Factitious disorder is the deliberate simulation of illness for the purpose of seeking the sick role. It is a 20th-century diagnosis, though the grounds for its introduction are uncertain. While previous authors have considered the social changes contributing to growth in the disorder, this article looks at some of the pressures on doctors that may have created the diagnostic need for a disorder between hysteria and malingering. The recent history of those disorders suggests that malingering would no longer be acceptable (...) when applied to the potentially larger numbers involved in workers’ compensation or in mass conscription. Equally, the absolution given to hysteria on the basis of the Freudian subconscious would survive only as long as that model retained credibility. Growing egalitarianism and changing doctor—patient relationships in the 20th century would no longer tolerate a sharp division between culpable malingering and exculpated hysteria, which may previously have been made on grounds of class or gender. They would contribute to the need for a mediating diagnosis, such as factitious disorder. (shrink)

Kenneth Burke, arguably the most important American literary theorist of the twentieth century, helped define the theoretical terrain for contemporary literary and cultural studies. His perspectives were literary and linguistic, but his influences ranged across history, philosophy, and the social sciences. In this important and original study Robert Wess traces the trajectory of Burke's long career and situates his work in relation to postmodernity. His study is both an examination of contemporary theories of rhetoric, ideology, and the subject, and an (...) explanation of why Burke failed to complete his Motives trilogy. Burke's own critique of the 'isolated unique individual' led him to question the possibility of unique individuation, a strategy which anticipated important elements of postmodern concepts of subjectivity. Robert Wess's study is both a timely and judicious exposition of Burke's massive oeuvre, and a crucial intervention in current debates on rhetoric and human agency. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe paper argues for the restricted viability of the concept of style in the history of science. Since historians of science borrow this term from art history or the sociology of knowledge, the paper outlines its emergence and function in these disciplines, in order to show that the need for ever subtler stylistic distinctions in historical description inevitably leads to the dissolution of the concept of style itself.“Style” will be defined in predominantly cognitive or technical terms when imputed to (...) an individual; in social or moral terms when thought to be carried by some collective entity. Both descriptions are given normative interpretations. A good individual style, then, is regarded as the pledge for valid knowledge or insights of a “higher order,” while a collective style, understood as the vehicle of successful intra group communication, involves the acceptance of certain rhetorical norms and/or socially shared values that are supposed to structure that style. “National styles” belong to the latter category; the emergence of this dubious notion can best be explained in sociological terms.If historians of science insist on adopting the concept of style, they will have to agree on its meaning. The paper concludes, therefore, with a rough typology of its most frequent meanings and uses. (shrink)

Hidden Mortgages. Taking the case of Oswald Spengler as an example, this article discusses the politics and practices of canonization and exclusion within the history of science since the 1990s and advocates a critical revision of the discipline's own history, its founding figures and main influences.

SummaryThe Science Museum, London, recently acquired some circular logic demonstrators by Charles Mahon, 3rd Earl Stanhope. A study of what exists of Stanhope's unpublished book, notes and letters on the subject allows the development of his demonstrators to be traced. A consideration of Stanhope's characters and interests reveals an Enlightenment figure with aspirations consonant with that era, the logic demonstrators representing the material culmination of his ideals. Yet the demonstrators were not made public during his lifetime, and the final form (...) was greeted with derision 60 years after his death. (shrink)

While nature is often claimed to be a space of harmonized balance or an antidote to the chaos of the modern world, we need a more grounded assessment of nature as endlessly changing and much less predictable than we like to assume. In this essay, I explore Karen Traviss’ provocative exploration of unbalanced nature and unbounded bodies in her wess’har series with the guidance of two ecocritics who reject the concept of balanced nature, Dana Phillips and Ursula Heise. Additionally, I (...) turn to the environmental philosopher Val Plumwood for insights regarding Traviss’ spurious yet rather standard vision of an unlimited technological panacea. Traviss’ series portrays how the boundaries and limits that we perceive as solid are often much less so than we believe, yet she also reveals—inadvertently, it seems—how easily we blindly ignore other, more solid limits. (shrink)

Loidl, F. Friedrich Wessely.--Messner, J. Zur ethischen Grundlagen- und Normenforschung.--Laun, A. Zur Frage einer spezifisch-christlichen Ethnik.--Weismayer, J. Spirituelle Theologie oder Theologie der Spiritualität?--Virt, G. Das spirituelle Interesse in der Moraltheologie Karl Werners.--Dantine, W. Spiritualität und Politik.--Schmölz, F. M. Über die Hoffnung.--Weiler, R. Arbeit: Fluch oder Utopie?--Bruch, R. Das Wesen der schweren Sünde nach der Lehre des hl. Thomas.--Rotter, H. Zur Bewertung der Euthanasie.--Zulehner, P. M. Priesterliche Spiritualität.--Pettirsch, F. X. Zur Spiritualität des christlichen Sonntags.--Kuhn, D. Konformismus und sittliche Gestaltungspflicht elterlichen (...) Lebens.--Böcklinger, K. Eheglück und Spiritualität.--Pressler, F. W. Nietzsches Moralkritik im "Willen zur Macht.". (shrink)

This is a large, complex story in which the author describes the contributions of Mendelssohn, Wessely, Krochmal, Zunz, the mainstream Zionist thinkers ...

Previously unpublished writings by and about Kenneth Burke plus essays by such Burkean luminaries as Wayne C. Booth, William H. Rueckert, Robert Wess, Thomas Carmichael, and Michael Feehan make the publication of Unending Conversations a ...

Concept of ethics in Ādi-Granth, Sikh canon.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kenneth Burke on Dialectical-Rhetorical TranscendenceJames P. ZappenKenneth Burke's concept of rhetoric is complex and elusive, increasingly so as it becomes intertwined and infused with dialectic in the long third part of A Rhetoric of Motives and in some essays published shortly thereafter (1951; 1955; 1969b [1950], 183–333).1 The connection between Burke's rhetoric and dialectic is well established (Brummett 1995; Crusius 1986; 1999, 120–21; Wess 1996, 136–216; Wolin 2001, 143–204), (...) and his concept of rhetoric as identification is widely recognized for its broadening of the traditional view of rhetoric as persuasion to include identification as a means of inducing cooperation and building communities (Crusius 1999, 120–21; Hauser 1986, 120–37; Henderson 1988, 33–34). Timothy W. Crusius establishes the fundamental relationship between A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives as dialectical and rhetorical counterparts and explains both the strengths and the limitations of identification as a means of inducing cooperation (1986). According to Crusius, dialectic explores the substance of a person or thing—all that "supports or 'substands'" it—from multiple and shifting perspectives, viewing human action dramatistically as act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose (24–28). Rhetoric complements dialectic and its multiple dramatistic perspectives by promoting "identification" and "cooperation," building "a community, a sense of oneness amid diversity of conflicting interests and values" (28–30). As Crusius and others observe, [End Page 279] however, identification as a means of inducing cooperation is inherently limited since any identification necessarily also entails a division: "Every 'us' requires a 'them'" (29; Biesecker 1997, 47–49; Wolin 2001, 177–78). Thus, for example, while Christianity provides a powerful instance of identification, it also provides an equally powerful illustration of its division from other peoples—"Satan and his counter-kingdom," "the Turk infidel," and "the pagan hordes of Asia" (28–29). For Burke, these divisions were largely political (George and Selzer 2007, 16–57, 110–32; Lentricchia 1983, 21–38). For us, they are differences of gender, culture, and economic and social class (Condit 1992), compounded by political, economic, and religious differences on a global scale. By this account, the first two parts of the Rhetoric offer at best a partial solution to the problem. The third part challenges and mystifies and in itself seems to offer little more than a utopian vision without purpose or outcome (Crusius 1999, 120–21; Wess 1996, 211–16; Wolin 2001, 201–3).2 Situated within the broader context of Burke's work, however, the third part seems rather to offer a bold and creative solution to the problem by merging dialectic and rhetoric with dialogue and poetic myth in a dialectical-rhetorical transcendence—a concept that merits a place alongside identification as a major contribution to rhetorical theory (1969b, 197–208, 221–33).3Burke's concept of dialectical-rhetorical transcendence developed over the course of more than twenty years, from the mid 1930s to the mid 1950s and beyond. Its sources are partly Hegelian and Marxist but increasingly Platonic,4 as Burke comes to perceive the Hegelian and Marxist concepts of history as part of the problem of competing ideologies and his version of Platonic transcendence as the solution—a solution that leads, on the one hand, toward "pure persuasion" and "ultimate identification" and, on the other, toward the pragmatics of a new rhetoric and a revolutionary program of lifelong education (1951; 1955; 1969b, 267–94, 328–33; Biesecker 1997, 43–47; Lee 2004; Wess 1996, 203–5, 211–16; Wolin 2001, 201–3). In the midst of the political divisiveness of the 1930s, Burke glimpsed in Hegel and even Marx the possibility of bridging conflicting ideologies via transcendence, but he turned to Plato in the Grammar and again in the Rhetoric to explain the processes by which opposing ideas and ideologies might merge in transcendent visions or myths that encompass what he perceived to be partial and partisan points of view. In the Grammar, his solution is dialectical—a merger of opposing ideas at higher levels of generalization through a process of linguistic abstraction and transformation that respects a diversity of individual interests, even as it seeks to transcend them in larger [End... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 207-222 [Access article in PDF] Burke Contra Kierkegaard:Kenneth Burke's Dialectic via Reading Søren Kierkegaard G. L. Ercolini Isaac—to his children Lived to tell the tale— Moral—with a Mastiff Manners may prevail. —Emily Dickinson Kenneth Burke employs the term dialectic throughout his works and yet, despite its profuse recurrence, the term remains ambiguous. Much secondary scholarship has focused on Burke and dialectics, and still the (...) term in Burke remains—if not already complicated—cloudy. 1 Part of the difficulty regarding this term stems from Burke's own ambiguity; another part from critics' tendency to rely on Burke's own use and definitions for clarification of this concept. The arguments have been helpful and illuminating, yet Burke's dialectic can be further clarified by going beyond what Burke means by the term by focusing on how he deploys dialectical criticism in his own work. 2 This article focuses on Burke's appropriation of the existential thinker Søren Kierkegaard as a particularly clear and remarkable instance of the operation of Burke's dialectic in his criticism. I maintain that although Burke's reading of Kierkegaard is arguably a misreading, his strategic appropriation of Kierkegaard in A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) not only serves as a clear deployment of the dialectic, but also functions as a foil against which Burke defines his own critical method. Burke's reading of Kierkegaard emphasizes the function of resolution in Burke's critical project.The current literature, although quite informative, does not put Burke's dialectic in sharp focus. Rueckert argues that Burkean dialectics "is really a branch of what Burke was to later call logology, the study of words, of language, of symbol systems" (1994, 14). Heath claims that dialectic "is an analytical tool to help us diagnose perspectives so that we can [End Page 207] examine whether they make sense and consider their implications for social relations" (1986, 162). Crusius contends that, "dialectic for Burke is the study of verbal universes, the disinterested pursuit of a vocabulary's implications" (1986, 24). While Brummett and Crusius show similarity between Hegel's and Burke's dialectic, Heath and Wess distinguish Burke's dialectic from Hegelian idealism and teleological history respectively. 3 Most of the arguments concerning Burke and dialectic focus on "The Dialectic of Constitutions" in A Grammar of Motives (1969), while A Rhetoric of Motives (1962), where Burke identifies humankind as homo dialecticus, is hardly engaged with regard to this concept. 4 Burke's working through Kierkegaard in A Rhetoric of Motives demonstrates Burke's dialectical criticism—thus providing an operational account of Burke's dialectic—and allows for his revelation of the three motives in the realm of rhetoric: the Order, the Secret, and the Kill. 5 And yet, despite this centrality of Fear and Trembling, surprisingly little has been said about Burke's Kierkegaard beyond passing mention. 6Despite editorial advice to the opposite regarding an article that would later become a part of the book, Burke evidently regarded his reading of Kierkegaard as important. Joseph Bennett, editor of Hudson Review, responded as follows to Burke's 1948 submission of the article entitled "Imagery of Killing": "I would like to request that you eliminate Kierkegaard from the article in question, confining it simply to literary exegesis and excluding the philosopher theologian." 7 Although he complied for the article, Burke retained his reading of Kierkegaard in A Rhetoric of Motives. Despite the lack of attention given to it, Burke's engagement with Kierkegaard clearly demonstrates how Burke views ethical criticism as that which resolves opposition, negation, and paradox to a higher order. Burke contra Kierkegaard The section entitled "Order" in A Rhetoric of Motives contains a detailed, twenty-three-page discussion of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. In this discussion, Burke primarily attacks Kierkegaard for encouraging what Burke enigmatically and elliptically identifies as the "cult of the Kill."Burke's portrayal of Kierkegaard is hardly flattering: at the crescendo of his analysis in A Rhetoric of Motives he claims that thinking such as Kierkegaard... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Terministic Screens," Social Constructionism, and the Language of Experience:Kenneth Burke's Utilization of William JamesPaul StobKenneth Burke's influence on various academic disciplines is clear in the number of books and articles published annually on his thought. It is also clear insofar as academics continue to turn to his work for insights on handling scholarly problems. That is to say, not only do we explore the dimensions of his work, we (...) also bring it to bear on current disputes in the hopes of clarifying or moving past the issues we face. His thought, in short, has a currency that transcends its historical period. "As we meet new challenges that echo the past," writes Ross Wolin, "Burke's inquiries into meaning, orientation, faction, communication, and rhetoric are as urgent today as when Burke raised them long ago and for decades after."1By bringing the terms of Burke's work to bear on current disputes, we connect him to the vocabularies and discourses that surround us. His thought becomes familiar through the lenses we employ, as we intermix his ideas with our own terminology and see his work through the language of our discussions. One example of this phenomenon is the way scholars have been describing Burke's philosophical outlook. Burke's thought, we are told, is that of a social constructionist. Edward Schiappa, for example, concludes that Burke gives us a view of the world as intersubjectively created: "Our understanding is social in the sense that our concepts are human-made and are part of a shared language. Our understanding is [End Page 130] constructed in the sense that our claims, interpretations, and orientations constitute 'conceptual fabrics' that weave together contingent sets of beliefs and social practices."2 Paul Jay turns the sentiment into a more explicitly epistemological point: "The most radical aspect of Burke's evolving theory of language at this time is his recognition that language—inherently metaphorical—constructs rather than reflects knowledge."3 James Chesebro highlights social constructionism as one of the hallmarks of Burke's dramatism: "For Burke, the realm of symbol-using is unique to the human being. Symbol-using is a solely conventional, arbitrary, and social process. It allows human beings to become self-conscious, create motives independently of physical phenomena, and ultimately to create social constructions of reality."4 Dennis Ciesielski argues that Burke's "terministic screens" define "base reality into truth-systems unique to each respective discourse community and impl[y] a neo-pragmatic, social constructionist pattern for the making of meaning."5 Finally, Robert Wess characterizes Burke's entire career as the evolution from a materialist, biological-essentialist view of the human self to a social constructionist view.6Generally speaking, "social constructionism" is a metaphor that attempts to capture the way Burke viewed the nature of the world and the function of language therein. It suggests that symbols, terms, and language form the building blocks, the bricks and mortar, of the structures of our collective life. We employ symbols that construct our social realities, similar to the way a contractor employs the materials and labor that construct a house. Consequently, the realities we face are not inherent in nature but are built up discursively and can therefore be reconstructed as we alter our discursive practices.7The social construction metaphor positions Burke's philosophical out-look in terms that are familiar to us, though not necessarily familiar to him. That is to say, the label of social constructionist is recent, and it comes not from Burke's work but from intellectual developments after he wrote the bulk of his corpus.8 We apply it to him retroactively, meshing together his intellectual milieu with our own. And as Ian Hacking reminds us, "The phrase has become code. If you use it favorably, you deem yourself rather radical. If you trash the phrase, you declare that you are rational, reasonable, and respectable."9Labeling Burke a social constructionist wraps his thought in a current metaphor, merging his perspective with a vocabulary that was not part of his project. While such a merger is not necessarily a bad thing—to some degree the process is inevitable10—a certain danger... (shrink)

This article must open with a Warning. In face of the positive information which the sciences supply, the philosophical contribution to this problem will seem disappointingly negative, or at least mine will do so. For I shall insist, and I think we can only rightly insist, that the philosopher is not yet in a position to produce a satisfactory positive theory of the relation between mind and body. And I shall annoy many of you further by insisting that the old-fashioned (...) “dualism” has not really been disproved. However, even if you do not agree with me, it is at any rate a good general piece of advice that, when we are confronted with a philosophical view which has maintained its ground for a very long time but seems to ourselves or to our generation very unreasonable, we should look specially carefully to find the positive grounds which have made so apparently unplausible a doctrine seem true to so many competent thinkers. (shrink)

At least for those who uphold the rationality of morality, ethics and practical reason are not two distinct topics: an ethically sound agent is one whose practical reason functions as it should. Take, for instance, the greatest historical figures. Aristotle claimed that no virtue of character can exist without practical wisdom—the excellence of practical, deliberative reason. And Kant thought that the categorical imperative, the ultimate moral principle that governs a good will, was at the same time the fundamental principlof practical (...) reasoning because the will simply ispractical reason. Even before any philosophical theory of the connection between acting well and the exercise of a rational power is in view, our moral practices strongly suggest that there is one. For we take it for granted that, in an important range of cases, when an agent fails to act as she should, something has gone awry with the agent and not just with her acts, and, furthermore, that the agent herself may be held responsible for this. In calling an agent who acts unethically "irrational," we are saying these two things. (shrink)

There are few examples in the literature of objective measures for the assessment of donor willingness. The author describes the scoring system in use at his own renal transplant unit which has brought objectivity to the process of determining the willingness of living related donors. In this system, a total score to determine the degree of willingness or unwillingness is calculated based on responses to a series of questions. The author believes that with minor modifications this system could be implemented (...) by transplant units in different countries and cultures to screen out donors who are acting under duress. (shrink)