves. In compelling photographs and prose, Longmire shows this patch of original Iowa to be a living record of all the land's uses since its settlement. (shrink)

At the age of eighty-four, Thomas Hobbes wrote an autobiography in Latin elegaics. Unsurprisingly, it was not as widely read as his two great philosophical works, Leviathan and Behemoth, in which he laid out a set of sociopolitical theories that enraged many of the philosophers and moralists of Europe. In this comprehensive biography, first published in 1904, Sir Leslie Stephen charts the character and changes of Hobbes' thinking, from the scholasticism of his early Oxford education, to his later devotion (...) to geometry and deductive science. With an emphasis on personal influences, Stephen sets Hobbes and his work in the historical context of Hobbes' often difficult patrons, the Civil War, and the Restoration, providing an insight into the life of the eminent philosopher and into the tenets of early twentieth-century biographical writing. An interesting text for students of both philosophy and English literature. (shrink)

Experimental natural philosophy was a mid-seventeenth-century development in which physical enquiry proceeded by connecting phenomena in an experimentally guided fashion, as opposed to attempting to account for them in terms of some underlying micro-corpuscular structure. The approach proved fruitful in two areas: Boyle’s experiments on the air pump and Newton’s experiments on the prism. This chapter argues that Lockean empiricism, which was subsequently taken to embody the principles behind Newtonianism, was an outcome of these developments and that it was worked (...) into an epistemological doctrine only when Locke encountered Malebranche’s vindication of the sole legitimacy of micro-corpuscularian explanation. The chapter reveals a form of empiricism—empiricism as a successor to, and refinement of, seventeenth-century experimental natural philosophy—which is intimately tied up with natural-philosophical practice, and is quite distinct from the speculative epistemology to which it is reduced in the rationalism and empiricism debates. (shrink)

First published in 1918, this volume was partly based on lectures delivered by Dorothea Jane Stephen at and near Bangalore and was intended to illustrate the considerable influence exercised by the early literature of India on later Indian philosophy and culture. Examining themes of divinity and religion together with morality and human nature, the essays in this book combine to offer a fitting introduction to the importance and far-reaching effects of early Indian thought.