Public debates on reality television often address the display of emotion and immoral conduct. Television scholars have recently proposed that while reality television offers its audience an opportunity to learn valuable lessons, they rarely address the issue of the morality of the genre. In this contribution, we analyze the display of emotion and immoral conduct in the Dutch reality show The Golden Cage. Reality television is viewed as constituting a ‘moral laboratory’. The question guiding our research revolved around the kind (...) of exercise this moral laboratory provides for. A dramaturgical study of the display of actions and emotions as part of participant “projects” was used to answer this question. Results indicate that moral issues and emotions were continuously at stake, and immoral conduct appeared to be coupled with pleasurable emotions. It is concluded that the laboratory of The Golden Cage is at least equally suited for exercising autonomy and identity performance under competitive pressure as it is for the simulation of moral conflicts. (shrink)

In Vencor, Inc. v. National States Insurance Co., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a Medigap insurance provider was only obligated to pay the rates that Medicare would have paid for the same care.Clarence Rollins purchased a Medigap insurance policy from National States Insurance Company to supplement his Medicare coverage. When Rollins became ill and required care beyond that which Medicare would cover, he received his medical treatment from Vencor Hospital-Phoenix. Upon Rollins's death, NSIC paid (...) Vencor $38,760. Vencor claimed that NSIC owed an additional $132,438 because NSIC was not entitled to the lower care rates established by Medicare. NSIC refused to pay Vencor's higher rates. As a result, Vencor sued NSIC for breach of contract.The U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona held, on a motion for summary judgment, that no breach occurred, and that NSIC was obligated to pay only the lower rates established by Mediare. The Ninth Circuit affirmed this decision. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions PARMENIDES THE PROPHET~ The latest word on Parmenides comes from a recent and exhaustive study by Leonardo Tar~n. 1 Among other illuminating and novel interpretations, Tarhn argues that Parmenides was not, after all, guilty of the confusion between the existential and copulative senses of "to be," that he did not identify thinking with Being, and that he had no conception of atemporal reality.~ In these and (...) other respects Tar~n's volume makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Parmenides. One might judge, however, that Tars work is unusually insensitive to the religious element in Parmenides' poem, and in this respect his analysis seems to echo Reinhardt's unfortunate judgment which calls Parmenides "einen Denker, der keinen Wunsch kennt als Erkenntnis, keine Fessel ffihlt als Logik, den Gott und Geffihl gleichgiiltig lassen." s This inadequacy of TarAn's approach to Parmenides is evident in his treatment of the poem in general, and especially the prologue. The prologue to Parmenides' poem has always been a source of debate. After exploring and rejecting the allegorical interpretation of Sextus (the main source for the proem), Tar~n then systematically examines and rejects the modern interpretations which (among others) make it out to be a shamanistic rapture (Diels, Cornford), Orphic apocalypse (Burnet), religious revelation (Jaeger, Bowra), and mystical experience (Verdenius).4 TarAn judges that Parmenides did not intend his journey to be taken as a reality in any sense, largely on the grounds (1) that Parmenides speaks of his journey as a repeated experience. To take seriously the iterative expressions of the prologue (e.g. fr. 1, lines 1, 3, 8) is incompatible with interpretations which construe it to refer to a specific occasion.6 He supports the conclusion that the proem is nothing more than a literary device with the observations (2) that symbolic interpretations are incongruous with the fact that the goddess expounds her doctrine without symbols, and (3) that the appeal is to Logos, the rational, critical faculty; (4) that the goddess remains anonymous shows that she stands for no religious figure at all ("the 'revelation' is the truth discovered by Parmenides himself"); and (5) that Parmenides could hardly expect us to take seriously the reality of the goddess and other elements in the proem, the reality of which would be entirely incompatible with the thesis of the poem, viz. that reality is One and that all multiplicity and distinction is unreal. ~ z Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton, 1965). See my review of this work in The Classical Journal, LXII (1967),232ff. aParmenides und die Geschiehtc der griechischen Philosophic (Bonn, 1916),p. 256. 4TarGn,p. 17ft.Guthrie believes that Parmenides recognized an affinity between his search for truth, and his religious activity and mystical experience, and that he reflected this in his mystical-allegorical prologue (History of Greek Philosophy [Cambridge, 1965],II, 13). Guthrie was not, apparently, aware of Ta~n's work when he wrote his second volume; and on the matter of the prologue he favors the work of Mansfeld (Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschlichc Welt [Assen, 1964],chap. IV), and Bowra ("The Proem of Parmenides," Classical Philology, XXXII [1987],97ff). Tar~n, p. 30. * P. 30f. [67] 68 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY It is probably true that interpretations which find all sorts of religious elements in the proem (and the poem as a whole) go too far. On the other hand, Tar~n gives the impression that Parmenides was nothing more than a pedantic academician, and in this respect he tends to sin in the opposite direction. First, the possible religious significance of the prologue does not depend on its being taken to refer to a literal experience; but even if it did, it need not refer to a specific event; and even if that were so, it is a little forced to exclude a specific event in view of the iterative expressions which may be no more than a function of poetic style. As for his second charge, Tar~n seems unaware that the main part of the poem hardly lends itself to symbolic expression, and afortiori the prologue, with its symbolism, sets the religious mood for... (shrink)

This Element introduces the notion of curatorial composing to account for certain musical practices that emerged from the 1960s as the founding concepts of music as an art - instituted in the modern era - were systematically dismantled. It raises the key question of how musical value and authority might be produced without recourse to an external principle, origin, transcendental framework, or other foundation. It argues that these practices do not dismiss the issue of value or simply relativise it but (...) shift the paradigm to a curatorial concern for composing public encounters and staging events. The Element shows that Lydia Goehr's elaboration of the work-concept provides a framework that was transformed by John Cage in his work from 0'00" (1962) onwards. The Element then introduces Heiner Goebbels' practice and focus on his role as Artistic Director of the Ruhrtriennale (2012-14), which it argues was an extension of his curatorial composing. (shrink)

This volume, originally published in 1987, is a collection of seven previously published essays, here slightly modified. Six of these were previously published in various journals over the years 1971-1984 and one was presented at a Kierkegaard conference at St. Olaf college in 1985.

It is unknown to what extent medical researchers generalize study findings beyond their samples when their sample size, sample diversity, or knowledge of conditions that support external validity do not warrant it. It is also unknown to what extent medical researchers describe their results with precise quantifications or unquantified generalizations, i.e., generics, that can obscure variations between individuals. We therefore systematically reviewed all prospective studies (n = 533) published in the top four highest ranking medical journals, Lancet, New England Journal (...) of Medicine (NEJM), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), from January 2022 to May 2023. We additionally reviewed all NEJM Journal Watch clinical research summaries (n = 143) published during the same time. Of all research articles reporting prospective studies, 52.5% included generalizations beyond specific national study populations, with the numbers of articles with generics varying significantly between journals (JAMA = 12%; Lancet = 77%) (p < 0.001, V = 0.48). There was no evidence that articles containing broader generalizations or generics were correlated with larger or more nationally diverse samples. Moreover, only 10.2% of articles with generalizations beyond specific national populations reported external validity strengthening factors that could potentially support such extrapolations. There was no evidence that original research articles and NEJM Journal Watch summaries intended for practitioners differed in their use of broad generalizations, including generics. Finally, from the journal with the highest citation impact, articles containing broader conclusions were correlated with more citations. Since there was no evidence that studies with generalizations beyond specific national study populations or with generics were associated with larger, more nationally diverse samples, or with reports of population similarity that may permit extensions of conclusions, our findings suggest that the generalizations in many articles were insufficiently supported. Caution against overly broad generalizations in medical research is warranted. (shrink)

Four men in a cell in Rebibbia prison, Rome, awaiting trial on serious charges of subversion. One of them, the political thinker Antonio Negri, spends his days writing. Among his writings are twenty letters addressed to a young friend in France letters in which Negri reflects on his own personal development as a philosopher, theorist and political activist and analyses the events, activities and movements in which he has been involved. The letters recount an existential journey that links a rigorous (...) philosophical education with a powerful political passion, set against the historical backdrop of postwar Italy. Crucially, Negri recalls the pivotal moment in 1978 when the former prime minister of Italy, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades, and how the institutions then pinned that killing onto him and his associates. Published here for the first time, these letters offer a unique and invaluable insight into the factors that shaped the thinking of one of the most influential political theorists of our time and they document Negri’s role in the development of political movements like Autonomia. They are a vivid testimony to one man’s journey through the political upheavals and intellectual traditions of the late 20th century, in the course of which he produced a body of work that has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on radical thought and politics around the world. (shrink)

This is a fun, chatty little book that also manages to say, comprehensibly, much that is profound about technology. This trifecta is an embarrassment to those of us phlegmatic of mind and turgid of prose, but more about that presently. First, the book.For any kid who ever doodled his way through junior high school American history—and therefore for most of our countrymen—the “victory” of the Union ironclad Monitor over the CSS Virginia preserved the Union blockade, assured Northern victory in the (...) Civil War, and signaled both a technological revolution in naval warfare and the advent of American technological preeminence. As David Mindell shows, however, none of the above. Moreover, these historical myths resulted not from fond recollections of a remote, more heroic time and place but, rather, from the carefully orchestrated real‐time machinations of interested historical actors: designers and allied contractors and politicians , navy bureaucrats and officers, cabinet‐level officials, newspaper propagandists, and earnest intellectuals, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville.The Monitor barely made it to her famous pas de deux with the Virginia in Hampton Roads, and while she achieved tactical stalemate, Virginia, by her continued existence, strategically checkmated the Monitor, the Union Navy, and the Army of the Potomac in the Peninsula Campaign. Even after the Virginia was scuttled by the retreating Confederates, Monitor continued to swelter in futility, anchored for most of the summer of 1862 up the James River, just short of Richmond. But by then she was a sacred icon: in the telling phrase of the major source for this book, the ship's paymaster, Lt. William Keeler, she was “an iron ship in a glass case,” too valuable to Union morale to risk in combat.The six months of idle futility did give Keeler and his compatriots more than ample time for surprisingly deep ruminations on the nature of war and technology: on what classic military virtues such as “heroism” or “courage” or “honor” could possibly mean for those invulnerable behind iron armor; on whether “casualty‐free war” would be morally acceptable either to the now “machine operators” of the Monitor or to her victims; on the irony of life in a ship that was really a submersible, dependent on sealed hatches, often inadequate and unreliable ventilation blowers, and bilge pumps for life support; on the disjuncture between the “public” Monitor and life on the James; presciently, on what death might be like in an iron coffin. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who visited the ship soon after the engagement in Hampton Roads, made perhaps the most chilling observations for those of us fed a steady diet of “smart bombs,” cruise missiles, UACVs , and the happy prospect of war by remote control: “human strife is to be transferred from the heart and personality of man into cunning contrivances of machinery, which by‐and‐by will fight our wars with only the clank and smash of iron, strewing the field with broken engines, but damaging nobody's little finger except by accident” . Not then; probably not yet.Mindell probes and explores these weighty issues with a grace and aplomb that virtually indict more ponderous efforts. Yet therein lies a sublime reflexive paradox: Could this argument, so clearly expressed, have been thought, much less understood, without the twenty‐five years of scholarship comprised by EPOR , SCOT , or actor network theory? Happily, none of the jargon of any of these schools intrudes in this story. But the narrative, so clearly written, and the side comments within the narrative, so cleverly phrased, evoke a whole analytical structure, laboriously, if often murkily, assembled by tedious writers and tendentious theorists. Like the Monitor herself in her glass box, the history told here reflects as much as it reveals. Elegant and understandable historical narrative and theoretically animated inquiry are not, it would seem, mutually exclusive antagonists, but the warp and weft of collective intellectual endeavor. If some see farther or more clearly than others, it may be because, sometimes, they stand on the shoulders of industrious moles. (shrink)

The paper charts both the interpersonal connections between historical anarchist figures and the beat poets as well as the philosophical similarities between them. Almost all the beat poets were anarchists, though their politics was secondary to their attempts to transform consciousness. Among the anarchists, the romantic socialist Gustav Landauer, who was especially popular in post-war American anarchist circles, came closest to the political perspective of the beat poets. Like the beats, Landauer was a poet, a pacifist, an anarchist, a communitarian, (...) a romantic, and a mystic. In northern California, the circle of anarchists surrounding Kenneth Rexroth provided support and inspiration to the early beat movement. In New York, the beats had an affinity with anarchists such as David Thoreau Wieck and the publication "Why?" (later "Resistance"), as well as Dwight Macdonald's "politics" and Holley Cantine's "Retort". (shrink)

Now that there is more distance from Existentialism as a movement in philosophy, after its influence has passed to other forms, this collection of writings by its founding members can help raise the question about just what existentialism is. Langiulli writes an interesting and freer new introduction to this 25-year-old collection. He makes a good case for looking back to the philosophical sources to see again what existentialism had and still has a hold of. He implies that “post-modernism, deconstructionism, antifoundationalism, (...) historicism, multiculturalism, and diversityism,” while stemming from existentialism, also forget what existentialism was onto. (shrink)

There has been an exponential growth in research examining the neurological basis of human cognition and learning. Little is known, however, about the extent to which sports coaches are aware of these advances. Consequently, the aim of the present study was to examine the prevalence of pseudoscientific ideas among British and Irish sports coaches. In total, 545 coaches from the United Kingdom and Ireland completed a measure that included questions about how evidence-based theories of the brain might enhance coaching and (...) learning, how they were exposed to these different theories, and their awareness of neuromyths. Results revealed that the coaches believed that an enhanced understanding of the brain helped with their planning and delivery of sports sessions. Goal-setting was the most frequently used strategy. Interestingly, 41.6% of the coaches agreed with statements that promoted neuromyths. The most prevalent neuromyth was “individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style (e.g., auditory, visual, or kinesthetic)”, which 62% of coaches believed. It is apparent that a relatively large percentage of coaches base aspects of their coaching practice on neuromyths and other pseudoscientific ideas. Strategies for addressing this situation are briefly discussed and include changing the content of coach education programs. (shrink)

This is a greatly expanded version of my article "Anarchism and the Beats," which was published in the book, The Philosophy of the Beats, by the University Press of Kentucky in 2012. It is both an historical and a philosophical analysis of the postwar American counterculture. It charts the historical origins of the postwar American counterculture from the anarchists and romantic poets of the early nineteenth century to a complex network of beat poets and pacifist anarchists in the early decades (...) after World War II. The beat poets understood themselves to be religious prophets of a new form of liberated consciousness. Poetry was both a means to achieve this new form of consciousness and a means to express that consciousness once it was achieved by other means including travel, psychedelic drugs, sex or meditation. The transformation of consciousness sought by the beats was therefore primarily religious in nature, not political or ideological. However, that does not mean that the beats believed that the transformation of consciousness they sought had no political or social implications. On the contrary, the beats were almost all anarchists. It merely means that, for them, political ideology follows consciousness, not the reverse. (shrink)

This book provides an overview of key features of (philosophical) materialism, in historical perspective. It is, thus, a study in the history and philosophy of materialism, with a particular focus on the early modern and Enlightenment periods, leading into the 19th and 20th centuries. For it was in the 18th century that the word was first used by a philosopher (La Mettrie) to refer to himself. Prior to that, 'materialism' was a pejorative term, used for wicked thinkers, as a near-synonym (...) to 'atheist', 'Spinozist' or the delightful 'Hobbist'. The book provides the different forms of materialism, particularly distinguished into claims about the material nature of the world and about the material nature of the mind, and then focus on materialist approaches to body and embodiment, selfhood, ethics, laws of nature, reductionism and determinism, and overall, its relationship to science. For materialism is often understood as a kind of philosophical facilitator of the sciences, and the author want to suggest that is not always the case. Materialism takes on different forms and guises in different historical, ideological and scientific contexts as well, and the author wants to do justice to that diversity. Figures discussed include Lucretius, Hobbes, Gassendi, Spinoza, Toland, Collins, La Mettrie, Diderot, d'Holbach and Priestley; Büchner, Bergson, J.J.C. Smart and D.M. Armstrong. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe idea of a special role of the scientist in modern society was proposed by Max Weber in his lecture ‘Science as a Vocation’. Weber saw the scientific community as an entity possessing th...

In this co-authored article, one contributor presents a case story from an interview with a social worker in Slovenia, while five others offer commentaries on ethical aspects of the case. The story comes from a practitioner working with a pregnant young woman, arranging for adoption following birth. The social worker respected the woman’s request to keep her identity secret, hence not registering her in the institutional records. However, whilst the social worker was on holiday, the baby was born and anonymity (...) was not maintained. Commentaries 1 and 2 evaluate the story through its form: as a narrative with a tempo and plot; and as a performance that creates its narrator as an agent with an ethical identity. Commentary 3 uses a normative moral philosophical framework (virtue ethics), while the final two commentaries take a more grounded approach. Commentary 4 views the social worker as using discretion to act in a space void of rules (there is no provision for anonymous birth), whereas Commentary 5 foregrounds the Slovenian code of ethics as a source of ethical standards unremarked upon by the social worker. The article ends with reflections on the value of exploring multiple perspectives and engaging in dialogue in developing ethical understandings and actions. (shrink)

Der Gedanke, der sich in der modernen Idee der Autonomie verdichtet, ist ein doppelter: Die Figur der Autonomie enthält zugleich eine neue Auffassung von Normativität und eine eigene Konzeption von Freiheit. Dem Gedanken der Autonomie zufolge ist ein Gesetz, das wahrhaft normativ ist, eines, als dessen Urheber wir uns selbst betrachten können; und eine Freiheit, die im vollen Sinne wirklich ist, drückt sich in Gestalt eben solcher selbstgegebener Gesetze aus. Die Idee der Autonomie artikuliert so die Einsicht, dass man Freiheit (...) und Gesetz nicht durch ihre Entgegensetzung bestimmen kann, sondern durcheinander erläutern muss. Wirkliche Freiheit ist nicht Freiheit von Gesetzen, sondern Freiheit in Gesetzen; verbindliche Normen sind nicht das, was Freiheit äußerlich beschränkt, sondern das, was Freiheit innerlich verwirklicht. Die Idee der Autonomie, die für die moderne praktische Philosophie seit Rousseau und Kant grundlegend ist, zielt so darauf, Freiheit und Verbindlichkeit in einem Zuge zu artikulieren: durch die Form selbstgegebener Gesetze. Mit Beiträgen von Robert Brandom, Judith Butler, Thomas Khurana, Christoph Menke, Terry Pinkard und Sebastian Rödl. (shrink)

This is just a brief description of the people involved and activities that occurred during a full-day pre-conference event that included a winery tour, a luncheon, apanel discussion of management systems, and a wine tasting. We completed a facility tour at Gallo’s Frei Ranch Winery that highlighted the environmental performance opportunities that exist for wine production. The rest of the day’s schedule was held at MacMurray Ranch. There was a panel that featured presentations and discussions about Gallo of Sonoma’s sustainability (...) management systems, the Benziger Family Winery’s Biodynamic vineyard practices, and the application of environmental management systems in the wine industry and other industries. (shrink)

Reviews : Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity ; Steven Seidman and David G. Wagner, Postmodernism and Social Theory ; Stephen Crook, Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Wa ters, Postmodernization: Change in Advanced Society ; Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity—Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Post-modern Culture.

This study is aimed to investigate Peter Auriol’s theory of the distinction between being and essence. Late medieval Realists considered being and essence as two constitutive principles of the singular things; the former concerned the actual existence of the thing, the latter its nature or quiddity and was expressed by the definition of the thing. Auriol denies that the distinction between being and essence is a distinction between two ontological elements that taken together give rise to the singular things. Instead, (...) for him this distinction is a distinction between two notions (concrete and abstract) of the same singular thing. These two notions derive from our mind’s two different ways of considering the same thing: through intuitive and abstractive cognitions. The combination in the mind of the two notions gives rise to the epistemological truths expressed by propositions. As a consequence, Auriol elaborates a new version of the theory of meaning and truth of both the existential and essential propositions, such as ‘Rosa est’ and ‘Sortes est homo’ respectively, where the abstract terms of our language do not signify pre-existing essences of things, but only their abstract concepts. Thus, in the first case, our mind derives the notion of the actual existence of a thing (ex-pressed by ‘est’) from its abstract general notion (in our example the notion of rose). In the second, our mind combines two different notions of Socrates linked to the different ways of conceiving (modi concipiendi) him, intuitively and abstractively. Since these notions are not subjective modifications of the mind, but they coincide with the thing itself (the whole reality of Socrates) insofar as it is known, they refer to Socrates and to a state of affairs connected with him. (shrink)

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This essay talks about the concept of ‘metaphysics’ as it was interpreted by Carlini, leading it back to a transcendental perspective of Kantian ascendancy. ITn particular, the work attempts at an in-depth study of the Carlinian conception of transcendental as “something that proves constitutively defined by its ability to make transcendency possible”.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Virgil: Aeneid, Book XII ed. by Richard TarrantVassiliki PanoussiRichard Tarrant, ed. Virgil: Aeneid, Book XII. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. ix + 363 pp. Paperback, $36.99.To say that students of Vergil have long awaited a commentary dedicated to Aeneid 12 would be an understatement. W. Warde Fowler’s 1919 volume, The Death of Turnus: Observations on the Twelfth Book of the Aeneid (Oxford), was the last work to fit (...) this description. This is surely in no small measure due to the extremely difficult nature of the task. How would one begin to fit the amount of copious scholarship spanning a century to a volume of manageable size that will be thorough and useful? With this new commentary, Tarrant meets the challenge with great aplomb, having produced a volume that is balanced, nuanced, learned, and thought-provoking. Tarrant follows the familiar commentary format: a substantial introduction, text (with apparatus criticus), commentary, an interesting appendix, bibliography, a general index, and an index of Latin words. [End Page 291]The author states that the commentary aims “to be accessible to students at the university level and upper classes of schools, but also to contain material of interest to professional classicists” (44). I submit that he succeeds admirably in both goals. For instance, early on in the commentary when he uses literary terms such as “focalization,” he gives a brief description of the meaning of the term (85), while the longer entries are frequently followed by bibliography, which will benefit the student (and the scholar) who wants to research a specific episode or passage further. As a scholar, I was often intrigued by Tarrant’s interpretations and comments and was pleased to be forced to rethink passages I believed I understood well. One such example is the comment on the description of Turnus riding his chariot in line 370, where the plume of his helmet is blown backward while the chariot moves into the wind. Tarrant insightfully interprets the chariot’s movement as “an implied conflict of forces, between the wind that ‘strikes’ (quatit) the plume and the ‘opposing’ (aduerso) chariot,” linking this moment with the storm motif that occupies a prominent place in the poem as a whole.The lengthy introduction lays the groundwork for much of what is to follow in the commentary proper. Tarrant begins with a discussion of the book as the final in the epic and points out a series of thematic and structural analogies with other parts of the Aeneid and especially Book 1. He rightly brings to the foreground many issues that have been the topic of discussion in the most recent scholarship, such as narrative delay (3), the problem of Italian identity (7), the connection between Aeneas’ killing of Turnus and Romulus’ killing of Remus (8), the representation of the conflict as civil war (7), the problem of anger and revenge (18–21), and the depiction of Turnus’ death as a sacrifice (21–22). As one would expect, Tarrant devotes a considerable portion of his introduction to the final scene and presents a balanced and sober discussion of the controversy surrounding Aeneas’ killing of Turnus, arguing for deliberate ambivalence on the part of Vergil. He identifies two perspectives that help interpret the actions of the characters: one that comes from external forces, larger than and beyond the control of the characters, and an internal one that focuses on their emotional forces. Tarrant concludes that these two perspectives “do not cancel each other out, but co-exist,” a manifestation of Vergil’s tragic view of humanity (28–29).Tarrant’s comments on metrical issues are excellent. I plan to assign the portion of his introduction dedicated to Vergil’s meter as required reading for my undergraduates. In addition, throughout the commentary, Tarrant frequently demonstrates the ways in which meter, anaphora, enjambment, etc. contribute to the construction of meaning and makes a strong case for their impact on interpretation. This is an important lesson for today’s student, who gets little exposure to meter, or worse, tends to ignore it altogether. Take, for example, the note on lines 56–59, Amata’s plea to Turnus not to enter the fight. Tarrant... (shrink)

This article examines the role of mainstream political participation in the quest for gender equitable citizenship as a measure of the attainment of democracy. Citizenship stands here as the appropriate measure for the implementation of women's rights as human rights. The article examines citizenship status through the prism of representation in mainstream politics in the context of democratisation in Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to European Union accession negotiations, gender was marginal on the political agenda in most countries in the (...) region. Indeed, what counts as 'political' had been narrowed to denote formal party and legislative politics alone. The contradiction between this definition and the discursive validation of civil society involvement is explored, both within the region and by international donor agencies and supranational governments such as the European Union. Some empirical evidence of the barriers hindering women's access to the public sphere of the polity is presented. Finally, strategies such as the introduction of quotas that are designed to overcome the factors curtailing women's capacity to become active citizens in the public sphere of politics are discussed. (shrink)

Siehe die stark erweiterte Neufassung dieses Beitrags: "Was ist der Mensch? Ein Streifzug durch die philosophische Anthropologie", in: Ulrich Lüke & Georg Souvignier (eds.), Der Mensch – ein Tier. Und sonst? Interdisziplinäre Annäherungen. Freiburg: Herder. pp. 19-44 (2020).

The papers in this volume are updated versions of talks that were presented at the workshop QP structure, Nominalizations, and the role of DP that we organized at Saarland University, Germany, in December 2005. Although the connection between QP structure and definiteness, on the one hand, and nominalizations and definiteness on the other, were long observed in the literature, there has never been an attempt to bring the three together, and our aim at the workshop was to do exactly this: (...) to address recent developments in the area of quantifier phrase structure, nominalizations, and the linking definite determiner D. We invited discussions among the central approaches in syntax, morphology, semantics, and typology, paving the way towards a more comprehensive understanding of how quantification, definiteness and nominalizations are encoded in the grammar. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Josiah Royce: Pragmatist, Ethicist, Philosopher of Religion ed. by Christoph Seibert and Christian PolkeRobin FriedmanJosiah Royce: Pragmatist, Ethicist, Philosopher of Religion Christoph Seibert and Christian Polke, editors. Mohr Siebeck, 2021.In October 2015, the Warburg Haus, Hamburg, held a conference on the American philosopher Josiah Royce that brought together German and American scholars. The papers given at the conference led to this new book, Josiah Royce: Pragmatist, Ethicist, Philosopher (...) of Religion. Edited by the German scholars Christoph Seibert and Christian Polke, the volume includes eleven essays, nine delivered at the 2015 conference, together with additional contributions by Seibert and Polke, the conference organizers.It is valuable to see contemporary German scholars engaging with Royce and to compare their approach with that of American scholars. Americans tend to approach Royce through the tradition of pragmatism in the company of William James, Charles Peirce, and John Dewey, and to minimize the metaphysics in Royce's thought and its idealistic influences. [End Page 116]The book has the goal of developing Royce's thought to show how its insights and concerns may be valuable for contemporary life, not only for scholars of differing philosophical traditions. In their Introduction, Seibert and Polke describe Royce as a "pragmatist of his own kind" (3) and identify three themes in his philosophy. The first is community, which was central to Royce from the beginning and, following his serious study of Peirce, "became the ultimate principle of both his metaphysics and his philosophy of life" (3). The second theme is religion, which, for Royce, involved the "search for the ultimate meaning of his own life, as well as that of his fellows' lives" (3). The third broad theme in Royce is ethics and a lifelong concern with the nature of the examined life. Royce developed his ethical philosophy from an original critique of moral skepticism to the "never-ending task of building communities within and through mankind by way of a critical spirit of true and mutual loyalty" (3). Among these three, the editors consider religion as the most important. They state: "[R]eligion is a very important theme of Royce's philosophy: one may even assume that it is the central subject, which implies that his philosophy may be properly understood only if it is regarded as a philosophy of religion" (8). The centrality of religion is apparent in the essays. Consideration here must be brief.The book's first section, "Bridging Two Continents: Royce between Pragmatism and Idealism," includes three broad-ranging essays that work toward a synthesis between pragmatism and idealism in the thought of Royce. Ludwig Nagl's contribution, "Toward a Global Philosophical Discourse on Religion," discusses Royce's posthumously published "Lectures on Modern Idealism." Nagl uses this work, together with Royce's adaption of Peirce, to help create a bridge between pragmatism and idealism. He further explores Royce's interest in Eastern religion to suggest how Royce's thought might support a broad philosophical study of religion, not restricted to Christianity. Co-editor Seibert's article, "The Ethical Nucleus of Reality," focuses on Royce's epistemology and his ethics, while touching briefly on religion. The essay shows how Royce combined pragmatic and idealistic threads from his earliest writings, with particular attention to his book The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (SM). Royce's SM is also central to the American philosopher Douglas Anderson's essay "What Philosophy Meant to Josiah Royce." In SM, Royce argues that philosophy constitutes a critical reflection on experience that may be practiced by every person, not only by professional philosophers. Anderson, however, also identifies and criticizes a more elitist, professional aspect in Royce's conception of philosophy. For Anderson, Royce's thought had a pragmatist dimension in that philosophy was a "voluntarily chosen attitude toward conducting our lives" (80). Royce's thought also was idealistic [End Page 117] in its recognition of the finite character of human life and in the search for the whole. Anderson writes that, for Royce, "to understand our experiences and to gain some control of our futures, we must see those experiences in their relations to all of what is—no easy task" (80).The book's second section includes... (shrink)

Given how central causality is in ancient as well as in modern philosophical thought, it is surprising that the number of existing studies on the way the topic was theorized on in antiquity are still too few. This is one of the reasons why the present volume is a very welcome addition to the literature on ancient theories of causation. This volume also has the special merit of covering a period in ancient Western thought that, as a whole, has been (...) so far less investigated than others: the Hel... (shrink)

The present research study carries out a contrastive analysis between two corpora of legal opinion columns as special types of genres, with a view to assess their opposing patterns of impersonality—authorial detachment—and attitude—emotion, judgment, appreciation, taking as a point of departure appraisal theory, or the interpretation of Halliday's Systemic-Functional Linguistics by the so-called Sydney School. The long-established perspective is that legal genres are highly impersonal; authoritative instruments representing an intentional exercise of elitist and exclusionary practices. However, the hypothesis embedded in (...) the present study is that some texts, such as news editorials and op-eds, constitute hybrid genres where the writer makes use of all kinds of inducement devices to support his/her theses with effectiveness and credibility, nonetheless retaining one of the basic traits of monogloss legal discourse: impersonality. However, it is hypothesized that this hybridity is to take place in different degrees, in tune with the influence exerted by legal system that constitutes the background of each corpus. To prove such a point, 40 legal op-eds—roughly, a thirty-five-thousand-word corpus in English and Spanish overall—were scrutinized, having been extracted from the specialized legal sections of two national newspapers of undisputed prestige as opinion-formation media. Through a contrastive study, the purpose of the present work was set to describe, explain and assess how lexicogrammar devices unveil interesting differences between the expression of impersonality and attitude in legal opinion columns as genres in either language, hence reflecting different ways in which the law is envisioned in each of the particular legal systems they belong to. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:On Secular Governance: Lutheran Perspectives on Contemporary Legal Issues ed. by Ronald W. Duty and Marie A. FailingerElisabeth Rain KincaidOn Secular Governance: Lutheran Perspectives on Contemporary Legal Issues Edited by Ronald W. Duty and Marie A. Failinger grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2016. 382 pp. $45.00In editing this collection of essays, Ronald Duty and Marie Failinger describe their goal as seeking "to bring more Lutheran voices to the pressing (...) legal issues" in local and global contexts (1). They point out that in discussions between the fields of religion and law to date, "Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, and Reformed perspectives have largely dominated" (1). In bringing Lutheran perspectives to questions of law and religion, this collection begins an important task of retrieving a theological perspective on law that was integral for the formation of modern legal thought but has been largely absent from contemporary discussions of law and religion.The strength of this collection of essays lies in the breadth of contemporary legal questions addressed and in the diversity of perspectives offered. Since, as Duty and Failinger point out, recent Lutheran scholarship has been relatively silent on questions of law and religion, there is a broad field of issues to explore. This collection avoids too narrowly focusing on any one "hot-button" issue of law and religion, such as questions of religious liberty or relationship between church and state, although these questions are addressed. Rather, it benefits from a truly expansive view of contemporary legal issues and includes essays on issues as diverse as immigration reform, family law, fiduciary duties, military chaplaincy, and water rights in the American Southwest. The collection also shows geographical breadth, and looks beyond the contemporary American and European legal arena to consider how theology could affect law in Nigeria and Rwanda. The volume also benefits from a wide range of theoretical approaches, including contributions from both legal scholars and theologians. In [End Page 211] the dialectic that results as theologians consider law and legal scholars consider theology, we see a performative example of the Lutheran concept of two kingdoms, both coexisting under God's domain.The collection would have benefited from a broader use of theological sources to accompany this admirably broad approach to legal issues. Many, although not all, of the essays, draw only on Martin Luther's understanding of Christian engagement with legal authority. This focus on Luther's somewhat limited legal corpus can result in a slightly repetitive theological approach among the essays. However, this narrow focus on Luther indicates a potential next stage for further development of Lutheran engagement with contemporary legal issues. In the closing essay in the book, "How Should Modern Lutherans Try to Shape Secular Law?," Robert Benne references John Witte's work in tracing how Philipp Melanchthon and the Lutheran jurists developed Luther's original theory of law to "build bridges between the two kingdoms" (332). While this book provides a good starting point for bringing Lutheran perspectives to bear on contemporary legal issues, it also indicates the need for future research to excavate the perspectives of Melanchthon and jurists such as Johannes Eisermann and Johann Oldendorp, along with more modern Lutheran scholars of law and religion, such as Helmut Thielicke, who considered the legacy of Lutheran legal theory in the wake of post-Nazi Germany. Both Lutheran theological approaches to law and legal approaches to religion will undoubtedly be enriched if the editors' project continues, resulting in continued excavation of later Lutheran interpretation and reception of theories of law, which will bring Lutheran theology ever closer to the challenges of contemporary legal issues in the modern nation-state.Elisabeth Rain KincaidUniversity of Notre DameCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This volume, edited by Vinod Acharya and Ryan J. Johnson, consists of fourteen chapters concerning Nietzsche’s lifelong fascination with Epicurus. Epicurus was hailed by Nietzsche as the ideal thinker in the middle period of his philosophical career and subsequently accused of being a decadent figure.The volume is divided into four parts. Part 1 is titled “Encounters: Body, Mood, Geography and Aesthetic” and consists of five chapters: Carlotta Santini on Nietzsche’s critique of Epicurus’s writing style; Ryan Johnson on the topic of (...) “gastrosophia,” namely the moral effects of foods according to Nietzsche and Epicurus; Jill Marsden on the kinship between Nietzsche and Epicurus about philosophy and the art of living;... (shrink)

This study aims to explore what motivates Chinese mid-career educational practitioners to pursue Ed. D. A university in South China was selected as a case university, and 18 Ed.D. candidates were recruited to participate in semi-structured interviews. Grounded theory analysis was conducted on the transcripts of the interviewees' information. The findings uncovered four motivational patterns of Ed.D. candidates in China that mutually influence and reinforce one another. A theoretical model was thus constructed in which extrinsic factors moderate intrinsic factors, prepositional (...) factors stimulate post-positional factors, with pre-intrinsic factors act as incentives, pre-extrinsic factors act as preconditions, and post-intrinsic factors and post-extrinsic factors act as internal and external reinforcers, respectively. This study broadens critical understanding of Ed.D. students' motivation and offers several implications that should be of interest to Chinese Ed.D. candidates, educational researchers, universities, and government officials. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Leo Strauss on Plato's Euthyphro ed. Hannes Kerber, and Svetozar Y. MinkovColin David PearsKERBER, Hannes, and Svetozar Y. Minkov, editors. Leo Strauss on Plato's Euthyphro. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023. vii + 231 pp. Cloth, $74.95; paper, $22.95Leo Strauss is an enigmatic figure in the landscape of political philosophy, deeply committed to the restoration of political philosophy as the premiere discipline in academia. He spent his (...) career working to reopen le querelle des anciens et des modernes and the theologico-political problem underlying those tensions. Though, as the editors of this volume point out, Strauss's motivations were not merely historiographic and the evolution of his thought was not without significant, if fruitful, setbacks.Strauss's early thought is defined by his engagement with Maimonides, and especially Philosophy and Law (1935). Without fully abandoning the [End Page 550] traditional interpretation of Maimonides as reconciling Jewish and Aristotelian philosophy, Strauss advances Maimonides as an esoteric thinker with a more complex and nuanced philosophic perspective. Strauss later turned to al-Farabi, who like Maimonides grapples with the complex interrelation of reason, revelation, and the role of philosophy. It was during this era that Strauss, having just fled Nazi Germany in 1938, confirmed his view of esoterism in philosophic writing and jettisoned limited traditional interpretations.However, these phases of Strauss's early development prove short-lived. In 1946, Strauss "suffers" his famous "shipwreck," a profound philosophic crisis, which compelled him "to begin again from the beginning" (Strauss to Löwith, 1946). Al-Farabi had led Strauss back into a study of Plato and to the crisis of reason laid out in Plato's dialogues, the crux of which is the possibility that there may exist permanent limits on what philosophy or science can know about the fundamental nature of things. The implications this has regarding the legitimacy of divine revelation led to the "second sailing" suggested in the Phaedo, and to Strauss's complete reevaluation of the theologico-political problem.The present volume provides a view of Strauss's evolving thought immediately following his "shipwreck" and as he begins to critically elaborate on his view of the relationship between philosophy and religion. Included are Strauss's notebook on Plato's Euthyphro and Crito (1948), a draft of his first lecture on the Euthyphro (1950), notes for his second lecture on the Euthyphro and the text of the lecture itself (1952), as well as marginalia and selections from his copy of Plato's dialogue. Together, these materials make up the several layers surrounding the heart of Strauss's thought on the problems of justice and piety, or "whether the right and necessity of philosophy are completely evident."Reading this volume is an exercise in flipping back and forth between one section and another to the point where one is tempted to break the spine, separate the sections, and lay them out side by side. Strauss's notebook provides his line-by-line interpretation of the Platonic dialogues and forms the basis for both the draft of his first lecture, his notes on the second, and his 1952 lecture itself. Astute readers may already notice in the notebook how Strauss subtly opens up his view of piety, for example by taking seriously Euthyphro's first but formally flawed definition of piety and gradually refusing to position Euthyphro as a fool. Strauss's draft of his first lecture picks up the notebook's themes but still presents a view of piety more in line with the pro-philosopher stance presented early in the notes. By contrast, the 1952 lecture presents a more elegant formulation of Strauss's position, both in words and actions. That is, not only does the second lecture closely follow the notebook's nuanced exegesis, but it is also designed to stimulate the reader's thinking on the problems of justice and piety, rather than resolve these didactically.Strauss appears to have abandoned the approach he took in the first lecture in favor of an approach that echoed Plato's own presentation in the Euthyphro. He closes the 1952 lecture with two especially salient [End Page 551] points. Returning to his early claim... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity by Rob Arner, and: Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace ed. by Paul Alexander, and: Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and US Policy by Eli Sarasan McCarthyBrian D. BerryReview of Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity ROB ARNER Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010. 136 pp. $15.56Review (...) of Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace EDITED BY PAUL ALEXANDER Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. 182 pp. $19.80Review of Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and US Policy ELI SARASAN MCCARTHY Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. 259 pp. $27.00In Consistently Pro-Life, Rob Arner (who teaches at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia) makes the case that Christians should not kill other human beings—regardless of the circumstances. Taking as his point of departure the vigilante killing of abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, in 2009, he argues not only that abortion is always morally impermissible but so also is [End Page 217] the murder of abortion doctors and the use of the death penalty to punish those who murder them. In addition, he turns to the early church fathers to contend that, prior to Constantine, “without exception, the church strongly condemned the taking of human life in any form whatsoever”—thus rejecting abortion and infanticide, the blood sport of the Roman games, suicide, and killing in war (120). This was because the New Testament witness to Jesus and his death on the cross required early Christians to view “the means as just as important, if not more important, than the ends” (xiii).Arner supplements this deontological argument for Christian pacifism, which he learned from John Howard Yoder, with a brief consideration of the virtue of patience cultivated in the early churches, reflecting the influence of Stanley Hauerwas on his thought. This “cardinal virtue” connoting “longsuffering, forbearance, patient endurance”—as found in Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:38–48)—enabled early Christians to practice non-violent resistance “deferring personal revenge in favor of God’s vindicating justice” (98). If Christians were to adopt this same consistently pro-life ethic today, argues Arner, it would “lead to greater healing and peace in our blood-soaked world” (121). The book closes with three appendices—one of which is a chart of terminology that dehumanizes vulnerable victims, including unborn human beings. Unfortunately, the book does not have an index.Christ at the Checkpoint, edited by Paul Alexander (professor of Christian ethics and public policy at the Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University), includes thirteen plenary addresses delivered at a conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict organized by Palestinian Evangelical Christians at Bethlehem Bible College in March 2010. Almost all of the contributors to this volume—including biblical scholars, theologians, ethicists, pastors, activists, and others—criticize the ideology of Christian Zionism and its support of a theology of dispensationalism that, in their view, distorts the scriptures and fosters violence rather than reconciliation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In his own presentation titled “What Can Pentecostals and Charismatics Do for Peace with Justice in Israel and Palestine?,” Alexander—who describes himself as a former “one-sided” Christian Zionist who later discovered the writings of Yoder and Hauerwas—appeals to Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and urges Pentecostals to create church communities “that cultivate persons of character and conviction, who through habits, practices, and action live out the core of our faith” (69). Along with being faithful to the “greater challenges” of love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, he argues that they should publicly declare that Jesus does not want Israel to continue the occupation of Palestine, and they should engage in the “easier tasks” of promoting human rights, lending support to United Nations Resolutions, and working toward a two-state solution (72). “The time has come in human history,” writes Alexander, “for Pentecostals to speak and act prophetically regarding this present injustice … [End Page 218] and to use every nonviolent weapon in our arsenal—stories, preaching... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:An American Scholar Recalls Karl Barth’s Golden Years as a Teacher (1958–1964) by Raymond Kemp Anderson, and: The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth ed. by Richard E. BurnettMatthew R. JantzenAn American Scholar Recalls Karl Barth’s Golden Years as a Teacher (1958–1964) Raymond Kemp Anderson lewiston, ny: edwin mellen press, 2013. 438 pp. $159.95The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth Edited by Richard E. Burnett louisville, ky: westminster john knox (...) press, 2013. 242 pp. $35.00On April 2, 1966, Karl Barth received a letter from Peter Vogelsanger, informing him that Emil Brunner—the recipient of Barth’s thunderous “Nein!” on the subject of natural theology in 1934—was on his deathbed. Two days later, Barth responded and asked Vogelsanger to tell Brunner that “the time when I thought I should say No to him is long since past, and we all live only by the fact that a great and merciful God speaks his gracious Yes to all of us.” The irenic, compassionate, and affirming tone of this letter is typical of the “mature” Barth, whom Raymond Anderson studied under from 1958 to 1964 as a ThD student at the University of Basel. This period of doctoral study is the subject of Anderson’s interesting and eminently readable new book. Anderson enjoyably weaves together several different genres in his reflections on his experience with Barth, smoothly transitioning back and forth between personal memoir, constructive theological argument, and thoughtful interpretation of Barth’s life and writings.Structurally, the book offers a series of recollections and reflections gathered loosely around common themes rather than a tightly knit argument pursued rigorously from beginning to end. In other words, the work is a series of sketches from the artist’s notebook, as opposed to one intricate and detailed portrait focusing on a single subject. [End Page 207]In the first five chapters of the book, Anderson sketches a picture of the elderly Karl Barth who served as his “doktorvater,” drawing material from his student notes and personal memories of the years he spent with Barth in Basel. While Anderson finds continuity between the earlier and later writings of Barth, he suggests that the older Barth began to increasingly unfold the “fuller, grace-centered and human-shaped positive implications” of the earlier writings (viii). In Anderson’s experience, Barth’s early appeal to “Let God be God!” had in those later years “mellowed to an even deeper appeal to let God be himself, human as well, in the most unexpected ways” (11). This mellowing extended beyond Barth’s writing to his personality and demeanor as a teacher and theologian. The Barth whom Anderson knew was humble, understated, and compassionate, a sympathetic listener and a generous interpreter—in short, an “un-dogmatic” dogmatician (139).In the sixth chapter, Anderson shifts gears and reproduces extensive transcriptions of his own notes from several of Barth’s biweekly English-language colloquia on the topics of natural theology, the Old Testament promise, Paul Tillich, and existentialism. Anderson suggests that these notes are particularly valuable because in them one witnesses Barth explaining the bare essentials of his thinking in clear and simple English terms. This is true for large portions of the transcriptions. However, it must be said that there are also portions of these transcriptions that suffer from the lack of clarity that one might expect to find in student notes of discussions conducted in a language with which Barth was not completely comfortable. Nevertheless, these transcriptions provide previously unpublished primary source material from Barth that is worth examining.From chapter 7 until the end of the book, Anderson takes up the task of “sketching key insights and special teachings from the mature Barth that in the years since Barth’s death have shown themselves to carry special significance for our American college classroom, church school, and pulpit” (205). These include, but are not limited to, Barth’s attitude toward America, his emphasis on the priority of grace, his theology of nature (not his natural theology), and his positions on theories of religion, satisfaction theories of the atonement, election, universalism, and even the possibility of extraterrestrial life. This section also includes... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:African Athena: New Agendas ed. by Daniel Orrells, Gurminder K. Bhambra, Tessa RoynonMary R. LefkowitzDaniel Orrells, Gurminder K. Bhambra, and Tessa Roynon, eds., African Athena: New Agendas. Classical Presences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. xiv + 469 pp. 6 black-and-white figs. Cloth, $160.The inspiration for this book derives from a 2008 conference at the University of Warwick that was held in recognition of the twentieth anniversary of the (...) publication of the first volume of Black Athena. African Athena is the title Martin Bernal once said that he “should have used” for his multivolume project, but his publisher “insisted on” using Black because it would “sell” (“Black Athena and the APA,” Arethusa 22 [1989]: 31–32). In his autobiographical afterword to this volume, he admits that the title Black Athena “may well have had the effect” of exposing critics of his books to charges of racism, as indeed it did. So the use of the alternate title for the present volume represents a welcome shift in emphasis from issues of race to issues of culture and nationality, and the reception of Greek and Roman ideas by later writers. Some of the essays in the volume are based on papers given at the Warwick conference; other contributors were specially invited. The chapters in the first part of the book are primarily historiographical in nature, while most of the essays in the second part consider the literary and historical productions of particular authors. The editors provide an introductory overview of each contribution, with a helpful survey of some of the other recent work in this emerging field, and offer some brief general remarks. But it is not [End Page 347] clear why certain important topics (e.g., the works of Jean Terrasson or Cheikh Anta Diop) were not treated in more depth. Of course, no collection can have the coherence of a work by an individual author, and the essays in this volume seem largely independent of one another. If there was any discussion among the authors who presented their papers in the conference, or commentary on them by Bernal himself, few traces of such interchange appears in the published book. Readers are left to make such connections as best they can.There are, however, some commonalities among the papers. Most concentrate on reception, and do not consider the historical issues that have made Black Athena the subject of such heated debate. That does not mean that the editors or most of the authors believe that the debate has been in any way resolved; rather, it appears that they have sought to avoid discussion of the historical issues involved in Bernal’s reconstruction of the ancient past, seeking instead to concentrate on the “ongoing relevance of the issues Bernal raises.” Although works by Bernal’s most outspoken critics are mentioned, there is only occasional reference to what they actually said and no specific discussions of the particular reasons why most scholars of the ancient world believe that Bernal has vastly overstated the degree of Egyptian influence on Greece and misinterpreted such evidence as there is, especially in the case of his proposed new etymologies. Some of the contributors seem sincerely puzzled by the relative lack of attention accorded to Black Athena. Volume III: The Linguistic Evidence (New Brunswick, N.J. 2006). For example, Patrice Rankine in his chapter “Black Apollo?” is impressed by the “patience and meticulous attention to sources” displayed in Bernal’s claim (based on the epithet λυκηγενής) “that European scholars dislodged Apollo from his Egyptian connection” to Sun worship. Rankine believes that it is mainly because of “the context of North American intellectual life” that such proposals failed to persuade classicists and Indo-Europeanists. He does not appear to have supposed that there might be other, far more compelling reasons why linguists have thought that Apollo’s origins might more credibly be traced to Lycia or Anatolia.Rankine and other contributors to the volume call attention to the nationalism and other types of Zeitgeist that have caused European scholars to ignore or downplay the contributions of Egypt and other African cultures. Toby Green observes, “In the long run, the most deep-rooted impact of Black... (shrink)

Reprinted in Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology, Volume 1: Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, Oxford 2009, ed. Michael Rea. A popular argument for the divinity of Jesus goes like this. Jesus claimed to be divine, but if his claim was false, then either he was insane (mad) or lying (bad), both of which are very unlikely; so, he was divine. I present two objections to this argument. The first, the dwindling probabilities objection, contends that even if we make generous probability assignments (...) to the relevant pieces of evidence for Jesus’ divinity, the probability calculus tell us to suspend judgement on the matter. The second, and more telling objection in my opinion, the merely mistaken objection, contends that it is no less plausible to suppose that Jesus was neither mad nor bad but merely mistaken than that he was divine. (shrink)

Sufis mainly focused on the properties of the nafs (soul) and its positive and negative effects on human life. Thus, they tried to correct the nafs with various training methods to eliminate its possible harms to humans. The aim of the present study, where we discuss the approach of Muhammad bin Abd al-Malik ad-Daylami (d. 589/1193), a mystic of the 6th century after hegira, to soul, is to investigate the rise of soul in the spiritual realm based on his manuscripts. (...) In the study, the nature of the soul, its properties and the positions it occupied in the spiritual realm were investigated based on Daylemi's Arabic treatise “Me‘aricü'n-nüfûs”. In the treatise, Daylem, explained the positions of the soul in the spiritual realm with a unique interpretation and approach. Furthermore, the study is centered on Daylemî's views on soul, and the views of theologians, philosophers and other Sufis were included where necessary. Daylemi argued that the soul will rise in the spiritual realm, although struggle and piety had been prioritized. He also declared that this could lead to the grace of the corporeal soul. According to Daylemi, there were basically eight attributes of the soul, and these attributes were not randomly included in the human soul, and each fulfilled a rask for humans to rise in the spiritual realm. However, although these attributes were suitable for development and training in essence, when they are left to their own devices, they could either stand still or lead to corruption. Daylemi argued that the soul was corporeal during the creation of human beings from soil, so it could not be called spiritual, but the nature of the human soul became pleasant because Allah passed this earthly substance through certain stages. Daylemi argued that the soul's experience through these states occured entirely in the spiritual realm and it could not leave the body because the soul gives life to the body and from him dies as soon as the soul leaves the body. Comparing this process to the rays of the sun, Daylemi stated that the soul of a human being shined in different degrees after reaching the stage of contentment, so that the human is enlightened in the realm of the kingdom, stronger than the sun. Because although the sun is in the sky, its rays could reach the ground, and it is possible for its rays to circulate in the spiritual realm even though the soul remains in the body. Daylemi, who believed that inspection had a significant effect on the ascension to the spiritual realm, argued that for enlightenment to become a skill in the servant and to remain, the servant should prioritize inspection at the beginning, otherwise the servant’s light would decrease and fade away. Finally, Daylemi discussed the question of whether it was possible for the corporeal soul to transform into a luminous state, and based on certain verses and hadiths, he argued that it was possible for the corporeal soul to transform into a spiritual light. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Democracy, Culture, Catholicism: Voices from Four Continents eds. by Michael J. Schuck and John Crowley-BuckSteven P. MilliesDemocracy, Culture, Catholicism: Voices from Four Continents Edited by Michael J. Schuck and John Crowley-Buck NEW YORK: FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. 350 pp. $105.00 / $35.00Democracy, Culture, Catholicism is the product of a three-year, international project that started from a less specific inspiration. Originally begun at Loyola University Chicago's Joan and Bill (...) Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage in 2010 as a broad inquiry into the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and politics, the project leaders eventually took a different bearing from events as diverse as the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, and Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in Veritate to focus their project more squarely on democracy. Examining democracy from within the diverse experiences found in Lithuania, Peru, Indonesia, and the United States, the editors [End Page 208] present us with a valuable snapshot of where the Catholic engagement with democracy as a cultural expression finds itself today in a global perspective.Given the amount of material at play, the volume is a monumental achievement, if only for the clarity with which it presents its findings. Some essays are stronger than others. Still, the volume benefits tremendously from an apparent and unusual amount of editorial attention that sequences the essays and interrelates them with useful references to one another in such a way that Democracy, Culture, Catholicism escapes entirely the fate of so many volumes of collected essays. Here, the reader has the sensation of reading one coherent narrative, not twenty-three disparately connected, individual essays. This alone is impressive.The volume possesses other strengths. Reflections emerge throughout that engage the deeper questions of democracy. Who are these people making decisions together? How can we understand the composition of a political community? Too much democratic theory overlooks the complex interweaving of history, memory, and identity that operates like a substrate of our consciousness beneath our reason while we are presuming ourselves to be rational decision makers using democratic procedures. The book's engagement not just with democracy and Catholicism but also with culture is important. These essays treat culture not only in different local expressions but also (and in a way that is deep, serious, and sustained) as a phenomenon of consciousness.The American perspective always lurks in the narrative, threatening to dominate. This is inevitable not only because the project was managed in the United States but also because the polarizing obsessions of the church in the United States about how to acknowledge the norms of modern political arrangements have tended to dominate conversation in the church worldwide. The editors have shrewdly chosen to save the United States for the last part of this volume, allowing other voices to come forward first to claim their own space. This editorial decision, like so many others, improves the volume and keeps the narrative in good balance. Still, some questions linger in this reviewer's mind as the volume concludes.What do we mean by democracy? Throughout, the authors treat this as a question that is largely settled. Democracy is identified with democratic values that the church accepts, and in Schuck's words, what is under way is "a critical conversation with the culture of democracy" (330). Yet procedural democracy cannot be severed from these values. Are democratic norms and values vindicated when majorities choose undemocratic values? A more careful drawing of distinctions between democracy, liberalism, and republicanism would expose the inner conflicts in which Catholicism meets modern political norms.Perhaps most urgently for the subject matter of this book, are the claims of Catholic social teaching and Christian ethics a foundation for the democratic, participatory values of this secular age, as writers like Charles Taylor and David [End Page 209] Walsh have suggested? This also would raise questions about how culturally conditioned we should understand democracy to be, surely an important consideration for this very fine study.Steven P. MilliesCatholic Theological UnionCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)