This case study examines the failure of top management at Putnam to exercise ethical behavior in the face of their clear knowledge of corruption in the company. Market timing by employees was expressly forbidden by Putnam. Six employees, including two portfolio managers, repeatedly engaged in market timing activities from 1998 to 2003, garnering over a million dollars in personal profit. The CEO and key senior executives had factual knowledge of the abuses. Management failed to stop the abuses or to discipline (...) those involved until faced with charges from government regulators. By failing to do so, top management breached ethical duties to its shareholders and inflicted serious damage on the organization. The end results of top management's failure to address ethical violations were significant outflow of assets from Putnam's funds, payment of penalties, and loss of trust among investors. This case raises awareness about ethical issues surrounding mutual fund trading practices and the impact that top management can have on the ethical behavior of employees. (shrink)

Catholic employers and employees have been under increasing attack in the last fifty years by a growing number of public policy encroachments in the workplace that are in direct conflict with their religious convictions. In some instances, these threats have been successfully parried. Others remain a source of serious conflict. This article will summarize highlights of the last fifty years of public policy and jurisprudence as they relate to the ability of Catholic institutions to practice and enforce non-negotiable Catholic moral (...) doctrines. (shrink)

It is often alleged that an agent is morally responsible in a liability sense for a transgression just in case s/he deserves a negative interpersonal response for that transgression, blaming responses such as resentment and indignation being paradigms. Aside from a few exceptions, guilt is cited in recent discussions of moral responsibility, if at all, as merely an effect of being blamed, or as a reliable indicator of moral responsibility, but not itself an explanation of moral responsibility. In this paper, (...) I argue that an agent is morally responsible in a liability sense for a transgression just in case s/he deserves to feel moral guilt for that transgression. I argue that this alternative view offers all that the predominant blame-focused view offers, while also solving some puzzling features of moral responsibility. Specifically, it offers a compelling way to reconcile conflicting intuitions about the suberogatory, and allows those who do not understand what Darwall calls ‘second-personal’ reasons to be morally responsible for their immoral acts. (shrink)

The prospect of using cell-based interventions to treat neurological conditions raises several important ethical and policy questions. In this target article, we focus on issues related to the unique constellation of traits that characterize CBIs targeted at the central nervous system. In particular, there is at least a theoretical prospect that these cells will alter the recipients' cognition, mood, and behavior—brain functions that are central to our concept of the self. The potential for such changes, although perhaps remote, is cause (...) for concern and careful ethical analysis. Both to enable better informed consent in the future and as an end in itself, we argue that early human trials of CBIs for neurological conditions must monitor subjects for changes in cognition, mood, and behavior; further, we recommend concrete steps for that monitoring. Such steps will help better characterize the potential risks and benefits of CBIs as they are tested and potentially used for treatment. (shrink)

: Because an influenza pandemic would create the most serious hardships for those who already face most serious hardships, countries should take special measures to mitigate the effect of a pandemic on existing social inequalities. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that anybody is thinking about that.

Over the course of the past twenty-five years, feminist theory has had a forceful impact upon the history of Western philosophy. The present collection of essays has as its primary aim to evaluate past women’s published philosophical work, and to introduce readers to newly recovered female figures; the collection will also make contributions to the history of the philosophy of gender, and to the history of feminist social and political philosophy, insofar as the collection will discuss women’s views on these (...) issues. The volume contains contributions by an international group of leading historians of philosophy and political thought, whose scholarship represents some of the very best work being done in North and Central America, Canada, Europe and Australia. (shrink)

What do we mean by theory in the arts, and what role does it play in that sense? Theory appears as an active, transformative, fluid, and communicative element of art practices, and research in the arts in particular. Theory is the fluid that perfuses and connects the territory of fine art and design, as well as other art forms such as music, architecture, writing, moving images, dance, and theatre. At the heart of this publication is the new field of research (...) in theory and the way the ArtEZ Theory in the Arts research group investigates its possibilities and extends its boundaries. Editor Peter Sonderen currently chairs the professorship Theory in the Arts at ArtEZ University of the Arts. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 240—241. “Pirogenetico, Pirogenetico”, 2009 Installation composée de deux tables en métal et trois blocs d’obsidienne et leur moulages. © Coll.Centre Pompidou / Distr. RMN I'm not so sure that art is so ambiguous. I just think it's not linguistic. It's more full and complex than language— we can experience it but not explain it. —Jimmie Durham(1) Jimmie Duraham is an American artist of Cherokee descent. He’s a visual artist and a political activist for the American Indian Movement. (...) Pirogenetico pirogenetico (2009) was recently installed at the Centre Pompidou as part of their “New Presentation of the Contemporary Collections.” His work is replete with wild ideas shaped by a sage, unpretentious impulse and an automatic responsibility to history, particularly his own Cherokee history. Confident from instability, and free from pedagogical language, he strings form and words together that sharply pierce the atmosphere of ideology. Durham doesn’t follow a line and he doesn’t depend on the scaffold of language, but the work makes a remarkable point. Pirogenetico, pirogenetico is a collection of three obsidian rocks, cut and then cast as a double in German silver. Each threesome sits on its own low metal table, forming a diptych. The cut of the original follows the shattering nature of obsidian, which Durham undercuts and monumentalizes in the double. The derivative double and its mannered original: they are nearly too beautiful but still can’t deny the violence. If Durham’s irony, his edge, is obscured by the volume of his forms, it’s reactivated in a video on the adjacent wall where the obsidian cuts through a heart organ. Durham’s syntax is spare. He knows that language isn’t big enough to tell the story, reminding us, as Lacan stated, “I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth... because saying it all is impossible: words fail.”(2) In place of language Durham uses an alternative accuracy that compounds history with the present, a mashup of material things, a collision of aesthetics that shakes down conventional wisdom, replacing it with searing poetry. NOTES (1) Heyokamagazine. “ Jimmie Durham: The Pursuit of Happiness .” (2) Lacan, Jacques. Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment . Ed. Joan Copjec. Trans. Dennis Hollier, Rosalind Kraus, and Annette Michelson. (New York: Norton, 1990). p. 18. (shrink)

BackgroundNeuroimaging studies have shown a complex pattern of brain activation during perception of a pleasant odor and during its olfactory imagery. To date, little is known regarding changes in motor cortex excitability during these tasks. Bergamot essential oil is extensively used in perfumes and cosmetics for its pleasantness. Therefore, to further our understanding of the human sense of smell, this study aimed to investigate the effect of perception and imagery of a pleasant odor on motor cortex using Transcranial magnetic stimulation.Materials (...) and MethodsWe examined the primary motor cortex excitability during perception of a pleasant odor or perception of odorless saline. Furthermore, we tested the effect of olfactory imagery of BEO on corticospinal excitability. The increase in motor evoked potential amplitude was correlated with personality dimensions scores, pleasantness, vividness, and general imagery ability.ResultsThe results indicate that the corticospinal excitability changed after both perception and imagery of a pleasant odor. The correlation analysis shows an association with neuroticism personality trait and with general olfactory imagery ability.ConclusionBoth perception of a pleasant odor and its olfactory imagery modulate motor cortex excitability. The enhanced brain activation is affected by specific individual characteristics. Overall, our findings provide physiological evidence for a complex interaction between the olfactory and motor systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THREE NOTIONS OF RESOLUTIO AND THE STRUCTURE OF REASONING IN AQUINAS 1 EILEEN c. SWEENEY Boston College Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts RESOLUTIO, better known by the English transliteration of its Greek counterpart, "analysis," has been touted as " the conceptual model for some of the most important ideas in the history of philosophy, including the history of the methodology and philosophy of science." 2 But while resolution /analysis may (...) be important in the histories of philosophy and science, its own history is, to say the least, confused. A Renaissance commentator, Jeremias Triverius gives some sense of this when, after giving a list of four methods of dialectic (division, definition, demonstration, and resolution),3 he writes, 1 I have used the following abbreviations for works by Thomas Aquinas. All translations of Aquinas are my own. Commentum in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum (ed. Busa): In Sent; Compendium Theologiae (ed. Busa): Comp Theo!; E:rpositio Super Librum Boethii De Trinitate (ed. Decker): Exp de Trin; In Aristotelis Libros Posterium Analyticorum (ed. Marietti) : In Anal Post; In Duodecem Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis E:rpositio (ed. Marietti): In Meta; In Librum Beati Dionysii De Divinis Nominibus E:rpositio (ed. Marietti): In Div Nom; Sententia Libri Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nichomachum: In Ethic; Sententia Libri Politicormn Aristotelis (ed. Leonine): In Pol; De Substantiis Separatis (ed. Busa): De Sub Sep; Summa Contra Gentiles (ed. Leonine): SCG; Summa Theologiae (ed. Leonine): ST; Questiones Disputatae de Veritate: QDV. 2 Jaakko Hintikka and Unto Remes, The Method of Analysis (Boston: D. Reidel, 1974), p. 1. s These four methods of dialectic are also given by a number of ancient commentators, for example, Ammonius (In Porphyrii Isagogen, in Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca [hereafter, CAG], ed. Maximilian Wallies [Berlin, 1891], vol. IV, pt. 6, p. 34, 11. 19-20) and a later commentator, David (Davidis Prolegomena et in Porphyrii Isagogen Commentarium, CAG, ed. Adolf Busse [Berlin, 1904], vol. 18, p. 88, 11. 6-10). 197 198 EILEEN C. SWEENEY Now anyone who has some knowledge of dialectical matters knows what Definition, Division, and Demonstration are. There is no general agreement, however, so far as I can see, on Resolution. Some identify it with Division. Others regard it as contrary [to Divi- • ] 4 S!On, ••• Triverius, like many modern commentators, adds to, rather than sorts out, the confusion, continuing, " And since each one is entitled to his opinion, I am now maintaining that Resolution is contrary to Demonstration...." 5 Many centuries before Triverius we find a similar ambiguity in Greek commentators on Aristotle, who outline several types of analysis. Unlike Triverius, however, most seem untroubled by the multiple types; Ammonius and David, without puzzlement, explain carefully that analysis is the opposite of each of the other three methods.6 The lack of 4 Jeremias Triverius, In texnhn [sic] Galeni clarissimi commentarii (Lyon, 1547), p. 14; cited and translated in Nea! Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 106. Galen's opening remarks of the Ars medica, giving three methods of teaching (analysis, synthesis, and definition) is a common locus for the discussion of resolution/ analysis in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Galen's contribution, at least for Aquinas, seems to have been completely mediated by Medieval Arabic commentators. Galen's own discussions are either incomplete, as in the opening passage to the Ars medica (in Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, ed. C. G. Kiihn, [Repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965], vol. I, pp. 305-306), which merely mentions the word, or are unclear accounts of analysis (Cf. Galen's discussion of analysis in De Peccatorum, in Opera Omnia, vol. 5, ch. 5, pp. 80-81). On two of the Arabic commentaries' descriptions of analysis to accompany medieval translations of Galen, see below, nn. 80 & 83. On Galen's supposed contribution to the notion of resolution and method in the development of experimental science, see A. C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), especially pp. 7680, and Gilbert, Renaissance Method, pp, 13-27, 44-46. 5 Triverius, In texnhn, p. 14; Gilbert, p. 106. 6 For analysis as the opposite of division, definition, and demonstration, see Ammonius, In Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum Librum I Commentarium, CAG, ed. Maximilian Wallies, (Berlin, 1891... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Subtlety and Moral Vision in FictionEileen JohnIIn Martha Nussbaum’s work in Love’s Knowledge, the subtlety of literary fiction is given a prominent role in explaining literature’s moral influence. 1 Nussbaum argues that the subtlety displayed in certain works of literary fiction can help readers develop habits of perception such that they will perceive their actual moral world more finely and respond to it with a more nuanced range of (...) feeling. We are encouraged to perceive in this way both by encountering good examples of subtle, sensitive moral agents, in characters such as James’s Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl, and by undergoing the perceiving, responding activity that can be required of a reader. The overarching assumption is that, as moral agents, we need finely-tuned perceptions and felt responses if we are to pick up on the morally relevant elements of our circumstances. We cannot count on finding bold, neat and regular moral patterns to follow; we are rather likely to find ourselves in a complex web of particular contexts, each demanding special moral attention. 2Nussbaum develops these claims in close conversation with the fiction and literary essays of Henry James. 3 Through examples from his novels, she illustrates and elaborates upon the ideal he points to in his essays, the ideal of “being finely aware and richly responsible,” of being a person “on whom nothing is lost.” 4 It seems quite appropriate to dwell on the works of Henry James as displaying—and as demanding from readers—a finer discrimination of elements of experience than we [End Page 308] ordinarily achieve. Discussing the “we” of James’s readers (and leading with a phrase of James’s), Nussbaum puts it: “‘Participators by a fond attention’ in the lives and dilemmas of his participants, we engage with them in a loving scrutiny of appearances. We actively care for their particularity, and we strain to be people on whom none of their subtleties are lost, in intellect and feeling” (p. 162). Having experienced this as readers, we are supposed to be better prepared to approach our own lives and dilemmas with equally scrupulous and caring attention.In general, I am less confident than Nussbaum about the connections between responsible reading of excellent fiction and the pursuit of a responsible moral life. The effects of intense appreciation of fictional moral contexts on real-life decision-making and action are probably quite indirect, requiring encouragement from real-life experiences, from practice with situations in which we have something at stake. But for the moment, I want to develop a suggestion that assumes, in agreement with Nussbaum, that one may take habits of perception learned as a reader and make them count in one’s larger moral life—albeit with reinforcement from one’s judgments and actions in that life.My suggestion involves seeing literary fiction as sometimes playing a subversive role with regard to subtlety. In saying that literary fiction can be “subversive” of subtlety, I am trying to capture the ways in which reading fiction can disrupt a working standard of subtlety. Works of fiction do not provide “normal” perceptual fields, and readers do not approach them with precisely “normal” perceptual habits, so, roughly stated, the reader-fiction interaction has plenty of potential for disrupting epistemic standards of subtlety, bluntness, opacity and so forth. I will illustrate two sorts of subversions of subtlety with an example from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. In one case, I will argue that the subversion of the standard of subtlety has moral import—this will provide a case to contrast with Nussbaum’s Jamesian examples.By bringing in an example from a non-Henry James novel, I hope to open up the discussion of moral vision in fiction to encompass epistemic qualities besides subtlety. It does not seem that the ideals of subtlety, fine awareness, and missing nothing can be the only epistemic qualities which serve to support literary works’ moral influence. 5 Nussbaum herself acknowledges that, by focusing on one literary paradigm, she pursues only one strand of a larger project (pp. 45–46). Since I here consider just one example from a different style of novel... (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Summary Long-standing claims have been made for nearly the entire twentieth century that the biometrician, Karl Pearson, and his colleague, W. F. R. Weldon, rejected Mendelism as a theory of inheritance. It is shown that at the end of the nineteenth century Pearson considered various theories of inheritance (including Francis Galton's law of ancestral heredity for characters underpinned by continuous variation), and by 1904 he ?accepted the fundamental idea of Mendel? as a theory of inheritance for discontinuous variation. Moreover, in (...) 1909, he suggested a synthesis of biometry and Mendelism. Despite the many attempts made by a number of geneticists (including R. A. Fisher in 1936) to use Pearson's chi-square (X 2, P) goodness-of-fit test on Mendel's data, which produced results that were ?too good to be true?, Weldon reached the same conclusion in 1902, but his results were never acknowledged. The geneticist and arch-rival of the biometricians, Williams Bateson, was instead exceptionally critical of this work and interpreted this as Weldon's rejection of Mendelism. Whilst scholarship on Mendel, by historians of science in the last 18 years, has led to a balanced perspective of Mendel, it is suggested that a better balanced and more rounded view of the hereditarian-statistical work of Pearson, Weldon, and the biometricians is long overdue. (shrink)

BackgroundSocial support plays an important role for health outcomes. Support for those living with chronic conditions may be particularly important for their health, and even for their survival. The role of support for the survival of cancer patients after receiving an allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant is understudied. To better understand the link between survival and support, as well as different sources and functions of support, we conducted two studies in alloHCT patients. First, we examined whether social support is related to (...) survival. Second, we examined who provides which support and which specific support-related functions and tasks are fulfilled by lay caregivers and healthcare professionals.MethodsIn Study 1, we conducted a retrospective chart review of alloHCT patients and registered availability of a dedicated lay caregiver and survival. In Study 2, we prospectively followed patients after alloHCT from the same hospital, partly overlapping from Study 1, who shared their experiences of support from lay caregivers and healthcare providers in semi-structured in-depth interviews 3 to 6 months after their first hospital discharge.ResultsPatients with a dedicated caregiver had a higher probability of surviving to 100 days than patients without a caregiver, OR = 2.84, p = 0.042. Study 2 demonstrated the importance of post-transplant support due to patients’ emotional needs and complex self-care regimen. The role of lay caregivers extended to many areas of patients’ daily lives, including support for attending doctor’s appointments, managing medications and financial tasks, physical distancing, and maintaining strict dietary requirements. Healthcare providers mainly fulfilled medical needs and provided informational support, while lay caregivers were the main source of emotional and practical support.ConclusionThe findings highlight the importance of studying support from lay caregivers as well as healthcare providers, to better understand how they work together to support patients’ adherence to recommended self-care and survival. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant was stirred from his "dogmatic slumber" by the writings of David Hume. It is not well known that Hume had a similar effect upon his contemporary Thomas Reid. Yet it was Hume who led Reid to see that the path along which British Empiricism was moving might well end in Pyrrhonian skepticism-Hume's denial to the contrary. Interest in the writings of Reid has been increasing in recent years. One reason is that the range of (...) Reid's philosophical inquiry covers a number of areas which attract a good deal of attention today. Reid offers interesting and often significant insights into aspects of epistemology, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and philosophy of action. His philosophy has contributed to the writings of such men as G. E. Moore, C. S. Peirce, R. Chisholm, P. Winch, to mention only a few. This new edition of An Inquiry Into the Human Mind follows closely upon the heels of new editions of Reid's Essays on the Active Powers of Man and Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, both of which appeared in 1969. In introducing this latest edition, Duggan chose to concentrate his attention upon one aspect of Reid's thought rather than offer a rapid and perhaps superficial treatment of the multifaceted thinking of this 18th century philosopher. Duggan's critical analysis of Reid's interpretation of sensation and perception is invaluable for introducing the reader to Reid's philosophical alternative to Hume. It was this alternative which came to be known as the philosophy of common sense.--W. P. G. (shrink)

Gordon Baker and I had been colleagues at St John’s for almost ten years when we resolved, in 1976, to undertake the task of writing a commentary on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. We had been talking about Wittgenstein since 1969, and when we cooperated in writing a long critical notice on the Philosophical Grammar in 1975, we found that working together was mutually instructive, intellectually stimulating and great fun. We thought that we still had much to say about Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and (...) it seemed to us that misinterpretations of passages in the Investigations were so extensive that it would be worth trying to write a detailed analytical commentary. It is difficult to recapture the excitement of those early days in being among the first to work on the microfilms and, subsequently, on the photocopies of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. We spent many hundreds of hours poring over the typescripts and the often only semi-legible manuscripts, fascinated and privileged to be able to try to follow the development of the thoughts of a great philosophical genius. We talked endlessly about what we had found in Wittgenstein’s manuscripts and typescripts, and debated how it should be understood. The first fruit of our labours was Wittgenstein – Understanding and Meaning. Its guiding idea was to draw attention to the manner in which Wittgenstein linked the concepts of meaning, understanding and explanation, and so to bypass the connections between meaning, truth and truth-conditions that so fascinated philosophers of the 1970s, and to abandon the red-herring of assertion-conditions and anti-realism. After a hiatus of four years, during which time we wrote a controversial book entitled Frege – Logical Excavations and a polemical book on contemporary philosophy of language – Language, Sense. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century, and: Anne Conway: A Woman PhilosopherJane DuranWomen Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century, by Jacqueline Broad; 204 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. $65.00. Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher, by Sarah Hutton; 280 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. $75.00.Recent work on women philosophers has, in general, approached the topic from two vantage points: on the one hand, a number of anthologies have (...) been published, wherein commentators present a small portion of the woman thinker's work, often without the background necessary for a fuller understanding. On the other hand, some few women philosophers have been the subject of full-length works, but these have tended, by and large, to be women thinkers of the twentieth century, with whose work we are already familiar. Two recent books, one by Jacqueline Broad and the other by Sarah Hutton, go a long way toward improving the situation.Work by Eileen O'Neill, Sarah Hutton and Margaret Atherton, among others, has helped familiarize us with the notion that the seventeenth century—that era so commonly associated with Descartes and the rise of modern philosophy—was also a time of rich theorizing by women philosophers. Jacqueline Broad's book possesses many virtues: it has the finely-tuned style of the careful historian, while at the same time not failing to demonstrate acquaintance with a range of contemporary feminist commentary. Part of the problem in addressing women thinkers of the past is another version of what we are now tempted to call the essentialism problem: does it make sense to think that there is a style that might be demarcated as "feminine," or that might, in some way, pertain uniquely to women theorists? These are difficult issues, but a partial response to the question is to try to remember that it is not for no reason that women thinkers have, indeed, been left out of the canon. As Broad herself says, women philosophers "are now mere footnotes to the standard historical-intellectual accounts of the early modern period" (p. 1).Broad does a superb job of navigating between the need to set out the plain tenets of the thinker's philosophy, and the desire to try to tie it into these larger questions. In six chapters, she addresses the work of Elizabeth of Bohemia, [End Page 200] Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Astell, Damaris Masham and Catharine Trotter Cockburn The chapters on Elizabeth, Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell are particularly strong—here part of the difficulty is that we do have familiar commentaries addressing the work of these women, and it is hard to try to see them in a new light. We are accustomed, for example, to think of Elizabeth merely as Descartes's correspondent. As is the case with information that is currently coming to bear on the question of Harriet Taylor Mill's input into the work of John Stuart Mill, it is difficult for us to see Elizabeth as a thinker in her own right, or, indeed, to give her the credit that Descartes himself gave her; as Broad notes, he had described her as "the only person I have so far found who has completely understood all my previous works" (p. 13). Margaret Cavendish's reputation has suffered from the somewhat scattered approach of her writings, and Broad cites her "reputation for eccentricity" (p. 38). Nevertheless, the sheer volume of her work and its allusion to the problems addressed by the Cambridge Platonists (areas also worked on by Anne Conway) demands that she be taken far more seriously than she has in the past. Astell has become known largely for her more overtly feminist works, such as A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, but she was also the author of several other pieces addressing issues in metaphysics, and again the amount of her work and its citation during her own time would militate against the notion that it should not receive thorough examination.Broad does a wonderful job of setting out the main philosophical questions found in these theorists' works, and she excels at pitting their views against those of the various male philosophers whose work—according to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:470 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of fundamental notions (e.g.,"creator" and "demiurge") are omnipresent. Sometimes even a confusion happens of Anaxagoras with Democritus when the "atom" is ascribed to Anaxagoras (p. 48). And the author does not seem to feel the fatal inadequacy of merely second-hand knowledge. While he in longura et latum argues with Aristotelian presentations and misrepresentations of Anaxagorean tenets, there is good reason for the suspicion that he (...) might never have read even one authentic sentence written by Anaxagoras himself. For those interested in general cultural history, this book, the religious diatribe of a modem Zoroastrian believer, is very worthwhile reading. For the historian of philosophy, itis of rather modest value. P-~LIX M. CLEVE New School for Social Research New York City The Esthetics of the Middle Ages. By Edgar De Bruyne. Trans. Eileen B. Hennessy. (New York: Frederick Uugar, 1969. Pp. viii+232. $6.50) This book has a very complex character. It is the English translation of a French work, L'Esth~tique du moyen dge,I which, in turn, is a one-volume abridged version by Edgar De Bruyne of his own original three-volume work, I~tudes d'Esth~tique M~di~vale.2 Thus, one may evaluate this book either as a translation or, presupposing the faithfulness and correctness of the translation itself,as a relatively short work by E. De Bruyne, or else in its relation to or as compared with the original three-volume work. I will confine myself here to the lattertwo considerations.3 First, considering this book in comparison with the three-volume original work, one of the principal writings of De Bruyne and one of the most significant contemporary contributions to the history of medieval aesthetics, we can find both quantitative and qualitative differences between the original work and its abridged version. The quantitative difference is considerable. While the abridged work, at least in its English translation, is less than a quarter of a thousand pages in length, the original work includes altogether 1,224 pages 4 and is thus more than five times longer than thc translated abridged version of it. The qualitative or methodological difference is at least equally great. In the original work, each of the three volumes deals primarily with the various medieval authors of aesthetic works and doctrines in a chronological order.5 In contrast, the contents of the translated abridged version follow a topical arrangement with chronology playing only a subordinate role, if any at all, within Louvain. L'InstitutSupdrieur de Philosophic, 1947. Brugge: De Tempel, 1946. s I have had no access to the abridged French original. 9 Vol. I, xiv+370; II, x-{-420; III,x-F400. 9 VoL I: Boethius to Erigena; II. "L'l~poque Romane," from the Carolingian period to the schools of Chartres and St. Victor; and Ill:the thirteenthcentury, from St. Bernard to Duns Scotus. BOOK REVIEWS 471 each topic. The six chapters are entitled, "'The Sources," "The Fundamental Principles," "Various Esthetic Systems," "The Esthetic Experience," "Art," and "The Fine Arts." To this may be added a third difference that is the result of the first two differences. There is virtually neither any direct quotation from any author on any topic, nor a~y direct reference to texts in the works of medieval authors mentioned or discussed. While the quantitative difference in itself is understandable, since only a scholar specializing in this field would read over 1,200 pages on medieval aesthetics, and while the qualitative difference is perfectly justified in terms of an intelligent summary, the absence especially of direct references to discussed texts is, as will be shown below, deeply regxettable. So much for the relative consideration of this translated abridged work. Let us next consider the abridged work in itself in the form of a positive and a negative evaluation. Second, despite the relative brevity of the work, one finds this book extremely valuable both in terms of the quantity and the quality of the data it contains. As to quantity, De Bruyne manages to compress an enormous amount of information about medieval aesthetic thought into this book. The significance of this, to confine ourselves at this point only... (shrink)

There has been a rising interest in the study of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) in philosophy, political theory, literary studies and the history of political thought in recent decades. The Wollstonecraftian Mind seeks to provide a comprehensive survey of her work, not only placing it in its historical context but also exploring its contemporary significance. Comprising 38 chapters by a team of international contributors this handbook covers: the background to Wollstonecraft’s work Wollstonecraft’s major works the relationship between Wollstonecraft and other major (...) philosophers Wollstonecraftian philosophy Wollstonecraft’s legacy Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, Wollstonecraft’s work is central to the study of political philosophy, literature, French studies, political thought, and feminism. (shrink)