The aim of this paper is to clarify the distinctive and the shared features of the three phenomena: irony, understatement, and litotes. These rhetorical figures have been defined as synonymous, distinct or overlapping in various accounts. This indicates an interrelation but also a need for clearer definitions. Here, each of these rhetorical figures is defined via two jointly necessary conditions. This approach sharpens the categories, enables clear-cut distinctions and helps to explain cases of overlap. German corpus data and examples (...) from the literature as a basis, allow differentiating between cases of understatement as a means of irony, and cases of litotes as a means of understatement. Beyond that, litotes and understatement allow for non-ironic uses. Interestingly, litotic irony is built on litotic understatement. This is due to the overt contrast necessary for both understatement and irony. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called hedging. Hedging is that error in reasoning involving the systematic weakening of a claim so as to avoid refutation. The defining characteristic of the hedge is the use of understatement. To understate a claim is to use words which diminish the force or content of the claim. Hedging uses understatement the way slippery slope uses vagueness, begging the question uses latency, and the straw man uses (...) overstatement. With the hedge, detensifiers are used to weaken the claim in order to avoid refutation without admitting the weakened claim is different from the original. As with most informal fallacies, hedging can easily be avoided by accepting the counter‐evidence against the initial claim and revising the claim in light of that evidence. (shrink)

It is tempting to assume that understatement and overstatement, meiosis and hyperbole, are analogous figures of speech, differing only in whether the speaker represents a quantity as larger, or as smaller, than she means to claim that it is. But these tropes have hugely different roles in conversation. Understatement is akin to irony, perhaps a species of it. Overstatement is an entirely different kettle of fish. Things get interestingly messy when we notice that to overstate how large or (...) expensive or distant something is, is to understate how small or inexpensive or close it is, and vice versa. So it may seem, anyway. I propose an account of the two tropes that counts some utterances, in their conversational contexts, as overstatements of a quantity but not understatements of the opposite quantity, and other utterances as understatements only. This account shows why understatement is closely related to irony and overstatement is not. Although overstatement and understatement (or irony) are very different, they are sometimes combined. An understatement of one quantity may be an overstatement of a different one. (shrink)

It would be an understatement to say that Russell was interested in Cantorian diagonal paradoxes. His discovery of the various versions of Russell’s paradox—the classes version, the predicates version, the propositional functions version—had a lasting effect on his views in philosophical logic. Similar Cantorian paradoxes regarding propositions—such as that discussed in §500 of The Principles of Mathematics—were surely among the reasons Russell eventually abandoned his ontology of propositions.1 However, Russell’s reasons for abandoning what he called “denoting concepts”, and his (...) rejection of similar “semantic dualisms” such as Frege’s theory of sense and reference—at least in “On Denoting”—made no explicit mention of any Cantorian paradox. My aim in this paper is to argue that such paradoxes do pose a problem for certain theories such as Frege’s, and early Russell’s, about how definite descriptions are meaningful. My first aim is simply to lay out the problem I have in mind. Next, I shall turn to arguing that the theories of descriptions endorsed by Frege and by Russell prior to “On Denoting” are susceptible to the problem. Finally, I explore what responses a.. (shrink)

It would be an understatement to say that the New Science is difficult to read. Most contemporary readers conclude with a Russian scholar that Vico's thought "is expressed in extremely naive forms, profound thoughts are interspersed with all sorts of pedantic trifles, the exposition is very confusing, yet it is beyond doubt that the basic idea is a work of genius. " 1 There can be no disputing the fact that the New Science is difficult to read; the dispute (...) emerges in the effort to explain how a work which is at once "confusing," "naive" and "pedantic," can be a "work of genius. " The purpose of this brief study is to suggest that a good deal of the confusion can be dispelled when the New Science is read with care and an eye to the possibility of two levels of meaning. We must never forget that Vico was a professor of rhetoric and was therefore familiar with the techniques of cautious writing. It is our conviction that the New Science is an exoteric book which means that it contains two levels of meaning: one which conveys a popular and orthodox message, and another which 2 conveys a philosophical message addressed to philosophers. A large number of contemporary scholars tend to minimize or dismiss this type of writing. (shrink)

1. Implicature: some basic oppositions IMPLICATURE is a component of speaker meaning that constitutes an aspect of what is meant in a speaker’s utterance without being part of what is said. What a speaker intends to communicate is characteristically far richer than what she directly expresses; linguistic meaning radically underdetermines the message conveyed and understood. Speaker S tacitly exploits pragmatic principles to bridge this gap and counts on hearer H to invoke the same principles for the purposes of utterance interpretation. (...) The contrast between the said and the meant, and derivatively between the said and the implicated (the meant-but-unsaid), dates back to the fourth century rhetoricians Servius and Donatus, who characterized litotes—the figure of pragmatic understatement—as a figure in which we say less but mean more (“minus dicimus et plus significamus”; see Hoffmann 1987 and Horn 1991a for discussion). In the classical Gricean model, the bridge from what is said (the literal content of the uttered sentence, computed directly from its grammatical structure with the reference of indexicals resolved) to what is communicated is constructed through implicature. As an aspect of speaker meaning, implicatures are by definition distinct from the non-logical inferences that the hearer draws; it is a category mistake to attribute implicatures either to hearers or to sentences (e.g. P and Q) and subsentential expressions (e.g. some). But we can systematically (at least for generalized implicatures; see below) correlate the speaker’s intention to implicate q (in uttering p in context C), the expression p that carries the implicature in C, and the inference of q induced by the speaker’s utterance of p in C. (shrink)

It is an understatement to say we live in an exciting time considering the increasingly widespread applications of artificial intelligence (AI). This observation is brought to the fore by Sedlakova...

When I was an undergraduate in Oxford, we were taught economics almost as though it were a natural science. The subject matter of economics might be different from physics, but only in the way that the subject matter of chemistry or biology is different from physics. The actual results were presented to us as if they were scientific theories. So when we learned that savings equals investment, it was taught in the same tone of voice as one teaches that force (...) equals mass times acceleration. And we learned that rational entrepreneurs sell where marginal cost equals marginal revenue in the way that we once learned that bodies attract in a way that is directly proportional to the product of their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. At no point was it ever suggested that the reality described by economic theory was dependent on human beliefs and other attitudes in a way that was totally unlike the reality described by physics or chemistry. Some years ago, when I published The Construction of Social Reality, I was aware that it had implications for the ontology of economics, but I was not aware that there had already been an important revival of the tradition of institutional economics. It would be an understatement to say that I welcome this interest in institutions; I enthusiastically support it. But I think that in the institutional literature there is still an unclarity about what exactly an institution is. What is the ontology, the mode of existence, of institutional reality? This article tries to add to this discussion. Economics as a subject matter, unlike physics or chemistry, is largely concerned with institutional facts. Facts about money and interest rates, exchange and employment, corporations and the balance of payments, form the very heart of the subject of economics. When Lionel Robbins, in a classic work, tells us that “Economics is a study of the disposal of scarce commodities,”2 he takes for granted a huge invisible institutional.... (shrink)

It has been a decade since the phrase virtue argumentation was introduced, and while it would be an exaggeration to say that it burst onto the scene, it would be just as much of an understatement to say that it has gone unnoticed. Trying to strike the virtuous mean between the extremes of hyperbole and litotes, then, we can fairly characterize it as a way of thinking about arguments and argumentation that has steadily attracted more and more attention from (...) argumentation theorists. We hope it is neither too late for an introduction to the field nor too soon for some retrospective assessment of where things stand. (shrink)

This article responds to a critical research challenge in Medieval philosophy scholarship regarding the internal periodisation of the register. By arguing the case for ‘post-scholasticism’ as an internal period indicator (1349–1464, the era between the deaths of William of Ockham and Nicholas of Cusa), defined as ‘the transformation of high scholasticism on the basis of a selective departure thereof’, the article specifies a predisposition in the majority of introductions to and commentaries in Medieval philosophy to proceed straight from 1349 to (...) 1464, understating 115 years of pertinent Medieval philosophical discourse. It is argued that in the modern account of Medieval philosophy, this understatement is manifested in either a predating of Renaissance philosophy to close the gap between 1349 and 1464 as far as possible or in proceeding straight from 1349 to Renaissance philosophy. The article presents five unique philosophical themes from this delicate period, indicating that ‘post-scholasticism’ was indeed a productive period in late Medieval philosophy, which should not be bypassed as an inconsequential entrance to Renaissance philosophy. The period 1349–1464 should accordingly be appreciated for its idiosyncratic contributions to the history of ideas in the late-14th and early-15th centuries, with reference to the political intensification of the via moderna, the pivotal separation of philosophy and theology and the resulting independence of the natural sciences, in res critique of institutions, transforming pragmatics and the rise of philosophical materialism. Contribution: This article contributes to methodological development in Medieval philosophy by responding to a critical research challenge regarding the internal periodisation of the later Middle Ages. Arguing the case for ‘post-scholasticism’ as an internal period indicator (1349 to 1464 in Medieval philosophy, the article presents unique philosophical themes from the period, indicating that it was a productive stage in late Medieval philosophy which should not be bypassed as an inconsequential entrance to Renaissance philosophy. (shrink)

Several commentators on Kierkegaard and Heidegger have noted the similarity between Heidegger's account of authentic temporality in Being and Time and Kierkegaard's discussion of time in The Concept of Dread. By drawing attention to a not very well known essay of Kierkegaard's, ?The Decisiveness of Death?, I attempt to show that there is a very close connection between Heidegger's and Kierkegaard's entire views on authentic human existence. In the second part I try to locate in The Present Age, not just (...) the equivalent of das Man in Heidegger as numerous commentators have done, but the presence of the entire temporal structure of inauthenticity with equivalents for each of the ?fallen? modes of inauthentic being described by Heidegger in Being and Time. The result is that the previous attempts by commentators to restrict early Heidegger's originality vis?à?vis Kierkegaard begin to look like masterpieces of understatement. In the process of reaching this conclusion I try to shed light on several often misunderstood aspects of Kierkegaard's thought. (shrink)

BackgroundInstitutional review boards (IRBs) have been criticised for delays in approvals for research proposals due to inadequate or inexperienced IRB staff. Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models (LLMs), has significant potential to assist IRB members in a prompt and efficient reviewing process.MethodsFour LLMs were evaluated on whether they could identify potential ethical issues in seven validated case studies. The LLMs were prompted with queries related to the proposed eligibility criteria of the study participants, vulnerability issues, information to be disclosed (...) in the informed consent document (ICD), risk–benefit assessment and justification of the use of a placebo. Another query was issued to the LLMs to generate ICDs for these case scenarios.ResultsAll four LLMs were able to provide answers to the queries related to all seven cases. In general, the responses were homogeneous with respect to most elements. LLMs performed suboptimally in identifying the suitability of the placebo arm, risk mitigation strategies and potential risks to study participants in certain case studies with a single prompt. However, multiple prompts led to better outputs in all of these domains. Each of the LLMs included all of the fundamental elements of the ICD for all case scenarios. Use of jargon, understatement of benefits and failure to state potential risks were the key observations in the AI-generated ICD.ConclusionIt is likely that LLMs can enhance the identification of potential ethical issues in clinical research, and they can be used as an adjunct tool to prescreen research proposals and enhance the efficiency of an IRB. (shrink)

Get the science facts, not science fiction, on the cutting-edge developments that are already changing the course of our future. Every day, scientists conduct pioneering experiments with the potential to transform how we live. Yet it isn’t every day you hear from the scientists themselves! Now, award–winning author Jim Al–Khalili and his team of top-notch experts explain how today’s earthshaking discoveries will shape our world tomorrow—and beyond. Pull back the curtain on: genomics robotics AI the “Internet of Things” synthetic biology (...) transhumanism interstellar travel colonization of the solar system teleportation and much more And find insight into big–picture questions such as: Will we find a cure to all diseases? The answer to climate change? And will bionics one day turn us into superheroes? The scientists in these pages are interested only in the truth—reality-based and speculation-free. The future they conjure is by turns tantalizing and sobering: There’s plenty to look forward to, but also plenty to dread. And undoubtedly the best way to for us to face tomorrow’s greatest challenges is to learn what the future looks like—today. Praise for What the Future Looks Like “A collection of mind-boggling essays that are just the thing for firing up your brain cells.” —Saga Magazine “The predictions and impacts are global... [and] the book contains far more fascinating information than can be covered in this review.” —Choice “This book is filled with essays from experts offering their informed opinions on what the science and technology of today will look like in the future, from smart materials to artificial intelligence to genetic editing.” —Popular Science “Fun is an understatement. This is a great collection to get the summer book season started.” —Forbes.com “The focus on sincere, factual presentation of current and future possibilities by leading experts is particularly welcome in this era of fake news and anti-science rhetoric.” —Library Journal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 34.1 (2004) 3-17 [Access article in PDF] Universal Shylockery Money and Morality in The Merchant of Venice Simon Critchley Tom McCarthy What if Nietzsche were a Jew, and a mean-minded Venetian Jew at that? We'd like to begin with the thought experiment of imagining The Merchant of Venice as a genealogy of morality and imagining Shylock as Nietzsche. What is The Merchant of Venice about? What is at (...) stake in this oddly inside-out drama, where a piece of good old Elizabethan comic Jew-baiting rotates 180 degrees into a devastating study of Christian anti-Semitism only to flip back into what it seemed to deny? Our initial hypothesis is that it is nothing less than an inquiry into the origin of our moral concepts of justice, good and bad, and more particularly guilt, law, mercy, and love. It is here that a link with Nietzsche suggests itself, particularly with the Second Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals.* * *How do we breed an animal with the right to make promises? For Nietzsche, the human being is an originally forgetful creature, like a young child. To make this originally forgetful creature remember requires physical discipline; it behooves punishment. The teaching of morality is never gentle; it never droppeth from heaven like gentle rain. On the contrary, if something is to be retained in memory, it must be burned in. The origin of memory lies in pain and cruelty: "Man could never do without blood, torture and sacrifices when he felt the need to create a memory for himself" [GM 61]. Nietzsche's first, astonishing hypothesis in the Second Essay is that the origin of concepts like responsibility and conscience lies in cruelty—cruelty administered and maintained through a corporal and corporeal regime. Further, as religions are systems of cruelty, all forms of asceticism originate in the same painful place. "Consider the German punishments," Nietzsche proposes—and we all know that there's nothing quite like the German punishments: stoning, breaking on the wheel, piercing with stakes, tearing apart or trampling with horses, boiling in oil, flaying alive, cutting straps from the flesh, smearing the wrongdoer with honey and leaving him to the flies in the blazing sun. As Nietzsche quips, with magnificent understatement, "With the aid of such images and procedures one finally remembers five or six 'I will not's'" [GM 62]. It is on the basis of this burned-in memory of cruelty that good, decent, upright burghers such as ourselves acquired the habit of moral reasoning:Ah, reason, seriousness, mastery over affects, the whole sombre thing called reflection, all these prerogatives and showpieces of man: how dearly they have been bought! How much blood and cruelty lie at the bottom of all "good things." [GM 62] [End Page 3]"Dearly bought": let's hold onto that trope of purchasing. In another extraordinary passage of the Second Essay, Nietzsche explains the origin of thinking itself in terms of economic activity:Setting prices, determining values, contriving equivalences, exchanging—these preoccupied the earliest thinking of man to so great an extent that in a sense they are thinking [das Denken ist]. [GM 70] In the beginning was trade. Human activity begins with exchange, with the to and fro of buying and selling, which are forms of life older than all other social alliances and organization. It is from here, Nietzsche insists, that human beings arrive at the first moral canon of justice:"Everything has its price; all things can be paid for"—the oldest and most naïve moral canon of justice, the beginning of all "good-naturedness," all "fairness," all "good will," all "objectivity" on earth. [GM 70] Which brings us to the origin of das Bewusstsein der Schuld and schlechte Gewissen, the consciousness of guilt and bad conscience. Nietzsche's hypothesis here, and our theme is beginning to come into focus, is that the origin of guilty conscience lies in the relation between a creditor and debtor, Glaubiger und Schuldner. The spiritual concept of guilt, Schuld, originates in the very material concept of Schulden... (shrink)

A theoretical framework called "Quantum Brain Dynamics" to describe long range ordered dynamics of the quantum system of electromagnetic field and water dipole field in the brain is proposed as a revival of the original idea developed by Umezawa in the early 1960s. Based on Umezawa’s world view of quantum field theory, the manifestation of long range ordered dynamics is a macroscopic object of quantum origin, and so it reveals the existence of specific macroscopic objects in the brain called "tunneling (...) photon water." Tunneling photon water is shown to manifest several interesting quantum phenomena involving coherent photon emission and transmission, and is suggested to play an important role in quantum brain dynamics. The ordered quantum dynamics of such a macroscopic condensate of tunneling photons with nonvanishing effective charge and mass as tunneling photon water is governed by the macroscopic Schrödinger equation, and ensures superconducting phenomena in the brain at body temperature. The meaning of quantum brain dynamics is clearly explained for brain and cognitive scientists who have been confused by either the overstatement with misplaced quantum concepts usually given by those not appropriately schooled in physics or the understatement with textbook quantum concepts given by technical physicists. (shrink)

It is a historical truism that every thinker who made any impact on the field of philosophy also received his or her fair share of criticism, and it would therefore be surprising if Richard Rorty, at one time “the most quoted American philosopher,” did not. But to merely say that he did would be an understatement. For Rorty happened to belong to the exclusive club of thinkers whose reception consists mostly of attacks. To be fair, throughout his career, he (...) held academic positions at America’s... (shrink)

The subject of analysis in the article is The Metamorphosis of Franz Kafka. The author attempts to capture various aspects of the Kafka space phenomenon in the context of the functioning of the wall / ceiling motif in this probably the most famous narrative of world literature. At the same time, the researcher treats Kafka’s work as an unsurpassed pattern of artistic scenery shaping: namely, which plasticity and concrete motifs and spatial relations make a kind of residuum of sublime, symbolic (...) meanings, realizing fully only through the imagination of the recipient, in the course of contemplative reading and accompanying it aesthetic experience. The argument leads to the conclusion that in his parabolic, absurd, full of understatement piece of work, Kafka does not reveal the sense of the story of a hero transformed into an arthropod, but allows us to experience this sense and presage it – as the content of our own lives. (shrink)

The main objective of Zika transmission studies is to work out the simplest approach to scale back human mortality and morbidity caused by the disease. Therefore, it is essential to spot the relative importance of the various factors contributing to the transmission and prevalence of the disease. Many mathematical models have been formulated incorporating vector-to-human transmission or human-to-human transmission. However, they do not take into consideration the mixture of both sorts of transmission. It raises the question of the impact of (...) both sorts of transmission on the disease dynamics. We develop a mathematical model of Zika with the vertical transmission in the vector population and human-to-human transmission to answer this question. It includes the immature phase of mosquitoes, adult mosquitoes, and human hosts. Results show that neglecting sexual transmission results in an understatement of the proportion of the infected population. Furthermore, it reduces the speed of disease spreading. On the other hand, vertical transmission in mosquitoes has a negligible effect on the dynamics of disease spread. We perform a sensitivity analysis of the reproductive number R 0 to raise to understand the parameters driving the dynamics of the disease. It appears that the most sensitive parameters in decreasing order are as follows: the adult mosquito death rate, the sting rate, the transmission probability of mosquito to human, and, therefore, the transmission probability of human to mosquito. Furthermore, the proportion at the equilibrium of infected humans is extremely sensitive to the transition rate from the immature vector stage to the adult stage, the human-to-human transmission rate, and, therefore, the human recovery rate. These results confirm that control policies targeting the vector population and, therefore, the recovery rate of people are pretty effective solutions. To validate the model and estimate the important parameters of the model and the prediction of the disease, we consider the real cases in Colombia from 2016. In a series of graphic maps, we presented the comparative study to estimate the disease scenarios and to predict the time limit of the epidemic control measure. (shrink)

Intelligent design theorists assert that ID is a scientific theory that is merely consistent with some religious beliefs. Many critics point to the circumstantial evidence of the apparent development of ID from creation science and the affiliation of ID with mainstream evangelical organizations to assert its religious orientation. This article suggests that the position of ID proponents is a substantial understatement, and that beyond the circumstantial evidence of critics, fundamental Christian doctrine constitutes the essence of ID theory. The bulk (...) of scholarship on ID is polarized into those for and against, as most focus on adjudicating ID truth claims, but this adversarial structure elides some important complexities. This article sets aside the truth claims of ID and focuses more broadly on the discourse in which it is situated to show the Christian core of ID and to examine several hallmarks of religion apparent from this perspective. (shrink)

In this updated edition of his brief, engaging book, Robert J. Fogelin examines figures of speech that concern meaning-irony, hyperbole, understatement, similes, metaphors, and others-to show how they work and to explain their attraction.

In his article “Insight: Genesis and Ongoing Context,” Fred Crowe calls out Lonergan’s line “the diagram is more important than…is ordinarily believed” as the “philosophical understatement of the century.” Sixteen pages later he identifies elaborating an invariant cognitional theory to underlie generalized emergent probability and thus “the immanent order of the universe of proportionate being,” as “our challenge,” “but given the difficulty” he does not “see any prospect for an immediate answer.” Could this have something to do with the (...) lack of a comprehensive diagram of cognitional theory? Appendix A of The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism offers diagrams of the dynamics of knowing and doing perhaps copied from Lonergan’s own blackboard work, but they do not distinguish explanatory and descriptive insights, let alone statistical insights, and do not illustrate the pull upwards or the fusing of routinized insights. Before we can effectively relate cognitional theory to generalized emergent probability, we must have an adequately rigorous and precise cognitional theory. I firmly believe in the truth of Lonergan’s fundamental insights, but in order to rigorously undergird generalized emergent probability there are many pertinent questions about his cognitional theory which must be asked and answered. In this paper I (1) review some of Lonergan’s attempts to diagram cognitional theory and discuss what insights they do and do not express, (2) elaborate and defend principles for making our formulations of insight into insight rigorous and clear, and (3) attempt to build up a diagram which makes full use of those principles in a maximally expressive way. (shrink)

To say that coronavirus is highly visible is a massive understatement in terms of its omnipresence in our lives and media coverage concerning it, yet also clearly untrue in terms of the virus itself. COVID-19 is our invisible enemy, changing our lives radically without ever revealing itself directly. In this paper I explore its invisibility and how it relates to and exposes other invisible enemies we are and have been fighting, in many cases without even realizing. First, I analyse (...) the virus itself and how its stealthy nature has transformed our lives. Second, I describe how the invisible epidemic of social media sharing of fake news about the virus worsens the situation further. Third, I explore how the virus has revealed to us what really matters in our lives and has forced us to re-evaluate our priorities. Fourth, I go on to explore the underlying structural weaknesses and disparities in society that have been exposed by the virus but previously remained unconsidered for so long that they too have become camouflaged, even if their effects are all too apparent; like the virus, neoliberal capitalism is an invisible enemy that has made prisoners of us all. I conclude by suggesting that the coronavirus pandemic represents a hidden opportunity to overcome perhaps the biggest invisible enemy of all: the moral distance that separates us from others. Only by rendering the rest of humanity morally visible to ourselves can we overcome capitalism and stop treating other people as invisible enemies. (shrink)

Robert Cummins [(1996) Representations, targets and attitudes, Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT, p. 1] has characterized the vexed problem of mental representation as "the topic in the philosophy of mind for some time now." This remark is something of an understatement. The same topic was central to the famous controversy between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld in the 17th century and remained central to the entire philosophical tradition of "ideas" in the writings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid and Kant. However, the (...) scholarly, exegetical literature has almost no overlap with that of contemporary cognitive science. I show that the recurrence of certain deep perplexities about the mind is a systematic and pervasive pattern arising not only throughout history, but also in a number of independent domains today such as debates over visual imagery, symbolic systems and others. Such historical and contemporary convergences suggest that the fundamental issues cannot arise essentially from the theoretical guise they take in any particular case. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Intersection of Medicine and ReligionJohn C. DormoisThe practice of medicine offers a host of rewards to the practitioner. Besides the obvious intellectual satisfaction of solving a difficult diagnostic problem or the ability to make a comfortable living, I have found the greatest personal sense of moral gratification when helping [End Page 196] families negotiate the most challenging event in life: making decisions at end of life. Whether the (...) condition was a ruptured intracranial aneurysm with brain death or a patient with far advanced cancer struggling with the choice between experimental chemotherapy or choosing comfort therapy at home surrounded by family for the remaining days of life, the moral courage required to provide the best guidance was considerable. In my early years of practice I didn’t call my actions in these situations “courageous” nor were there moral “guidelines” providing a blueprint. I knew I responded with empathy and compassion and that this ability had a lot to do with being raised in a religious or spiritual home. At the same time, I suspected that some of the lack of empathy and compassion I witnessed in some of my colleagues was related to the very training programs of physicians. This essay traces the origin of my moral and ethical concerns about medical education and my intention to reinvigorate the spiritual or existential voice in medicine.An early life experience had a great deal to do with shaping my moral development. At age seven my family traveled through the West Indies. My father’s amateur radio hobby meant that at every stop we would be greeted by one of his radio contacts. One stop in particular was life changing.Port au Prince, Haiti was an unknown place to this seven year–old, but to say it was a culture shock to a boy from Kansas would be an understatement of epic proportions. It was during this visit that I experienced true poverty in its most blatant form. In downtown Port au Prince I saw limbless beggars and the deformed from polio and malnutrition. But it was the sight of the garbage dump near the center of town that changed my world forever. There, among piles of detritus, I saw children and families making their home in the dump. They had hollowed out a sort of cavern in the piles of trash that served as a place of refuge from both the rain and the sun.This experience in many ways has served as a framework and background for my life. Although seen through the eyes of a seven year–old, the picture can only be adequately understood within the context of being raised by religiously faithful parents, parents free of hypocrisy whose lives personified the best in Christian virtues and practices. These early experiences planted the seeds that would only fully blossom some 60 years later.Medical school was a demanding but exhilarating experience. Each day was a day of discovery … anatomy, physiology, pathology … all subjects opening up a whole new world to explore. Internal medicine suited me best since it was the specialty that most closely integrated all the basic sciences necessary to arrive at a diagnosis. I loved the elegance of endocrinology in particular where a given hormone mediator could cause widely different effects if present in excess or completely absent. But I was in the end drawn to cardiology since it combined complex physiology with my avocation, the love of running.There was, however, a disturbing aspect of medicine education that I observed affecting many of my classmates. Although I can vividly recall the enthusiasm that all of us shared as we donned our white coats for the first time and envisioned a future of caring for our patients, things gradually and insidiously changed over the next four years. The altruism and empathy that was so evident in the early years gradually lessened as graduation approached. I could not help being struck by this change and wondered at the time why that should happen. I had no insight then that what I had observed was a well recognized consequence of the medical school experience. I’m sure that the passage from professional training to practice in... (shrink)

Litotes, often confused with meiosis and understatement, has long suffered neglect. By comparing synonymous key words in previous definitions, this essay defines litotes as “a trope in which an affirmative is expressed by the negation of its opposite,” and for the first time classifies litotes into three subtypes based upon Aristotle’s study of opposition: contradictory, contrary and relative. Focusing particularly on the strong contradictory type of litotes and its realization in The Analects of Confucius, with its nearly one hundred (...) double negation litotes, we find they prominently serve the logical functions of achieving high probability, providing a sophisticated major premise, and elaborating strict definitions. Further, the essay argues that this strong argumentative function in logic leads to litotes’ epistemic power, a promising dimension for future research. (shrink)

_The Writings of Charles De Koninck_, Volume 1, introduces a projected three-volume series that presents the first English edition of the collected works of the Catholic Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck. Ralph McInerny is the project editor and has prepared the excellent translations. The first volume contains writings ranging from De Koninck’s 1934 dissertation at the University of Louvain on the philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington, to two remarkable early essays on indeterminism and the unpublished book “The Cosmos.” The short (...) essay “Are the Experimental Sciences Distinct from the Philosophy of Nature?” is also included and demonstrates for the first time De Koninck’s distinctive view on the relation between philosophy of nature and the experimental sciences. A comprehensive introductory essay by Leslie Armour outlines the structure and themes of De Koninck's philosophy. The volume begins with a biographical essay by De Koninck’s son, Thomas. “Charles De Koninck, perhaps because of his untimely death, is not as well known to English-speaking readers as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, but his work belongs to that same world-class scholarship as his notable contemporaries. It is almost an understatement to say that his contribution to the philosophy of science remains timely. Readers are fortunate that his former student, Ralph McInerny, has seen fit to collect and to translate, where necessary, some of De Koninck's most important work for this volume.” —_Jude P. Dougherty, The Catholic University of America_ “Ralph McInerny is doing us the incalculable good of making available to a general public the writings of Charles De Koninck. This volume, the first of many to come, begins a chronological presentation of the books, articles, essays, and addresses of one of the strongest and most penetrating thinkers of the last century, who was at once an extraordinary philosopher and theologian, with the profound and simple faith of the proverbial peasant. May we continue now to learn from the great De Koninck, and include in our prayers the intentions of his gracious disciple, who is so felicitously discharging the office of piety to a revered and unforgettable master.” —_Ronald P. Mc Arthur, President Emeritus, Thomas Aquinas College_. (shrink)

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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Where the Journey BeginsJapmehr SandhuAs a fresh medical graduate in India, you are first required to go through a year of mandatory internship at your parent institute. Mine happened to start in 2021 at a government hospital in Northern India. There were a series of coincidences at that moment.To begin with, I started as a physician-in-training in the middle of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic whilst staying (...) with my 70-year-old grandmother. This coincided with my hospital being declared a "COVID only" hospital and requiring the transferring of all non-COVID patients—critical or non. The country was seeing a shortage of oxygen supplies in private hospitals and even saw incidents of oxygen cylinders being looted. For my first rotation, I was coincidently allotted the COVID ward, which meant that my very first patient was a COVID patient. This start also coincided with all the second-year residents coming back after recovering from COVID—the confidence and thrill of fresh immunity translated into a shirking of any PPE equipment. With these fortuitous series of occurrences, combined with the fact that I had not seen a single clinical rotation in 2020, being 'overwhelmed' would be an understatement.This story is about my first shift. The sentinel thing that struck me upon entry was how it seemed I had automatically jumped up an imaginary level across professional hierarchies. Being offered a chair and a cup of tea seemed so surreal, but I welcomed it. It was also a subtle way of making me realise the change in my prefix and the duties that come with it. Armed with this greater power and greater responsibility, I embraced my first job of getting the whole ward's vitals down. Following this, I was told to focus on the patients on ventilators since the hospital did not have enough monitors for all the patients at the moment.Feeling like a novice doesn't even begin to describe how I felt being the only professional in the ward wearing a bright white PPE kit, resembling a half-filled balloon in the middle of the April heat, walking down the halls making "swish-swish" sounds. I had never seen a working ventilator till that point. I had never led interactions with patient families, and I had certainly not been in a position where they solely looked up to me for information about their loved ones' well-being since the ward did not allow visitors. This sense of responsibility made my tongue feel heavier than usual—like any and all sounds and words made by it would acutely affect the mood and behaviour of many. [End Page E10]One of the people accompanying a patient on a ventilator asked to have us check on their patient. I was sent for the same. The patient was in the same position as the morning, the ventilator continuing its job—obvious from the way the air was rushing through the pipes and making his chest inflate and deflate. The patient, a thin man in his 30s, was sickly and cachexic—I started with the vitals. However, the BP monitor couldn't measure the same, so I started using a manual sphygmomanometer. I couldn't locate the radial pulse and moved to the carotid, but with the tracheal movement by air being pushed in and out by the ventilator, it was hard to ascertain any other pulsation in the area. I decided to call my senior after feeling the patient's hands and feet and finding them cold. When the resident arrived, he immediately concluded the patient had passed away and turned to me and said, "Why did it take you so long"? Followed by, "He was fine this morning. What happened"? He then just went back to the resident room and continued scrolling on his phone after sending a brief message to the hospital group, which read: "One from Ward 6".My first shift of 6 hours saw 17 deaths. After each death, there was a notification in the group and a continuation of the cycle. Apparently, these patients were too far along to be saved from a disease that did not... (shrink)

“Where's Dr. Tunzi?” Flor bellowed from the waiting room. “Is he here today?” Tattooed and built like a short middle linebacker, Flor is one of my favorite people. Despite schizophrenia, hepatitis C, and diabetes, she lives up to her name with a colorful and sunny personality. She and her partner, Nancy, have been my patients for about fifteen years, since I first met them at the small homeless clinic I help staff. I was away one day last year when Flor (...) and Nancy came in. It would be an understatement to say that it wasted everybody's time. But “team care” and “patient-centered medical home” are the buzzwords of the day. (shrink)

Litotes, often confused with meiosis and understatement, has long suffered neglect. By comparing synonymous key words in previous definitions, this essay defines litotes as “a trope in which an affirmative is expressed by the negation of its opposite,” and for the first time classifies litotes into three subtypes based upon Aristotle’s study of opposition: contradictory, contrary and relative. Focusing particularly on the strong contradictory type of litotes and its realization in The Analects of Confucius, with its nearly one hundred (...) double negation litotes, we find they prominently serve the logical functions of achieving high probability, providing a sophisticated major premise, and elaborating strict definitions. Further, the essay argues that this strong argumentative function in logic leads to litotes’ epistemic power, a promising dimension for future research. (shrink)

A sample survey of members of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) found relatively low rates of obvious ethical misconduct, such as data fabrication and falsification, and higher rates of dubious behaviors, such as deliberate overstatement of positive and understatement of negative results. AERE members reported that job-related pressures-including competition with peers, pressure due to professional implication and on-the-job pressure-were the most important causes. The most effective preventive measures, according to respondents, were discussion of ethics in existing (...) classes, codes of ethics, and short courses at professional meetings. The vast majority of AERE members were against government audits and regulations. (shrink)

This essay renews a discussion of how historians do, and should, represent atrocity. It argues that the problems of representing extreme violence remain under-conceptualized; in this context it discusses the strengths and weaknesses of minimalism, a style prevalent both in historiography and in an intellectual culture that values understatement in approaches to violence. The essay traces the general cultural preference for minimalist narratives of suffering, which, it claims, is driven by the widespread conviction that experimental and exuberant narratives convert (...) victims' suffering into kitsch. It then focuses on two works, by Saul Friedlander and by Jan Gross, on the history of Jewish victims during and after the Second World War in order to assess how each uses sophisticated minimalist understatement to represent suffering, but with radically different effects. Finally, it asks historians to reflect upon the representation of extreme events by focusing on narrative style, on questions of ethics, and on the cultural narratives within which their own work on suffering and violence is inevitably embedded-especially given that historians are paying increasing attention to violent events that generate tremendous difficulties in relation to the representation both of victims and perpetrators. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 119 Der Verf. bedient sieh in Verfolgung seines Ziels der fibliehen historischen Methode, die er mit Meistersehaft handhabt. Doch ist er keineswegs ein typischer Vertreter des modernen Historismus. Als Philosoph ist er gefesselt von den Problemen, die sich in der dreifachen Thematik seiner Untersuehung verbergen. Er begibt sich in die Gesehichte, aber doch nur, um yon Zeit zu Zeit aus ihr herauszutreten und i)berlegungen nachzugehen, die er (...) selbst, anlfifilieh einer methodologisehen Bemerkung in der Einleitung, als eine "Typologie yon LSsungen" (3) bezeiehnet. Aber das ist ein understatement, keine exakte Besehreibung. Die unbefangene und nfiehterne Kfihnheit dieser seiner trans-historisehen Reflexionen durehweht als ein frischer Luftzug die Welt der Gelehrsamkeit und Vielbelesenheit, die sich in diesen Seiten aufbaut. Freilieh, wo der Verf. selbst steht, gibt er uns nur gelegentlieh zu verstehen, so z.B. wenn er mit Entsehiedenheit die averroistisehe Depotenzierung des Einzelnen gegenfiber der Mensehheir zurfickweist. Aber, wiederum im Zusammenhang mit Averroes, legt er Gedanken zu der berfihmten oder auch berfiehtigten Lebre yon der doppelten Wahrheit vor, die uns in Zweifel darfiber lassen, ob und wie weit sich der Verf. hier verbirgt oder d~couvriert. M. gesellt sich nicht zu denen, die Averroes entlasten woUen, indem sie die fatale Lehre als eine spatere Zutat erkl~ren. Vielmehr mSchte er das Anathema dadurch fortnehmen, daB er die grobe und beleidigende Darstellung der Lehre dutch eine subtile Deutung ersetzt, die sie als konsequent, als vernfinftig und schlie61ich als wahr erscheinen l~Bt (107 ft.). Der Mensch, so argumentiert er, drfickt sich in einer Mehrheit yon "Sprachen" (universes of discourse) aus, die sich nieht ineinander fibersetzen lassen--der Sprache der Kunst, der Dichtung, der Philosophie, der Religion usw. So kann ein und derselbe Menseh ohne Selbstwidersprueh oder Unredliehkeit als Philosoph sagen: die individuelleSeele ist sterblich, als Gl~ubigerhingegen: sie ist unsterblich. Denn sowohl "Seele" wie "Individuum" wie aueh "Unsterblichkeit" meinen etwas anderes je nach dem universe of discourse, dem philosophischen oder religiSsen, in welchem sie gebraueht werden. Freilich, man kann den Versueh maehen, in langagestart in einer der vielen langues zu reden, und die Theologie kann nicht umhin, eben dies zu wagen. Ffir die Theologie aber~ so bekennt der Verf., ist kein Raum in seinem "scheme of things" (109). Das ist ein erschreckendes Wort, und nieht blofi ffir den, der die Theologie erhalten mSchte. Denn es besteht begrfindete Sorge, dab der Ruin der zwisehen den versehiedenen langues zerriebenen Theologie auch die Philosophiepulverisiert. Die verschiedenen"Spraehen" miissen doch wohl in der einen mensehlichen Person sinnvoll zusammengeordnet sein. Welche Wissenschaft aber wenn nicht die Philosophie darf sich diese Zusammenordnung zum Gegenstand ihres Forschens und Sagens machen? Wir schliefien also unseren Bericht fiber ein bedeutendes Buch mit einer Frage, nicht aber der Kritik oder gar des Besser-wissen-wollenswegen, sondern um auszudrficken, dab der Autor uns nicht nur als gelehrter Kenner unterrichtet, sondern als Philosoph zum Denken zwingt. Mi~nchen, Germany HELMUT KUHN Diogenis Laertii Vitae Philosophorum. Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit H. S. Long. 1 vol. in2. (Oxford: 1964.Pp. xx ~ xiv W 597. $11.20.) Der Hg erinnert uns, dass seit der Cobetsehen (1850), leider apparatlosen, keine kritische Ausgabe des Diogenes im ganzen ersehlenen ist. Immerhin gibt es abet die Ubersetzung yon M. Gigante (DiogeneLaerzio, Vite dei filosofi, Bari 1962), die so annotiert ist, dass sie vielfach anstatt einer Edition gebraucht werden kann. Man bedauert, dass der Hg sie offenbar noch nicht benutzen konnte (sein Buch ist wohl 1964erschienen, doch ist die Vorrede 1961datiert). Der Hg schliesst sich der Meinung an, dass nut 3 der existierenden Diogenes-Hss den Wert unabh~ngiger Zeugen besitzen. Vorsichtiger beurteilt den Sachverhalt z.B.H. Erbse in: Geschichte der Text~berlieferung, I. Band (1961), S. 306f., doch wollen wir die These des Hg akzeptieren. Wie allgemein zugestanden, gehen diese drei auf eine gemeinsame Vorlage zur~iek. Unter diesen Ums~nden ist es die Pflicht des Hg, uns verl~sslich und eindeutig fiber den Text dieser drei (BFP aus dem 12.u. 13.Jh.) zu informieren, eine Entscheidung zu treffen, wo diese 120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY nicht tibereinstimmen, darfiber hinaus Textverderbnisse anzuzeigen und womSglich zu emendieren, entweder dureh eigene Vermutungen (in Buch VI und IX, e. 19% des Ganzen, habe ich nur zwei gefunden, beide einleuehtend... (shrink)

Like Kolodny, I think feminism one of the most vital and energizing forces in literary criticism today, but for two reasons I found her exposition of the topic disappointing. It seems to me that she underplays the most crucial of the many aesthetic and pedagogical issues raised by feminist literary study, and she endorses a kind of intellectual defeatism when, in the conclusion of her essay, she places a "Posted" sign between the male readers of Critical Inquiry and her own (...) area of work. Both flaws arise, it appears, out of her underestimation or understatement of the revolutionary implications of feminist literary study. On the other hand, both flaws may be evidence of her problem in writing for so general an audience, for in addressing a very heterogeneous audience about a topic so potentially incendiary, she has to confront the rhetorical problem of how to tell the truth and still be heard. It is that problem, I think, that may have led Kolodny and other feminists to propose an intellectual separatism of sorts as a necessary interlude. It seems to me that once the revolutionary implications of feminist literary study are understood, separatism can be seen to be one of the most damaging proposals one could make. William W. Morgan, associate professor of English at Illinois State University, is a contributor to Thomas Hardy: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him and has published essays on Hardy. He is presently working on a book on Hardy's poetry. This essay is a response to Annette Kolodny's "Some Notes on Defining a 'Feminist Literary Criticism'". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Bittersweet Score:A Father’s Account of His Family’s 20-Year Journey After a Pediatric Brain Tumor DiagnosisChristopher RileyI hadn’t seen him for 20 years, not since the day he drilled a hole in Peter’s head and left the stainless steel drill and bloody bit on the bedside table. He figured prominently in the story I often told of that day when he, a doctor in training, [End Page 3] informed (...) my wife Kathy and me that, “Wow,” our five-year-old son had “an impressive tumor” in his brain. He announced it with the admiration I reserve for a touchdown pass or stunning sunset. Since that day, he had become a venerable physician. Back then he was the resident who met us in the ER after our pediatrician told us that the MRI of Peter’s brain was “not normal,” that “there might be a growth.” As if there might not be. I imagined that Peter’s brain might simply have an unusual shape, or that the scan revealed some undiscovered fracture and the authorities only wanted to lock me up and all with my son would be well. The thrilled young doctor slew those hopes with an ice pick: “Wow, that’s an impressive tumor.” I said, “That’s the first time anyone has used the word tumor.” The doctor appeared mortified and started over.Now 20 years later we found ourselves at the same party and I felt a compulsion to introduce myself, remind him we’d met that day in 1993, and tell him what had become of Peter and his family in the decades since he’d made that mortifying mistake, one I hoped had become for him a defining moment. To my disappointment, he didn’t seem to remember.Peter was my red-haired boy. Fearless and whip smart, he told a stream of knock-knock jokes and performed dance routines choreographed by his 8-year-old sister Rachel. Six months of headaches, vomiting and clumsy falls led to discovery of the tumor. When I phoned my parents with the news, I couldn’t speak the words, words that felt as if they spelled my boy’s doom. My body refused to pronounce them.The war for Peter’s life began with surgery. I sat with Kathy in the surgical waiting area, fearing every minute that I would see the surgeon approaching with his shoulders slumped in mortal defeat. I learned during those hours that fear of your child’s death is a physical pain, a constriction in the chest, a suffocation. At the end of that wait, the surgeon told us the tumor was out and Peter had survived. The pathology indicated the tumor was a medulloblastoma. Without additional treatment, including radiation, it was certain to come back. Kathy’s knees buckled. Having just endured one life-and-death battle, we were plunged into another. To complicate matters, Peter wasn’t waking from surgery. Even after the anesthesia wore off, Peter remained groggy, unable to move or focus his eyes.Through the following days, Peter failed to rouse or speak. Sores formed at the back of his neck where his unswallowed saliva pooled. Neurologists doubted he knew us. His doctors hoped Peter would recover but it was possible he would remain as he was indefinitely. As I sat holding his useless hand, watching his useless body, I thought I’d never loved him as much as I did now.Peter’s doctors presented two treatment options. The first consisted of relatively high doses of daily radiation, the most effective known method for preventing the return of the cancer. But radiation wasn’t good for young brains. It “shaved IQ points,” they said in wild understatement. So they offered a second, experimental option, one that reduced radiation by a third and added months of chemotherapy. The doctors hoped this new regimen would be as effective as the old but cause less cognitive damage. They asked us to choose. It seemed impossible. We gathered the scant available data. We weighed the risks. We prayed. We took a leap. Without asking him, we made a decision for Peter we knew... (shrink)

Although at first sight the Speculum contains ‘too little Augustine’ for theologians who are attempting to discover the originality of this thought, it is in fact a revealing anthology. An examination of the criteria used for the selection of Scriptural quotations brings to light an important facet of his mystagogy. Both the exclusion and inclusion criteria demonstrate that Augustine’s intention is to confront his reader with his own imperfections, and this to a much greater degree than is suggested by the (...) understatement of Speculum 108 that the moral guidelines proffered should have an immediate impact. Augustine’s aim in writing the Speculum is to effect a confrontation of the reader with himself, in a first, but permanent step on the way of mystagogy. Scripture serves as a mirror to reflect as detailed and unpolished an image as possible of the person who looks into it; the confrontation must be as violent as possible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Impact of Fingarette’s Confucius: The Secular as Sacred on Confucian StudiesRoger T. Ames (bio)Confucius: The Secular as Sacred. By Herbert Fingarette. Hannacroix: Apocryphile Press, 2023.Writing a review of this Apocryphile Press edition of Herb Fingarette’s 1972 publication of Confucius: Secular as Sacred with its new preface by my good friend Michael Nylan is deeply personal. Like Michael and the several other distinguished scholars who have written their endorsements (...) for this new reprint, this occasion gives me a long moment to reflect on how this little book has changed my life. The project has also given me a reason to go back and reread the review of this book written by my longtime friend and collaborator, Henry Rosemont, Jr., published almost 50 years ago in Philosophy East and West.My first memory is of Herb Fingarette himself. I met this gentleman, and gentle he was, early on in my tenure at the University of Hawai‘i when Herb, always accompanied by Leslie, would make regular visits to participate in our public lectures and conferences. I always marveled at how in his presentations he would begin from some seemingly simple and offhand fact about our everyday lives. He would then quite masterfully take this ordinary detail and, through a series of incrementally insightful reflections and then again through his sensitive responses to the questions raised by his audience, elevate the discussion to become an extraordinarily memorable event. I remember well how this seasoned teacher always began the question session by calling upon the graduate students, leaving his eager professional colleagues to wait their turn. And then, with the rigor and impeccable logic of the best kind of analytical philosopher, he would gently and always smilingly, win everyone over to his conclusions.When Herb retired from Santa Barbara, he was adamant that he was retired, and in spite of the many efforts we made to draw him back into the circuit, he would have none of it. My only success in my numerous attempts to corral him was in persuading him to write a chapter for a Festschrift I edited celebrating the career of a philosopher much in his own mold as an independent thinker, my colleague Eliot Deutsch. [End Page 516]Even though Herb’s withdrawal from professional events was unequivocal, he was always available for a Reuben sandwich and a good conversation. Over the ensuing years that saw a clear-headed and always happy Herb carry on until a few years short of his centenary, I would sometimes accompany Rosemont in his regular pilgrimages to sojourn with his best Berkeley friends, which included, along with Herb, David Keightley, Huston Smith, and of course, Michael Nylan.Turning then from the large-souled man to the little book that changed the world of Confucian studies, to say that it was not well received is an understatement. When this monograph published by HarperCollins, a trade press, first appeared in the bookstores, whispers ran through the sinological community about how this pretender had the temerity to engage a canonical text well beyond his reach. Without proper philological training, he was actually challenging what we all know to be the proper translations of important Chinese terms. Again, Herb’s philosophical colleagues who were baffled by his efforts to engage Chinese philosophy as philosophy, also had his number, and it was not a high one.As Rosemont pointed out in both a critical, and to my knowledge, the first truly appreciative review of Fingarette’s commentary on the Analects (a feature review that in its pages would constitute a goodly portion of Fingarette’s 79-page book), what made this book an important inflection point for Confucian studies is that a rigorously trained philosopher was writing a philosophical and philological exegesis on what he deemed a philosophically profound text. Even for Fingarette who was himself initially nonplussed by the idea that the Analects was good philosophy, it took a careful reading and an open mind to fathom both the depth and the worth of the Analects for reflecting on our lives as they are lived today.It is a commonplace that we often do not appreciate those teachers who have influenced... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Four Majestic Philosophical Thoroughbreds and a Deranged DonkeyWesley J. Wildman (bio)I. IntroductionFor me, this special issue is miraculous fun. I'm so grateful in an undirected way that the universe affords such possibilities. To think, the human project might have ended already had any one of a litany of disasters occurred, from asteroid collisions to our dalliance with self-destructive technologies. No more friends. No more wonderful and silly philosophical arguments. (...) But the human project hasn't ended, not this week anyway, and here we are, celebrating the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, and enjoying a vigorous exchange of ideas.I'm also grateful in a directed way to specific people—to LeRon Shults and Robert Neville for editing the book that inspired this discussion, Religion in Multidisciplinary Perspective,1 to LeRon for editing this special issue, and additionally to Lisa Landoe Hedrick, Bin Song, Demian Wheeler, Bob, and LeRon for their contributions. These five friends have done me a great honor.It is fascinating—as well as a rare privilege—to witness how one's writings land in the minds and lives of diverse readers. What I hope that means is that there is more to say and write, more insights to wring from the drenched, raggedy fabric of reality, more reason to joyfully embrace the inassimilable density of value that confronts us. That is cause for celebration. Surely this is one reason we dabble in philosophy, dancing atop the brooding axiological depths, telling stories about what lies beneath, and occasionally fighting with one another about what matters most in those stories. To me, making that vision of the depth dimension of reality count for the wellbeing of others is what matters most. But I'm up for quibbling over stories, too; it's a welcome diversion from the daily labors of practical, prosocial philosophy.A word about the peculiar title of this essay is in order. Aren't philosophical theologians supposed to be more serious than that? In fact, the title refers to a memorable experience I shared with my old friend Larry Martin when we worked together in Piedmont, California. One weekend we trekked into [End Page 83] the California mountains to go white-water rafting. It was my first time to experience this particular form of joyful intensity, and I was glad for Larry's company.We were two and the rafts were large, so we were teamed with a crew of Pentecostal church leaders for whom the rafting day was a bonding adventure. Between them and Larry and me, we took up several rafts. We set off through class-four rapids, which I later found out was a rather extreme introduction to white-water rafting. Fortunately, nothing terrible happened to me, apart from a bruised knee when the base of the raft slammed onto a rock right where I was perched. One raft flipped but it wasn't ours and everyone survived.We were exhausted but strangely energized when we pulled into a clearing for lunch. There we found a great pile of sandwiches wrapped in foil, just begging to be eaten by famished rafters. Unwisely, I reached for one, only to discover that this group of Pentecostal church leaders wanted to pray over their meal first. Suitably humbled, and simultaneously impressed with their ability to delay gratification, I listened as they prayed—all of them speaking in tongues—for a seemingly endless period of time.After a minute, I noticed movement in the corner of my vision, my eyes remaining inappropriately open during this act of prayer. I turned to see a donkey walk out of the woods and come to rest in a corner of the clearing. It began braying, expressing a bizarre kind of sympathy with the tongues-talkers, I supposed. As the outburst of glossolalia wound down, the donkey turned and walked back into the forest.To say that I was astonished is a gross understatement. Was that a corporate Saint Francis of Assisi moment? A coincidence to end all coincidences? A practical joke played by two people from the rafting company in an extremely realistic donkey suit? The full measure of my astonishment lies in my... (shrink)

The rejection of behaviorism in the 1950s and 1960s led to the view, due mainly to Noam Chomsky, that language must be studied by looking at the mind and not just at behavior. It is an understatement to say that Chomskyan linguistics dominates the field. Despite being the overwhelming majority view, it has not gone unchallenged, and the challenges have focused on different aspects of the theory. What is almost universally accepted, however, is Chomsky’s view that understanding language demands (...) a theory that posits mental states that represent rules of language. Call this claim, following Cowie (1999), Representationalism or (R). According to (R), ‘‘[e]xplaining language mastery and acquisition requires the postulation of contentful mental states and processes involving their manipulation’’ (Cowie, 1999, p. 154). Although (R) is nothing more than the general assumption on which cognitive psychology is founded applied to the case of language, even it has had its detractors. Critics have argued that linguistic competence should not in fact be thought of as based on the possession of a body of linguistic knowledge but should be thought of, rather, as a kind of skill. This is an important challenge because one might be inclined to think that no recognizable form of Chomskyan linguistics could withstand the falsification of (R). In this paper we attempt to show that in fact (R) could be false without doing much damage to Chomskyan linguistics at all. Indeed, it is possible that the Chomskyan position could be made more coherent by adopting the view we will sketch. Our claim, therefore, is that critics of (R) might be right, but that this does not obviously make them serious critics of the Chomskyan program. (shrink)

From my ongoing "Metalogical Plato" project. The aim of the diagram is to make reasonably intuitive how the Socratic elenchos (the logic of refutation applied to candidate formulations of virtues or ruling knowledges) looks and works as a whole structure. This is my starting point in the project, in part because of its great familiarity and arguable claim to being the inauguration of western philosophy; getting this point less wrong would have broad and deep consequences, including for philosophy’s self-understanding. -/- (...) (i.) is the first pass at elenchos in which the Socratic interlocutor does not reflect on knowledge being the crux of the problem. (ii.) is the second, rarer, reflective pass in which they are, making the investigation explicitly about knowledge. Its centrality in the Charmides makes that neglected dialogue of superlative importance. This structure is also the gateway through which the discussion/dialectic crosses into the Agathology (discussion of the form of the good) at Republic 505. -/- The problem of elenchos, then, grasped as a whole structure, is that it seems that knowledge can neither satisfactorily be included in nor excluded from its own scope. The development of the ti esti (“what is ---?”) question leads to the introduction of knowledge into its own scope (i. implicitly, as goodness contrasted with blind rule-following ii. explicitly qua knowledge) while the development of the dual peri tinos (“----about what?) question leads to K’s elimination from its own scope. The introductions are motivated to avoid contradiction, but produce regress; the eliminations are motivated to avoid regress, but produce contradiction. In scholarship, and in the history of philosophy, the ti esti question is universally recognized, to the point of being identified with philosophy’s origin and essence; the peri tinos question is neglected textually and never recognized as the equal dual to the ti esti. This, I claim, has blocked the development of a nontrivial logical appreciation of what Plato's Socrates is up to. (One rather disastrous effect of this neglect is taking Aristotle as the beginning of the development of logic, rather than, correctly, for the beginning of logic’s fatal separation from mathematics and dialectic.) -/- Further, because of this monopticism of the ti esti, the function of consistency in the elenchos has not been understood, even with respect to the ti esti. The ti esti is actually in search of completeness, given a norm of consistency; the peri tinos is in search of consistency, given a norm of completeness. Only appreciating the two questions as dual allows space in the structure to clarify these different orientations relative to consistency. (And, dually, to completeness, whose function in the elenchos is generally entirely missed by scholars and relegated to discussions of eros; it's not out of place there, of course, but its significance is secured here.) Recognizing the duality of the ti esti and peri tinos questions is thus the royal road, in the Socratic-Platonic context, to catching sight of what we post-Cantorians can recognize as the metalogical duality of consistency and completeness. (The salutary disruptive effects of this Plato-Cantor proximity have, of course, been traced in complementary ways by Badiou.) -/- Note that the diagram is supposed to provide a relatively accessible orientation, not to stand on its own, and certainly not to be the last word on any subject. An important qualification (telegraphed in the previous paragraph) is that what elenchos shows is not finally circular or paradoxical, though the problem first presents as such (stubbornly, obdurately, as "difficult" Plato's Socrates always says with characteristic understatement). What is depicted here is meant, at a first pass, to be the shape of that first presentation, the form of the problem of elenchos, rather than of its solution. It's not an accident that this problem strongly resembles "Russell's paradox" (not Russell's not a paradox.) Problem is to solution as RP is to the diagonal theorems. (shrink)

The sciences of kalam and fiqh, which have a special importance in the history of Islamic thought and science, became prominent with their interactions with other sciences in their formation processes and their contributions to the evolution of religious thought. In the literature, the field representing the linguistic, religious, mental and practical aspects of fiqh has become widespread with the concepts of usūl-i fiqh and fürū-i fiqh, and the part about creed as usūlü'd-dīn or fiqhu'l-akbar. It has drawn our attention (...) that Imam Abū Ḥanīfa and Imam Shāfiʿī's ijtihads, fatwas and thoughts have remained up to date in every century without exception in the vortex of overdoing and understatement in these two disciplines. However, there are some narrations stating that although these imams were interested in kalam, they kept a distance from it. Their, famous students also indicated that they gave them advice in this sense. Therefore, this study has been prepared in order to examine the background of the aforementioned issues. For this purpose, the reasons why two imams preferred the science of fiqh in the main axis of the subject were subjected to a general criticism. Consequently, it has been seen that both imams had similar concerns and their ideas have been overlapping in the face of the creed developments of the period. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dimensions of Agency in Lincoln’s Second InauguralAndrew C. HansenSix days before he delivered his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln strode into his White House office. Greeting him were G. B. Lincoln, John A. Bingham, and Francis Carpenter, the last of whom had been living with Lincoln in the White House for six months, painting a portrait of the president reading the Emancipation Proclamation to the cabinet. It is Carpenter's (...) delineation of the president's entrance that contains the "only known description of the preliminaries of the Second Inaugural" (Barondess 1954, 62). "Mr. Lincoln came in through the side passage which had lately been constructed," Carpenter writes, "holding in his hand a roll of manuscripts." Lincoln turned to his guests and quipped, "Lots of wisdom in that document, I suspect; it is what will be called my 'second inaugural' " (quoted in Barondess, 62).The content and modesty of Carpenter's description of the "preliminaries of the Second Inaugural" give the rhetorical critic a telling preview of what might be discovered in a reading of Lincoln's composition of that manuscript. The understatement in the length and simplicity of the address subtly and poignantly charms the reader. And there is "lots of wisdom" in the Second Inaugural: along with the Gettysburg Address, it contains the words of Lincoln that most abide. In a letter to an admiring Thurow Weed, who had penned Lincoln that his inaugural was "the neatest but the most pregnant and effective use to which the English Language was ever put," Lincoln wrote that he "expected" the Second Inaugural to "wear as well as—perhaps better than—anything I have ever produced" (quoted in Barondess 1954, 78).Underscoring Lincoln's perspicacity when he wrote to Weed that he "expected" the speech to "wear well," Carl Schulz's designation of the address as a "sacred poem" and the frequency with which that epithet is quoted by other critics confirm Lincoln's assessment of the oratorical endurance [End Page 223] of the piece. The estimation of the rhetorical durability of the address is perhaps best proven by its ability to withstand the polemics of its detractors, both immediately after its delivery and in successive generations, and the encomia of its admirers, both the obscure journalists and the renowned poets.1 Lately, only praise surrounds the Second Inaugural. Ronald C. White's thorough overview of the Second Inaugural's basic stylistic characteristics and how the oration resonates within Lincoln's social, political, and intellectual context is modestly entitled Lincoln's Greatest Speech (2002). In the last line of Lincoln at Gettysburg, Wills concludes that the Second Inaugural "is the only speech worthy to stand with" the Gettysburg Address (1992, 189) and later argues in the Atlantic Monthly that Lincoln "was at the peak of his creativity when he wrote the Second Inaugural Address" (1999, 70). The Second Inaugural seemingly speaks beyond its content and situation.Contained within the aura of adoration that surrounds the Second Inaugural is a significant charge to the rhetorical critic: what is it particularly about the address that sustains its agency and permits it to escape the evanescence accorded to most rhetorical efforts? When the agency of discourse helps to eliminate or extenuate the immediate exigency that calls forth that speech, it usually becomes remanded to the annals of history and is examined by the public or by scholars only when that historical nidus forces itself back upon the public's or the scholar's attention. The speech is exhausted by its situation and swallowed by its surrounding and future events. There are, however, those speeches like the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural that practice their persuasion on audiences beyond the immediate exigency. They persist, they talk to us still, and their agency endures. Why is this true of Lincoln's Second Inaugural? This is the question that motivates my close reading of Lincoln's speech; and, as I hope to demonstrate, it is only through a close reading that such a question even makes sense. After explicating the scholarship that the Second Inaugural has generated and the critical assumptions that drive my close textual analysis, the essay will proceed with the work... (shrink)

To say that the matter of the legality of the armed conflict against Iraq in 2003 was divisive is an understatement. The primary justification given by the UK government for the lawful nature of the Iraq war was an implied mandate from the Security Council. The implied mandate was said to be derived from a combination of Security Council Resolutions 678 and 1441. Many international lawyers remain unconvinced that such a mandate can be inferred from those resolutions. There is (...) agreement among both supporters and opponents of the war in Iraq that Saddam Hussein’s regime had an appalling human rights record. This was known to the coalition governments; indeed, Tony Blair expressly made the "moral case" for war on the basis of Hussein’s human rights violations. The legal justifications offered for the conflict by the UK government, however, did not refer to humanitarian intervention. This paper investigates whether it is possible that, despite the fact that the justification was not raised by the UK, it can provide a defence to any claims that the UK acted unlawfully, or that individuals committed an international crime, by initiating the attack on Iraq. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics by Mark SideritsRick Repetti (bio)How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics. By Mark Siderits. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. vi + 204. Paperback $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-760691-9.How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics, by Mark Siderits, presents ten chapters on Buddhist metaphysics that will appeal to readers from any number of backgrounds, e.g. Western philosophers concerned with (...) analytic metaphysics, but also philosophers of mind, epistemologists, phenomenologists, philosophers of meditation, comparative philosophers, non-Buddhist Indian philosophers, and Buddhist philosophers. The book includes an introductory chapter and chapters on the self, the person, fundamental ontology, causation, Buddhist nominalism, time, the external world, the internal world, and anti-realism. This book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to have a robust understanding of Buddhist metaphysics. If nothing else, the reader will appreciate the richness, complexity, and analytic rigor of Buddhist metaphysics that parallels its Western counterparts.This book is an "introduction" to "Buddhist" metaphysics, but much more, as each chapter comprehensively assesses the dialectical progression of arguments, theories, objections, rebuttals, and refinements throughout the history within and between the various schools and traditions of Buddhist metaphysics and their non-Buddhist interlocutors in Indian philosophy, and their analogues in Western philosophy. That comprehensiveness is an obvious feature, but possibly also a bug, as "Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics" is an understatement. For readers to fully follow any "introduction," they must be able to do so on the basis of the information provided. This is largely but not entirely the case here, for, as someone fairly well-versed in Western and Indian philosophy, I think readers of How Things Are would only be able to fully follow its many abstract, complex, eloquent arguments and assertions if they were already quite well-versed in the history of both. I found it occasionally difficult to follow Siderits' reasoning, despite knowing what he means by certain unexplained terms he relies on, such as "qualia-philes," "cognitively impenetrable," and "the refrigerator illusion."The introductory chapter begins by noting that, contextually, older philosophical systems, e.g. Sāṃkhya and Nyāya, were extant when Buddhism [End Page 1] arose in India, systems which agree that liberation is about disidentifying consciousness with matter, while Buddhism is about disidentifying with anything. Siderits here sketches the eightfold path and its meditative core, noting that "the careful observation of mental states cultivated in some types of meditational practice is said to provide empirical evidence in support of key philosophical theses" (p. 11). As keen as Siderits is elsewhere to uncover problems, however, this description glosses over the fact that Buddhist meditative instructions are formulated precisely to "confirm" the "key philosophical theses" of momentariness, impersonality, and causal interdependence, in which case practitioners are looking for these things in ways that generate their perception; thus the claim that meditative experiences count as "empirical evidence of key Buddhist ideological theses" is circular (Struhl 2022).Siderits then sketches the three main stages in Buddhist development, namely, the early sūtras (the Indian Nikāyas and the Chinese Āgamas), the subsequent philosophical analyses of these (the Abhidharma), and the later developments (the Mahāyāna: both Yogācāra and Mādhyamaka), and what they all agree on: the unreality of the self, momentariness, mereological nihilism, and non-substantialism. Siderits brilliantly explains arguments for and against each, and maps out four general stances: two dualist realisms (Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika), one external world anti-realism (Yogācāra), and one global anti-realism (Mādhyamaka). He then explains Vaibhāṣika's direct realism (we perceive external, mind-independent objects directly, akin to naïve realism) and eternalism (each moment exists in all three times: past, present, future). He goes on to explain Sautrāntika's representationalism (we are aware only of mental representations of perceptual objects, akin to sense data) and presentism (only the present moment exists). Siderits here notes that representationalism leads to idealism (as it did in the modern West), and that Yogācāra espouses non-duality between representation and reality--a non-duality that entails local anti-realism about the physical... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Working with Patience:An Insight into Dealing with Difficult EmotionsDavid VilanovaAs the most trusted professionals in the nation, nurses are expected to care for their patients with empathy and freedom from bias. The reality is that nurses are human, and some form of implicit bias is inevitable. In my own experience, this issue has reared its head on several occasions. My nursing background is prominently in cardiac and intensive care. (...) Seeing patients at their most vulnerable has become a regular part of my practice. Among some of the most challenging cases for me have been when I assume care of a patient withdrawing from alcohol. As an adult child with close alcoholic family members, many instances of abuse and pain stick with me today and these are brought to the surface when I care for patients with alcohol use disorder. In most cases, I easily find a healthy balance between remaining an understanding-and-empathetic provider and protecting my emotional and mental health as I navigate ethical and moral issues. However, with this patient population, walking that fine line is especially challenging. How do I navigate and manage intensely personal emotions and biases while providing the high-quality care I vowed to deliver regardless of my patient's life choices, addictions, and illnesses? How do I maintain an appropriate level of neutrality and clarity as this patient's behavior and attitude spark emotional triggers? In other words, how do I take care of someone I don't like?Mrs. H was a middle-aged Hispanic woman, barely coherent, but speaking clearly enough that I could understand her slurred speech. Immediate dread washed over me as I realized my assignment included a patient withdrawing from alcohol. The patient's affect, incoherence, and aggression were all too reminiscent of a traumatic past I still work to heal from. My coworkers couldn't understand her insults and obscenities and were therefore unphased except for noting her unruly and erratic behavior. On the other hand, I could understand much of what she was yelling at me and any other staff who bravely walked into her room. My immediate thoughts were that this woman clearly did not want our help. My every attempt to enter her room, speak with her, and provide care were met with an all too familiar rejection and denial that she even had a problem. Yet here she was in a hospital room, and I was her nurse. She verbalized denial of drinking too much when told that she was being treated for alcohol withdrawal. She stated this denial more to herself than to the health care providers in the room, and it was reminiscent of the denial I have seen in my loved ones. This was ironic, I always thought, as the need for such self-deception in and of itself points to the fact that something may be wrong and worth addressing.But denial or not, today, this patient—Mrs. H, was entrusted into my care. She refused treatments and medications, and this put me in a complex ethical predicament—treating a patient that I do not like for the personal issues she reminds me of, and the treatment of a patient against their refusal, as she was deemed incapable of making her own decisions. The latter of these two issues was easiest to put aside. Legally, this patient needed to be treated through her alcohol withdrawal. Once her mental status cleared up, she could sign out against medical advice or choose to remain until a safe discharge plan was in place. There was a protocol and legal guidelines for this situation. However, no guidelines [End Page 10] truly exist when it comes to the management of a patient that you simply do not like. The result can be a near-instantaneous dread each time you must answer that patient's bed alarm, call light, or most basic needs. A negative bias takes over, and it would be an understatement to say that this affects the quality of care. Patients in situations like this—with providers who judge them as I have been guilty of—can easily become subject to derogatory remarks, health inequities, and biased labeling... (shrink)

What is the relevance of morality today? Eden Collinsworth enlists the famous, the infamous, and the heretofore unheard-of to unravel how we make moral choices in an increasingly complex and ethically flexible age. To call these unsettling times is an understatement: our political leaders are less and less respectable; in the realm of business, cheating, lying, and stealing are hazily defined; and in daily life, rapidly changing technology offers permission to act in ways inconceivable without it. Yet somehow, this (...) hasn t quite led to a complete free-for-all people still draw lines around what is acceptable and what is not. Collinsworth sets out to understand how and why. In her intrepid quest, she squares off witha prime minister, the editor of London s Financial Times, a holocaust survivor, a pop star, and a former commander of the U.S. Air Force to grapple with the impracticality of applying morals to foreign policy; precisely when morality gets lost in the making of money; what happens to morality without free will; whether immoral women are just those having a better time; why celebrities have become the new moral standard-bearers; and if testosterone is morality s enemy or its hero.". (shrink)

The Writings of Charles De Koninck, Volume 1, introduces a projected three-volume series that presents the first English edition of the collected works of the Catholic Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck. Ralph McInerny is the project editor and has prepared the excellent translations. The first volume contains writings ranging from De Koninck's 1934 dissertation at the University of Louvain on the philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington, to two remarkable early essays on indeterminism and the unpublished book "The Cosmos." The short (...) essay "Are the Experimental Sciences Distinct from the Philosophy of Nature?" is also included and demonstrates for the first time De Koninck's distinctive view on the relation between philosophy of nature and the experimental sciences. A comprehensive introductory essay by Leslie Armour outlines the structure and themes of De Koninck's philosophy. The volume begins with a biographical essay by De Koninck's son, Thomas. "Charles De Koninck, perhaps because of his untimely death, is not as well known to English-speaking readers as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, but his work belongs to that same world-class scholarship as his notable contemporaries. It is almost an understatement to say that his contribution to the philosophy of science remains timely. Readers are fortunate that his former student, Ralph McInerny, has seen fit to collect and to translate, where necessary, some of De Koninck's most important work for this volume." --Jude P. Dougherty, The Catholic University of America "Ralph McInerny is doing us the incalculable good of making available to a general public the writings of Charles De Koninck. This volume, the first of many to come, begins a chronological presentation of the books, articles, essays, and addresses of one of the strongest and most penetrating thinkers of the last century, who was at once an extraordinary philosopher and theologian, with the profound and simple faith of the proverbial peasant. May we continue now to learn from the great De Koninck, and include in our prayers the intentions of his gracious disciple, who is so felicitously discharging the office of piety to a revered and unforgettable master." --Ronald P. Mc Arthur, President Emeritus, Thomas Aquinas College. (shrink)

It would be an almost comical understatement to say that, throughout my graduate study in philosophy and subsequent years of teaching and writing, I found myself engaging with the works of Jeremy Bentham somewhat infrequently. Beyond flavorful anecdotes about mummified heads and jabs about stilted nonsense in my undergraduate Intro to Ethics courses—as we segued into extended discussion of John Stuart Mill, of course—Bentham’s direct and recognized role in my philosophical activities has been pretty much nonexistent. With all that (...) said: as a sexual- and gender- nonconforming aesthetician and LGBTQIA+ educator and wellness professional living in what is now a post-Roe United States, I found Carrie D. Shanafelt’s Uncommon Sense: Jeremy Bentham, Queer Aesthetics, and the Politics of Taste (2021) to be rich, captivating, and at times, even genuinely comforting. -/- Shanafelt’s short book is equal parts history of philosophy, philosophical history, biography, and queer manifesto, written in an accessible manner that successfully balances scholarship with readability. I could easily see Uncommon Sense engendering rich discussion in graduate seminars as well as undergraduate courses of various sorts—though I can just as easily see portions of the book’s content generating various rumbles of controversy, at least at some of the institutions I’ve taught at before. (See, for example, Chapter Four, titled ‘Bentham’s Queer Christ.’) Any anticipatory worries of short-sighted reactionary takes aside, the book would absolutely serve well as the central focus on an entire course, supplemented by a range of literature and scholarly material from philosophical aesthetics, queer studies, political theory, and more. Honestly, I would love to teach that class. (shrink)