Thomas Cromwell, chief architect of the English Reformation, served as minister of Henry VIII from 1531 to 1540, the period during which more political and religious reform was accomplished than at any other time in Henry's thirty-seven-year reign. This biography_the first in a generation and the only one now in print_looks at his work and achievements during this period, and includes earlier and more critical assessments that view Cromwell as a disciple of Machiavelli.

For students of the poet, Robert Fallon's _Milton in Government_ fills a gap in modern knowledge of his life, the ten years he labored as Secretary for Foreign Languages to the English Republic. For Interregnum historians, the book offers a study of the international affairs of the Republic from a unique perspective, as well as a detailed analysis of the government bureaucracy that conceived and articulated foreign policy during the 1650s. Milton's decade of public service to the English Republic, and (...) the collection of State Papers which are the product of those years, have been either misunderstood or largely ignored by Miltonists, and their influence upon his poetry all but dismissed. Making extensive use of the State Papers Foreign in the Public Record Office, hitherto overlooked by literary scholars, and the Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Fallon offers the first definitive description of the poet's place in government. He finds Milton to be an indefatigable and highly knowledgeable public servant, closely involved in the expression of foreign policy, and responsible for many more documents than have been previously ascribed to him. His State Letters reveal him as a man intimately aware of international events, a consideration which leaves little doubt that his experience in government had a significant influence on his creative imagination. Fallon also provides a reading of Milton's tracts of 1659–1660, tracing the influence of a decade of public service in his political philosophy and questioning historians' conclusions that he was repudiating Cromwell's Protectorate in his appeal to stave off the Restoration. (shrink)

Recent scholarship interprets Leviathan as subtly revealing Thomas Hobbes’s allegiance to Cromwell, the Rump Parliament and the Commonwealth. I, however, argue that Hobbes’s Leviathan intends to smash the religious principles underwriting Cromwell, the Rump and the new regime. I begin by situating Leviathan alongside the popular religious rhetoric favoring Cromwell, the Rump and their allies. I then proceed to reveal how Hobbes’s Leviathan subverts the popular religious opinions justifying their claims to authority. Hobbes’s politically subversive arguments (...) are important because de facto power ultimately rests on the legitimizing public opinions that lead men to consent to obey and to support a particular man or an assembly of men. That is, right makes might, according to Hobbes. By subverting the powerful religious opinions legitimizing Cromwell’s and the Rump’s rise, Hobbes intends Leviathan to disempower Cromwell and the Rump Parliament. (shrink)

Oliver Cromwells historical reputation underwent significant change during the nineteenth century. Writers such as Thomas Carlyle were prominent in this reassessment, creating a Cromwell that found particular support among Nonconformists in the north of England. Projects to memorialize Cromwell included the raising of public statues. This article traces the history of the Manchester statue, the first major outdoor statue of Cromwell to be unveiled in the country. The project originated among Manchester radical Liberal Nonconformists in the (...) early 1860s but was not realized until 1875. It was the gift of Elizabeth Heywood; the sculptor was Matthew Noble. The project, including its intended site in Manchesters new Town Hall, was contentious, exposing political and religious divisions within the community, reinforcing the view that the reassessment of Cromwells place in the making of modern Britain was far from settled. (shrink)

Despite an efflorescence of historical scholarship on the theme of monarchy in nineteenth-century Britain, the views of the great Victorian man of letters Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) in this regard have been explored only in fragmentary and incomplete fashion. The present article aims to offer a comprehensive survey of Carlyle's thought regarding monarchy, arguing that on the whole, Carlyle was strongly and consistently opposed to monarchy on the hereditary principle, claiming that this had become an absurd anachronism in the modern (...) (democratic) world. Instead, Carlyle strongly and consistently promoted a merit-based aristocracy of talent, in which the ‘best’ man would rule, regardless of heredity or social origin. Indeed, in his historical writings, he was quite prepared to endorse regicide as a means to replacing inept hereditary monarchs with low-born men of destiny such as Oliver Cromwell. Although Carlyle refrained from publicly demanding the abolition of the monarchy in contemporary Britain, his private correspondence and conversation were replete with sneers and snide asides regarding Queen Victoria and her predecessors. (shrink)

It has been shown that the thirteenth-century Dominican friar, St Thomas Aquinas, was an important theological influence on John Owen, the seventeenth-century English puritan theologian, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, especially in the areas of the divine being, grace and Chalcedonian Christology. Suzanne McDonald has argued that, while Aquinas is unmistakably a source for Owen's doctrine of the beatific vision, Owen surpassed Aquinas's doctrine in a manner she judges to be correct, theologically speaking, and (...) which exposes the deficiency of Aquinas's account. Owen achieved this particular ‘Reforming’ or rather ‘re-forming’ of Aquinas's doctrine, she argues, by way of a ‘Christological re-orientation of the doctrine’ in terms of what is seen in the beatific vision and how it is seen, that is, its content and means. This article replies to McDonald from a Catholic and Thomist perspective, in response to her suggestion that Owen's account of the beatific vision opens up possibilities for ecumenical dialogue. The article attempts to achieve this first by reassessing the Christological contrasts McDonald draws between Owen and Aquinas in terms of content and means, and then by offering several suggestions as to why one might want to prefer Aquinas's account over Owen's. (shrink)

The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes offers a new interpretation of Thomas Hobbes's response to the English Revolution. By focusing on his religious thought, it debunks the standard view of him as a royalist, and recovers his sympathies with the religious projects of the 1640s and 1650s. This reinterpretation culminates with an exploration of Hobbes's surprising sympathies with Oliver Cromwell and his supporters. By placing Thomas Hobbes within fresh contexts, Professor Collins offers a new angle of vision (...) on the religious significance of the English Revolution itself. (shrink)

Carlyle regarded the Reformation as a seminal event in the history of modern Europe, the starting point of an ongoing stage in human development. Reformation Protestantism gave birth to a more general and pervasive spirit of ‘reformation’ that Carlyle identified with the moral destiny of all individuals and communities. These qualities were epitomized by heroic figures such as Luther and Cromwell but they were also embedded in cultures that responded productively to the ongoing challenge of reformation. Having traced the (...) history of the ethos of reformation through English Puritanism and in the commitment to transformative action or ‘work’ that gave rise to Britains emergence as a leading industrial and imperial power, Carlyle brought this reinvention of the Reformation to bear in his critique of the counter-reforming tendencies in early Victorian society that he saw as posing a profound threat to it. (shrink)

Can a good man do evil things? This paper offers a moral philosophical reading of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the bodies, focusing on Mantel’s fictional portrayal of Thomas Cromwell as a good person, in spite of his growing involvement in the dirty work of Henry VIII. The narrative resists interpretations of Cromwell as someone corrupted by power. It also thwarts attempts to read his deeds as results of a deficient capacity for sympathetic imagination, (...) which has been a focalized moral flaw in contemporary moral philosophical discussions of literature. By thus resisting moralized readings of his character, the novels invite intensified attention to the complex dynamics of character and circumstance. (shrink)

In the place of an introduction to part 5 of the Common Knowledge symposium on forms of quietism, the journal's editor and one of its longtime columnists discuss, in dialogue format, the case of Thomas More. Could he have evaded martyrdom at the hands of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell? One discussant argues that More could not have done so without contemptibly abandoning his principles and surrendering fully to despotism. The other discussant disagrees, suggesting that More had (...) to abandon some of his principles one way or the other—in resisting despotism, however quietly, More did serious harm to his wife and daughter, to the European humanist movement, and to the cause of English Catholics. (shrink)

In 1536 the English Parliament under pressure from Henry VIII and the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, gave its consent for the dissolution of the lesser monasteries and abbeys in the king’s realm, and three years later with the sanction of MPs some of the greater religious houses also suffered the same fate. The principal aim of this paper is to assess the importance of this political decision with a view to examining the progress being made in the field (...) of education in England in the middle of the sixteenth century resultant upon this dissolution. The evaluation of the merits and demerits originating from the suppression of the English monasteries is made in terms of both primary and academic education. The answers to these key questions are preceded by a short analysis of the reputation monasteries and abbeys had acquired by that time. Also on a selective basis, some opinions have been presented here to provide an overall picture of the standing of the monks and nuns and their concomitant activities, as perceived through the eyes of English society; the eminent scholars and humanists in particular. Subsequently, before assessing the consequences resulting from the dissolution of the religious houses in England, some consideration is given to the reasoning and rationale which lay behind both Henry VIII and his Lord Chancellor’s political decisions. (shrink)

Thomas Carlyle, renowned nineteenth-century essayist and social critic, came to be thought of as a secular prophet by many of his readers and as the "undoubted head of English letters" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. _Historical Essays _brings together Carlyle's essays on history and historical subjects in a fully annotated modern edition for the first time. These essays, which were originally collected in _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, _span Carlyle's career from 1830 to 1875 and represent a major facet of his (...) writings. This edition uses all the extant authoritative versions of the essays to create an accurate critical text and includes a mine of lucidly presented information to enhance readers' understanding of Carlyle's densely allusive prose. The collection includes essays on the French Revolution, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, and medieval Scandinavia. It also includes such essential pieces as "On History," "On History Again," "Count Cagliostro," and "The Diamond Necklace." Together the essays show Carlyle positioning himself in relation to the new Romantic historiography but not yet ready to adopt the strictures of modern scientific history. They also exhibit his talent for analyzing the historical significance of seemingly minor events. He describes a plot to steal a diamond necklace in which Marie Antoinette became implicated, a visit of Whig sympathizers to the National Assembly during the French Revolution, and the kidnapping of two fifteenth-century German princes, one of whose descendents was Carlyle’s contemporary Prince Albert. This volume, the third of the eight-volume Strouse Edition of Carlyle’s works, includes a historical introduction and illustrations along with complete textual apparatus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomism in John Owen by Christopher ClevelandSebastian RehnmanThomism in John Owen. By Christopher Cleveland. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. Pp. 173. $90.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-1-4094-5579-0.Renaissance Scholasticism generally falls out of the contemporary philosophical and theological canon, and thus this form of argumentation is, and has for a long time, been a severely neglected area of study. However, a renewed interest in this field is increasingly exposing the philosophical (...) and theological stereotypes of the few earlier studies. Although institutional [End Page 160] philosophy and theology throughout Europe between the Reformation and the Enlightenment continued to identify itself as Scholastic, it is now clear that it was far from homogeneous. One of the diverse currents was the Scholasticism in Evangelical Protestantism. Within the reformed Church, academies aimed explicitly at continuing and contributing to the theological and philosophical tradition of the entire Church. Several studies have in particular suggested continuity between Thomas Aquinas and philosophers and theologians of good standing in the reformed Church. The most recent study is Christopher Cleveland’s Thomism in John Owen.The subject of this study is well chosen. John Owen (1616-83) was an influential pastor, scholar, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, and chaplain of Oliver Cromwell. He received a first-rate education at Oxford and maintained a wide-ranging scholarship throughout his life. His complete works comprise twenty-four volumes in the critical edition, and these are often thorough and systematic. From his tutor and friend Thomas Barlow, Owen seems to have gained a deep and lifelong appreciation of Aquinas, Alvarez, Bañez, and other Scholastics.Cleveland rightly aims at a focused investigation. His purpose is to “expand the inquiry into Reformed Thomism” (17) and “examine the role of Thomism in the theology of John Owen” (2). By “Thomism” he means “Aquinas” and sometimes “Diego Alvarez and Domingo Bañez.” In the first chapter Cleveland outlines the book and surveys some of the secondary literature. In the second chapter he contends that Owen was influenced by Aquinas’s concept of actus purus in arguing divine simplicity, divine immutability, and divine concurrence. In the third and fourth chapters he asserts that Aquinas’s understanding of infused “habits” strengthened Owen’s explanation of justification and sanctification. In the fifth chapter Cleveland proposes that Owen’s account of the hypostatic union is greatly indebted to Aquinas. Strangely the author concludes that Owen’s thought represents “a Western Trinitarian Theology” although he does not treat Owen’s doctrine of the Trinity.This book is a laudable and well-needed attempt to determine the particular influence of Aquinas on Owen. However, Cleveland’s work would benefit from a greater methodological rigor. Let us first consider Cleveland’s criteria for tracing Aquinas’s influence. He suggests that there are “four categories into which Thomistic influence falls.” These are: (1) quotations or paraphrases of “Thomas or a Thomist author,” (2) the development of a subject by means of similar theological concepts, (3) the “use of similar but not identical principles,” and (4) a coincidence of thought because of a common source. The second criterion is said to identify the most common type of influence, and the fourth the rarest (3). Now, that Owen was influenced by Aquinas is not in contest; the question is: how was Owen influenced? And there are limitations to what can be drawn from the application of these categories. The first category is not decisive, since any [End Page 161] author may be quoted or paraphrased for widely various reasons, and some influential authors may not be quoted or paraphrased. The fourth criterion is somewhat irrelevant, since the coincidental rarely reveals steady influence.Cleveland identifies “three major areas of Thomistic influence upon Owen’s theology” (4; similarly 154). These are God as actus purus, infused dispositions of grace, and the hypostatic union. Yet, the book contains no argument for that conclusion. Having formulated four criteria for the assessment of influence in the first chapter, Cleveland surprisingly does not return to them in the remainder of the book. The reader is thus left to wonder whether these three major areas of influence were determined by applying... (shrink)

Sir Henry Vane the younger was highly critical of Oliver Cromwell's ecclesiastical policy. The article explores the idioms in which Vane conducted his attack on Cromwell, and shows how Vane spun a conception of both the politics of the present and the politics of the future out of various fibres of religious discourse. Vane cultivated a theologically based doctrine of liberty of conscience, and thus insisted that there were significant reasons of a religious nature for limiting magisterial power. (...) Thomas Hobbes and Richard Baxter, among others, thought otherwise, and the article presents Vane as a contributor to a robust mid-seventeenth-century debate. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the relationship between epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality, and I attempt to delineate their respective roles in typical instances of theoretical reasoning. My primary concern is with the instrumentalist conception of epistemic rationality: the view that epistemic rationality is simply a species of instrumental rationality, viz. instrumental rationality in the service of one's cognitive or epistemic goals. After sketching the relevance of the instrumentalist conception to debates over naturalism and 'the ethics of belief', I argue (...) that, despite enjoying considerable popularity among both epistemologists and philosophers of science, it is ultimately indefensible. Having thus argued for the distinctness of epistemic and instrumental rationality, I attempt to clarify the role played by each in typical instances of theoretical reasoning. I suggest that being theoretically rational--that is, being proficient with respect to theoretical reasoning--is best construed as a hybrid virtue, inasmuch as it involves manifesting sensitivity to two very different kinds of reasons. (shrink)

Using Bernard Suits’s brilliant analysis (contra Wittgenstein) of playing a game, this paper examines the intrinsic value of game-playing. It argues that two elements in Suits’s analysis make success in games difficult, which is one ground of value, while a third involves choosing a good activity for the property that makes it good, which is a further ground. The paper concludes by arguing that game-playing is the paradigm modern (Marx, Nietzsche) as against classical (Aristotle) value: since its goal is intrinsically (...) trivial, its value is entirely one of process rather than product, journey rather than destination. (shrink)

In Rahul Banerjee and Bikas K. Chakrabarti (eds.), Progress in Brain Research, 168: 215-246. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Electronic offprint available upon request.

In a series of recent papers, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has used findings in social psychology to put pressure on the claim that our moral beliefs can be non-inferentially justified. More specifically, he has suggested that insofar as our moral intuitions are subject to what psychologists call framing effects, this poses a real problem for moral intuitionism. In this paper, we are going to try to add more fuel to the empirical fire that Sinnott-Armstrong has placed under the feet of the intuitionist. (...) Along the way, we first provide an overview of what Sinnott-Armstrong calls the Master Argument against intuitionism. Then we examine some of the literature on framing effects—especially as it pertains to moral philosophy. Finally, we present the results of a new study which create yet another hurdle intuitionists must clear if they want to motivate their view. It appears that in addition to being influenced by framing effects, our moral intuitions are also influenced by an actor–observer bias as well—a bias whereby we hold other people to different moral standards than we would hold ourselves even if we were in the same situation. If we’re right, the burden is on the moral intuitionist to explain why we should have faith in our moral intuitions despite the gathering evidence concerning their seeming unreliability. And by our lights, this is something that simply cannot be done from the armchair. (shrink)

The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy. Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy. The philosophical usefulness of a definition of art has also been debated. -/- Contemporary definitions can be classified with respect to the dimensions of art they emphasize. One distinctively modern, conventionalist, sort of definition focuses on art’s institutional features, emphasizing the way art changes over time, modern works that appear to break radically with all traditional art, the relational properties (...) of artworks that depend on works’ relations to art history, art genres, etc. – more broadly, on the undeniable heterogeneity of the class of artworks. The more traditional, less conventionalist sort of definition defended in contemporary philosophy makes use of a broader, more traditional concept of aesthetic properties that includes more than art-relational ones, and puts more emphasis on art’s pan-cultural and trans-historical characteristics – in sum, on commonalities across the class of artworks. Hybrid definitions aim to do justice to both the traditional aesthetic dimension as well as to the institutional and art-historical dimensions of art, while privileging neither. (shrink)

In his groundbreaking Grundlagen, Frege (1884) pointed out that number words like ‘four’ occur in ordinary language in two quite different ways and that this gives rise to a philosophical puzzle. On the one hand ‘four’ occurs as an adjective, which is to say that it occurs grammatically in sentences in a position that is commonly occupied by adjectives. Frege’s example was (1) Jupiter has four moons, where the occurrence of ‘four’ seems to be just like that of ‘green’ in (...) (2) Jupiter has green moons. On the other hand, ‘four’ occurs as a singular term, which is to say that it occurs in a position that is commonly occupied by paradigmatic cases of singular terms, like proper names: (3) The number of moons of Jupiter is four. Here ‘four’ seems to be just like ‘Wagner’ in (4) The composer of Tannhäuser is Wagner, and both of these statements seem to be identity statements, ones with which we claim that what two singular terms stand for is identical. But that number words can occur both as singular terms and as adjectives is puzzling. Usually adjectives cannot occur in a position occupied by a singular term, and the other way round, without resulting in ungrammaticality and nonsense. To give just one example, it would be ungrammatical to replace ‘four’ with ‘the number of moons of Jupiter’ in (1): (5) *Jupiter has the number of moons of Jupiter moons. This ungrammaticality results even though ‘four’ and ‘the number of moons of Jupiter’ are both apparently singular terms standing for the same object in (3). So, how can it be that number words can occur both as singular terms and as adjectives, while other adjectives cannot occur as singular terms, and other singular terms cannot occur as adjectives? (shrink)

Sartre's moral thinking progressed from an abstract, idealistic ethics of authenticity to a more concrete, realistic, and materialistic morality. Much of Sartre's important unpublished work on ethics - relevant to both his 'first' and his 'second' ethics - has become available to scholars only in the years since his death. Only now has it become possible to give a complete presentation of both the first and the second ethics and to accurately identify their relationship. Sartre's Two Ethics also presents Professor (...) Anderson's original criticisms of Sartre's two ethics, and concludes that the second is a significant advance over the first. (shrink)

This paper describes a theory of accuracy or approximate truth and applies it to problems in the realist interpretation of scientific theories. It argues not only that realism requires approximate truth, but that an adequate theory of approximation also presupposes some elements of a realist interpretation of theories. The paper distinguishes approximate truth from vagueness, probability and verisimilitude, and applies it to problems of confirmation and deduction from inaccurate premises. Basic results are cited, but details appear elsewhere. Objections are surveyed, (...) including arguments by Miller, Laymon, and Laudan. Comparison is made with Niiniluoto's theory of verisimilitude, and the utility of his theory for realism assessed. (shrink)

This article examines some of the main tenets of competition theory in light of the theory of evolution and the concept of an ecological niche. The principle of competitive exclusion and the related assumption that communities exist at competitive equilibrium - fundamental parts of many competition theories and models - may be violated if non-equilibrium conditions exist in natural communities or are incorporated into competition models. Furthermore, these two basic tenets of competition theory are not compatible with the theory of (...) evolution. Variation in ecologically significant environmental factors and non-equilibrium in population numbers should occur in most natural communities, and such changes have important effects on community relations, niche overlap, and the evolution of ecosystems. Ecologists should view competition as a process occurring within a complexdynamic system, and should be wary of theoretical positions built upon simple laboratory experiments or simplistic mathematical models.In considering the relationship between niche overlap and competition, niche overlap should not be taken as a sufficient condition for competition; many factors may prevent or diminish competition between populations with similar resource utilization patterns. The typically opposing forces of intraspecific and interspecific competition need to be simultaneously considered, for it is the balance between them that in large part determines niche boundaries. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that internalistic foundationalist theories of the justification of memory belief are inadequate. Taking a discussion of John Pollock as a starting point, I argue against any theory that requires a memory belief to be based on a phenomenal state in order to be justified. I then consider another version of internalistic foundationalism and claim that it, too, is open to important objections. Finally, I note that both varieties of foundationalism fail to account for the epistemic (...) status of our justified nonoccurrent beliefs, and hence are drastically incomplete. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical and scienti .c discussions of mind developed from a 'proto-concept of mind ',a mythical,tradition- alistic,animistic and quasi-sensory theory about what it means to have a mind. It can be found in many di .erent cultures and has a semantic core corresponding to the folk-phenomenological notion of a 'soul '.It will be argued that this notion originates in accurate and truthful .rst-person reports about the experiential content of a special neurophenomenological state-class called 'out-of-body experiences '.They can be undergone by (...) every human being and seem to possess a culturally invariant cluster of functional and phenomenal core properties similar to the proto-concept of mind. The common causal factor in the emergence and development of the notion of the soul and the proto-concept of mind may consist in a yet to be determined set of properties realized by the human brain, underlying the cluster of phenomenal properties described in the relevant first-person reports. This hypothesis suggests that such a neurofunctional substrate ed human beings at different times, and in widely varying cultural contexts, to postulate the existence of a soul and to begin developing a theory of mind. (shrink)

The paper gives a physicist's view on the framework of branching space-time, 385--434). Branching models are constructed from physical state assignments. The models are then employed to give a formal semantics for the modal operators ``possibly'' and ``necessarily'' and for the counterfactual conditional. The resulting formal language can be used to analyze quantum correlation experiments. As an application sketch, Stapp's premises LOC1 and LOC2 from his purported proof of non-locality, 300--304) are analyzed.

Hass wird in der Arbeit als eine anhaltende affektive Gesinnung verstanden, die auf eine erlebte Kränkung oder Ungerechtigkeit zurückgeht und auf Rache an ihrem Urheber, in extre­men Fällen auf die Vernichtung des Feindes gerichtet ist. Die Dynamik und Radikalität insbesondere des malignen Hasses resultiert, so die These des Autors, aus einer Affektretention, die durch die selbst empfundene Schwäche oder Ohnmacht des Hassenden bedingt ist. Durch diesen Rückstau wird der Hass demnach in der Latenzphase immer weiter genährt, bis er schließlich in (...) akute destruktive Handlungen umschlagen kann. Als charakteristische Struktur des Hasses wird dabei eine Dialektik von Selbststeigerung und Selbstdestruktivität mit fortschreitender Entleerung des Selbst herausgearbeitet. Diese indivi­duelle Dynamik findet sich in oft potenzierter Form im Hass von Gruppen wieder. Der Autor untersucht die Phänomenologie des Hasses und die daraus resultierende Form von Destruktivität anhand literarischer Beispiele, psychischer Störungen und gesellschaftlicher Phänomene. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the possibility of a Quantum Molinism : such a view applies an analogue of the Molinistic account of free will‘s compatibility with God’s foreknowledge to God’s knowledge of (supposedly) indeterministic events at a quantum level. W e ask how (and why) a providential God could care for and know about a world with this kind of indeterminacy. We consider various formulations of such a Quantum Molinism, and after rejecting a number of options arrive at one (...) seemingly coherent formulation. (shrink)

In recent years historians have revisited the creation of the United Nations (UN) system by highlighting the enduring influence of Empire and recognizing the substantial role of cultural and scientific actors in wartime international diplomacy. The British biochemist Joseph Needham, who participated in the creation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), was one of them. Yet, if historians have recognized his role as the leading architect of the sciences at UNESCO, they still fall short of engaging (...) with the Chinese and imperial geography of his involvement with UNESCO. During the Second World War, Needham was stationed in war-torn China. As director of the Sino-British Scientific Cooperation Office, Needham not only organized Sino-British scientific cooperation against the Japanese invasion, but his mission inspired his engagement for a reform of international science and fueled an international campaign that led him to become the director of UNESCO’s Natural Science division after the war. By reconstructing his campaign in context, this article seeks to demonstrate how the imperial and transnational scientific networks of the wartime era fostered the creation of a scientific mandate for UNESCO. It situates Needham’s activism and ideas in the context of the Sino-Japanese war, imperial wartime technocracy, and China’s scientific nationalism. In so doing, it reveals a string of forgotten partners from China and the British Empire. Their conception of a reorganized international science and shared belief in modern science and its ideal of universality shaped Needham’s vision for science at UNESCO, while their activism contributed decisively to the success of his campaign. This inquiry hence participates in recent efforts to challenge the existing Eurocentrism corseting the historiography of the UN and expands the historiography of scientific internationalism beyond Europe and North America. Importantly, it also contributes to uncovering the technocratic ties established between Empire and the UN system from its onset. (shrink)

" En écrivant son Traité de l'Interprétation, Aristote a trempé sa plume à l'encre de son esprit! " L'antique remarque de Cassiodore vaut encore aujourd'hui tant la matière étudiée est complexe et le style ramassé. Aristote démonte les mécanismes du langage philosophique, aux confins de la linguistique et de la métaphysique. Il offre à cette occasion des développements fondateurs sur la formulation de la vérité, les règles de mise en contradiction, les propositions universelles, la contingence des jugements sur le futur, (...) ou encore les redoutables énonciations modales. S'appuyant sur ses prédécesseurs, Thomas d'Aquin en rédige un commentaire hautement structuré, reconnu comme l'un des plus explicites. Demeuré cependant inachevé, il est complété par Thomas de Vio, dit Cajetan, un des premiers grands thomistes et maître logicien. C'est de l'ensemble de ces deux parties de commentaires que nous proposons la traduction ; la seconde pour la première fois en langue française. (shrink)

A number of important philosophical problems are problems in the overlap of logic and ontology. Both logic and ontology are diverse fields within philosophy, and partly because of this there is not one single philosophical problem about the relation between logic and ontology. In this survey article we will first discuss what different philosophical projects are carried out under the headings of "logic" and "ontology" and then we will look at several areas where logic and ontology overlap.

Neurath's proposal for the form of protocol statements explicates the multiple embedding of a singular sentence as specifying different conditions for the acceptance of such a sentence as a bona fide scientific datum. Before theories are accepted or rejected in the light of such evidence, however, a further condition must be met which Neurath did not formalize. The different conditions are discussed and shown to constitute a naturalistic theory of scientific data and a pragmatic theory of theory acceptance.

Hedge funds are targets of mounting ethical criticism. The most salient focuses on their opacity. Hedge funds are structured to block transparency for strategic reasons: that is, they systematically deny information to their own investors and to governments in order to protect their competitive advantage, even though the information they hide holds tremendous significance for the interests of both groups. In this article I will detail the ethical allegations made against hedge funds, showing why their opacity creates intractable conflicts that (...) cannot be resolved through government regulation. Sometimes opacity be regulated away; but with hedge funds I show why it cannot because of “regulatory recalcitrance.” In the end a form of voluntary moral coordination, a form of “microsocial contract” instituted as an industry standard, is required relief. In a word, the solution to hedge fund opacity is ethical. (shrink)

G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica of 1903 is often considered a revolutionary work that set a new agenda for 20 th-century ethics. This historical view is hard to sustain, however. In metaethics Moore's non naturalist position was close to that defended by Henry Sidgwick and other late..

This paper deals with Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox, focussing on the infinite rule-regress as featured in Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. I argue that one of the most salient and popular proposed solutions (championed by John McDowell), which argues that rule-following is grounded in “custom,” “practice” or “form of life, remains unsatisfactory because part of this proposal is the rejection of further “theory” (commonly attributed to Wittgenstein) which seemingly makes it impossible to substantiate the claim of how customs, practices (...) or forms of life ground rule-following. I argue that this conundrum can be solved by introducing Wilhelm Dilthey’s overlooked notion of objective spirit as the objectivated sediment of historical human communality. This proposal allows us to substantiate Wittgenstein’s hints at the connection between rule-following and customs, practices, and forms of life without introducing “problematic theories.” Combining Wittgenstein’s views with Dilthey’s notion of objective spirit results in a solution that is neither skeptical nor straight, but therapeutic. (shrink)