Why was Wollstonecraft's landmark feminist work, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, categorised as a work of political economy when it was first published? Taking this question as a starting point, Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Economy gives a compelling new account of Wollstonecraft as critic of the material, moral, social, and psychological conditions of commercial modernity. Offering thorough analysis of Wollstonecraft's major writings - including her two Vindications, her novels, her history of the French Revolution, and her travel writing (...) - this is the only book-length study to situate Wollstonecraft in the context of the political economic thought of her time. It shows Wollstonecraft as an economic as much as a political radical, whose critique of the emerging economic orthodoxies of her time anticipates later Romantic thinkers. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 465-481 [Access article in PDF] The Physiology of Political Economy: Vitalism and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations Catherine Packham The Scottish Enlightenment has been described as uniting a concern with the origins and foundations of knowledge with a preoccupation with the useful application of knowledge in schemes of practical improvement. 1 Adam Smith's Inquiry into the Nature and Causes (...) of the Wealth of Nations, which combines a theoretical account of political economy with specific proposals on politico-economic matters, might seem to exemplify such a characterization. For some commentators at the time of its publication, however, Smith's lack of practical experience in the field of trade disqualified any claims he might make to authoritative knowledge. Sir John Pringle, for instance, military surgeon and friend of Smith's, thought that a man "who had never been in trade could not be expected to write well on the subject"; and while Dr. Johnson repudiated this, suggesting that all that was necessary was "extensive views," Pringle's opinion was not unusual. 2 Such objections, interrogating the very basis of Smith's expertise, reiterate, in the context of his work, the same kinds of questions regarding knowledge's provenance which preoccupied his age, and which were indeed addressed by Smith himself. Smith's own account of the formation of philosophical knowledge rests not on the authority of experience but on the role of the imagination; he understood systematic knowledge as an imaginative "machine" or work of fancy created to please and soothe a mind disturbed by phenomena which are observed but unexplained. 3 Smith's account of philosophical [End Page 465] knowledge, in which he would include his own Wealth of Nations, suggests that his own expertise should be judged not on the extent of his personal experience of the matters discussed but on the explanatory power and pleasurable nature of the system which he outlines. With its emphasis on the work of the philosophical imagination, his account also suggests that some of the sources for that system might be somewhat unexpected, a suggestion which this paper will pursue.Such questions concerning the genesis and formation of the new discourse of political economy instituted by Wealth of Nations have recurred in our own time, informing some of the more illuminating of recent work on Smith. Rejecting a tradition which assesses the significance of Wealth of Nations in terms of its anticipation of modern economic analysis, revisionist historians of political and economic thought have, since the late 1970s, offered more contextualist accounts of the work, tracing the relations between Smith's moral and economic philosophy and the contemporary discourses of natural jurisprudence and civic humanism. Other commentators have borrowed from literary scholarship to examine the textual and discursive conventions through which Smith's writings construct and sustain their meanings. 4 Such work has given a new emphasis to the textual and discursive nature of Smith's work as a means to understand its derivation, sources, and influences; it has replaced an older perception of Smith as inspired prophet-founder of the new political economy with an effort to interpret his work in the context of other, adjacent and contemporary forms of inquiry. Collectively, such work highlights the varied and disparate discourses which informed Smith's thinking on economic and other matters and seeks to understand how the complex and diverse forms of interaction with and assimilation of aspects of these philosophical and other discourses may have contributed to the formation of Smith's work—and hence, must also figure in our own attempts to read it.This paper, by exploring a strand of physiological language and imagery which runs through Wealth of Nations and considering it in the context of new developments in Scottish physiological research in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, also seeks to understand Smith's work by examining its relations with contemporary philosophical discourse. Where other recent accounts of Wealth of Nations have reassessed its relationship with moral, political and legal discourses, it will... (shrink)

The nursing profession has a responsibility to ensure that nursing goals and perspectives as these have developed over time remain the focus of its work. Explored in this paper is the potential problem for the nursing profession of recognizing both the promises and pitfalls of informational technologies so as to use them wisely in behalf of ethical patient care. We make a normative claim that maintaining a critical stance toward the use of informational technologies in practice and in influencing the (...) thought patterns of the younger generations of nurses is a moral imperative of the discipline, because without this practice can become subverted from professional goals in various ways. We use a synthesized concept we call “intentional authenticity” derived from the writing of Heidegger and Feminist care ethics to provide a foundation for the development of nurses who understand the importance of the nurse‐patient relationship and how the unthoughtful use of informational and other technologies can militate against effective or good nursing care. (shrink)

In exploring skilled performance in Contact Improvisation, we utilize an enactive ethnographic methodology combined with an interdisciplinary approach to examine the question of how skill develops in CI. We suggest this involves the development of subtleties of awareness of intra- and interkinaesthetic attunement, and a capacity for interkinaesthetic negative capability—an embodied interpersonal ‘not knowing yet’—including an ease with being off balance and waiting for the next shift or movement to arise, literally a ‘playing with’ balance, falling, nearly falling, momentum and (...) gravity. We draw on insights from an interdisciplinary approach, including from a developmental perspective concerning the experience of dyadic interpersonal embodied skill development in both infancy and CI. Building on Ravn and Høffding’s definition of expertise in improvisation as an “oscillatory process of assuming and relinquishing agency” we propose that a key aspect of expertise in CI involves oscillation between levels and processes of interkinaesthetic sense of agency. These interdisciplinary insights also elucidate limitations within current conceptualisations of sense of agency, including the relationship between sense of agency and sense of control. (shrink)

La scénographie est le plus souvent considérée au théâtre dans sa dimension esthétique ou dans sa capacité à devenir un espace ludique. Or, à l’opéra, si ces deux dimensions restent importantes et se complexifient du fait des contraintes spécifiques du chant et des attentes du public, c’est la fonction dramaturgique qui passe au premier plan. La nécessité de donner le décor à l’avance pour qu’il soit construit dans les ateliers impose qu’il soit pensé avec la mise en scène, en même (...) temps qu’elle. Grâce à un exemple précis, nous montrerons comment le trio dramaturgie-scénographie et mise en scène fonctionne étroitement pour faire émerger le sens. C’est donc à cette voix dramaturgique du scénographe que nous nous intéresserons ici. (shrink)

_Shohei Imamura_ Edited by James Quandt Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival Group, 1997 ISBN 0-9682969-0-4 183 pp.

This essay promotes affective engagement with the texts we read, arguing that we should attend both to recognizing emotion within the texts and to allowing ourselves to feel emotion as we read. The essay thus aligns itself with contemporary theories of non-hermeneutic or surface reading. The argument is illustrated specifically by the relationship of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) to the emotion of anger. The transcripts of the Council of Carthage, held in 411, show an eruption of anger on Augustine’s (...) part. The essay then traces his thinking on anger through various texts, notably the City of God, the Augustinian Rule, and the personal letters to Nebridius. Using the reflections on anger of the contemporary philosopher Agnes Callard, I argue that Augustine saw anger as a unique type of moral problem, something that, once experienced, was ineradicable and distorted a sense of justice and order. It is only through an emotionally engaged reading that such a position is perceptible. (shrink)

The spillovers in knowledge among largely college-educated workers were among the key reasons for the impressive degree of economic growth and spread of entrepreneurship in the United States during the 1990s. Prior 'industrial policies' in the 1970s and 1980s did not advance growth because these were based on outmoded large manufacturing models. Zoltan Acs and Catherine Armington use a knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship to explain new firm formation rates in regional economies during the 1990s period and beyond. The (...) fastest-growing regions are those that have the highest rates of new firm formation, and which are not dominated by large businesses. The authors of this text also find support for the thesis that knowledge spillovers move across industries and are not confined within a single industry. As a result, they suggest, regional policies to encourage and sustain growth should focus on entrepreneurship among other factors. (shrink)

The intact nervous system has an exquisite ability to modulate the activity of multiple muscles acting at one or more joints to produce an enormous range of actions. Seemingly simple tasks, such as reaching for an object or walking, in fact rely on very complex spatial and temporal patterns of muscle activations. Neurological disorders such as stroke and focal dystonia affect the ability to coordinate multi-joint movements. This article reviews the state of the art of research of muscle synergies in (...) the intact and damaged nervous system, their implications for recovery and rehabilitation, and proposes avenues for research aimed at restoring the nervous system’s ability to control movement. (shrink)

This article relates the process by which I discovered and, even more, identified and authenticated an unpublished Montesquieu manuscript, Notes sur Cicéron (held in the La Brède collection of the Bordeaux city library). This document casts new light on Montesquieu's philosophical education and reveals a highly critical attitude towards religion, inspired in large part by the reading of Bayle.

In the short story that opens Lebow's sobering and provocative book, Richard Nixon has gone to hell. There, the devil, inspired by human innovation, has set up an Auschwitz-Birkenau-style concentration camp to torment mass murderers, including Nixon and Pope Pius XII.

In James Joyce and the Matter of Paris, Catherine Flynn recovers the paradigmatic city of European urban modernity as the foundational context of Joyce's imaginative consciousness. Beginning with Joyce's underexamined first exile in 1902–03, she shows the significance for his writing of the time he spent in Paris and of a range of French authors whose works inflected his experience of that city. In response to the pressures of Parisian consumer capitalism, Joyce drew on French literature to conceive a (...) somatic aesthetic, in which the philosophically disparaged senses of taste, touch, and smell as well as the porous, digestive body resist capitalism's efforts to manage and instrumentalize desire. This book resituates the most canonical of Irish modernists in a European avant-garde context while revealing important links between Anglophone modernism and critical theory. (shrink)

This essay offers a personal account of the author’s friendship and collaboration with Paul Ricoeur in the last years of his life. Catherine Goldenstein, who, after Ricoeur’s death, took care of his manuscripts and organized the archives of the Fonds Ricoeur, reflects on her conversations with the philosopher. Their contents, recorded as she remembers them, illuminate Ricoeur’s philosophical endeavors and his work as an academic instructor. Ricoeur is also viewed through the testimony of letters addressed by him to the (...) author, through his personal notes, and through the events of his academic career. These perspectives combine to offer a concise and challenging vision of a life devoted to reflection, whose ultimate boundary is a reality we do not know directly: that of eternity. (shrink)

Background: There is an international trend for frail older adults to move to residential care homes, rather than ageing at home. Residential facilities typically espouse a person-centred philosophy, yet evidence points to restrictive policies and surveillance resulting in increased loneliness and diminished opportunities for intimacy and sexual expression. Residents may experience what has been termed social death, rather than perceive they are related to by others as socially alive. Aim: To consider how the loss of intimacy and sexuality in residents’ (...) lives contributes to iatrogenic loneliness experienced in residential care, and the importance of considering these issues together. Research design: The study utilised a constructionist methodology, investigating the meanings associated with intimacy, loneliness, and ageing. Participants and research context: Qualitative data used in this study are drawn from a larger dataset of a mixed-methods study. Interviews were completed as follows: staff, 21 individual interviews, and two groups with a total of 13 additional people; residents, 26 interviews with 28 people; and family members, 12 interviews with 13 people. Findings: Five key themes were identified in the data analysis: loneliness and relational identity, loneliness and functional relationships, loneliness and disrupted intimacy, loneliness and liminality, and loneliness and the built environment. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by a University Human Ethics Committee. Participation was voluntary. Consent was gained and confidentiality upheld. Discussion: Residents’ expression of intimacy and sexuality can be compromised through paternalism, ageism, restrictive policies, care-rationing and functional care, alienating residents from sustaining and developing significant relationships. Attitudes and cultural beliefs of staff and family members about ageing and intimacy, compounded by architectural design, may intensify loneliness. Conclusions: Nurses have a pivotal role in ensuring policies and practice enhance social citizenship. (shrink)

Cet article analyse pourquoi le paganisme, en son lien au sacré et au mythe, maintient l’homme dans un assujetissement immoral selon Levinas. Il montre comment affronter l’épreuve de l’athéisme métaphysique – de la séparation, de l’éloignement de Dieu – est une nécessité pour la foi monothéiste, une foi adulte et responsable. Il réfléchit à l’amour de la Torah dans un monde où l’homme éprouve que Dieu s’est voilé la Face.

Spinoza parle toujours de Maïmonide avec une extrême sévérité : sa propre certitude que la Bible ne contient aucune vérité d'ordre philosophique, mais seulement un contenu moral à destination des ignorants, se révèle incompatible avec l'œuvre d'un prédécesseur soucieux, au contraire, de montrer que, pour celui qui sait lire, la Bible a bel et bien un contenu philosophique. Pourtant, les questions de Maïmonide - à défaut de ses réponses - scandent l'œuvre théologico-politique de Spinoza. Ce livre cherche donc à dessiner (...) la ligne théorique complexe qui, à la fois, unit et sépare Spinoza et Maïmonide. Il explique pourquoi le premier dut tenir à l'écart le second, en durcissant et en simplifiant à l'extrême ses positions afin de mieux se démarquer de lui. Si Maïmonide fut, en effet, une source indéniable de réflexion pour Spinoza, ce dernier refusa toujours, sans la moindre concession, sa tentative de " sauver " la Bible aux yeux des philosophes. Les questions examinées ici sont partagées, de façon conflictuelle, par les deux philosophes : la lecture de la Bible, les idées de Dieu et de sa Providence, la prophétie et la différence entre loi divine et loi humaine, les régimes politiques qui permettent de vivre en paix et enfin le désir de salut. Malgré sa détermination à exclure Maïmonide de son propre chemin d'analyse des liens entre théologie et philosophie, pour cause d'inutilité et de danger, l'œuvre de Spinoza trouve un éclairage important dans sa confrontation à celle de Maïmonide anxieux, pour son compte, de répondre aux perplexes de son temps, déchirés entre une sagesse issue de la Bible et une sagesse issue de la philosophie grecque. L'histoire de cette tension entre les deux sagesses caractérise la culture occidentale, ce livre en explore un moment décisif. (shrink)

Homère nous présente dans l'Odyssée son activite poétique à travers deux aèdes, Phémios et Démodokos, et un conteur hors pair, Ulysse. II s'en degage une conception de la poésie qui apparait comme un melange de vérites et de faussetés. Une telle définition nous conduit, par une réflexion sur les notions de vraisemblable et de monde simulé, a penser la poesie d'Homere comme un recit fictionnel.

Philosophie de la culture grecque est un ouvrage qui rassemble une cinquantaine de textes de différentes origines. Cet ouvrage s’inscrit dans le prolongement des travaux d’E. Moutsopoulos, parmi lesquels La musique dans l’œuvre de Platon, La philosophie de la musique dans la dramaturgie antique. Formation et structure ou encore Les structures de l’imaginaire dans la philosophie de Proclus. L’unité de l’ouvrage se dégage au terme d’un parcours où se découvre progressivement sa logique interne. Les grands moments, c’est-à-dire aussi les grandes (...) figures, de la philosophie grecque depuis ses origines jusqu’au XXe siècle y sont présentés. L’idée directrice est de montrer le rayonnement de la pensée grecque dans l’histoire de l’Occident et d’en exposer les temps forts. L’influence décisive de la Grèce dans le passé, sous le nom d’humanisme, peut et doit être prolongée, selon notre auteur, dans l’Europe d’aujourd’hui. Composé de sept parties, l’ouvrage est centré sur ces deux grandes figures que sont Platon et Aristote, autour et à partir desquelles la philosophie s’est développée. L’enjeu de l’ouvrage est dans son titre même, puisqu’il s’agit de la possibilité d’une philosophie de la culture grecque. (shrink)

This essay explores references to monkeys as a way of talking about imitation, authenticity, and identity in Greek stories about the “Monkey Island” Pithekoussai and in Athenian insults, and in Plautus' comedy. In early Greek contexts, monkey business defines what it means to be aristocratic and authoritative. Classical Athenians use monkeys to think about what it means to be authentically Athenian: monkey business is a figure for behavior which threatens democratic culture—sycophancy or other deceptions of the people. Plautus' monkey imagery (...) across the corpus of his plays moves beyond the Athenian use of “monkey” as a term of abuse and uses the “imitative” relation of monkeys to men as a metapoetic figure for invention and play-making. For Plautus, imitator—and distorter—of Greek plays, monkeys' distorted imitations of men are mapped not onto the relations between inauthentic and authentic citizens, as in Athens, but onto the relation of Roman to Greek comedy and culture at large. Monkey business in Plautus is part of the insistence on difference which was always crucial in Roman encounters with Greek culture. (shrink)

In the midst of the ongoing debate over the uniqueness of Christ and of Christianity, Stanislas Breton’s work Unicité et monothéisme offers new categories of reflection which may come to bridge the fundamental theological differences between pluralist and inclusivist perspectives. While his notions of méontology and of the Cross as the symbol of self-effacement create a radical openness to the distinctive truth of other religious traditions, this openness is itself firmly grounded within Christian self-understanding. Breton also reminds us that the (...) ultimate Christian basis for salvation lies not so much in assent to particular doctrines, but in the act of total self-givenness to others, in particular to “the least of these my brethren” (Matt. 25). (shrink)

It is argued that university education has a moral and social function in society. Its purpose is to provide a liberal education , the development of new knowledge and the provision of trustworthy, disinterested research. To serve society in this way safeguards are necessary: a separation from the state, giving institutional autonomy and academic freedom in teaching and research. With the rise of extreme free market capitalism and the "knowledge society", these safeguards are being eroded: national governments, partly through the (...) ramifications of the Bologna convergence... process, are in the process of moulding universities to the needs of the market, and now see the accommodation of students to the workplace as the principal, or indeed only, objective for a university education. Example of the consequences of these changes are discussed, including the corruption of research integrity and erosion of individual liberties. (shrink)

Science relies on models and idealizations that are known not to be true. Even so, science is epistemically reputable. To accommodate science, epistemology should focus on understanding rather than knowledge and should recognize that the understanding of a topic need not be factive. This requires reconfiguring the norms of epistemic acceptability. If epistemology has the resources to accommodate science, it will also have the resources to show that art too advances understanding.

Ideology and science Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9535-3 Authors David E. Packham, Materials Research Centre, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

The likely impact of applying the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to higher education are examined. GATS aims to “open up” services to competition: no preference can be shown to national or government providers. The consequences for teaching are likely to be that private companies, with degree-awarding powers, would be eligible for the same subsidies as public providers. Appealing to the inadequate recently introduced “benchmark” statements as proof of quality, they would provide a “bare bones” service at lower (...) cost. Public subsidies would go: education being reduced to that minimum which could be packaged in terms of verifiable “learning outcomes”. The loss of “higher” aspirations, such education of critically-minded citizens of a democratic and civilised society would impoverish the university’s research culture which demands honesty and openness to public scrutiny. (shrink)

Catherine Rowett presents an in depth study of Plato's Meno, Republic and Theaetetus and offers both a coherent argument that the project in which Plato was engaging has been widely misunderstood and misrepresented, and detailed new readings of particular thorny issues in the interpretation of these classic texts.

In this unconventional article, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg conduct a three-way ‘conversation’ in which they all take turns outlining how they understand the relationship among postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism. It begins with a short introduction, and then Ros, Sarah and Catherine each define the term they have become associated with. This is followed by another round in which they discuss the overlaps, similarities and disjunctures among the terms, and the article ends with how (...) each one understands the current mediated feminist landscape. (shrink)