“Witty, acerbic, and brilliant. Halton takes on truly basic philosophical issues, but unlike the great majority of cultural critics today, he is philosophically prepared and highly competent to do so. Halton’s extraordinary work is nearly unique among current writers in its relevance, incisiveness, and philosophical power.” (Bruce Wilshire, Rutgers University) “The Great Brain Suck is a wholly original book that draws on Eugene Halton’s careful empirical and conceptual work to offer critical insights into American life and scholarship. As he (...) details the ways that the American citizen has given way to the American consumer—the ways we have been fooled by the commodity magicians of commerce—Halton provides new, sound, and fascinating perspectives on both contemporary and historic American themes.” (Russell Belk, York University). (shrink)

John Passmore has claimed that American environmental attitudes are incompatible with Western traditions and Western civilization: they arose out of a Romantic transvaluation of values in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and today are defensible only in terms of antiscientific nature mysticism and Oriental religions. I argue that these attitudes developed out of an intricate interplay between Western science and art over the last three centuries, and are, therefore, of Western, not Eastern, origin. Moreover, they are apart of scientific (...) and aesthetic changes so broad and fundamental that, despite Passmore’s prediction that they are unlikely to survive into the twenty-first century, they cannot be regarded lightly as a passing fad, and probably have already found a permanent place in Western thought and values. (shrink)

Environmentalists in the United States are often confronted by rural landowners who feel that they have the right to do whatever they want with their land regardless of the consequences for other human beings or of the damage to the environment. This attitude is traced from its origins in ancient German and Saxon land use practices into the political writings of Thomas Jefferson where it was fused togetherwith John Locke’s theory of property. This view of land and property rights was (...) most influential in the late nineteenth century after the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862 when it was used in the arguments opposing national parks and nature preservation. Today it remains a formidable obstacle to planning and zoning in rural areas, despite unstated underlying assumptions which are either outdated or false. (shrink)

In this exciting new study, Eugene Gogol interweaves three strands that form the intellectual bedrock for the concept of the Other in the Latin American context: Hegel's dialectic of negativity, Marx's humanism, and autochthonal emancipatory thought. From this foundation, the book explores the relation of liberatory philosophic thought to today's social and class movements. Gogol considers the logic of capitalism on Latin American soil, the ecological crisis in Latin America, and the concept and practice of self-liberation. Still one (...) of the most contested terrains of Latin American thought, the Other has been of central concern for many luminary thinkers including Leopoldo Zea, Octavio Paz, and José Carlos Mariátegui. While these writers may not garner much publicity in the world press, the highly public and ongoing struggles of the Zapatistas and Brazil's Landless Workers Movement demonstrate the continuing need to theorize the volatile nature of Latin American social reality. (shrink)

At the turn of the twentieth century, William James was America's most widely read philosopher. In addition to being one of the founders of pragmatism, however, he was also a leading psychologist and author of the seminal work, The Principles of Psychology. While scholars argue that James withdrew from the study of psychology after 1890, Eugene Taylor demonstrates convincingly that James remained preeminently a psychologist until his death in 1910.Taylor details James's contributions to experimental psychopathology, psychical research, and the psychology (...) of religion. Moreover, Taylor's work shows that out of his scientific study of consciousness, James formulated a sophisticated metaphysics of radical empiricism. In light of historical developments in psychology, as well as the current philosophic implications of the neuroscience revolution related to the biology of consciousness, Taylor argues that both the subject matter of James's investigations and his metaphysics of radical empiricism are just as important for psychology today as James believed they were in his own time.This book represents a major new contribution both to James scholarship and to the history of American psychology. Although philosophers have analyzed radical empiricism, this book is the first to trace the development of radical empiricism as a metaphysics addressed to psychologists. It is also the first to show James's involvement in depth-psychology and psychotherapeutics and to trace historical continuity between James's work on consciousness and subsequent developments in psychoanalysis, personality theory, and humanistic psychology. (shrink)

Pluralism in Theory and Practice not only brings McKeon to the attention of contemporary philosophers and students; it also puts his theories into practice. Some of the essays explicate aspects of McKeon's thought or situate him in the context of American intellectual and practical engagement. Others take the concerns he raised as starting points for inquiries into urgent contemporary problems, or, in some cases, for reexamining McKeon's work as fertile ground for shaping the direction of new investigation.

Is "natural law" actually the "Laws of Nature" as Thomas Jefferson explains in the Declaration of Independence, meaning the rights of Life, Liberty & the pursuit of Happiness, or the ecclesiastical view which holds that laws of the government must conform to "natural laws" in order to be binding? This text examines this conflict, yet leads the reader to draw his own conclusions.

Studies the character and nature of Latin American thought, focusing on the evolution of political and social ideas.

FOUNDATIONALISM IN PHILOSOPHY n his autobiographical work, The Education of Henry Adams, this I brooding and disillusioned offspring of American presidents confronted, at age sixty, his own perplexity concerning the new scientific world-view that was emerging at the end of the century. He noted that the unity of things, long guaranteed morally by the teachings of Christianity and scientifically by the Newtonian world-view, was being challenged by a newer vision of things that found only incomprehensible multiplicity at the root (...) of the world: What happened if one dropped the sounder into the ab yss-let it go-frankly gave up Unity altogether? What was Unity? Why was one to be forced to affirm it? Here every body flatly refused help.... [Adams] got out his Descartes again; dipped into his Hume and Berkeley; wrestled anew with his Kant; pondered solemnly over his Hegel and Scho penhauer and Hartmann; strayed gaily away with his Greeks-all merely to ask what Unity meant, and what happened when one denied it. Apparently one never denied it. Every philosopher, whether sane or insane, naturally af firmed it. I Adams, then approaching with heavy pessimism a new century, felt instinc tively that, were one to attack the notion of unity, the entire edifice of human knowledge would quickly collapse. For understanding requires the unification of apparently different phenomena. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Can Virtue Be Bought?Eugene Garver1. The problem: Epistemic elitism or cognitive dominanceDemocracy and rationality can be enemies. Superior intelligence and information can silence people, and the voices of reason can be drowned out by anti-intellectual populism. Given the dearth of both democracy and rationality in contemporary American politics, I hope that each can be fortified by association with the other, but I don't think that mutual reinforcement is (...) easy. I start by giving short quotations from two of the most significant contemporary thinkers who question the relation between democracy and intelligence.First a thesis from James Bohman that sets the challenge for practical intelligence and rhetoric in a democracy: "Deliberative democracy should not reward those groups who simply are better situated to get what they want by public and discursive means; its standard of political equality cannot endorse any kind of cognitive elitism" (1997, 332).1Next, a longer passage from Henry Richardson:The fatal objection to an objectivist interpretation of arbitrary power [in which the public good is thought of as a determinate object] is that it excludes from counting as domination what should be counted as one of its primary cases, namely domination on the basis of superior knowledge and information. Whatever the content of the public good may be, we may suppose—absent liberal justificational restrictions—that there are some people who are relatively expert in discerning it. One way to track the public good with reasonable reliability, then, is to turn political decisions over to those experts or wise persons. If we accept an objectivist interpretation of what "nonarbitrary power" means, then we could not count such Platonic guardians as dominating us. Intuitively, however, I think that we would: They would be dominating us precisely in virtue of their superior knowledge and information about the public good. (2002, 41)2 [End Page 353]Bohman worries about the injustice of unequal powers of eloquence. Richardson worries about what I think is a harder problem, the injustice of unequal powers of practical intelligence, the domination by superior knowledge. These two concerns, rhetorical and epistemic, are related. In Hobbes's wonderful phrase, "eloquence is seeming prudence," everything turns on the permanently contested relation between the appearance of facility with public and discursive means and the reality of superior practical knowledge. The only practical knowledge worth worrying about is manifested practical knowledge.Richardson and Bohman pose the ethical problem of what happens to community when there are claims to superior practical wisdom. The question isn't whether such claims are true or false, but the conditions under which they can be asserted and accepted. When are successful claims to knowledge "arbitrary," "dominating," or in a word, unjust? Thus, David Estlund writes, "Even granting that some people might be far better at making the morally and technically best political decisions, such invidious comparisons among citizens are bound to be open to reasonable disagreement" (2000, 137). But the issue is whether such reasonable disagreement is itself grounds for denying the comparison. Why is a judgment of better and worse necessarily "invidious"? When is disagreement about what is the best political decision a "reasonable" disagreement?Of course we should worry when eloquence silences people. But many other things silence citizens, too. Some argue, for example, that the discursive power of cross-burning "has a silencing effect" since it intimidates African Americans, and similar arguments have been made about how pornography silences women, but it would be strange to call these powers superior eloquence, certainly not in the sense that Bohman, Richardson, and Estlund worry about (Fiss 1996, 119).3 Many forms of coercion and ways of limiting freedom have nothing to do with silencing, as they prevent us from even getting to a point where there can be discussion. Extra-discursive signs of power, such as age, wealth, or difference, can inhibit me from speaking my mind. The personal experience of a purported victim is hard to argue against. So are people with access to powerful symbols.For example, consider the resistance to some forms of victim impact statements. Opponents argue that these are too emotional to have probative value. Their presence is unfair. They are unfair because... (shrink)

Can we who have been touched by the scientific, intellectual, and experimental revolutions of modern and contemporary times still believe with and degree of coherence and consistency that we as individual persons are immortal. Indeed, is there even good cause to hope that we are? In examining the present relationship of reason to faith, can we find justifying reasons for faith? These are the central questions in Self, God, and Immortality, a compelling exercise in philosophical theology. Drawing upon the works (...) of William James and the principles of American Pragmatism, Eugene Fontinell extrapolates carefully from "data given in experience" to a model of the cosmic process open to the idea that individual identity may survive bodily dissolution. Presupposing that the possibility of personal immortality has been established in the first part, the second part of the essay is concerned with desirability. Here, Fontinell shows that, far from diverting attention and energies from the crucial tasks confronting us here and now, such belief can be energizing and life enhancing. The wider importance of Self, God, and Immortality lies in its pressing both immortality-believers and terminality-believers to explore both the metaphysical presuppositions and the lived consequences of their beliefs. It is the author's expressed hope that such explorations, rather than impeding, will stimulate co-operative efforts to create a richer and more humane community. (shrink)

One of the most influential research and teaching programs to emerge in the new science of ecology in the early twentieth century was that which developed at the University of Chicago under the direction of botanist Henry Chandler Cowles. Not a prolific writer, Cowles was nevertheless author of two of the seminal papers in American plant ecology. On the basis of those early contributions, as well as his considerable abilities as field guide, he was able to draw numerous students (...) into Chicago’s new plant ecology program for both introductory and advanced work. No small part of the attraction of the program was Cowles’s ability to interpret successional changes in vegetation in terms that fitted in well with the forward-looking, reform-minded mood of the educated elite of the nation and the city of Chicago during the early decades of the century. Cowles’s favorite outdoor laboratory, the region of sand dunes along the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan, provided the ideal setting for his vivid telling and retelling of the story of the struggles and transformations of plant communities toward the establishment of the inevitable climax community. Both this dramatic tale of progressive change and the unusual diversity of species and communities at the dunes reflected qualities of Chicago itself, and Cowles interpreted these ecological phenomena in a manner that bore a striking resemblance to the frontier hypothesis of Frederick Jackson Turner. (shrink)

Project Chariot, one of the first planned nuclear excavation experiments of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Plowshare program, touched off a controversy over its safety that drew in two prominent American biologists, Paul Sears and Barry Commoner, both now known mainly for their roles as environmental advocates. However, Sears, the ecologist and well-established conservationist, supported Project Chariot and the Plowshare program in general, while Commoner, unacquainted with ecology at the time, strongly opposed it. A close study of their different responses (...) to this project provides insights into the tensions and pressures on scientists during this critical period of the Cold War, 1960–1961, when fear of nuclear war and concerns over radioactive fallout from bomb tests mixed with hopes for peaceful applications of nuclear energy and the environmental movement had not yet begun. For Sears, the close connections in the United States between the science of ecology and the Atomic Energy Commission may well have played a significant role in his support for Chariot, while for Commoner, Project Chariot turned out to be his epiphany moment, the incident that transformed him from an antinuclear activist into an environmentalist. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to introduce a recursive model of ecological discursive sustainability, as it applies to and emerges from the history of an after-school program partnership between the School of Education at the University of Delaware, USA and the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. This model is characterized by the development of shared ownership and collaboration between the institutional partners, the co-evolution and crossfertilization of the partners’ practices and the negotiation of institutional boundaries (...) and structures. This model was developed by analyzing dialogic discourses across six diverse ecological domains of the partnership. The purpose of the paper is to introduce a recursive model of ecological discursive sustainability, as it applies to and emerges from the history of an after-school program partnership between the School of Education at the University of Delaware and the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington, Delaware. This model is characterized by the development of shared ownership and collaboration between the institutional partners, the co-evolution and cross-fertilization of the partners' practices and the negotiation of institutional boundaries and structures. This model was developed by analyzing dialogic discourses across six diverse ecological domains of the partnership. (shrink)

(1999). Internet Review: African-American Sources in the Library of Congress American Memory Project. Educational Studies: Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 99-102.

We blame faulty brakes for a car crash, or rain for our bad mood. This “merely causal” blame is usually seen as uninteresting. I argue that it is crucial for understanding the interpersonal blame with which we target ourselves and each other. The two are often difficult to distinguish, in a way that plagues philosophical discussions of blame. And interpersonal blame is distinctive, I argue, partly in its causal focus: its attention to a person as cause. I argue that this (...) causal focus helps explain several central characteristics of interpersonal blame: its tendency to exaggerate a person’s causal role, its weakening through attention to personal history or thoughts about determinism, its characteristic ‘force’ or ‘sting’, and our sense that blame is often harmful or unfair. I conclude by drawing out one implication of blame's causal focus: in a certain range of cases, blame is partly under our voluntary control. (shrink)

By the 1950s, eugenics had lost its scientific status; it now belonged to the context rather than to the content of science. Interest in the subject was also at low ebb. But that situation would soon change dramatically. Indeed, in an essay-review published in 1993, Philip Pauly commented that a “eugenics industry” had come to rival the “Darwin industry” in importance, although the former seemed less integrated than the latter. Since then, the pace of publication on eugenics, (...) including American eugenics, has only accelerated, while the field has become even more fractured, moving in multiple and even contradictory directions. This essay explores the trajectory of work on the history of American eugenics since interest in the subject revived in the 1960s, noting trends and also fractures. The latter are seen to result partly from the fact that professional historians no longer own the subject, which has attracted the interest of scholars in several other disciplines as well as scientists, political activists, and journalists, and also from the fact that the history of eugenics has almost always been policy-oriented. Historians’ desire to be policy-relevant and at the same time attentive to context, complexity, and contingency has generated tensions at several levels: within individuals, among historians, and between professional historians and others who also engage with the history of eugenics. That these tensions are resolved differently by different authors and even by the same authors at different times helps explain why the fragmentation that Pauly noted is not likely to be overcome anytime soon. (shrink)

The 1918 discovery of oil in the bed of the Red River, which forms the border between Texas and Oklahoma, led to a U.S. Supreme Court case that involved the extensive use of expert witnesses in fields such as geology, geography, and ecology. What began as a dispute between the two states soon became a multisided controversy involving those states, the federal government, Native Americans, and individual placer‐mining claimants. After the federal attorneys introduced scientific experts into the dispute, including the (...) plant ecologist Henry Chandler Cowles and the geographer Isaiah Bowman, fresh from negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference, Texas attorneys fielded their own team of opposing experts. Charged with the task of determining the location of the border, defined as the south bank of the river at the time of the 1819 treaty with Spain, the scientific experts presented the court with volumes of evidence and elaborate arguments, much of it contradictory and involving creative interpretations of existing theories. The case exhibited all the now‐familiar features of a trial using expert witnesses, for which it represents an early, overlooked, and particularly complex example. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 167 they regard as the Standard of every Thing, and which they will not submit to the superior Light of Revelation?" (p. 21) is the Hume we have come to accept, Hume the philosopher, Hume the foe of superstition and enthusiasm. Indeed, upon reading the Letter it seems that one must ask himself if Hume;s desire for this position--and the financial security it would offer--has not (...) affected his response. We know that in his later life Hume flatly refused to debate the multitude of clergymen who attacked his works. Not even so respectable a philosopher as Thomas Reid could elicit a public response from him. Why then did he reply to a philosophical scoundrel such as Wishart? Of course, one could suggest that Courts and Kames and perhaps others may have urged Hume to this reply in his own interest. But that, to me, is precisely the point: Why so unusual a concern in just this case, and why one which seems to undercut some of what are thought to be Hume's most daring and creative analyses? These are not rhetorical questions, but queries of importance to those who wish to see Hume and his work whole. The Letter ]rom a Gentleman does shed important light on the Treatise. Professor Mossner was quite correct in his surmise. But I believe that it raises more questions than it answers--and for this reason too we are fortunate that it has been added to the Hume bibliography. DAVZDFATE NORTON Edinburgh, Scotland THE HEGELIAN DANTE OF WILLIAM TORREY HARRIS William Torrey Harris is remembered as the foremost American exponent of Hegelianism; as founder of the Philosophical Society (1866); as editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (1867-93); as U.S. Commissioner of Education (1889-1906); and as founder, with Miss Susan E. Blow, of the first permanent public school kindergarten in America. He also gave Melville Dewey the order of the ten subiect classes of his famous book classification system, and was co-founder of the Library Journal. Harris was born in North Killingsly, Connecticut in 1835. He studied at Phillips Andovcr Academy, and at Yale University, from which he withdrew in his junior year to accept a teaching position in St. Louis, Missouri in 1857. In St. Louis he met Henry C. Brockmeyer, a German immigrant and intellectual, and under his influence began a lifelong commitment to the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He states that Hegel's philosophy became the center of all his thinking, but he nevertheless ~vent on to study the works of the other great thinkers, including those of Dante Alighieri. In 1883-84 he gave a series of lectures in St. Louis on Dante, and again in 1886 at the Concord School of Philosophy. These lectures were later expanded and published as The Spiritual Sense o] Dante's Divina Commedia, in Boston, by Houghton in 1889, and reissued in 1896. 168 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The form of the Divina Commedia is a massive triadic structure of written words developed by exhaustive repetition of the terza rima. Structurally it is a development of the concept of The Trinity. The reader who knew not a single word of Italian could not escape having the Trinitarian notion hammered into his consciousness. Harris, however, was more concerned with meaning than form, and so he considered the triadic format a relatively trivial matter. Harris uses the Commedia to illustrate by imaginative representation the dialectic of the Holy Trinity to the American Protestant while explaining it with Hegelian logic. In summary he writes, "The doctrine of the divine form, or the self-activity of the absolute, involves the common nature of man and God, or God as divine human. This is the great central truth (of which the doctrine of the Trinity is the symbol) on which all modern civilization is built, and it is its open secret." Dante's Inferno corresponds with Hegel's logical and ontological level, called "Sein," the realm of abstract-unconscious-being-for-another. The Purgatory corresponds with his level "Wesen," the realm of mediated being in which the self is conscious of its being-in-and-for-another... (shrink)

This collection of original articles, written by leading contemporary European and American philosophers of religion, is presented in celebration of the publication of the fiftieth volume of the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Following the Editor's Introduction, John Macquarrie, Adriaan Peperzak, and Hent de Vries take up central themes in continental philosophy of religion. Macquarrie analyzes postmodernism and its influence in philosophy and theology. Peperzak argues for a form of universality different from that of modern philosophy, and de (...) Vries analyzes an intrinsic and structural relationship between religion and the media. The next three essays discuss issues in analytic philosophy of religion. Philip Quinn argues that religious diversity reduces the epistemic status of exclusivism and makes it possible for a religious person to be justified while living within a pluralistic environment. William Wainwright plumbs the work of Jonathan Edwards in order to better understand debates concerning freedom, determinism, and the problem of evil, and William Hasker asks whether theological incompatibilism is less inimical to traditional theism than some have supposed. Representing the Thomist tradition, Fergus Kerr challenges standard readings of Aquinas on the arguments for the existence of God. David Griffin analyzes the contributions of process philosophy to the problem of evil and the relation between science and religion. Illustrating comparative approaches, Keith Ward argues that the Semitic and Indian traditions have developed a similar concept of God that should be revised in view of post-Enlightenment theories of the individual and the historical. Keith Yandell explores themes in the Indian metaphysical tradition and considers what account of persons is most in accord with reincarnation and karma doctrines. Feminist philosophy of religion is represented in Pamela Anderson's article, in which she argues for a gender-sensitive and more inclusive approach to the craving for infinitude. (shrink)

The translator of Scheler’s essay, “On the Rehabilitation of Virtue,” presents an account of the context of this essay in Scheler’s work and of its relevance to his concept of the ordo amoris and to his critique of Kant. The translator discusses the intended audience of the essay, its moral purpose, and the method of its procedure. The postscript further reflects on the essay’s central themes of humility and reverence, suggesting avenues for a critical assessment of Scheler’s conclusions. It ends (...) with some reflections on the contemporary value of Scheler’s contributions in this essay to a historical and philosophical understanding of the conflict between science and religion. (shrink)

In a large and detailed survey on the ethics of scientific coauthorship, members of the American Physical Society (APS) were asked to judge the number of appropriate coauthors on his or her last published paper. Results show that the first or second coauthor are more appropriate than later coauthors about whom there is equal and considerable doubt. The probability of any third and subsequent coathors being judged as inappropriate is 23% for the APS guideline, 67% for the tighter guideline (...) of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, 59% if the guideline requires “direct contributions to scientific discovery or invention”. Only 3% of respondents report having personally rejected an undeserving scientist who expected to be an author on the last published paper. Respondents seem to be divided into two non-overlapping populations—those who report no inappropriate coauthorship and those who have a more graduated view. (shrink)

The scientific study of consciousness in the late 19th century, which took place in Western countries across disciplines such as neurology, physiology, neuropathology, psychology, psychiatry and philosophy, appears to have striking parallels to current crossdisciplinary developments in the neurosciences. The 19th century period, however, has received little scholarly attention from historians of medicine, psychology, or science. Historians of depth psychology have investigated the area as part of the history of psychiatry, but cleaved most closely to the versions presented by early (...) psychoanalysts- turned-historians, who have consistently portrayed Freud as the only legitimate history of the period, thus marking the territory of the late 19th century as inherently Freudo-centric. More recently a new line of historiography emanating from the work of the late Henri Ellenberger has launched a post-Freudian perspective in which the classical depth psychologies of Freud, Jung, and Adler may now be understood in a wider and deeper historical context defined by the development of a so-called French, Swiss, English, and American psychotherapeutic axis between 1881 and 1918, before the advent of psychoanalysis. Chief among the prime movers of this axis was Frederic William Henry Myers, graduate of Cambridge University, and co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research in England in 1882. Myers' grasp of the literature of the day regarding the scientific study of consciousness was both profound, and highly influential, particularly on such figures as William James. Since the period itself has yet to be fully reconstructed, the identity of Myers and his contribution to the scientific study of consciousness remain obscure, but are also receiving new attention in the area of modern consciousness studies. (shrink)

AT MID-CENTURY, MOST PHILOSOPHICAL ROUTES to transcendence appeared closed. Philosophers and theologians often cooperated in associating transcendence with dubious metaphysics, the otherworldly and the supernatural. This attitude towards transcendence was captured most sharply perhaps, in the work of the logical positivists, but it was shared for different reasons by the positivists of revelation. The rebirth of idealism in British and American philosophy of religion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, had been widely succeeded by realism and naturalism (...) of the kind that, with some exceptions, tended to be indifferent, if not openly hostile to philosophical and theological talk of transcendent reality. Between the wars, metaphysical utterances were condemned by the logical positivists and their immediate successors to the scrap heap of the non-cognitive. Kerygmatic theologians, with their emphasis upon the ontological difference of transcendence and their appeal to the authority of revelation and faith, joined hands with the philosophers in ruling out any connecting point between transcendence and immanence, between the sacred and the secular in the ordinary experience of persons. The positivists of revelation no less than the logical positivists conferred an independence upon the world. Transcendent reality was reduced either to the non-cognitive, or to the miracle of faith and revelation. (shrink)

Some conceptions of the role of philosophers in climate change focus mainly on theoretical progress in philosophy, or on philosophers as individual citizens. Against these views, I defend a skill view: philosophers should use our characteristic skills as philosophers to combat climate change by integrating it into our teaching, research, service, and community engagement. A focus on theoretical progress, citizenship, expertise, virtue, ability, social role, or power, rather than on skill, can allow for some of these contributions. But the skill (...) view, I argue, uniquely captures the breadth of philosophers’ role in climate change; promises to make us more effective in practice; and offers a compelling way to overcome our own lingering climate denial by integrating climate change into all aspects of philosophical activity. (shrink)

Large-scale weapons systems have increasingly become part of a patronage system justified by claims about national defense. American politics tends to proceed by distribution, redistribution, and compromise. The disjunction between the "virtually" autonomous processes of worldwide weapons innovation and American incrementalism lead to a potentially disastrous situation. This situation is characterized by potential chaos in the integration of complex, interdependent combat and communication systems as well as a mindless arms race that seems to defy political control. A modest (...) proposal is made to suggest a potential bureaucratic change agent. (shrink)

This essay from 1999, republished in Notre Dame Magazine online in July 2023, explores how the 1950s were a time of fundamental transformations in American society, a time when the United States went fully megatechnic. The hugely increased power of military, corporate-industrial and “big science” institutions developed during the 1950s signaled the transformation to megatechnic America, with atomic bombs and nuclear testing, automobiles and televisions as key symbols of that transformation. Figures such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller (...) illustrated the battle between national security dictates controlling nuclear bomb testing and responsible science. -/- Since the Second World War the United States has been problematically guided by a power-oriented culture, which, in the names of national security and convenience, has tended to reshape America toward an increasingly hierarchical model of society based on the system requirements of a machine. This same era gave birth to a generalized economic prosperity in the United States, to the civil rights movement, to feminism, literary and artistic innovations, and to other openings of public equality and freedom. Yet the magnification of bureaucratic-corporate structures in that postwar, cold war prosperity has ultimately tended to restructure America against the basic requirements of democratic community. (shrink)

The Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and International Law, 1600-1926, brings together foreign, comparative, and international titles in a single resource. Its International Law component features works of some of the great legal theorists, including Gentili, Grotius, Selden, Zouche, Pufendorf, Bijnkershoek, Wolff, Vattel, Martens, Mackintosh, Wheaton, among others. The materials in this archive are drawn from three world-class American law libraries: the Yale Law Library, the George Washington University Law Library, and the Columbia Law Library.Now for the first (...) time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.+++++++++++++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: +++++++++++++++Yale Law LibraryLP3Y101000019210101The Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative, and International Law, 1600-1926Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1921xv, 463 p.; 22 cmSwitzeland. (shrink)