Technological advancements, especially with regard to enhancements of human capacities and powers, have instigated a collision between opposing views of the human person. I begin with the premise that the predominant classical view of the human person attained its clearest and most cogent expression in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and can be termed the theory of the homo integralis. The human person is, for Thomas, the integrated being par excellence: he is a union of the material (body) and the (...) immaterial (soul); his freedom is guided by a normative nature; he is himself a product of and participant in nature; he is a member of a common species from which he draws his identity; and he balances the needs of his embodied state with a recognition that his existence is not limited to it. Due to the philosophical and technological revolutions of the modern period, themselves an outgrowth perhaps of earlier attitudes, a contrasting view of the human person emerged: the homo technologicus. Technological man, unlike his classical predecessor, is marked by fundamental disintegration: he is divided in himself, between mind and body; he is dissociated from a normative human nature; he is divided from nature itself as he sets himself against it through technological means; he is divided from the human community in radical, self-determining autonomy; and he is severed from any sense of transcendent purpose or value aside from that which can be attained through his own powers, technological or otherwise. By recovering a sense of the homo integralis as articulated by Thomas Aquinas, a fresh appraisal of contemporary issues regarding the human relationship to technology, human capacities and powers as evaluated by movements like transhumanism, and ultimately, human meaning and value, is made possible and is shown to provide a consistent and appealing rejoinder to the disintegrated vision of man that emerges in a technologized world. (shrink)

Welcome to the Post-Truth era-- a time in which the art of the lie is shaking the very foundations of democracy and the world as we know it. The Brexit vote; Donald Trump's victory; the rejection of climate change science; the vilification of immigrants; all have been based on the power to evoke feelings and not facts. So what does it all mean and how can we champion truth in in a time of lies and 'alternative facts'? In this (...) eye-opening and timely book, Post-Truth is distinguished from a long tradition of political lies, exaggeration and spin. What is new is not the mendacity of politicians but the public's response to it and the ability of new technologies and social media to manipulate, polarise and entrench opinion. Where trust has evaporated, conspiracy theories thrive, the authority of the media wilt and emotions matter more than facts. Now, one of the UK's most respected political journalists, Matthew d'Ancona investigates how we got here, why quiet resignation is not an option and how we can and must fight back. (shrink)

Austrian immigration authorities frequently reject the family reunion applications of immigrant workers. They justify their decisions not only on legal grounds but also on the basis of their own often prejudiced judgements of the applicants' ability to `integrate' into Austrian society. A discourse-historical method is combined with systemic-functionally oriented methods of text analysis to study the official letters which notify immigrant workers of the rejection of their family reunion applications. The systemic-functionally oriented methods are used in a detailed analysis of (...) a sample of rejection letters while the discourse-historical method allows this analysis to be intertextually connected to other related genres of discourse and strategies of argumentation, and to the history of post-war immigration in Austria generally. (shrink)

This chapter shows how and how far humanism has found expression in more recent fiction. If one has to consider whether the novel is humanistic, one must examine the values held by the people, which become clear despite their not being in the habit of articulating them. Accounts of post‐war immigrants coming into England can provide a basis for acute observation, in ways that cast light on our central concern. Material for thinking about humanism in the contemporary world (...) is particularly well provided by novels giving an overall account of society, often referred to as condition‐of‐England fiction. Perowne believes that the failure of political utopianism in the twentieth century has left most people, with ‘a queasy agnosticism’ about social justice and the distribution of wealth. The chapter concludes with the discussion of a piece of fiction, Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to Afro-Caribbean musical rituals as a form of response to exclusion from public sphere. The author claims that there are two key features of black music (in all the diversity of its genres): a) participatory character; b) dualism, manifested in a combination of a cheerful form and tragic content, hidden from an external observer. Starting from this thesis, the author places Notting Hill Carnival as a key chronotope of the (post)migratory situation in the center of his (...) analysis. West Indian immigrants found themselves in this very situation in post-war Britain. The evolution of the Afro-Caribbean immigrants' carnival culture is considered in three stages. Firstly, the article discusses participation of the African slaves' descendants in the Trinidad street carnival. Then it proceeds to the transposition of this tradition into the context of the UK's capital. Further, the use of carnival forms of protest against racism in modern Britain is discussed. On the one hand, the study reveals a trend towards significant expansion of the "black music" adherents circle due to its subversive potential. On the other hand, it discovers the limits of solidarity among those who are prone to social stigmatization due to their ethnocultural otherness. (shrink)

This article examines the issues of social (re)integration in Ukraine, which were actualized during the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014-2022. The first part of the article is devoted to the consideration of theoretical issues related to the conceptualization of social integration in the social sciences and the role of the state in reproducing social relations. The author assumes that during the last decades, ideas about the role of the state in these processes have changed significantly, which was caused by the departure (...) of the governments of developed democratic countries from the policy of the welfare state. This caused a reorientation of the state towards policies of inclusion, that is, targeted support and assistance to the most vulnerable social strata. The second part of the article is devoted to the consideration of the processes of social integration of migrants and refugees during the war in Ukraine. The author concludes that during the first full-scale invasion, processes of rethinking one's own national identity intensified in Ukrainian society. The armed confrontation and the catastrophic consequences caused by it contributed to the nationwide consolidation of Ukrainians and neutralized socio-cultural differences, which for a long time became the cause of political opposition and electoral divisions. Instead, the long stay of part of the territory and citizens of Ukraine under occupation under conditions of repressive and propaganda pressure, violent mobilization to the armed forces of the self-proclaimed republics and participation in the armed confrontation on the side of the occupiers revealed new divisions between Ukrainians who were on different sides of the front line. These divisions will obviously become an obstacle to the successful reintegration of Ukrainians after de-occupation, which will require a balanced and careful integration policy from the state authorities during the post-war reconstruction. (shrink)

Beata Halicka's masterly narrated biography is the story of an extraordinary man and leading intellectual in the Polish-American community. Z. Anthony Kruszewski was first a Polish scout fighting in World War II against the Nazi occupiers, then Prisoner of War/Displaced Person in Western Europe. He stranded as a penniless immigrant in post-war America and eventually became a world-renowned academic. Kruszewski's almost incredible life stands out from his entire generation. His story is a microcosm of the 20th-century history, covering various theatres (...) and incorporating key events and individuals. Kruszewski walks a stage very few people have even stood on, both as an eye-witness at the centre of the Second World War, and later as vice-president of the Polish American Congress, and a professor and political scientist at world-class universities in the USA. Not only did he become a pioneer and a leading figure in Borderland Studies, but he is a borderlander in every sense of the word. (shrink)

Concerning race and its intertwinements with gender, sexual orientation, class, accents, or ability there is a scarcity of social psychological research in Europe. With an intersectional approach studying racism in Europe it is possible to detect specific experiences of discrimination. The prevalent understanding of European racism is connected to migration from the former colonies to the European metropoles and the post-Second-World-War immigration of ‘guest workers.’ Thus, the focus of this research is on work-related discrimination. Against the background of a short (...) historical review, we present the results of the few existing studies on intersectional discrimination within the labor market in Europe and discuss their implications. The pattern of findings is more complex than the assumption that individuals belonging to two or more marginalized social categories are always the most discriminated ones. Gender, sexual orientation, and origin rather interact with the specific job context. These interactions determine whether minority individuals are discriminated against or even preferred over individuals belonging to the majority group. We argue that considering the stereotype content model and social-identity theory helps to structure the sometimes contradictory results of intersectionality research. Therefore, the review presents new perspectives on racism in Europe based on current research, develops hypotheses on the interplay of intersecting identities, and identifies four novel research questions based on racist attributions considering situational variables: These are the role of concrete job contexts in explaining discrimination, the influence of different stereotypes regarding marginalized groups, the explanatory value of sexual orientation as well as class or socioeconomic-status and age in terms of some patterns of results. (shrink)

In response to Bourdieu and Wacquant, I argue that American hegemony in setting the terms of debate on ethnicity and racism is nothing new, led in the first half of the century by US heterotopic intellectuals, immigrants, outsiders and descendants of slaves. Ironically, in the light of claims made by the authors, in the post-war era the debate is increasingly dominated by ex-imperial British and French postcolonial thinkers. The authors' disquiet is more explicable, however, if viewed against the background (...) of French republican discourses that deny the legitimacy of `difference' in the public sphere. But in the final analysis, terms such as multiculturalism or ethnicity are not legislated from above but respond to grassroots social movements, and in France minority groups are presently claiming a voice and presence in the public sphere. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 64.3 (2003) 489-510 [Access article in PDF] The Analysis of Culture Revisited:Pure Texts, Applied Texts, Literary Historicisms, Cultural Histories Warren Boutcher School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London Theory What is the relationship between study of canonical texts and broader social and cultural history? This question lies behind the contemporary academic issue of historicism and the public "culture wars" that (...) broke out in the late 1980s, but it was asked by Raymond Williams in the late 1950s and by German and French intellectuals of the 1930s. For the purposes of the present argument I shall distinguish between three broad phases in the responses of those who have taken the inquiry up most actively. Each phase began with what were perceived as crises or turning-points in the humanities corresponding to watersheds in wider history. The first and most profound began after the global crisis of 1929-33 and continued through the global wars that followed. A second began in the mid-1950s after McCarthyism, the consolidation of the Cold War and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. A third phase began in the mid-1970s, after the events of 1968 brought on the extended period of social unrest which found one important epicenter in the universities themselves and which broke out again in the more civilized form of the culture wars already mentioned.Most discussions of historicism do not engage directly with the practice of history. The second half of the paper will therefore ask what the theoretical account offered in the first half means for historical research that starts from past texts, and will include as one of its practical examples a case-study in the modern intellectual history offered in outline below. [End Page 489] Literary Histories of Ideas After the First World War an intellectual revolt took place against the isolation of aesthetic experience in the European tradition. It was led in England and America by teachers who wanted to establish that the general critical intelligence acquired in English literary studies could be applied in extra-literary fields from anthropology to social psychology. In England, English literature as a single discipline was to be the "liaison field of study"; in America it fell to pre-professional literary education in general. 1 The common project was to use refined literary experience of texts as the base from which to conduct value-laden, historically informed analysis of the contemporary problems of interwar European and American society, of western culture and civilization. 2 As consolidated in English intellectual culture between the pre-war and immediate post-war period this has been dubbed the moment of Scrutiny, the influential literary periodical headed by F. R. Leavis. In American intellectual culture it might well be dubbed the moment of Partisan Review, an equally influential periodical whose leading literary critic was Lionel Trilling. 3Leavis's at once dissident and élitist literary criticism concealed a sociology designed to salvage the humane culture of an earlier England from amidst the decay of mass civilization. 4 Trilling used European culture to critique what he perceived to be the superficiality of modern American civilization and literature. His criticism became the Ellis Island of intellectual life, the product of an immigrant culture desirous of assimilation by means of high culture to an American society whose better values were formed by the European canon. 5 For both, then, distinctive histories of society and social change, culture and cultural change were central to the enterprise of criticism. 6 Culture in their hands was a value-laden English or European way of life that shaped and was shaped by the highest artistic consciousness. As such, it carried a new awareness of alienation and repression in the midst of modern society or civilization. The aesthetic critical sense of a Leavis or a Trilling was now a sense of past and present cultural and social life. It competed successfully with claims to the [End Page 490] same ground made by what were seen as cruder sociological theories of... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recent writings by philosophers such as David Miller and Yael Tamir have undertaken to provide nationalism with a normative foundation, a task which has been all but ignored by post‐War English‐language political philosophy. I identify and criticise three lines of argument which have been deployed in their writings. First, it is argued by Miller that the universalism and abstraction of rationalist moral theories have made them suspicious of ‘particularisms’ such as nationalism, but that they stem from a faulty (...) metaethics. Against this I argue that abstraction and universality need not be grounded in a universalist metaethics, but can be derived pragmatically from the ethical needs of multicultural societies. Second, it is argued that liberal policies such as taxation and material redistribution, restrictions on immigration, as well as liberal concepts such as political obligation, presuppose the validity of the nationalist point of view. Against this I hold that nationalism never provides the strongest moral grounds for these policies and concepts, and that, in the specific case of distributive justice, it can even undermine them. And third, I examine the argument that the historical excesses of which nationalists have been guilty are actually the product of a narrow, ‘ethnic’nationalism, in contrast to which we can articulate a categorically distinct, open, ‘civic’nationalism, which would be broadly compatible with liberal political morality. I argue that the concept of civic nationalism is unstable, and that under fairly plausible and widespread empirical conditions, it either collapses back into a form of ethnic nationalism, or else becomes devoid of any recognisably nationalist content. (shrink)

The following paper presents a proposal of a theoretical foundation for an application of distributed cognition in overcoming post-war traumas and related social conflicts. The distributed cognition theory states that the cognitive system is a structure distributed between internal-mental and external-objective social world representations across time and space. The basic issue of dialogue in distributed cognition is that distribution as information dissemination in each cognitive component functions in a systemic integrity. The presented perspective of overcoming traumas and war conflicts through (...) dialogue refers to the following aspects of human activity: 1 - the perception of an environment as a construct of own life path and self-image; 2 - active creation of a desired world, life space and desired self; 3 - agentic cognitive mapping of an environment as a real, virtual and potential life space; 4 - a way of elastic control over an environment through discovering objectively present environmental affordances; 5 - achieving agency through discovering possibilities for action rather than barriers; 6 - making the cognitive system more flexible through a change in style of thinking to a constant state of openness to new meanings and values. (shrink)

For most of the 20th century literature and criticism of literature functioned as central engines of cultural change across the western world. This was especially the case in ex-colonial societies like New Zealand where writers and intellectuals frequently expressed a desire to create sophisticated local cultures which could compete with the foundation societies in Europe. Between 1940 and 1984 New Zealand writers and intellectuals developed a mode of literary criticism which this essay refers to as `Literary Critique' for this very (...) reason. In the absence of well established cultural traditions and a sense that they had a duty to import and indigenise western intellectual thought in order to further the evolution of New Zealand culture, a series of writers wrote often scathing critiques of their culture, using literature as their point of entry. Post-War New Zealand Literary Critique stands as evidence of a provincial, masculine, and angry intellectual culture. (shrink)

Existing research shows consistently high levels of concern among people in the UK over the scale of immigration and its impact on jobs, wages and services. At the same time, that same body of research does not provide much in the way of detail about the nature of these concerns. This is partly because much of the data is from opinion polls which say little about the priorities and perspectives that underlie the aggregate numbers. Moreover, very little research has been (...) carried out on what new immigration policies the British public would like to see once the UK leaves the EU and free movement ends. Our research for this report aims to fill these gaps by providing evidence about how people use and understand information about economic impacts of immigration, and what they might wish to see from new, post-Brexit, policies. (shrink)

The military actions, the loss of human lives and especially the cruelty of the Nazi and Fascist regimes and armies caused a reaction among the allied governments, the public and intellectuals. The Nazi regime in Germany and its actions, in general, even before the beginning of WWII caused an initially mild and later a sharp reaction and criticism in the democratic world. However, the behaviour and fanaticism of the German armed forces and their atrocities during the war could not but (...) cause reflections about how the allied countries, especially the larger ones, should deal with the defeated Germany. The experience of WWI had shown that German Nazism had, as its basis, the militarism which was present everywhere, including in the educational process. That is why many in the United States and Great Britain began to think aloud about a complete change of the German educational system and the re-education of the Germans after the military victory. There was a great dilemma over the questions of how to carry out that re-education, whether to include only the younger population that was exposed to Nazi indoctrination, and whether Germans who were opponents of Nazism should be included in that process. The debates were conducted among politicians, in the public, among scholars and scientists. The view that gradually prevailed was that the issue was complex and that some Germans should be involved in the re-education process after the War. (shrink)

The intellectual origins of molecular biology are usually traced back to the 1930s. By contrast, molecular biology acquired a social reality only around 1960. To understand how it came to designate a community of researchers and a professional identity, I examine the creation of the first institutes of molecular biology, which took place around 1960, in four European countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland. This paper shows how the creation of these institutes was linked to the results of (...) post-war economic reconstruction. Then, it compares how the promoters of these different institutional projects delimited the goals of their discipline, reflected on its history, and suggested how research should be organised. I show how they carefully positioned their new discipline within the emerging national science policy discourse of the 1950s, and aligned it with the current vision of scientific modernity. In particular, I discuss how they articulated the meaning of molecular biology with respect to five common themes: the role of physics in the atomic age, the relations between fundamental research and medical applications, the ‘Americanisation’ of scientific research, the value of science in the reconstruction of national identities, and the drive towards interdisciplinary research. This paper thus demonstrates that beyond the local and national accounts there is a European history of molecular biology. (shrink)

SummaryThis article addresses the appeal of saints and sainthood in the years 1945 to 1960. Part 1 cites the 1957 diary of Susan Sontag, who focused on the cultural power of the Roman Catholic Church and drew attention to three European women: Teresa of Avila, Edith Stein, and Frances Cabrini. Reasons that these three (all Catholic saints) would have been in Susan Sontag's mind in 1957 are explored. In Part 2, wider attention is applied to the year 1957. Writers who (...) were dealing with sainthood (Camus, Kazantzakis, Genet, Kerouac, O'Connor, Werfel, etc.) are discussed, as well as non-Catholics acclaimed as ‘saints’ (Simone Weil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer) and persons admired as ‘living saints’ (Albert Schweitzer, Padre Pio). Part 3 considers the influence of some major canonisations in the inter-war era (e.g., Joan of Arc, Thomas More) and the widespread access to Vatican spectacle afforded by photojournalism and newsreel. Four routes of analysis are pursued: the veneration of saints as a response to wartime suffering and loss; the vigour of the vocabulary of sainthood, uncontaminated by Nazi or Stalinist abuse; the special appeal of the ‘outsider’ saint; and the political interests of the Vatican and Christian Democratic parties. (shrink)

The historiography on the concept of race in the post-war sciences has focused predominantly on the UNESCO campaign against scientific racism and on the Anglo-American research community. By way of contrast, this article highlights the history of the concept of race from a thus far unexplored angle: from Swiss research centres and their global interconnections with racial researchers around the world. The article investigates how the acceptance, resonance, and prestige of racial research changed during the post-war years. It analyses what (...) resources could be mobilised that enabled researchers to carry out and continue scientific studies in the field of racial research or even to expand them and link them to new contexts. From this perspective, the article looks at the dynamics, openness, and contingency of the European post-war period, which was less stable, anti-racist, and spiritually renewed than retrospective success stories often suggest. The pronounced internationality of Swiss racial science and its close entanglement with the booming field of human genetics in the early 1950s point to the ambiguities of the period’s political and scientific development. I argue that the impact of post-war anti-racism on science was more limited than is frequently assumed: it did not drain the market for racial knowledge on a continent that clung to imperialism and was still shaped by racist violence. Only from the mid 1950s onwards did a series of unforeseen events and contingent shifts curtail the importance of the race concept in various sectors of the human sciences. (shrink)

An essential introduction to post-war critical thought on the problem of violence.

This paper focuses on independent training providers (ITPs) – in other words, private companies – as suppliers of vocational education and training in post-war England. Whilst acknowledging the central role of further education (FE) colleges in delivering vocational learning, it draws attention to a large, diverse sector of ITPs operating alongside FE colleges, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s. Data suggest that around 15–20% of vocational learners were enrolled as fee-paying customers with private providers at that time – a figure (...) broadly similar to today. There are, it is argued, three related reasons for this. First, the post-war policy environment, and the varied and uneven nature of colleges at that time, allowed significant room for ITPs to operate as alternative providers of vocational education. Second, the far-reaching ‘efficiency’ gains required since FE colleges left local authority control have largely attenuated the space in which ITPs previously operated. Third, neoliberal assumptions about the superiority of private enterprise mean that ITPs now receive significant funding from the state, largely to deliver Apprenticeships and other programmes of work-related learning – which has, somewhat perversely, reduced the incentive for them to act as bone fide commercial providers of a broader range of vocational learning. (shrink)

Summary This article examines the complex nature of post-war Italian political thought, stressing the importance of Italy's unusual institutional and historical political arrangements, but also the vibrancy of its political ideologies in this period. In the past it has often been argued that the dysfunctional nature of post-war Italian democracy with its rapidly changing governments, and widespread corruption—which nonetheless coexisted with the one party, the Christian Democrats, being constantly in power—led to the atrophying of political theory in general, and political (...) ideologies in particular. But this picture is strongly disputed here—on the contrary it is argued that Christian Democratic, Left and liberal political ideologies were all complex and interesting. Thus if Christian democracy should ultimately be seen as an ‘ideology of transition’ which existed to help Catholicism adapt to the parameters of modern mass democracy, and which lacked a thinker of the calibre of Jacques Maritain, it nevertheless contained within it important debates on the role of the state, between such interesting thinkers as Giuseppe Dossetti and Alcide De Gasperi. And if anything, political thinking on the Left in the post-war period was even more complex, with visceral debates within the (large) Communist Party (PCI) over whether to work within the law—between such thinkers as Palmiro Togliatti and the Il Manifesto group. Equally on the more revolutionary Left, there were important debates about how quickly capitalism could be made to collapse through revolutionary action between thinkers such as Raniero Panzieri and his more radical disciples, Mario Tronti and Antonio Negri, while later, due to the general failure of these revolutionary efforts, post-modern thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo sought to abandon grand metaphysical narratives, whilst retaining a commitment to Left of centre political commitments. Finally, although not part of a widespread mass movement, the liberal thought of Norberto Bobbio was also highly interesting and sophisticated—borrowing from Hobbes and Kelsen, he sought to advocate a modest form of liberal democracy which allowed for civilised forms of conflict, and the protection of minorities, and which rejected the contention of Marxists that civil rights could not be distinguished from economic ones. Overall, if normative aspirations in post-war Italian politics were often frustrated in practice, this was certainly not due to any lack of theoretical vibrancy. (shrink)

The intellectual origins of molecular biology are usually traced back to the 1930s. By contrast, molecular biology acquired a social reality only around 1960. To understand how it came to designate a community of researchers and a professional identity, I examine the creation of the first institutes of molecular biology, which took place around 1960, in four European countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland. This paper shows how the creation of these institutes was linked to the results of (...) post-war economic reconstruction. Then, it compares how the promoters of these different institutional projects delimited the goals of their discipline, reflected on its history, and suggested how research should be organised. I show how they carefully positioned their new discipline within the emerging national science policy discourse of the 1950s, and aligned it with the current vision of scientific modernity. In particular, I discuss how they articulated the meaning of molecular biology with respect to five common themes: the role of physics in the atomic age, the relations between fundamental research and medical applications, the 'Americanisation' of scientific research, the value of science in the reconstruction of national identities, and the drive towards interdisciplinary research. This paper thus demonstrates that beyond the local and national accounts there is a European history of molecular biology. (shrink)

Between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, the quotidian dimension took political centrality in Japan thanks to the leading role of the New Left movement and its ideology. This went hand in hand with an appreciation of the philosophical approaches of Marxist intellectuals such as Jun Tosaka and Gorō Hani, who saw the quotidian as a fundamental space for historical transformation. We know how Tosaka and Hani developed an everyday-centred philosophy of history through their writings, but we know little about (...) how formats other than the written word – such as cinema – contributed to thinking historical reality from the same ideological approach. To address this gap in our understanding, this article analyses the intersection of two highly representative films with Tosaka and Hani’s historical thought: Secrets Within Walls ( Kabe no naka no himegoto, Kōji Wakamatsu, 1965) and Ceremonies ( Gishiki, Nagisa Ōshima, 1971). These films’ cinematic allegorisation of post-war Japan’s everyday relationships was a way to reflect on the political character of that period. (shrink)

Fulfilling the needs of securing the food market was a key problem for the economy of the People’s Republic of Poland. According to the assumptions of the socialist system, all basic means of production were owned by the state and society as a whole, and production: its structure and volume depended on central assumptions. Farmers not only had to face the issue of reconstruction of farms in the post-war period, they were also obliged to make compulsory deliveries, and had the (...) main responsibility for feeding the country. Production capacity in the face of the growing needs of society was insufficient, which forced rationing and the use of substitutes in the diet. There were periodic declines in the consumption of selected commodities, especially meat. The purpose of this article is to analyze the situation of the food market in the period 1945–1989, taking into account the burden of the countryside, the level of consumption and the import and export of basic food products. (shrink)

Summary The development of post-war German social sciences is marked by a series of disputes about the nature and implications of positivist methodology. Two of these are selected for consideration here; the ‘positivist dispute’ in German sociology associated with Adorno and Popper, and the more diffuse assault on positivism in the legal sciences. In both cases, self-avowed positivists were in fact hard to find but the debates were important polemical disputes about the past—notably the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich—and (...) the future of the young Federal Republic. It is suggested below that these disputes should be seen in this context and that the polemical claim in both disputes that certain methodological standpoints mandated specific moral and political commitments is more questionable. (shrink)

French social and philosophical thought has played a very significant role in the development of European and American social theory. This detailed, timely book provides a map of the production and reception of French social thought within a global sociological context. Critically comparing the work of five key theorists Derek Robbins examines how their ideas were produced and received before persuasively setting out the key differences between their philosophical and ideological positions. The book sensitively traces the cross-currents of social theory (...) and confidently leads the reader through the complex foundations of Western social thought. Each chapter represents a textual analysis of the production of a critical intellectual and focuses upon the work of: Althusser, Foucault, Aron, Lyotard, Bourdieu. This carefully crafted volume represents a significant contribution to the globalization of theory and will be essential reading for anyone interested in Western social theory and the foundations of sociological thought."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Taken in general terms, “hermeneutics” refers to the study of understanding and interpretation, and, traditionally, this study focuses on considerations of the art, method, and foundations of research in the arts and humanities. The study of hermeneutics has been developed and applied in a number of areas of scholarly inquiry, such as biblical exegesis, literary studies, legal studies, and the medical humanities. In the context of post-war Continental European thought, however, hermeneutics is brought into a novel philosophical context and, with (...) this, comes to designate a philosophical movement – or, at least, a number of related philosophers and themes – concerned with the scope and limits of phenomenology, the character of human existence, the relation of the natural sciences and humanities, as well as a range of interrelated matters in the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, practical philosophy, as well as in epistemology and the theory of meaning. (shrink)

Appropriate for both academic readers and informed general enthusiasts of the cinema it addresses, the book demonstrates both philosophy's particular usefulness for the analysis of modernist cinema and film form's inherent potential for ...

The letters of S. I. Hessen and I. I. Lapshin, two Russian Neo-Kantian philosophers, were written in the early post-war years. These letters bear witness to the later period in the life and work of their authors, a period of hardship, tragic losses and hopes. Both philosophers were deeply embedded in the intellectual landscape of Russian emigration. They were also known and valued by their peers in the countries that gave them refuge, Poland and Czechoslovakia, where they not only published (...) their works, but also taught young scholars. Hessen, being considerably younger than Lapshin, continued teaching and actively publishing after the war, including outside Poland. Lapshin in Czechoslovakia was less in demand, but continued preparing his works for publication. The reflections of the two authors shed light on the idea content of their later works, which is particularly valuable in reconstructing the conception of the texts which were not completed at the time of their death and have survived only in the shape of plans and rough notes. It is also interesting that in their letters Hessen and especially Lapshin expound the Kantian element of their philosophical views as well as sharing their impressions of the development of philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Widening participation — though it has only recently been labelled as such — has been a continuing concern for policy makers and higher education institutions in the United Kingdom since 1945 (and before). This article reviews the evidence for four key target groups — women, lower socio-economic groups, mature adults and ethnic minorities — to produce an overall assessment, a score card, of what has been achieved, and what remains to be done. It concludes that, while progress in the recruitment (...) of women, mature adults and ethnic minorities has been substantial — though with some qualifications — it has been much less so for lower socio-economic groups. (shrink)

The Vatican probably hoped that the visit of the apostolic nuncio Claudio Gugerotti on December 16-18, 2016 to the occupied territories of the Donbas Ukrainian society "swallowing" was just as easy as it easily "swallowed" the same and his Easter visit, as the "swallowed up" meeting on June 10, 2015 by Pope Roman Francis with the President of the Russian Federation V. Putin, in which many saw the obvious anti-Ukrainian context, not to mention here the anti-Ukrainian gesture that the Pope (...) had made by signing on February 12, 2016 The shameful "Havana Declaration", p Vatican which essentially gives Ukraine at the mercy of Moscow, since it recognizes domain of the Moscow Patriarchate. However, one should pay tribute to those who, seeing the pro-Moscow line of conduct of the Vatican, in particular its current head, Pope Francis, aspire to persuade Ukrainian society, first and foremost, of Ukrainian Roman and Greek Catholics, which, they say, only in this way the Holy See and can prove that he "loves Ukraine", but simply needs to have the ability to "read," "listen," to "look at the world through the eyes of God the Creator," as the Pope teaches. (shrink)

This essay introduces this special issue on virtue ethics in relation to military AI. It describes the current situation of military AI ethics as following that of AI ethics in general, caught between consequentialism and deontology. Virtue ethics serves as an alternative that can address some of the weaknesses of these dominant forms of ethics. The essay describes how the articles in the issue exemplify the value of virtue-related approaches for these questions, before ending with thoughts for further research.

During the first years of the post-war era, many French scientists travelled in the United States. As they looked for a reference to be used in rebuilding their own scientific landscape, their diaries say as much about the rise of the American biomedical complex as they do about their perception of research in the country. In order to illustrate how the French biologists adopted, competed with, or challenged the American model and how transatlantic exchanges played a critical role in the (...) molecularization of the life sciences, this paper presents three trajectories of laboratories. These include the services respectively led by P. Lépine and J. Monod at the Pasteur Institute, and G. Schapira’s biochemical research unit at the Hôpital des Enfants Malades. The three studies document the massive transatlantic circulation of materials, techniques, instruments, and people during the scientific reconstruction. The reconstruction however produced highly differentiated characters each operating in his own niche: the biotechnological inventor, the neo-clinician, and the fundamental biologist. The comparison situates the rise of molecular biology within the context of a rapidly expanding biomedical research system. It will help in understanding how, in contrast to the American situation, a logic of “demedicalization” became in France a means for developing biology at the molecular level. (shrink)

The review of activity of local governments of Leningrad on the solution of social problems is presented in article in the period of the Great Patriotic War and restoration of municipal economy during the post-war period. The considerable attention is paid to questions of ensuring activity of the population and the main directions of social policy. Consequences of the public regress caused by war, which detained for many decades development of the social sphere in the country, are not studied yet. (...) In this regard, the judgment of process of overcoming of these consequences, research of the principles of work, methods and forms of administrative activities for the organization of full-fledged life of citizens during the recovery post-war period and in the next decades is of special interest. Completion of World War II entailed changes in a control system of the country - as it is known, extraordinary bodies of authority and management of a wartime in the capital and on places were abolished. Management of restoration and maintenance of full functioning life support system of the cities and areas transferred to local governments of the Soviet power - to city and regional councils of deputies and their constantly operating executive committees. The role of the social sphere in modern conditions more and more increases in improvement of economy, development of democratic processes. The scientific analysis of activity of the central and local authorities for protection and providing the population in years of war and the post-war period gives more deep understanding of role and importance of social questions in life of society. It reveals historical experience of creation, development and implementation of effective mechanism of such activity, that experience is useful for modern management practice of state and local authorities. The considerable case of sources, among which analytical and research works of applied and theoretical character is analyzed. (shrink)

The Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, which laid the foundations of the modern world order, are considered the highest diplomatic achievements of World War II. At these conferences, all issues relating to the new world order were resolved by the will of the Allies, united in the anti- Hitler coalition. During the final stage of the war, the existing plans for the complete destruction of the Third Reich were coordinated, and the foundation for a new world order after the (...) war was established. The main topics of discussion at the conferences included achieving the complete defeat of Nazi Germany, determining the future of Germany, ensuring the payment of reparations for war damages, establishing a common political line concerning the European states liberated from occupation, and creating an international organization for security and cooperation, with the goal of making it a decisive factor in ensuring the stability of the newly emerging system of international relations. However, after the defeat of the common enemy, the existing disagreements between the Allies- who had united in the anti-Hitler coalition to fight against fascism and militarism- intensified and soon led to a split into two large blocs. The newly formed Yalta-Potsdam system developed under the conditions of a bipolar system of international relations. (shrink)