With the originality and energy that have marked his earlier works, Eric Wolf now explores the historical relationship of ideas, power, and culture. Responding to anthropology's long reliance on a concept of culture that takes little account of power, Wolf argues that power is crucial in shaping the circumstances of cultural production. Responding to social-science notions of ideology that incorporate power but disregard the ways ideas respond to cultural promptings, he demonstrates how power and ideas connect through the medium (...) of culture. Wolf advances his argument by examining three very different societies, each remarkable for its flamboyant ideological expressions: the Kwakiutl Indians of the Northwest Pacific Coast, the Aztecs of pre-Hispanic Mexico, and National Socialist Germany. Tracing the history of each case, he shows how these societies faced tensions posed by ecological, social, political, or psychological crises, prompting ideological responses that drew on distinctive, historically rooted cultural understandings. In each case study, Wolf analyzes how the regnant ideology intertwines with power around the pivotal relationships that govern social labor. Anyone interested in the history of anthropology or in how the social sciences make comparisons will want to join Wolf in _Envisioning Power_. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a host of ethical challenges, but key among these has been the possibility that health care systems might need to ration scarce critical care resources. Rationing p...

In 1989, Susan Wolf convincingly warned of a troublesome consequence that should discourage any movement in American society towards physician-assisted death—a legal backlash against the gains made for limiting life-sustaining treatment. The authors demonstrate that this dire consequence did not come to pass. As physician-assisted suicide gains a foothold in USA and elsewhere, many other slippery slope arguments are being put forward. Although many of these speculations should be taken seriously, they do not justify halting the new practice. Instead, our (...) courts, regulatory agencies, journalists, professional organisations and researchers should carefully monitor and study it as it unfolds, allowing continuous improvement just as our society has done in implementing the practice of limiting life-sustaining treatment. (shrink)

Questions about the role of luck in attributions of moral responsibility have troubled theorists for some time. In this paper I will explicate a position that acknowledges luck as a contributing factor to most, if not all, outcomes and consequences while denying luck the exculpatory role that some theorists contend it plays. I begin by going through the characterization of two perspectives on luck offered by Susan Wolf. From there I outline two necessary conditions for the legitimate attribution of praise (...) or blame. The first condition is that of Control. The second condition is the agent's creation of "undue risk". I revisit Wolfs two perspectives and break down the relationship between the necessary conditions and each perspective. I contend that a legitimate theory of moral responsibility must allow for factors outside of an agent's control when attempting to attribute praise or blame. Luck can be seen as one of these factors and it should not be seen as playing an exculpatory role. (shrink)

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most significant figures in nineteenth-century American literature and culture-indeed, this collection argues, in the history of philosophy. The Other Emerson is a thorough reassessment of the philosophical underpinnings, theoretical innovations, and ethical and political implications of the prose writings of one of America's most enduring thinkers. Considering Emerson first and foremost as a daring and original thinker, _The Other Emerson_ focuses on three Emersonian subjects-subjectivity, the political, and the nature of philosophy-and range in (...) topic from Emerson's relationships to slavery and mourning to his place in the development of Romanticism as reread by contemporary systems theory. It is Emerson's appreciation of truth's instability that link him to the European philosophical tradition. Contributors: Eduardo Cadava, Princeton U; Sharon Cameron, Johns Hopkins U; Russell B. Goodman, U of New Mexico; Paul Grimstad, Yale U; Eric Keenaghan, U at Albany, SUNY; Gregg Lambert, Syracuse U; Sandra Laugier, Université de Picardie Jules Verne; Donald Pease, Dartmouth College. (shrink)

Introduction Jan Abbink and Hans Vermeulen This volume consists of essays and studies by authors inspired by the work of Eric Wolf, a central figure in ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus: An English Translation by Bonhöffer, Adolf Friedrich, Discourses Book I by EpictetusEric BrownBonhöffer, Adolf Friedrich. The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus: An English Translation. Translated by William O. Stephens. Revisioning Philosophy, Vol. 2. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. Pp. xix + 335. Cloth, $56.95.Epictetus. Discourses Book I. Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Robert F. Dobbin. Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers. New (...) York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xxiv + 256. Cloth, $70.00.Epictetus has made a comeback, among scholars on account of the resurgence of interest in Stoicism and among a broader reading audience on account of folks as divergent as Vice-Admiral James Stockdale and Tom Wolfe (See J. Stockdale, “Testing Epictetus’ Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behaviour,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London 2 [1995]: 1–13, and T. Wolfe, A Man in Full [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998]). And because the ninety-five extant Discourses of Epictetus follow upon each other in no obvious order and frequently exhort without explaining, a guide to their contents is urgently needed. So it is timely that we now have an English translation of Bonhöffer’s landmark 1894 study of Epictetus’ ethics and the first commentary in English on the Discourses. Unfortunately, neither work fully addresses the needs of scholars or of fresh students.Bonhöffer argues in two important studies that the Discourses, written early in the second century C.E., essentially agree with the Stoicism of the third century B.C.E.: Epictet und die Stoa (1890) maintains this thesis for Epictetus’ epistemology and psychology, and Die Ethik des Stoiker Epictets (1894) extends the thesis to ethics. (Bonhöffer also [End Page 671] wrote a third study called Epiktet und das Neue Testament, which develops his frequent comparisons of Epictetan and early Christian thought.) Without Arnim’s Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, Bonhöffer reconstructs early Stoic doctrines, and against the then-prevailing view that “late” Stoics are all eclectic, he demonstrates Epictetus’ prevailing fidelity to early Stoic orthodoxy.Occasionally, Bonhöffer’s zeal for his thesis outruns the evidence, although this complaint has been lodged against him more often unjustly than justly. Consider, for example, Bonhöffer’s treatment of to prosôpon (literally, the mask; figuratively, the role). In Discourses 1.2, Epictetus notes that “different people consider different things reasonable and unreasonable” and that to “bring our preconception of the reasonable and the unreasonable into conformity with nature … we consult not only the value of externals, but also what is in accordance with our prosôpon” (1.2.5–7, trans. Dobbin). At first glance, this seems to pick up on Panaetius’ theory of four prosopa (Latin, personae) recounted in De Officiıs I, according to which one ought to act in conformity with one’s own individual nature even though one’s primary responsibility is to the role assigned by universal nature. But Bonhöffer insists that Epictetus is not agreeing with Panaetius that individuality matters morally. Rather, Bonhöffer’s Epictetus says that our different characters “should be the same ⋯ it is simply a matter of whether one wants to be an educated person (philosophos) or an uneducated person (idiôtês)” (10–11, trans. Stephens, original pagination). Bonhöffer seems to have in mind the last sentence of Encheiridion 29 for the claim that there is just a philosophical prosôpon and an uneducated one.This might seem to fit too neatly Bonhöffer’s thesis (and his general scorn for Panaetius). But a close analysis of Discourses 1.2 shows that Bonhöffer’s judgment cannot be so quickly dismissed. Epictetus says that we do consult our character (1.2.7), and that for those in the habit of doing so, individual character does make a huge difference (1.2.28). This comes up short of saying that we should consult our character and that it should make a huge difference. Bonhöffer might overstate Epictetus’ rejection of Panaetian prosôpa, but the relationship is surely complex.For the translation Stephens and his editors thoughtfully provide the original pagination and... (shrink)

In our daily lives, as in science and in all other domains, we encounter huge numbers of dispositions (tendencies, potentials, powers) which are realized in processes such as sneezing, sweating, shedding, melting. Among this plethora of what we can think of as ‘mere dispositions’ is a subset of dispositions in whose realizations we have an interest – a car responding well when driven on ice, a rabbit’s lungs responding well when it is chased by a wolf, and so on. We (...) call the latter ‘capabilities’ and we attempt to provide an ontological account of what capabilities are that is of sufficient generality to serve a variety of purposes, for example by providing a useful extension to ontology-based research in areas where capabilities data are being collected in siloed fashion. (shrink)

This paper discusses Eric Wolf’s (1923–1999) analysis of power in his last monograph, Anthropology (Wolf 1964) and last book Envisioning Power (Wolf 1999). In Anthropology, Wolf (1964: 96) wrote that the “anthropological point of vantage is that of a world culture, struggling to be born.” What is worth studying is human experience in all its variability and complexity. His aim was to set the framework bridging the humanities with anthropology. He never gave up this quest, only expanding it. In (...) the new introduction to his 1964 monograph, thirty years later, he commented that such a synthesis had not occurred. Rather there were growing schisms in the field. In the preface to Envisioning Power, he held that human sciences were unable or unwilling to come to grips with how cultural configurationsintertwine with considerations of power. In 1990 he had addressed the American Anthropological Society, holding that anthropologists favored a view of culture without power, while other social sciences have advanced a concept of ideology without culture. He wrote that his aim in his last book was to explore the connection of ideas and power observed in streams of behavior and recorded texts. Since minds interpose a selective screen between the organism and environment, ideas have content and functions that help bring people together or divide them. While ideas compose the entire range of mental constructs, Wolf understands ideology as configurations or unified schemes to underwrite or manifest power. Power is, according to Wolf, an aspect of all relations among people. Within this framework Wolf analyzes three cases, the Kwakiutl, the Aztecs, and Nazi Germany. The comparisons are very revealing, both the wide differences and similarities in power configurations and in the role of imagination. (shrink)

In 1864 - two years before the publication of The Communist Manifesto and 21 years before the publication of Das Kapital - Karl Marx published an essay titled Peuchet on Suicide. The essay was originally presented as a translation of excerpts from the memoirs of Jacques Peuchet, a leading French police administrator, economist and statistician. Plaut and Anderson reveal that Marx's Peuchet on Suicide is not a straightforward translation, but is an edited version in which Marx adds passages of his (...) own, altering the emphasis of the text from a moral and psychological focus to a profoundly social one. Thus, the essay very strongly reflects Marx's own position on this controversial subject. Sociologist Kevin Anderson provides an extensive introduction situating the essay in the context of Marx's work, especially that on gender; Plaut's essay focuses on the psychological aspects of the work, in particular contrasting Marx's thoughts on suicide with those of Freud and Durkheim. (shrink)

En antropología uno de los aspectos que más son sometidos a estudio dado la vasta influencia que tiene sobre los procesos humanos en relación con su entorno es el de la productividad y el trabajo. Karl Marx fue posiblemente quien más incidió en las actividades materiales humanas, básicamente porque su concepción antropológica del hombre, es la del homo economicus, que transforma las condiciones materiales de la existencia mediante su trabajo. El hombre es una parte esencial del mundo que se ve (...) abocado a enfrentarse con él, haciendo patente ese enfrentamiento con la puesta en práctica de la tecnología y la organización. Precisamente esta organización social es condicionante a la hora de plantear las formas de producción, ya que la naturaleza condiciona a su vez al hombre a que busque formas de resolver las restricciones que la propia naturaleza le impone. Los estudios realizados por el antropólogo Eric Wolf nos serán de gran ayuda para exponer esta reflexión. (shrink)

Climate change and justice are so closely associated that many people take it for granted that a global climate treaty should--indeed, must--directly address both issues together. But, in fact, this would be a serious mistake, one that, by dooming effective international limits on greenhouse gases, would actually make the world's poor and developing nations far worse off. This is the provocative and original argument of Climate Change Justice. Eric Posner and David Weisbach strongly favor both a climate change agreement (...) and efforts to improve economic justice. But they make a powerful case that the best--and possibly only--way to get an effective climate treaty is to exclude measures designed to redistribute wealth or address historical wrongs against underdeveloped countries. In clear language, Climate Change Justice proposes four basic principles for designing the only kind of climate treaty that will work--a forward-looking agreement that requires every country to make greenhouse--gas reductions but still makes every country better off in its own view. This kind of treaty has the best chance of actually controlling climate change and improving the welfare of people around the world. (shrink)

The overriding question Stroud confronts in John Dewey and the Artful Life is how to render more of life’s experiences, including the ensuing benefits, as aesthetic or artful as possible. The answer to this question is challenging and complex. The claim most aesthetic theories make is that an object, activity, or experience is artful if and only if it has intrinsic value. Although what constitutes intrinsic value is widely contested, having value in and of itself is a necessary and sufficient (...) condition for an object to be art or an experience aesthetic. This value gives art and aesthetic experience their unique quality and separates them from everyday objects, activities and experiences with only instrumental... (shrink)

For over 700 years scholastic theologians of varying degrees of allegiance to the text(s) of Thomas Aquinas have discoursed on the mystery of Christ's being (esse): Did Christ have one or two acts of existence? Yet despite this frequent and recurring quaestio, nevertheless only a handful of scholastic commentators pause to note that this is not simply a debate between rival scholastic ‘schools’ in regard to a theological mystery, but that in fact there is an inconsistency within the Angelic doctor's (...) own texts. And while in more recent scholarship this discrepancy has not only been noticed but explicated in various ways, nevertheless it is the contention of this paper that a satisfactory exposition of the meaning of esse secundarium has not yet been achieved. Consequently, I propose in this paper that esse secundarium is the created, substantial, but absolutely supernatural participation of the human nature of Jesus in the uncreated communication of the divine esse of the Word and provide a robust textual defense of this interpretation. (shrink)

Armed reprisals are the limited use of military force in response to unlawful actions perpetrated against states. Historically, reprisals provided a military remedy for states that had been wronged by another state without having to resort to all-out war in order to counter or deter such wrongful actions. While reprisals are broadly believed to have been outlawed by the UN Charter, states continue to routinely undertake such self-help measures. As part of the roundtable, “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” this essay (...) examines the doctrine of armed reprisals in light of recent instances of states using force “short of war” in this manner. We argue that the ban on reprisals has been largely ignored by states, and that recent attempts to apply the laws of armed conflict to the cyber domain are further weakening this prohibition. We conclude that this is a potentially dangerous development that lowers the bar for resorting to military force, risking escalation and thereby further destabilizing the international system. (shrink)

In a survey on research misconduct, roughly 20% of the respondents admitted that they have submitted federal grant proposals that include scholars as research participants even though those scholars were not expected to contribute to the research effort. This manuscript argues that adding such false investigators is illegal, violating multiple federal statutes including the False Statements Act, the False Claims Act, and False, Fictitious, or Fraudulent Claims. Moreover, it is not only the offending academics and the false investigators that face (...) civil and criminal penalties because administrators may also be liable if they sign off on proposals and are in a position to know that false investigators might be included. Policy recommendations that should reduce the use of false investigators include changing institutional cultures, better training and oversight of the responsible conduct of research, and, most importantly, making all grant reviews double blind. (shrink)

Carroll Izard completed his dissertation in 1952, beginning a career spanning more than six decades that coincided with clinical psychology maturing as a profession, and the birth of clinical science and cognitive neuroscience. Izard’s focus on discrete emotions as evolved systems that organize information, prepare responses, and shape the development of personality and relationships persisted through his career, despite “emotions” often being overshadowed by psychodynamic, behavioral, or cognitive perspectives. His theoretical work anticipated and now integrates contemporary neuroscience and relational perspectives. (...) Exploration of discrete emotions has kept lines of inquiry open that enrich our understanding of psychopathology. Izard also embraced clinical science, combining basic research with effectiveness studies addressing the unmet need for mental health services via emotion-focused interventions. (shrink)

Despite the bad press, Plato has a valid argument for immortality from three premises: (1) if the natural evil of a thing cannot destroy it, then it is indestructible; (2) the natural evil of the soul is vice; and (3) vice cannot destroy the soul. These premises are contestable, of course, but Plato has some good reasons for advancing them.

New communication technologies such as the microcomputer, videotex/teletext systems, the videocassette recorder, and satellite receiving dishes have been available to farmers since the early 1980s. This longitudinal study examines ethical issues associated with the impact that differential patterns of adoption and use of these technologies have had on inequalities among farmers from 1982 to 1989. The results demonstrate a strong adoption and use bias toward larger scale farmers who already have well-developed skills for handling information. This bias is especially strong (...) for microcomputer and videotex/teletext systems, and it isincreasing over time. Although the same farmers are not adopting all communication innovations, there is a strong tendency toward the already information-rich making the most use of the innovations they adopt. The article concludes with several recommendations that would help minimize some of these information inequalities. (shrink)

The mutations that cause many forms of inherited retinal degenerations have been identified, yet the mechanisms by which these mutations lead to death of photoreceptor cells of the retina are not completely understood. Investigations of the pathways from mutation to retinal degeneration have focused on spontaneous and engineered animal models of disease. Based on the studies performed to date, four major categories of degeneration mechanism can be identified. These include disruption of photoreceptor outer segment morphogenesis, metabolic overload, dysfunction of retinal (...) pigment epithelial cells, and chronic activation of phototransduction. Future investigations will likely identify additional mechanisms of photoreceptor damage. This review will summarize what has been learned from studying animal models of non-syndromic inherited retinal degenerations. BioEssays 23:605–618, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

With The Perils of Global Legalism, Eric A. Posner explains that such views demonstrate a dangerously naive tendency toward legalism—an idealistic belief that ...

Social referencing informs and regulates one’s relation with the environment as a function of the perceived appraisals of social partners. Increased emphasis on relational and social contexts in the study of emotion makes this interpersonal process particularly relevant to the field. However, theoretical conceptualizations and empirical operationalizations of social referencing are disjointed across domains and populations of study. This article seeks to unite and refine the study of this construct by providing a clear and comprehensive definition of social referencing. Our (...) perspective presents social referencing and social appraisal as coterminous processes and emphasizes the importance of a relational and interpersonal approach to the study of emotion. We conclude by outlining possible lines of research on this construct. (shrink)

The cost of health care, its growing share of the gross domestic product, and dire predictions about the future are a major political and economic issue in the U.S. The American legal system is commonly viewed as a significant part of the problem, particularly by those who believe that medical providers engage in defensive medicine in an effort to avoid malpractice litigation. Yet scholars and commentators in the U.S. have shown relatively little interest in how other nations manage legal conflict (...) over health care and whether they might learn something from abroad about the relationship between malpractice litigation and the health care system more generally.To that end, this article analyzes the Japanese health care experience, specifically the management of what are variously called adverse outcomes, medical accidents, and medical malpractice. How frequently do Japanese patients sue their doctors? Are medical malpractice litigation rates in Japan rising? If so, what is being done to control the increase and its impact on medical care? How well is Japan doing when it comes to balancing the needs of patients who believe they are victims of medical negligence with those of providers who think they are being unfairly accused? These are the questions, about Japan, that need to be asked by those interested in the nexus of law and health care in the U.S. (shrink)

The singular message in Global Health Law is that we must strive to achieve global health with justice—improved population health, with a fairer distribution of benefits of good health. Global health entails ensuring the conditions of good health—public health, universal health coverage, and the social determinants of health—while justice requires closing today’s vast domestic and global health inequities. These conditions for good health should be incorporated into public policy, supplemented by specific actions to overcome barriers to equity. A new global (...) health treaty grounded in the right to health and aimed at health equity—a Framework Convention on Global Health —stands out for its possibilities in helping to achieve global health with justice. This far-reaching legal instrument would establish minimum standards for universal health coverage and public health measures, with an accompanying national and international financing framework, require a constant focus on health equity, promote Health in All Policies and global governance for health, and advance the principles of good governance, including accountability. While achieving an FCGH is certainly ambitious, it is a struggle worth the efforts of us all. The treaty’s basis in the right to health, which has been agreed to by all governments, has powerful potential to form the foundation of global governance for health. From interpretations of UN treaty bodies to judgments of national courts, the right to health is now sufficiently articulated to serve this role, with the individual’s right to health best understood as a function of a social, political, and economic environment aimed at equity. However great the political challenge of securing state agreement to the FCGH, it is possible. States have joined other treaties with significant resource requirements and limitations on their sovereignty without significant reciprocal benefits from other states, while important state interests would benefit from the FCGH. And from integrating the FCGH into the existing human rights system to creative forms of compliance and enforcement and strengthened domestic legal and political accountability mechanisms, the treaty stands to improve right to health compliance. The potential for the FCGH to bring the right to health nearer universal reality calls for us to embark on the journey towards securing this global treaty. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that a particular war is just or unjust, that terrorism is always wrong, or that torture can sometimes be morally justified? What are the moral bases for the possession or use of nuclear weapons, intervening in other nations' civil wars, or being a bystander to genocide? Such questions take us to the heart of what is morally right and wrong behaviour in our world. Global Violence: Ethical and Political Issues provides readers with the analytical (...) tools to better understand the suppositions that underlie the debates about such questions, as well as equipping them to advance their own reasoned and informed moral analyses of these topics. The book engages different normative approaches from the fields of ethics, international relations and political philosophy and uses them to examine a set of case studies on the subjects of inter-state and civil war, nuclear weapons, terrorism, torture and genocide. (shrink)

An ethological analysis suggests that effort and protection actions, which are expressions of distress, are comparable with pain expressions. Distress occurs with uncontrollable pain, and the expressions are ritualized pain responses with exaggerated features and lower thresholds. Pain is a sensory-motor feeling state with aversive motivational (hedonic) value. Distress is an emotional state of failure of pain responses to control the pain.

Attempts to explain emotion typically emphasize the interaction of evolutionary and socialization processes. However, in describing this interplay the role of the person is typically underemphasized or unaccounted for. This paper lays out empirical and theoretical rationale for considering the person as a major contributor to emotion generation and development.

To date, emotion research has primarily focused on the experience and display of the emoter. However, of equal, if not more, importance is how such displays impact and guide the behavior of an observer. We incorporate a functionalist framework of emotion to examine the development of differential responding to discrete emotion, theorize on what may facilitate its development, and hypothesize the functions that may underlie such behavioral responses. Although our review is focused primarily on development, the theoretical and methodological ideas (...) laid out are relevant for researchers of emotion at all ages. (shrink)

Few novel or emerging infectious diseases have posed such vital ethical challenges so quickly and dramatically as the novel coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2. The World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern and recently classified Covid‐19 as a worldwide pandemic. As of this writing, the epidemic has not yet peaked in the United States, but community transmission is widespread. President Trump declared a national emergency as fifty governors declared state emergencies. In the coming weeks, hospitals will become overrun, stretched (...) to their capacities. When the health system becomes stretched beyond capacity, how can we ethically allocate scarce health goods and services? How can we ensure that marginalized populations can access the care they need? What ethical duties do we owe to vulnerable people separated from their families and communities? And how do we ethically and legally balance public health with civil liberties? (shrink)

Abstract Finding a moral justification for humanitarian intervention has been the objective of a great deal of academic inquiry in recent years. Most of these treatments, however, make certain arguments or assumptions about the morality of humanitarian intervention without fully exploring their precise philosophical underpinnings, which has led to an increasingly disjointed body of literature. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to suggest that the conventional arguments and assumptions made about the morality of humanitarian intervention can be encompassed in (...) what is essentially a consequentialist framework. After a brief examination of consequentialist ethics, this essay reveals a number of morally relevant factors concerning humanitarian intervention, wherein I suggest that the general consensus in the literature on these factors constitutes ?commonsense morality?. In doing so, I argue that consequentialism as a theory of the right provides the best fit with commonsense morality on humanitarian intervention. This is important not only to reveal the precise philosophical underpinnings of the debate, but also to bring ethical, prudential and political considerations together in a coherent ethical discourse. (shrink)