In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:After Extinction ed. by Richard Grusin, and: Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones and Extinction by David FarrierChris CrewsRichard Grusin, editor. After Extinction. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. 272pp.David Farrier. Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones and Extinction. University of Minnesota Press, 2019. 176pp.Thinking Critically and Poetically with the AnthropocenePublished within a year of each other, Richard Grusin’s edited collection, After Extinction, and David Farrier’s (...) Anthropocene Poetics offer two valuable perspectives on the themes of extinction and the Anthropocene. Most readers are likely familiar with some version of the Anthropocene by now, and its usage in these books (with a few exceptions) follows a common refrain in the humanities and social sciences, where it is used as an umbrella term to describe a wide range of (mostly negative) impacts to the Earth associated with industrial civilization and human activities.The topic of extinction is a much older issue, but increasingly frequent (and alarming) reports about biodiversity loss and extinction from bodies like the United Nations, combined with activism from groups like Extinction Rebellion, have raised its profile. Elizabeth Kolbert’s 2014 book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, which performs a sort of Derridean hauntology throughout the pages of After Extinction, further reinforced this trend. As Richard Grusin notes in his Introduction to After Extinction, the book emerged from a conference hosted by the Center for Twenty-First Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee which focused on the question of what comes after extinction. Each chapter is thought-provoking, but at times they sat uneasily together, producing a sort of Chthulucenic cacophony drawn from multiple disciplines and themes, from entangled humanism and the power of photography to a rethinking of disability and Indigenous languages in the Anthropocene. [End Page 156]I found David Farrier’s Anthropocene Poetics harder to pin down, despite being a more cohesive text. The book offers a series of ecocritical musings that engage with a series of poets and authors whose work Farrier uses to draw out a poetic imagination of the Anthropocene. Farrier develops this Anthropocene poetics through a dizzying array of textual and artistic examples that draws inspiration from queer ecology and New Materialism (e.g., Elizabeth Grosz, Timothy Morton, Jane Bennett, Quentin Meillassoux) to problematize the liminal spaces and borders between human and non-human agencies and affect, animacies and intimacies, while suggesting that poetry is well suited (perhaps best suited?) to help us rethink our relationship to deep time and geologic agency. While reading Farrier’s book, I could not help but think of Bruno Latour’s comments about how we need a new geostory to help us make sense of the Anthropocene.Farrier engages widely with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing to develop some key themes, yet there is no attempt to force the concept of the Anthropocene into any prefigured box, despite his study’s grounding in ecocriticism and his stated sympathy with the fledgling field of Anthropocene studies. As Farrier notes, “I pursue a more inclusive approach to defining the Anthropocene, that is, that each discipline must do so according to its own terms and, by implication, that each discipline must reappraise its boundaries and assumptions in the Anthropocene’s shadows” (3). Farrier’s familiarity with both the scientific basis and cultural debates around the Anthropocene allows him to pull this off successfully.A key aim for Farrier is to explore what an Anthropocene poetics might look like, and to show how such a poetics can allow for more fluid engagements with the Anthropocene. He does this through three framing devices: intimacy (deep time), entanglements (sacrifice zones), and swerve (kin-making), each of which allows him to think more deeply about our growing awareness of deep time (past and future) and our entanglements with a changing planet. Farrier suggests this awareness is creating a deeper appreciation for how the human project is (and always has been) deeply bound up with other than human beings and non-human agencies. As Farrier argues: “One of the most striking and unsettling aspects of the Anthropocene is the newly poignant sense that our present is in fact accompanied by deep pasts and... (shrink)

This paper presents a comparison of social kinship (patrilineage) and biological kinship (genetic relatedness) in predicting cooperative relationships in two different economic contexts in the fishing and whaling village of Lamalera, Indonesia. A previous analysis (Alvard, Human Nature 14:129–163, 2003) of boat crew affiliation data collected in the village in 1999 found that social kinship (patrilineage) was a better predictor of crew affiliation than was genetic kinship. A replication of this analysis using similar data collected in 2006 finds the same (...) pattern: lineage is a better predictor than genetic kinship of crew affiliation, and the two together explain little additional variance over that explained by lineage alone. However, an analogous test on food-sharing relationships finds the opposite pattern: biological kinship is a better predictor of food-sharing relationships than is social kinship. The difference between these two cooperative contexts is interpreted in terms of kin preferences that shape partner choice, and the relative autonomy with which individuals can seek to satisfy those preferences. Drawing on stable matching theory, it is suggested that unilineal descent may serve as a stable compromise among multiple individuals’ incongruent partner preferences, with patriliny favored over matriliny in the crew-formation context because it leads to higher mean degrees of relatedness among male cooperators. In the context of food-sharing, kin preferences can be pursued relatively autonomously, without the necessity of coordinating preferences with those of other households through the institution of lineage. (shrink)

The agent portrayed in much philosophy of action is, let's face it, a square. He does nothing intentionally unless he regards it or its consequences as desirable. The reason is that he acts intentionally only when he acts out of a desire for some anticipated outcome; and in desiring that outcome, he must regard it as having some value. All of his intentional actions are therefore directed at outcomes regarded sub specie boni: under the guise of the good. This agent (...) is conceived as being capable of intentional action—and hence as being an agent—only by virtue of being a pursuer of value. I want to question whether this conception of agency can be correct. Surely, so general a capacity as agency cannot entail so narrow a cast of mind. Our moral psychology has characterized, not the generic agent, but a particular species of agent, and a particularly bland species of agent, at that. It has characterized the earnest agent while ignoring those agents who are disaffected, refractory, silly, satanic, or punk. I hope for a moral psychology that has room for the whole motley crew. I shall begin by examining why some philosophers have thought that the attitudes motivating intentional actions involve judgments of value. I shall then argue that their conception of these attitudes is incorrect. Finally, I shall argue that practical reason should not be conceived as a faculty for pursuing value. (shrink)

Airline pilots are attributed ultimate responsibility and final authority over their aircraft to ensure the safety and well-being of all its occupants. Yet, with the advent of automation technologies, a dissonance has emerged in that pilots have lost their actual decision-making authority as well as their ability to act in an adequate fashion towards meeting their responsibilities when unexpected circumstances or emergencies occur. Across the literature in human factor studies, we show how automated algorithmic technologies have wrestled control away from (...) airline pilots. The inter-related ethical and pragmatic consequences resulting from such a dissonance are presented. This includes pilots serving as ‘legal sponges’, being caught in ‘moral crumple zones’, as well as real impacts on safety and well-being of passengers and crew. One potential avenue presented in the literature involves a redistribution of responsibility towards all agential entities within the cockpit system. We discuss the possible pitfalls to this approach, including the reinforcement of pilot skills erosion as well as technology’s own limitations in adaptively dealing with unexpected circumstances. We justify our position by showing how algorithmic technology’s representational frames mask or severely limit the pilots’ natural reflex to ‘practically cope’ and gain an ‘optimal grip’ with a given context/situation at hand. Here, we present the concept of relevant or meaningful control, which pilots, when allowed to develop their natural brain-body reflexes, gain across gradual mastery of the aircraft. Finally, we propose a socio-technical design approach in which pilots can re-appropriate full human meaningful control of the aircraft, thus allowing them to meet their attributed responsibilities. (shrink)

Pragmatic language competence plays a central role in how aviation flight crews perform crew resource management ; this competence significantly affects aviation safety. This paper contributes to existing literature on interventionist applications of conversation analysis by defining and evaluating a novel collaborative transcription and repair based learning method for aviation CRM learning. CTRBL was evaluated using a quantitative quasi-­experimental repeated-measure design with 42 novice, university pilots. Results support that CTRBL is an effective, low-resource CRM learning method that will benefit (...) from exploratory applications and further study in pragmatics, aviation, and other sociotechnical domains. The views in this article were the result of independent research of the authors. Views herein do not necessarily represent the views of the National Transportation Safety Board or the United States. (shrink)

이 논문의 목적은 초역사적인 합리성이 아닌 인간의 도덕적 감수성에 근거한 도덕적 탐구의 과정과 그 결과로서의 규범과 의무가 ‘자의적’이지 않을 수 있다는 것을 주장하는 것이다. 이를 위해 이 논문은 다음과 같이 전개될 것이다. 먼저 임마누엘 칸트와 그의 철학적 후예인 크리스틴 코스가드가 왜 도덕적 의무의 구성이나 이유의 이해의 차원에서 초역사적이고 보편적인 능력으로서의 이성이나 그에 준하는 능력을 요구하는지를 밝힌다. 칸트와 코스가드는 감정이나 감수성이 맹목적이고 노예적이기 때문에 그것들은 진정한 도덕적 의무 구성에서 핵심적 역할을 수행할 수 없다는 입장을 공유한다. 다음으로 우리가 가지는 도덕적 감수성에 근거한 (...) 도덕적 숙고와 탐구가 자의성 문제를 극복할 수 있음을 밝힌다. 우리의 감수성은 전체론적 구조를 가지기 때문에 감수성 사이의 비판과 교정이 가능하다. 결정적으로 우리의 욕망의 그물에 존재하는 안정적인 욕망들과 공유 가능한 욕망들은 자의성 문제를 극복하는 핵심 기제로 작용한다. 마지막으로 감정주의 윤리학은 한 개인이 가지는 특정한 주관적 감정 자체를 정당화된 도덕적 판단으로 간주하기 때문에 도덕적 의무를 이해하고 정당화하는 이론으로서 부적절하다는 주장을 반박한다. 도덕적 감수성에 근거한 숙고와 반성은 공동체주의적이기 때문에 필자의 감정주의의 구도 안에서의 정당한 도덕적 판단은 개인의 주관적인 정서적 반응으로 환원되지 않는다. (shrink)

Of all the crew to serve on a starship Enterprise, none has had such a convoluted line of existence as the venerable Mr. Spock. This chapter explores what the various incarnations of Mr. Spock can tell us about the nature of reality, existence, and personal identity. Lewis argues for the metaphysical theory of modal realism: all possible worlds are as real as the actual world. In science fiction parlance, this philosophical concept of world is more often called a universe. Thus, (...) Earth and Vulcan are both part of the same world depicted in Star Trek. The central question Lewis addresses is whether our world is the only real world, or whether other possible worlds could also be considered real. Lewis argues for the metaphysical theory of modal realism, all possible worlds are as real as the actual world. (shrink)

Dilthey’s moral writings have received scant attention over the years, perhaps due to his apparent tendency toward relativism. This essay offers a unified look at Dilthey’s moral writings in the context of his Kantian-styled “Critique of Historical Reason.” I present the Dilthey of the moral writings as an observer of reason in the spirit of Kant, watching practical reason devolve into error when it applies itself beyond the bounds of possible experience. Drawing on moral writings from across Dilthey’s corpus, I (...) retrace Dilthey’s argument that moral theories from Kantianism and utilitarianism to natural law theory suffer significant motivational problems because of the way they transcend the “synthesis” of moral perception. Dilthey’s argument suggests that abstract moral theory is always bound to seem unmotivating and unreal from the standpoint of lived experience, and perhaps that, to avoid this, moral philosophy should confine itself to more situated, case-specific judgments. (shrink)

It is shown how a diagram on the reverse of a Greek coin of Aegina of the fifth century b.c.e., is simply constructed with the help of Proposition 36 of Euclid’s Book on Divisions [of Figures], and it is conjectured in the absence of contemporary evidence that, since Euclid expressly designated this proposition to be the last in the book, he may have had in mind the diagram, which, some 200 years after its appearance on the coinage, may still have (...) played a significant role in geometry. (shrink)

Between the body and the breathing earth : on the phenomenology of depth perception -- To praise again : phenomenology and the project of ecopsychology -- Postphenomenology and the lifeworld : interconnections, relationships, and environmental wholes : a phenomenological ecology of natural and built worlds.

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.comAllen Fromherz has already written a very useful book on the Almohads, and he now attempts to set his work on their remarkable empire within a much wider setting, from the seventh century, when Islam reached the Maghreb, all the way to the fifteenth century, and in the entire western Mediterranean. His thesis is that we should (...) think of western Mediterranean civilization in the Middle Ages as a shared culture and experience, embracing the much-ignored history of what are now Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia alongside the study of Spanish, Italian and other histories, predominantly Christian. Close attention to the Christian shores of the western Mediterranean has, he avers, created a narrative of worlds apart: Christians on the northern flanks who had little in common... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Grand Theory on Trial:Kafka, Derrida, and the Will to PowerNina Pelikan StrausIn summa: so that man may respect himself he must be capable of doing evil.(Nietzsche, The Will to Power)1IThe following pages offer evidence that in The Trial Kafka invents characters who deploy a Nietzschean-sourced language of deconstruction related to what we now call theory; that in "Before the Law" Kafka's priest deconstructs The Law to which K. is (...) subjected, and that Kafka exposes the discursive devices by which laws can be deconstructed. Kafka's text then opens the way to another kind of deconstruction of that-which-is-already-deconstructed as performed by Jacques Derrida in his 1987 essay, "Before the Law."2 Although this claim may seem self-evident or rhetorically circular to some readers of Kafka and his commentators, it is the result of years of puzzlement concerning the impact of Grand Theory in American criticism.This puzzlement, often accompanied by antagonism, is shared by critics whose essays comprise Patia's and Corral's Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent. The 2005 volume includes major reassessments of poststructuralist theory, notably Derrida's, by Tzetan Todorov, Thomas Nagel, M. H. Abrams, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Frederick Crews, René Welleck, David Bromwich, and others. While the deconstructionist idea of the arbitrariness of the signifier appears to be a central target of these critics' analysis, it is precisely the arbitrariness of the signifier called the Law that Kafka explores in The Trial.Kafka's intended relation to what he exposes has been much debated. [End Page 378] Stanley Corngold refers to the "undecidability" of Kafka's work and its "narrative mood of neutrality."3 The emphasis on "undecidability" in Kafka can be viewed as symptomatic of the influence of French Theory embraced by the American literary academy in the 1970s and 1980s. This latter view of Kafka's writing contrasts sharply with an earlier view, such as Hannah Arendt's, that The Trial, for all its ambiguity and multivalence, carries precise political meanings and warnings that Kafka fully intended. The deconstructionist moment did not bury convictions such as Adorno's or Canetti's that "from the beginning, Kafka sided with the humiliated,"4 or that for "a generation of early readers Joseph K.'s arrest was... a prophetic anticipation of the fate awaiting Hitler's victims."5 But deconstruction's skeptical effect undermined the certitude that Kafka was a politically important novelist. For its detractors, the deconstructionist view that there is "nothing outside of the text" ignores that texts like Kafka's have shaped human lives and human history. Wellek, who helped to introduce French theory to American literature departments, now asserts that theory has destroyed literary studies, while Frederick Crews argues that "Derrida's judgment that 'there is nothing outside the text' automatically precludes recourse to evidence." In Crews's view, "both Derrida and his myriad followers think nothing of appropriating and denaturing propositions from systems of thought whose premises they have already rejected." Thomas Nagel goes further in condemning "post-modern relativism" as a "quick fix" which puts reason to sleep. In Theory's Empire, Derrida's language is described as a "maze," a "prison house of language," a "limbo of combined attention and nonassertion."6The arguments against deconstruction theory can scarcely be summarized here, but a sampling of the commentaries in Theory's Empire on Derrida can lead us through and eventually back to what is or isn't at political stake in reading The Trial. Two questions are of concern: How much of Kafka's political acumen does Derrida ignore or misread in his commentary on "Before the Law"? And: to what degree do Derrida's rhetorical devices and ingenious language games resemble the language of the Courtiers who torture Joseph K.? What might such an analogy imply? Other questions follow, such as David Bromwich's very important ones. "About the status of Derrida's procedures there was always a puzzle," he writes. "Was deconstruction a technique proper to the commentator, and necessary as a tactic against the naïve constructionism of the author? Or was it something the author's writing practiced for itself, in... (shrink)

Background: Current practice relies on patient-designated and next-of-kin surrogates, in consultation with clinicians, to make treatment decisions for patients who lose the ability to make their own decisions. Yet there is a paucity of data on whether this approach is consistent with patients' preferences regarding who they want to make treatment decisions for them in the event of decisional incapacity. Methods: Self-administered survey of patients at a tertiary care center. Results: Overall, 1169 respondents completed the survey (response rate = 59.8%). (...) Of the 229 respondents who had previously designated a surrogate, 78.2% wanted their surrogate to make treatment decisions in the event of decisional incapacity, whereas 21.8% wanted their doctors to make treatment decisions. Of the 822 respondents who had not designated a surrogate, 66.1% wanted their family to make treatment decisions, whereas 33.9% wanted their doctors to make treatment decisions. The most common explanation provided for why respondents wanted their surrogate or family to make treatment decisions for them in the event of decisional incapacity was the belief that loved ones knew the patient's treatment preferences. Conclusions: Contrary to current practice, 33.9% of respondents who had not designated a surrogate and 21.8% of those who had designated a surrogate indicated that they wanted their doctors to make treatment decisions for them in the event of decisional incapacity. Moreover, many of those who wanted their surrogates or family members to make treatment decisions explained this preference by citing a belief that loved ones knew the patient's treatment preferences. This belief is undermined by prior research that suggests that surrogates and family members frequently are unable to predict which treatments their charges would want. Future research should assess these two concerns with current practice and, where necessary, identify approaches to address them. (shrink)

_The Gift of Death_, Jacques Derrida’s most sustained consideration of religion, explores questions first introduced in his book _Given Time_ about the limits of the rational and responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution, or suicide. Derrida analyzes Czech philosopher Jan Patocka’s _Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History _and develops and compares his ideas to the works of Heidegger, Lévinas, and Kierkegaard. One of Derrida’s major works, _The Gift of Death_ resonates with (...) much of his earlier writing, and this highly anticipated second edition is greatly enhanced by David Wills’s updated translation. This new edition also features the first-ever English translation of Derrida’s _Literature in Secret_. In it, Derrida continues his discussion of the sacrifice of Isaac, which leads to bracing meditations on secrecy, forgiveness, literature, and democracy. He also offers a reading of Kafka’s _Letter to His Father_ and uses the story of the flood in Genesis as an embarkation point for a consideration of divine sovereignty. “An important contribution to the critical study of ethics that commends itself to philosophers, social scientists, scholars of religion... [and those] made curious by the controversy that so often attends Derrida.”—_Booklist_, on the first edition. (shrink)

Terry Eagleton is the foremost Marxist cultural theorist of our time. In the first book-length study of this highly influential figure, David Alderson provides detailed discussions of Eagleton's Marxism and his engagements with postmodernism, as well as an evaluation of his interventions in Irish Studies. Each of the chapters in this important intervention in current theoretical debates offers accessible contextualization of the key issues and provides detailed analyses of Eagleton's literary criticism. Alderson shows that the complex relations between nature, (...) culture and ideology, body, subjectivity and authority are at the heart of Eagleton's ethical and political concerns. He goes on to demonstrate that these relations inform the theorist's critical examinations of such literary works as Wuthering Heights and The Merchant of Venice, and his treatment of W.B. Yeats and Oscar Wilde. (shrink)

In this paper I take another look at the view, defended by C. Nino, that we may punish criminals because, by knowingly breaking a law, they have consented to becoming liable to the prescribed punishment. I will first rebut the criticisms usually aimed at this view in the literature, aiming to show that they are inconclusive. They are all efforts to show that criminal offenders in fact do not consent to becoming liable to punishment simply by committing crimes. I then (...) turn to a different line of criticism, which I find more promising. I argue that the moral power of effecting normative changes by consenting reflects the power holder’s value as a person, and show how this idea makes sense of how refusal to recognize that power wrongs a person. I then argue that the “power” of consenting to punishability does not fit that model, and is better explained as reflecting the value of other people, whom the offender has wronged. Hence the power of consenting is not involved in typical cases of wrongdoing. (shrink)

As David White explains in the Introduction to Tantra in Practice, Tantra is an Asian body of beliefs and practices that seeks to channel the divine energy that grounds the universe, in creative and liberating ways. The subsequent chapters reflect the wide geographical and temporal scope of Tantra by examining thirty-six texts from China, India, Japan, Nepal, and Tibet, ranging from the seventh century to the present day, and representing the full range of Tantric experience--Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and even (...) Islamic. Each text has been chosen and translated, often for the first time, by an international expert in the field who also provides detailed background material. Students of Asian religions and general readers alike will find the book rich and informative. The book includes plays, transcribed interviews, poetry, parodies, inscriptions, instructional texts, scriptures, philosophical conjectures, dreams, and astronomical speculations, each text illustrating one of the diverse traditions and practices of Tantra. Thus, the nineteenth-century Indian Buddhist Garland of Gems, a series of songs, warns against the illusion of appearance by referring to bees, yogurt, and the fire of Malaya Mountain; while fourteenth-century Chinese Buddhist manuscripts detail how to prosper through the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper by burning incense, making offerings to scriptures, and chanting incantations. In a transcribed conversation, a modern Hindu priest in Bengal candidly explains how he serves the black Goddess Kali and feeds temple skulls lentils, wine, or rice; a seventeenth-century Nepalese Hindu praise-poem hammered into the golden doors to the temple of the Goddess Taleju lists a king's faults and begs her forgiveness and grace. An introduction accompanies each text, identifying its period and genre, discussing the history and influence of the work, and identifying points of particular interest or difficulty. The first book to bring together texts from the entire range of Tantric phenomena, Tantra in Practice continues the Princeton Readings in Religions series. The breadth of work included, geographic areas spanned, and expert scholarship highlighting each piece serve to expand our understanding of what it means to practice Tantra. (shrink)

David M. Zientek; Response to the Consensus Statement of the Working Group on Roman Catholic Approaches to Determining Appropriate Critical Care, Christian bioe.

The Illusion of the Body: Introducing the Body Alive Principle is the divinely inspired work of author David Almeida. This book opens the door to a new understanding in metaphysical thinking. The author draws on the philosophy of panpsychism to support his contention that an unseen ocean of consciousness exists all around us, and within our own bodies (i.e. cells, organs, and systems). The author refers to the Body Alive Principle as “panpsychic healing.” This text offers proven techniques for (...) communicating with the body intelligences the author terms the “little minds.” This process is intended to bring healing to those with both minor and severe medical conditions. Some of the most common medical complaints treated by the Body Alive Principle includes:1. Back or neck pain2. Allergies3. Arthritis/rheumatism4. Difficulty walking5. Headaches6. Lung problems7. Digestive8. Gynecological9. Anxiety disorders10. Heart conditionsThe author contends that even the most nefarious medical issues are curable or can be successfully managed using the Body Alive Principle. This is accomplished through the action of human “super mind”, which will at times consciously supervise the activities of the little minds. The Illusion of the Body instructs its Body Alive practitioners to approach their recovery using several time-tested techniques. Three widely recognized methods are employed in the application of the panpsychic healing philosophy. These modalities are creative visualization and empathetic listening followed by affirmative commands. Each technique is essential to the effectiveness of the Body Alive Principle.This book also discusses guilt and its deleterious effect on the body. True guilt has a beneficial quality when it prevents us from repeating an unacceptable behavior. Beyond this, guilt causes us to become ineffectual. The author holds that this antiquated form guilt needs to be purged, so that we may move on with our lives. A step-by-step process for liberating oneself from the chains of guilt is provided.There is also a section dedicated to trauma because of its potential to immobilize an affected person. Traumatic experiences suddenly unleashed on the body may produce waves of acute anxiety, which wreak havoc on its finely tuned systems. The author recounts his personal experience of negotiating the discharge of negative experiences with the entities supporting them.The Body Alive Principle promotes the importance of adhering to high moral standards in order to maintain homeostasis within ourselves. Integrity is of the outmost importance to the little minds. The author emphasizes the necessity for one to act within the domain of moral excellence. However, the author makes it clear that integrity is a process we work to perfect throughout our lives.The Illusion of the Body represents the author's many years of metaphysical study and experimentation. The author hopes to generate a greater awareness and appreciation of our precious bodily intelligences. The organic vessels that contain our consciousness are alive. They are almost countless in number. If we, the super mind can learn to communicate with the little minds in a positive way, we can ensure ourselves of a more comfortable journey. (shrink)

Most people do not think to observe geology from the sidewalks of a major city, but all David B. Williams has to do is look at building stone in any urban center to find a range of rocks equal to any assembled by plate tectonics. In Stories in Stone, he takes you on explorations to find 3.5-billion-year-old rock that looks like swirled pink-and-black taffy, a gas station made of petrified wood, and a Florida fort that has withstood three hundred (...) years of attacks and hurricanes, despite being made of a stone that has the consistency of a granola bar. Williams also weaves in the cultural history of stone, explaining why a white fossil-rich limestone from Indiana became the only building stone used in all fifty states; how in 1825, the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument led to America’s first commercial railroad; and why when the same kind of marble used by Michelangelo clad a Chicago skyscraper it warped so much after nineteen years that all 44,000 panels of it had to be replaced. This love letter to building stone brings to life the geology you can see in the structures of every city. (shrink)

This article is divided into three sections. The first argues that the significance of David Hume's History of England as an inspiration for Gibbon's Decline and Fall has been underestimated, and that Momigliano's famous account of Gibbon's originality needs to be adapted to take account of the fact that Gibbon was, in effect, a disciple of Hume. Hume and Gibbon, I argue, shaped our modern understanding of "history" by producing narratives rather than annals, encyclopedias, or commentaries. Moreover, they made (...) history primarily the study of the remote past, not the recent past. In order to test my claim that "histories" had generally been quite different in character from those written by Hume and Gibbon, I survey the histories of the early church available to Gibbon. Of Gibbon's critics, East Apthorp, I suggest, is most alert to the novelty of his enterprise.The second section analyzes the argument of chapter fifteen of the Decline and Fall, the first chapter on Christianity. I argue that Gibbon deliberately assembles all the arguments against belief in Christianity that were current in the first century. But I also argue that Gibbon intends the alert reader to notice that ancient arguments against Christianity and modern ones largely overlap, so that he is at the same time offering a conspectus of eighteenth-century arguments against religious faith. At one point only do the modern arguments differ from the ancient ones, and that is in the attitude to miracles expressed in Conyers Middleton's Free Enquiry and Hume's essay "Of Miracles."The last section criticizes David Womersley's claim that the attitude to religion expressed in the later books of the Decline and Fall is significantly different from that in the first. I argue that Gibbon is throughout a more subtle historian of faith than is generally recognized , and that this is because Gibbon himself had once been a Catholic convert. (shrink)

AtRepublic9, 583b1–587a2, Socrates argues that the pleasure of the philosophical life is the truest pleasure. I will call this the ‘true pleasure argument’. The true pleasure argument is divisible into two parts: 583b1–585a7 and 585a8–587a2. Each part contains a sub-argument, which I will call ‘the misperception argument’ and ‘the true filling argument’ respectively. In the misperception argument Socrates argues that it is characteristic of irrational men to misperceive as pleasant what in fact is a condition of neither having pleasure nor (...) being pained. In the true filling argument Socrates argues that in so far as pleasure entails somatic or psychic filling and there are more and less true fillings, there are more and less true pleasures. Philosophical filling is the truest filling and thus the truest pleasure. The misperception argument critically contributes to the true pleasure argument by clarifying what pleasure is not: merely an appearance or merely the absence of pain. The misperception argument thereby clears the ground for the constructive contribution of the true filling argument. (shrink)

In this book, David Burrell, one of the foremost philosophical theologians in the English-speaking world, presents the best of his work on creation and human freedom. A collection of writings by one of the foremost philosophers of religion in the English-speaking world. Brings together in one volume the best of David Burrell’s work on creation and human freedom from the last twenty years. Dismantles the ‘libertarian’ approach to freedom underlying Western political and economic systems. Engages with Islam, Judaism (...) and Christianity, and with modern and pre-modern systems of thought. The author is noted for his rigorous approach, his wry humor, his intellectual subtlety and his generous spirit. (shrink)

(1997). An historical holistic thread in the dynamical fabric of psychology. World Futures: Vol. 49, The Dialatic of Evolution: Essays in Honor of David Loye, pp. 159-201.

MUCH RECENT SCHOLARSHIP HAS CALLED FOR THE INTEGRATION OF NATural law theory with biblical revelation, yet few writers have pursued such a project in detail. This essay presents the foundations of a constructive account of natural law grounded in an overlooked biblical text and in Reformed covenant theology, in conversation with contemporary biblical exegesis and recent Protestant and Roman Catholic literature on natural law. It explores the character of the Noahic covenant established with all creation (Gen. 8:20—9:17) and argues that (...) this covenant provides necessary theological foundation for understanding nature and common human moral obligations. This account of natural law provides a sound way to integrate natural law theory with the biblical narrative and to conceive of natural law as a universal God-given standard mediated through a fallen world. (shrink)

Aristotle argues that friendship is characterized by recognized, reciprocal goodwill. Friends are concerned about each other; ideally, they want the best for each other. As long as dialogue is possible, community exists, and friendship and goodwill are possible. Dialogue is a central, distinctive feature of Hans‐Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. It is rare in nineteenth‐century hermeneutics and it is all but absent in Martin Heidegger's philosophizing. Gadamer famously argues that dialogue can occur with texts and works of art, even though there (...) is a clear difference between these dialogues and dialogues with other people. In community, we share our interpretations in dialogue, moving us ever beyond our limited, individual understanding of God and creation and becoming ever more aligned with the Infinite. The true church is the community of freely associating believers working together in dialogue to come to an intuition of the Infinite. (shrink)

El artículo plantea las posibilidades de hacer efectivo un derecho del cuidado en el contexto español. Para ello, analiza sus posibilidades de positivación y efectividad. Al respecto, desgrana los fundamentos axiológicos y políticos de este derecho y entiende adecuada su comprensión desde la perspectiva de los derechos sociales. Sin embargo, identifica enormes dificultades para su positivación, debido a la falta de consenso político sobre el encuadramiento de los cuidados y sobre su régimen de organización social. Ello dificulta su establecimiento legislativo, (...) así como los análisis deductivos sobre su contenido y efectividad. En cambio, el artículo propone delimitar y estudiar este derecho a partir del análisis de casos en los que se solicita tutela judicial en sectores profesionales del cuidado, como la ayuda a domicilio, la limpieza o la preparación de habitaciones. Se trata de un primer paso para analizar la efectividad de estos derechos respecto a sus distintos agentes implicados. (shrink)

Reseña a Klinenberg, Eric. Palacios del pueblo. Políticas para una sociedad más igualitaria.(P. Zumalacárregui, trad.). Madrid: Capitán Swing, 2021, 293 pp.