Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars--many commissioned especially for this volume--are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity. In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato's works. Also included are concise introductions by Cooper and Hutchinson (...) to each translation, meticulous annotation designed to serve both scholar and general reader, and a comprehensive index. This handsome volume offers fine paper and a high-quality Smyth-sewn cloth binding in a sturdy, elegant edition. (shrink)

The key objectives of this book are to demonstrate the applicability of issues in the philosophy of science to problems in psychiatry and to show how the conceptual issues raised by psychiatry should be considered more closely by philosophers of science. These are worthy aims: the philosophy of psychiatry needs to draw more thoughtfully upon contemporary philosophical debates and stimulating interest within the philosophy of science is a good way to do this.Cooper's book succeeds for both of these desiderata. The (...) first five chapters discuss the central issues in the philosophy of psychiatry: whether mental illness is a disease/natural kind and what follows from this. There is a large literature on these questions, some of which …. (shrink)

In 1946, the French constitution made colonial subjects in Africa into citizens. Having been content to rule ‘tribes’ via their ‘chiefs’, at that point it had to track individuals entitled to vote and receive social benefits. The new citizens retained their personal status — regulating marriage, filiation, and inheritance — under Islamic law or local ‘customs’ rather than through the civil code. That posed a dilemma for French officials, for the état-civil did not just record life events, but symbolized the (...) integration of all into a single body of citizens. French officials and legislators — including African representatives — could not agree on whether the multiple status regimes necessitated two états-civils or one. In the end, officials were too torn between their recognition of difference among peoples under French rule and their desire for singularity to put in place a consistent policy of identification, registration, and surveillance. They bequeathed the problem to their successors. (shrink)

Cooper, Austin Review(s) of: The Bloomsbury guide to Christian spirituality, by Richard Woods and Peter Tyler, eds. (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), pp. viii + 422, $65.00.

Although psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism derive from theoretical and philosophical assumptions worlds apart, both experientially-based traditions share at their heart a desire for the understanding, development, and growth of the human experience. Paul Cooper utilizes detailed clinical vignettes to contextualize the implications of Zen Buddhism in the therapeutic setting to demonstrate how its practices and beliefs inform, relate to, and enhance transformative psychoanalytic practice. The basic concepts of Zen, such as the identity of the relative and the absolute and the (...) foundational principles of emptiness and dependent-arising, are given special attention as they relate to the psychoanalytic concepts of the unconscious and its processes, transference and countertransference, formulations of self, and more. In addition, through an analysis of apophasis, a unique style of discourse that serves as a basic structure for mystical languages, he provides insight into the structure of the seemingly irrational Zen koan in order to demonstrate its function as a pedagogical and psychological tool. Though mindful of their differences, Cooper’s intent throughout is to illustrate how the practices of both Zen and psychoanalysis become internalized by the individual who engages in them and can, in turn, inform one another in mutually beneficial ways in an effort to comprehend the ramifications of an individual or collective expanding vision. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a new account of living natural products in Kant’s physical geography. I argue that Kant adopts Buffon’s twofold conception of natural history, which consists of a general theory of nature as a physical nexus of causes and a particular account of living natural products in the setting of the earth. Yet in contrast to Buffon, who placed the two parts of natural history on equal epistemic footing, Kant’s physical geography can be understood as a second, (...) pragmatic level of inquiry that stands under the formal conditions of nature outlined in Universal Natural History. On the higher, formal level, natural history provides a physical account of time and space as an expanding causal sequence. On the lower, pragmatic level, physical geography provides a causal account of particular natural products as developing within a specific place. I argue that this two-tiered account not only clarifies the relation between metaphysics and experience in Kant’s pre-critical philosophy, it also sheds light on the continuity between the method of physical geography and the systematisation of nature presented in the critical philosophy. (shrink)

It is by now something of a cliché of Green discourse that environmental degradation and devastation is grounded in a sharp opposition – the legacy, it is often charged, of Christian metaphysics – between the human and the non-human, between the realms of culture and nature. If one is to understand, let alone endorse, the very general environmentalist ambition to dissolve the dualism of the human and the non-human, it is by questioning rather more tractable and particular dichotomies, like that (...) between art and nature appreciation, where it would seem wise to begin. (shrink)

Copyright ©2010–2015 all rights reserved. Jonathan Bennett [Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. (...) Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type.—All the quotations from Latin writers were given in the original in Latin.—The Lord Somers to whom this work is addressed was the Lord Chancellor of England, the most highly placed official in the legal system.—This work is the first of the five Treatises in Shaftesbury’s Characteristics of men, manners, opinions, and times. (shrink)

Andrew Cooper presents the first systematic study of Kant's account of natural history. Cooper contends that Kant made a decisive contribution to one of the most explosive and understudied revolutions in the history of science: the addition of time to the frame in which explanations are required, sought, and justified in natural science. Through addressing a wide range of Kant's works, Cooper challenges the claim that Kant's theory of science denies a developmental conception of nature and argues instead that it (...) establishes a method by which natural historians can genuinely dispute historical claims and potentially come to consensus. This method, Cooper argues, can be used to expose serious flaws in Kant's own historical reasoning, including the formation and defence of his racist views. The book will be valuable to philosophers seeking to discern both the power and limitations of Kant's theory of science, and to historians of science working on the fractured landscape of eighteenth-century Newtonianism. (shrink)

In both Western and East Asian traditions, large claims have been made about the power of aesthetic experience, whether of art (especially music) or of nature, to foster a sense of transcendence. There are, however, important differences between the traditions and, in consequence, between the characters of these claims. After illustrating these claims, I identify and elaborate on some of their salient aspects. I then argue that East Asian traditions possess greater resources than Western ones for explaining or accommodating these (...) aspects, and hence for substantiating the claims about experience and transcendence. (shrink)

We shall argue that there is adequate moral justification for capital punishment with linkage, that is, with linkage to keeping non-murderers from dying. We present the argument with two aims in mind. The first is to question the conventional wisdom, seldom challenged even by proponents of capital punishment, that being an abolitionist is closely connected to having a civilized respect for human life. This conventional wisdom, we hope to show, is somewhat off the mark. To this end we exhibit structural (...) similarities between so-called lifeboat dilemmas and the public's relationship to a murderer. In a lifeboat dilemma one must choose between saving this life or that, since the lifeboat will not hold both persons. Now if this life were an innocent's and that one a murderer's, a choice to save the latter would not be met with accusations of callousness towards human life. We hope to project everyone's intuitions about this case onto the more baffling case of a society's relationship to the murderers and dying innocents in its midst. (shrink)

The first part of the chapter translates and discusses, section by section, Metaphysics Α 10. The second part rveiews in retrospect Aristotle's intentions in Metaphysics Α as a whole, and the progress of his argument through the 10 chapters of the book. It is Aristotle's intention to search for the first principles and causes of being, by reviewing and examining the opinions of his predecessors on this subject. A distinction must be made between Aristotle's report of his predecessors' opinions and (...) his critical discussion of the difficulties he thinks their views involve; at the end of the book Aristotle reminds us that we need to mull over these difficulties for ourselves: this is the programme set for Book B. (shrink)

The Oxford or Tractarian Movement and later Ritualists and Anglo-Catholics schooled numerous converts in elements of the Catholic faith. Foremost among them was John Henry Cardinal Newman, one of the original founders of the Oxford Movement. Converts numbered in the hundreds and included another cardinal, Henry Edward Manning, the second Archbishop of Westminster, the religious foundress Cornelia Connelly, the priest novelist Robert Hugh Benson and later literary figures such as G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh and Mgr Ronald Knox. American historian, Patrick (...) Allitt, has argued that on both sides of the Atlantic converts dominated Catholic intellectual life between 1840 and 1960. While such 'Tractarian' converts have indeed greatly influenced Catholic life, many 'Tractarians' who never converted have also had a considerable impact on English-speaking Catholicism. C.S. Lewis is an obvious example. But there have been others, including author Charles Williams, poet T.S. Eliot and theologians John Macquarrie and Michael Ramsey. The author Dorothy L. Sayers also deserves to be counted among their number. (shrink)

Within the community of researchers applying type theory to natural language there have been proposals to use contexts from type theory to model information states and to use context extension to model information updates. Examples of this are Ranta (1994) and research conducted in the DenK project (e.g. Ahn, 1995, Ahn and Borghuis, 1998).

For the past two decades, the humanistic disciplines have been dominated by poststructuralist theories and, more recently, a not unrelated curricular philosophy best defined as hardline multiculturalism, much discussed and often misunderstood. When linked together, they form an internal contradiction that is the moral challenge of liberal education today. Traditional political alignments cannot explain current divisions among the humanities professoriate. Ideological quarrels only obscure a deeper moral debate between an ascendant poststructuralism and a resurgent liberal humanism. It is important to (...) reappropriate liberal humanism in an effort to revitalize humanistic inquiry and renew its place in creative public discourse, and check a danger posed by poststructuralism's fascination with power and epistemological relativism which threaten to erase the ethical border between education and indoctrination. (shrink)

Aside from aperçus of Kant, Nietzsche, and of course, Aristotle, metaphor has not, until recently, received its due. The dominant view has been Hobbes': metaphors are an ‘abuse’ of language, less dangerous than ordinary equivocation only because they ‘profess their inconstancy’.

Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2020, Page 207-209.

This paper examines what it is for a condition to be a disease. It falls into two sections. In the first I examine the best existing account of disease (as proposed by Christopher Boorse) and argue that it must be rejected. In the second I outline a more acceptable account of disease. According to this account, by disease we mean a condition that it is a bad thing to have, that is such that we consider the afflicted person to have (...) been unlucky, and that can potentially be medically treated. All three criteria must be fulfilled for a condition to be a disease. The criterion that for a condition to be a disease it must be a bad thing is required to distinguish the biologically different from the diseased. The claim that the sufferer must be unlucky is needed to distinguish diseases from conditions that are unpleasant but normal, for example teething. Finally, the claim that for a condition to be a disease it must be potentially medically treatable is needed to distinguish diseases from other types of misfortune, for example economic problems and legal problems. (shrink)

I Deliberation, Practical Syllogisms , and Intuition. Introduction Aristotle's views on moral reasoning are a difficult and much disputed subject. ...

Classifying Madness (Springer, 2005) concerns philosophical problems with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, more commonly known as the D.S.M. The D.S.M. is published by the American Psychiatric Association and aims to list and describe all mental disorders. The first half of Classifying Madness asks whether the project of constructing a classification of mental disorders that reflects natural distinctions makes sense. Chapters examine the nature of mental illness, and also consider whether mental disorders fall into natural kinds. The (...) second half of the book addresses epistemic worries. Even supposing a natural classification system to be possible in principle, there may be reasons to be suspicious of the categories included in the D.S.M. I examine the extent to which the D.S.M. depends on psychiatric theory, and look at how it has been shaped by social and financial factors. I aim to be critical of the D.S.M. without being antagonistic towards it. Ultimately, however, I am forced to conclude that although the D.S.M. is of immense practical importance, it is unlikely to come to reflect the natural structure of mental disorders. (shrink)

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