The Tao of Roark: Variations on a Theme from Ayn Rand, by Peter Saint-Andre, is a guide to personal development. He begins with the theme of youthful discovery in The Fountainhead and its protagonist, Howard Roark, progressing through forty-eight “variations,” familiar to close readers of Rand's novel: principles, virtues, and evaluations, which begin with reason and the integration of emotions. This is the intellectual and emotional journey of the author, shared, to inspire the reader.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Sexual Ethics: A Theological Introduction by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler, and: Making Love Just: Sexual Ethics for Perplexing Times by Marvin M. EllisonDarryl W. StephensReview of Sexual Ethics: A Theological Introduction TODD A. SALZMAN and MICHAEL G. LAWLER Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012. 280 pp. $26.95Review of Making Love Just: Sexual Ethics for Perplexing Times MARVIN M. ELLISON Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012. (...) 176 pp. $18.00Intended for “the general educated Catholic population” (xiii), Sexual Ethics: A Theological Introduction (SE) is a masterfully abridged version of the authors’ award-winning 2008 book, The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology (TSP). Nearly all of the text of Sexual Ethics is common to both volumes, much of it edited for a broader audience. Omitted in Sexual Ethics are about seventy pages presenting contemporary debates between the methods and anthropologies of traditionalists and revisionists (most of TSP chapters 2 and 3). New in Sexual Ethics are “Questions for Reflection” at the end of each chapter and a brief discussion of “conscience” (xxv–xxvi).In both books, the authors offer a “historically conscious and revisionist approach” to Catholic sexual morality (SE, 221). Beginning with “two magisterial principles” in “Catholic moral, sexual tradition”—procreation and the confines of marriage—the authors note different theological bases for these principles—nature and reason, respectively (xiii–xiv)—and propose a significant shift in focus from the “‘nature’ of the act” to “the meaning of the act for the human person” (xvii). Chapter 1, which could stand on its own, provides a helpful, “brief history” of “sexual morality in the Catholic tradition,” undergirding the authors’ historical (in contrast with a classicist) approach. In chapter 2, the theological crux of the argument, Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler proceed to explore methodological developments and tensions in magisterial teaching, choosing “the principle of the human person adequately considered,” theologically articulated in Gaudium et spes, as the basis for their proposal of a “unitive sexual anthropology” (47). This holistic anthropological approach to the sexual person attempts to shift the magisterium’s “focus on acts and absolute norms” in sexual ethics to a method more akin to its social ethics, focusing on general principles, interrelationships, and the common good (59). Central to their [End Page 226] argument is a reworking of the concept of complementarity purged “of every suggestion of either gender or sexual inequality” (63). The remainder of the book illustrates “how these principles apply in real, concrete, particular human relationships” (87).To critique the argument of Sexual Ethics necessarily implicates The Sexual Person, which is beyond the scope of this review. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to ask whether the same argument presented as a “renewed Catholic anthropology” (in TSP) for professional theologians functions equally well as a “theological introduction” to sexual ethics (in SE) for a lay (nonscholarly) audience. Chapter 6, “Artificial Reproductive Technologies,” is the most successful in this regard, exploring a range of ethical concerns (e.g., means versus ends, burden of proof, presumptions against, appropriate cautions, and consideration of the common good) to arrive at a qualified expansion of magisterial teaching, which becomes a guide to personal discernment. Other topics in Sexual Ethics include marriage and contraception (chapter 3), cohabitation and premarital sexuality (chapter 4), and homosexuality (chapter 5).Overall, Sexual Ethics functions better as an introduction to Catholic sexual teaching and moral anthropology than as an introduction to sexual ethics. For example, reworking the concept of “complementarity”—despite the authors’ inclination “to abandon both the word and the idea” (63)—may be necessary for reconstructing Catholic tradition, but is not necessarily the most helpful starting point for sexual ethics. Sexual Ethics will be challenging for readers lacking theological training and will be of most interest to those already committed to and invested in magisterial teaching. My recommendation would be to use The Sexual Person as a teacher’s guide when assigning Sexual Ethics. By any measure, these books present a brilliant, careful, and sophisticated scholarly argument that revises Catholic sexual teaching in important and faithful ways.In Making Love Just: Sexual Ethics for Perplexing Times (MLJ), Marvin Ellison provides an accessible, engaging introduction to sexual ethics for... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Cultural Predators The Prize is a Clear Conscience Souvenir Parts, Remembered Wholes Snapshots from the Other Side Still Lives Memories as Reanimation Notes.

This paper chronicles my introduction to and subsequent investigation of the Felix Experimental Group (FEG) and its exhibitions of classical physical mediumship. It’s been nearly a century since investigators have had the opportunity to carefully study standard spiritistic phenomena, including the extruding of ectoplasm, and the FEG is the only current physical mediumistic circle permitting any serious controls. The paper details a progressively stringent, personally supervised series of séances, culminating in some well-controlled experiments with video documentation in a secure and (...) private location belonging to one of the investigators. Regrettably, recent indications of fraud (explored also by Michael Nahm in this issue) have tarnished the case as a whole. However, it remains unclear how extensive the fraud has been. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the arguments both for and against the paranormality of the phenomena displayed under the author’s supervision. (shrink)

Ainslie's account of willpower is conspicuously individualistic. Because other people, social influence, and culture appear only peripherally, it risks overlooking what may be resolve's deeply social roots. We identify a general “outside-in” explanatory strategy suggested by a range of recent research into human cognitive evolution, and suggest how it might illuminate the origins and more social aspects of resolve.

¿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)

Charisma is a concept with a peculiar history. It arose from theological obscurity through social science, from which it passed into popular culture. As a social science concept, its significance derives in large part from the fact that it captures a particular type of leadership. But it fits poorly with other concepts in social science, and is problematic as an explanatory concept. Even Weber himself was torn in his use of the concept between the individual type-concept and a broader use (...) of it to characterize the sacral character of culture and institutions. Which use is fundamental? Neither use seems to be able to be extended to account for the other, and in practice the term serves as a heterogenous residual category. Shils’ argument that the charisma of central institutions was fundamental was an attempt to make sense of the examples of institutional charisma that fell into this residual category, such as the jury, and assimilated charisma to the idea of the holy. But this conflicts with Weber’s idea of the originary or creative character of individual charisma, which by definition cannot derive from preexisting sacral qualities. Weber’s account of individual charisma focuses on success, and this suggests the idea that the power of the charismatic leader arises from the ability to confound and surpass expectations - to be extraordinary. This allows us to reconsider ‘originary’ charisma, and assimilate it both to rational choice and to Steiner’s account of taboo. A leader who produces a change in our risk perceptions by proving our previous perceptions wrong by the success of the leader’s actions is providing a novel rational choice for us: a new option together with new estimates of the risk in a course of action. Weber explained the situation of primitive or magical morality in terms of magical charisma producing taboos that were then rationalized, leading to permanent norms - which relies on the notion of charisma without explaining it. But Steiner goes further, by suggesting that taboo represents the intellectual organization of danger through the act of interdiction. The power to interdict is not based on some other power, but rather the power to organize danger through interdiction is originary. Is there originary charisma today? Or is the commonplace use of the term ‘charisma’ a transformation of the concept into something else? In popular culture, the term refers to role-models who break new ground, and if we consider the ‘dangers’ that they appear to their audiences to overcome, the phenomenon is not so different. Charisma seems to collapse into personal style, but in a world in which the old interdicts have lost their power, style itself becomes a matter of experimental success in the face of social danger. (shrink)

The experience of having to suffer debilitating pain is far too common in the United States, and many patients continue to be inadequately treated by their doctors. Although many physicians freely admit that their pain management practices may have been somewhat lacking, many more express concern that the prescribing of heightened levels of opioid analgesics may result in closer regulatory scrutiny, criminal investigation, or even criminal prosecution.Although several researchers have examined the regulatory environment and the threat of sanction or harm (...) it poses to physicians and patients, few have examined the likelihood of investigation or prosecution stemming from the aggressive use of opioids in physician-directed pain management. Accordingly, in an effort to assess whether the fear of prosecution is realistic and, if so, what factors contribute to its likelihood, we surveyed chief prosecutors in four states about their knowledge, opinions, and attitudes concerning opioids and the prosecution of physicians stemming from the treatment of patients who were either terminally ill or suffering from chronic noncancer pain. (shrink)

To a first approximation, _propositional content_ is whatever _that-clauses_ contribute to what is ascribed in utterances of sentences such as Ralph believes _that Tony Curtis is alive_. Ralph said _that Tony Curtis is alive_. Ralph hopes _that Tony Curtis is alive_. Ralph desires _that Tony Curtis is alive_.

Recently a new question has emerged in the philosophy of religion: not whether God exists, but whether God’s existence is or would be preferable. The existing literature on the subject is sparse. The present essay, in dialogue form, is an attempt to marshal and evaluate arguments on both sides.

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)

SCSS President Stephen M. Krason wrote this letter in response to a review about a book he edited and contributed to in the SCSS’s Catholic Social Thought Book Series, The Crisis of Religious Liberty: Reflections from Law, History, and Catholic Social Thought. The review, which appeared in The Journal of Church and State, was mostly favorable to the book but made erroneous assertions and a false and unmerited conclusion about the sources Krason used in his Afterword in the book. (...) Krason also sent the letter to the editor of the Journal, but they apparently don’t run letters and did not make an exception with this one. Krason also sent a copy of this letter to the other contributors to the book and includes it here out of a sense of the need to have a public record of a response to a published book review that, of course, was publicly disseminated. (shrink)

Few ideas in the history of philosophy have come in for the sustained criticism meted out to Aristotle’s notion of final causation. According to Aristotle and the scholastics, final causes are not just one kind of cause among many, but the very ‘cause of causes’. To appreciate the connection between final causes and efficient causes, it is useful to gather a few reminders of the Aristotelian approach to causation in general. The Aristotelian notion of causation in general has two essential (...) components: a cause is that on which something depends in itself, and a cause is a principle in itself influencing being in another. For the scholastics, the effort to understand the natural order is in large part a matter of identifying these causes in the phenomenon under investigation. For final causes in cases of human agency are, in the last analysis, only ens rationis, namely, beings of reason. (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)

This was one of SCSS President, Stephen M. Krason’s “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns that appear monthly at his blog site and in Crisismagazine.com and The Wanderer. This column tells families and others proposing the “Benedict Option”—i.e., trying to separate as much from the secular culture as possible and trying to build up small Catholic subcultures where their children can be effectively reared in the Faith and family integrity preserved—to be attentive of the threat posed by the (...) current child protective system and the need to seek to reform it. (shrink)

This was one of SCSS President, Stephen M. Krason’s “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns that appear monthly at his blog site and in Crisismagazine.com and The Wanderer. This column speaks about what might be called a new expression of literalism and fundamentalism, especially among liberal Catholics and some in Church leadership, to take certain Scriptural passages and Church teachings and apply them to current situations and public questions without regard to the context of the situations or full (...) attention to nuances or even to the facts present—to in a certain sense absolutize the contingent. Sometimes this is done to promote certain policy agendas and without even considering the full statement of the Church’s teaching, as it is expressed in the social encyclicals and other documents. (shrink)

Characterizing science as a public good, as Steve Fuller notes, is a part of an ideological construal of science, linked to a particular portrayal of science in the postwar era that was designed to provide a rationale for the funding of pure or basic science. The image of science depended on the idea of scientists as autonomous truth-seekers. But the funding system, and other hierarchies, effectively eliminated this autonomy, and bound scientists tightly to a competitive system in which the opportunity (...) to pursue ideas in science depended on peer approval in advance. Funding agencies then turned to assessments of impact. John Ziman had already recognized the effects of these changes in the nature of science, and characterized it as “reliable knowledge” produced on demand from funders. As the competition for funds increased, there were further changes in the nature of science itself toward “reliable enough” knowledge. This made science into a “good”. but a good in the sense of results produced for funders, a transformation that left the original epistemic aims of science behind. (shrink)

Michael Polanyi and Edward Shils shared a great many views, and in their long mutual relationship influenced one another. This memorial note examines the relationship and some of the respects in which Shils presented a Polanyian social theory organized around the notion of tradition.

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.

Underneath the beautiful Sea of Galilee lies a hidden fault-line that runs down from Mount Hermon through the Jordan Valley to the Red Sea, the Arabian peninsula and on to the heart of East Africa. Over thousands of years, earthquakes along this fault-line have devastated countless civilizations.Today there is a human fault-line running through the same land — a fault-line that is largely hidden from view until it erupts in violence. The cause of these volcanic eruptions has to do with (...) the pressure of two peoples, like two tectonic plates, trying to occupy the same land — one the military occupier, the other the occupied. The media present this as a clash between two cultures, Palestinian and Israeli or Oriental and Western. As I hope to show, the convictions of Christian Zionists have made a significant contribution to the Israeli—Palestinian conflict. (shrink)

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Sir Leslie Stephen, the founding editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, and a writer on philosophy, ethics, and literature, was educated at Eton, King's College London and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained as a fellow and a tutor for a number of years. Though a sickly child, he later became a keen and successful mountaineer, taking part in first ascents of nine peaks in the Alps. In 1871 he became editor of the Cornhill Magazine. During his eleven-year (...) tenure, he wrote two successful books on ethics, including The Science of Ethics in 1892, which was widely adopted as a standard textbook. This two-volume work, which was first published in 1896, brings together the lectures he gave to various ethical societies, mostly in London. In Volume 2, he discusses the ethical issues surrounding a range of topics, including luxury, heredity, crime and punishment, and duty. (shrink)

American universities are increasingly proactive in dealing with conflict of interest problems of their faculty. Changing social norms, publicized scandals, and more have made both university administrators and faculty extra alert to the dangers of faculty infidelity to their roles as teachers and scholars. Personal interests — both financial and non-financial — appear increasingly to pressure faculty to behave inappropriately. Most faculty members resist those pressures. Yet, enough conduct that either is, or appears to be, improper has occurred to prompt (...) the adoption by universities of an ever-more complex regulatory regime. This regime no longer relies primarily upon threats of after-the-fact punishment for gross deviations from professorial norms. Instead, universities have also enacted a wide array of in-advance restrictions. These include required disclosures by faculty members of certain private interests, prohibitions of specific faculty behavior, and specified instances in which faculty members must temporarily withdraw from their professorial roles in light of their private interests. This article draws especially upon the author’s experience at the University of California to illustrate the new system of regulation. (shrink)

The concept of evolution is widely considered to be a foundational building block in atheist thought. Leaders of the New Atheist movement have taken Darwin's work and used it to diminish the authority of religious institutions and belief systems. But they have also embraced it as a metaphor for the gradual replacement of religious faith with secular reason. They have posed as harbingers of human progress, claiming the moral high ground, and rejecting with intolerance any message that challenges the hegemony (...) of science and reason. Religion, according to the New Atheists, should be relegated to the Dark Ages of superstition and senseless violence. Yet Darwin did not see evolution as a linear progression to an improved state of being. The more antagonistic members of the New Atheist movement who embrace this idea are not only employing bad history, but also the kind of rigid, black-and-white thinking they excoriate in their religious opponents. Indeed, Stephen LeDrew argues, militant atheists have more in common with religious fundamentalists than they would care to admit, advancing what LeDrew calls secular fundamentalism. In reaction to fundamentalist Christianity and Islamism, this strain of atheism has become an offshoot of the religion it tries so hard to malign. The Evolution of Atheism outlines the essential political tension at the heart of the atheist movement. The New Atheism, LeDrew shows, is part of a tradition of atheist thought and activism that promotes individualism and scientific authority, which puts it at odds with atheist groups that are motivated by humanistic ethics and social justice. LeDrew draws on public relations campaigns, publications, podcasts, and in-depth interviews to explore the belief systems, internal logics, and self-contradictions of the people who consider themselves to be atheists. He argues that evolving understandings of what atheism means, and how it should be put into action, are threatening to irrevocably fragment the movement. (shrink)

A powerful exploration of the human capacity for renewal, as seen through Shakespeare and Freud In this fresh investigation, Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips explore how the second chance has been an essential feature of the literary imagination and a promise so central to our existence that we try to reproduce it again and again. Innumerable stories, from the Homeric epics to the New Testament, and from Oedipus Rex to Hamlet, explore the realization or failure of second chances--outcomes that (...) depend on accident, acts of will, or fate. Such stories let us repeatedly rehearse the experience of loss and recovery: to know the joy that comes with a renewal of love and pleasure and to face the pain that comes with realizing that some damage can never be undone. Through a series of illuminating readings, the authors show how Shakespeare was the supreme virtuoso of the second chance and Freud was its supreme interpreter. Both Shakespeare and Freud believed that we can narrate our life stories as tales of transformation, of momentous shifts, constrained by time and place but often still possible. Ranging from The Comedy of Errors to The Winter's Tale, and from D. W. Winnicott to Marcel Proust, the authors challenge readers to imagine how, as Phillips writes, "it is the mending that matters.". (shrink)

U.S. citizens have a right to exclude potential immigrants. This right rests in part on the threat immigration poses to change the character of the institutions to which the current citizens have consented and in part on the threat immigrants pose to the citizens' rights to collective property. This right is probably not opposed by a human right to immigrate since such a right cannot be supported by arguments from equality, fairness, legitimate state authority, or libertarianism.