In over thirty lines of the Agamemnon I think I discern lurking in the apparatus of modern editions truths unnoticed by recent editors, and needing for the most part merely redivision, repunctuation, or reaccentuation to become recognizable. At a few points I offer alternative interpretations of readings that have been accepted by some at least among modern editors.

This paper argues that the concept and role of ‘institutional racism’ in contemporary discussions of race should be reconsidered. It starts by distinguishing between ‘intrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their constitutive features, and ‘extrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their negative effects. It accepts intrinsic institutional racism, but argues that a ‘disparate impact’ conception of extrinsic conception faces a number of objections, the most serious being that it (...) has no plausible account of what it is that makes extrinsically racist institutions racist. It also argues that claims about the explanatory indispensability of institutional racism are overstated (individual racism is at least as important), critiques structural approaches to racial inequality, and suggests that there is reason to doubt whether institutional reform can provide us with all that morality may require in the racial domain. (shrink)

Mencius, who lived in the 4th century B.C., is second only to Confucius in importance in the Confucian tradition. The _Mencius_ consists of sayings of Mencius and conversations he had with his contemporaries. When read side by side with the _Analects_, the _Mencius_ throws a great deal of light on the teachings of ConfuciusMencius developed many of the ideas of Confucius and at the same time discussed problems not touched upon by Confucius. He drew out the implications of Confucius' moral (...) principles and reinterpreted them for the conditions of his time. As the fullest of the four great Confucian texts, the _Mencius_ has been the required reading amongst Chinese scholars for two thousand years, and it still throws considerable light on the character of the Chinese people. (shrink)

A record of the words and teachings of Confucius, _The Analects_ is considered the most reliable expression of Confucian thought. However, the original meaning of Confucius's teachings have been filtered and interpreted by the commentaries of Confucianists of later ages, particularly the Neo-Confucianists of the Song dynasty, not altogether without distortion.In this monumental translation by Professor D. C. Lau, an attempt has been made to interpret the sayings as they stand. The corpus of the sayings is taken as an organic (...) whole and the final test of the interpretation rests on the internal consistency it exhibits. In other words, _The Analects_ is read in the light of _The Analects._This results in a truer understanding of Confucius' thought than the traditional interpretation and paves the way for a re-assessment of its importance in the history of Chinese thought and its relevance to the present day world.This volume also contains an introduction to the life and teachings of Confucius, and three appendices on the events in the life of Confucius, on his disciples, and on the composition of _The Analects._. (shrink)

This book examines the history of the concept of irony from the first appearance of?eironeia? in Plato to the modern era. It isolates and discusses the basic features of irony and the variable features that determine the kind and in part the effect or quality. It distinguishes carefully between the two main types : instrumental irony (of which verbal irony is the most common form) and observable irony (which includes dramatic irony, irony of events, general irony and other situational ironies). (...) A distinction is also drawn between open and closed irony. (shrink)

D.C. Schindler reminds us that the motto of Villanova consists of three terms: Unitas, Caritas and Veritas. Postmodern philosophy is keen to malign good Veritas as an exercise in oppression, something which must be avoided if we truly want to reach universal care and unity. In opposition to this trend, Schindler illustrates how Desmond’s philosophy is capable of giving truth its dues against the assaults of Vattimo and others, but also and more importantly that truth serves as foundational for unity (...) and care. Building from Desmond’s Intimate Universal, Schindler illustrates how care and unity need an ontological grounding in truth in order to be more than merely superficial. (shrink)

David Stove reviews Selwyn Grave's History of Philosophy in Australia, and praises philosophers for thinking harder about the bases of science, mathematics and medicine than the practitioners in the field. The review is reprinted as an appendix to James Franklin's Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia.

The development of transplantation technology increasingly places before society a multitude of diverse, complex ethical and legal problems. The subject is the more complex because of the various divergent interests involved. There are the interests of the donor of organs, who has a right to protection of his legal position, and those of the patient in need of an often lifesaving organ. There are also the interests of the donor’s relatives, after his death, and those of the transplantation surgeons. The (...) international dimension of transplantation technology makes the picture even more complicated. Though this article is devoted to the European situation, the problems are similar all over the world. (shrink)

This chapter presents and illustrates fundamental principles of the intuitionistic mathematics devised by L.E.J. Brouwer and then describes in largely nontechnical terms metamathematical results that shed light on the logical character of that mathematics. The fundamental principles, such as Uniformity and Brouwer’s Theorem, are drawn from the intuitionistic studies of logic and topology. The metamathematical results include Gödel’s negative and modal translations and Kleene’s realizability interpretation. The chapter closes with an assessment of anti-realism as a philosophy of intuitionism.

In Reconstruction in Philosophy, John Dewey issued an eloquent call for contemporary philosophy to become more relevant to the pressing problems facing society. Historically, the philosophy of a period had been appropriate to social conditions, but despite the vast changes in the contemporary world and the complex challenges confronting it philosophy had remained ossified. Karl Popper also was dissatisfied with contemporary philosophy, which he regarded as too often focusing upon “minute” problems. Both Dewey and Popper, however, were optimistic that the (...) situation could be turned around. In this essay D.C. Phillips argues that the resources they mustered give no basis for this optimism; in particular, Phillips emphasizes that philosophy cannot have traction with closed‐minded or fanatical individuals. Dewey passed over cases where his ideas about democratic processes and free intellectual exchange faced intractable difficulties, according to Phillips, and he further suggests that Popper “waffled” over the so‐called “myth of the framework.”. (shrink)

THE FACULTY OF Arts at the University of Sydney is a disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle.

Stove defends his book, Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism, and claims his critics have "irished", or changed the question.

Let S be a deductive system such that S-derivability (⊦s) is arithmetic and sound with respect to structures of class K. From simple conditions on K and ⊦s, it follows constructively that the K-completeness of ⊦s implies MP(S), a form of Markov's Principle. If ⊦s is undecidable then MP(S) is independent of first-order Heyting arithmetic. Also, if ⊦s is undecidable and the S proof relation is decidable, then MP(S) is independent of second-order Heyting arithmetic, HAS. Lastly, when ⊦s is many-one (...) complete, MP(S) implies the usual Markov's Principle MP. An immediate corollary is that the Tarski, Beth and Kripke weak completeness theorems for the negative fragment of intuitionistic predicate logic are unobtainable in HAS. Second, each of these: weak completeness for classical predicate logic, weak completeness for the negative fragment of intuitionistic predicate logic and strong completeness for sentential logic implies MP. Beth and Kripke completeness for intuitionistic predicate or sentential logic also entail MP. These results give extensions of the theorem of Gödel and Kreisel (in [4]) that completeness for pure intuitionistic predicate logic requires MP. The assumptions of Godel and Kreisel's original proof included the Axiom of Dependent Choice and Herbrand's Theorem, no use of which is explicit in the present article. (shrink)

The first point that Tacitus makes is the confusion that surrounded these elections. Tiberius' policy was in no way as well denned here as it apparently was in the case of the praetorship elections: De comitiis consularibus, quae turn primum illo principe ac deinceps fuere, vix quicquam firmare ausim: adeo diversa non modo apud auctores, sed in ipsius orationibus reperiuntur.

In his historical writings, Cluvius Rufus evidently found cause to criticize Verginius Rufus for his conduct on a particular occasion ‘Scis, Vergini, quae historiae fides debeatur; proinde, si quid in historiis meis legis aliter ac velles, rogo igmoscas’. From his reply, it is clear that Verginius automatically understood Cluvius to be referring to an event to which he himself attached great significance: ‘Tune ignoras, Cluvi, ideo me fecisse, quod feci, ut esset liberum vobis scribere quae libuisset?’.

In recent years, the starting-dates of both the Historiae and the Annales of Tacitus have been criticized. In the case of the Historiae, Hainsworth has claimed that Tacitus chose to start his narrative with the events of A.D. 69, because for various reasons the events of A.D. 68 were an embarrassment to him. Syme has suggested, in the case of the Annales, that by starting with the accession of Tiberius, Tacitus has barred himself from a proper understanding of that principate.

Among mainstream political philosophers, Charles Mills is probably best known, not as the author of The Racial Contract, but for his long-running critique of ideal theory and Rawls for his association with it. Yet the critique of ideal theory that followed the publication of The Racial Contract is prefigured in that very work, where we find in inchoate form what would be further developed later on. In the book, this early formulation of the critique occupies a small part of a (...) larger, more general argument condemning mainstream political philosophy for the way that it has ignored race. In this paper, I explore the relation of the critique to this more general argument. It might be thought that the general argument leads inevitably to the critique of ideal theory. I will argue that this is not so. I will show how Mills’ more general argument can be made without taking the further step of critiquing ideal theorizing. The blame for why mainstream political philosophy has ignored race, and continues to ignore race, I will argue, should be placed elsewhere. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:64. ON HUME'S IS-OUGHT THESIS The famous thesis of Hume about "is" and "ought" I take to be, as I believe it has generally been taken to be: (1) For any factual statement e and any ethical statement h, h is not deducible from e. My object in these brief notes is neither to defend nor to attack (1), but just to point out certain mistakes which have been (...) made, or are apt to be made, about (1), or about what Hume's thesis is. A. Max Black has taken Hume's thesis to be that "only statements of fact can follow- from statements of facti* ¡ a thesis, Black thinks, which Popper and "many other philos c be ; osophers" believe. That is. Black took Hume's thesis to (2)For any factual e and any non-factual h, h is not deducible. from e. It is certain, however, that Popper does not believe (2), and I hope it is untrue that many other philosophers believe it. For (2) is obviously false, and on the contrary, every factual statement has at least one nonfactual consequence; since from any factual statement 'f, the statement *f or not-f, which is not factual, is deducible. But this leaves Hume's thesis (1) untouched, since there is no excuse for confusing it with the foolish thesis (2). B. If a statement h is not deducible from a statement e, then given e, the falsity of h is possible; or in other words, h has less than maximum probability in relation to e. So part at least of the content of Hume's thesis (1) is: (3)For any factual e and ethical h, P(h/e). (shrink)

Polybius in a familiar passage, lists goods moving past Byzantium between the Mediterranean. world and the Black Sea region; among these goods, slaves are accorded a prominent place: …as regards necessities it is an unidsputed fact that the most plentiful supplies and best qualities of of cattle and slaves reach us from the countries lying round the Pontus, while among luxuries the same countries furnish us with an abundance of honey, wax and preserved fish; from the surplus of our countries (...) they take olive-oil and every kind of wine. As for grain, there is give and-take – with them sometimes supplying us when we require it and sometimes importing it from us. (shrink)

... the topic of 'meaning' is the one topic discussed in philosophy in which there is literally nothing but 'theory' - literally nothing that can be labelled or even ridiculed as the 'common sense view'. Putnam, 'The Meaning of Meaning' This book explores some truths behind the truism that experimentation is a hallmark of scientific activity. Scientists' descriptions of nature result from two sorts of encounter: they interact with each other and with nature. Philosophy of science has, by and large, (...) failed to give an account of either sort of interaction. Philosophers typically imagine that scientists observe, theorize and experiment in order to produce general knowledge of natural laws, knowledge which can be applied to generate new theories and technologies. This view bifurcates the scientist's world into an empirical world of pre-articulate experience and know how and another world of talk, thought and argument. Most received philosophies of science focus so exclusively on the literary world of representations that they cannot begin to address the philosophical problems arising from the interaction of these worlds: empirical access as a source of knowledge, meaning and reference, and of course, realism. This has placed the epistemological burden entirely on the predictive role of experiment because, it is argued, testing predictions is all that could show that scientists' theorizing is constrained by nature. Here a purely literary approach contributes to its own demise. The epistemological significance of experiment turns out to be a theoretical matter: cruciality depends on argument, not experiment. (shrink)

Phidias’ absence from the survey of sculptors in Cic. Brut. 70 is curious, explanation in terms of differing histories of sculpture only partly convincing. I suggest that Cicero has valid literary motives and is wittily undermining the Atticist position by adaptation of what was a rhetorical topos, the parallel development of Greek prose and sculpture from archaic spareness to classical expertise and dignity: see Dem. Eloc. 14, D. H. Isoc. 3, p.59 U-R; more elaborate but partly deriving from Cicero and (...) less homogeneous is Qu. 12.10.7–9. Cicero assumes the reader's knowledge of the commonplace, pointedly ignores the quality of grandeur and dignity, and develops a theory of technical progress on the basis of veritas and grace to attack the Atticists from their own preferences. The resulting model serves to demote Lysias, imitated by the Atticists but merely the counterpart of Calamis, strigosior like archaic sculptures and superseded by later progress. The analogy thus obliquely repeats the brief but charged parenthesis in 66 that Demosthenes superseded Lysias. (shrink)

The basic goal of health outcomes research is to identify the kinds of patients who do (or do not) benefit substantially from specified medical or surgical treatments and procedures. Similarly, clinicians must determine whether particular patients are the kinds of patients who do (or do not) benefit from specified interventions. Such a kinds-based approach to clinical practice is often resisted, however, when physicians are asked to standardize their practices based on the results of health outcome data. In such settings, clinicians (...) often assert that “every patient is unique”. The present paper explores the coherence of this claim. In particular, I examine the applicability of the philosophical notion of natural kinds to a kinds-based approach to clinical research and practice. I conclude that the claim of patient uniqueness is misguided. Two key difficulties with a kinds-based approach are examined: the problems associated with (1) assigning single-case probabilities and (2) stereotyping and discrimination. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Christian Structure of Politics: On the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas by William McCormickD. C. SchindlerMcCORMICK, William. The Christian Structure of Politics: On the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. xiii + 272 pp. Cloth, $75.00Challenging general assumptions that, because of its genre as a letter to a king in the speculum principis tradition, Aquinas's De Regno is a (...) minor source for Aquinas's political theory in comparison to the political passages from the Summa and Sentence Commentary, William McCormick, S.J. presents a new interpretation of this somewhat neglected text. Though there exist a few classic articles comparing Aquinas's thought in this letter and elsewhere, and substantial introductions to the De Regno in editions by Eschmann (1949) and Dondaine (1979), The Christian Structure of Politics is the first book-length study of Aquinas's letter to the king of Cyprus. In this respect, the volume makes a very welcome contribution to our understanding of Aquinas's understanding of political order, bringing out a dimension of his thought—its awareness of history and its pedagogical sensitivity—not so apparent in Aquinas's other writings.The book is very much what it presents itself as being, namely, a "close reading" of the text, following the letter's two parts (the second of which [End Page 150] Aquinas left unfinished) paragraph by paragraph, considering various interpretative possibilities and suspending judgment—the words "might" and "perhaps" are no doubt two of the most frequent in the book—until more evidence comes into view, and working up to general principles only at the end. McCormick thus eschews substantial engagement with theoretical issues that would form the backdrop to the discussion (for example, the relation between nature and grace, and between practical and theoretical reason), opting instead to focus on a more immediate engagement with what is presented in the text itself. He also does not make more than passing comments on Aquinas's better-known formulations on political matters from the Summa or Sentences Commentary. On the other hand, the "close reading" does not keep McCormick from discerning a general order in Aquinas's letter, which he divides up thematically according to a proposed schema. His approach shows a sensitivity to the historical context in which Aquinas was writing, even if particular details about Aquinas's addressee and the occasion of composition remain uncertain, but his aim is not simply to produce a historical study. Instead, as the book's title itself already indicates, he investigates the De Regno in order to show that the text offers fundamental principles for a distinctively Christian approach to politics, and thus can shed light even on our contemporary situation.The book is divided into five basic chapters, in addition to a substantial introduction and brief conclusion. The first four chapters follow the order of the De Regno, though the basic lines of division are McCormick's own interpretative proposal. Chapter 1 treats the letter's prooemium and the first two chapters of part one (I.1-2) under the title "The Aristotelian State of Nature," showing that, contrary to ideas found in a certain current of Christian thought, political order is fully natural to man and not simply a practical response to violence. Chapter 2, "The Augustinian Earthly City," treating I.3-6, complements the natural character of politics with the realistic acknowledgment of man's fallen nature. While some commentators have worried that the discussion of tyranny in these and subsequent chapters of the De Regno eclipses the positive account of politics given rather schematically at the start, and so diminishes the interest the text might hold for the political philosopher, McCormick argues that the engagement with the tyrant, and the disorder he generates, represents an essential dimension of Aquinas's political vision. Indeed, one of the principal theses of The Christian Structure of Politics is that Aquinas manages to integrate Aristotelian and Augustinian perspectives in an unusually illuminating way: Christian revelation, which introduces the eschatological horizon and foregrounds the historical narrative of sin and redemption, does not supplant but instead grounds and deepens the integrity of politics and... (shrink)