In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 11.1 (2001) 113 [Access article in PDF] Letters Rats, Mice, and Birds and the Animal Welfare Act Madam:In the September 2000 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, I argued for the inclusion of laboratory rats, mice, and birds under provisions of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). This act sets humane standards for animals used in biomedical experimentation, but these three species are (...) excluded despite the fact that they comprise 90 percent of all animals used. Recent actions have been taken on this issue that temporarily maintain the status quo of exclusion.On 25 September 2000, a legal suit brought by the Alternatives Research Development Fund was settled out of court when the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed that the AWA enforcement regulations should be extended to rats, mice, and birds. This was a significant victory heralded by the animal protection movement and some sections of the scientific community. Federal Court Judge Ellen S. Huvelle dismissed motions by pro-animal research groups to block this agreement.But the tide soon turned. On 11 October, a last-minute amendment to the USDA appropriations bill submitted by the Senate Appropriations Committee chair Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) precluded the department from spending any funds in the coming fiscal year to effect this change. This amendment had been drafted by the National Association for Biomedical Research and passed to the University of Mississippi to be forwarded to Cochran. This now congressionally approved amendment postponed for a year any action to implement the legal agreement. USDA plans to initiate the formal rule-making process for rats, mice, and birds by 1 October 2001. F. Barbara Orlans Senior Research Fellow Kennedy Institute of Ethics Georgetown University Washington, DC... (shrink)

Why are we interested in history at all? Why do we feel the need to distinguish between past and present? In this book, the author argues that the past originates from an experience of rupture separating past and present. Think of the radical rupture with Europe's past that was effected by the French and the Industrial Revolutions. Sublime Historical Experience investigates how the notion of sublime historical experience complicates and challenges existing conceptions of language, truth, and knowledge. These experiences of (...) rupture are paradoxical since they involve both the separation of past and present and, at the same time, the effort to overcome this separation in terms of historical knowledge. The experience unites feelings of loss/pain with those of love/satisfaction, and thus is in agreement with how sublime experience is ordinarily defined. The experience is also precognitive since it precedes historical knowledge. As such it is a challenge to traditional conceptions of the relationship between experience and truth or language. It compels us to disconnect the notions of experience and truth. (shrink)

First published in 1912, this book by F. R. Tennant was intended to redress the vague and inconsistent conceptions of sin that were popularly held at the beginning of the twentieth century. Tennant maintained that for any ongoing debate to remain meaningful, it was imperative that definitions of key terms should keep pace with discussion. Therefore his study aimed at providing a clear, logical definition of what sin in Christian doctrine represented, whilst also bringing to bear the importance of ethics (...) and psychology to any modern understanding of the subject. (shrink)

There are no dictionary meanings or authoritative discussions of "presence" that fix the significance of this word in a way that ought to be accepted by anybody using it. So we are in the welcome possession of great freedom to maneuver when using the term. In fact, the only feasible requirement for its use is that it should maximally contribute to our understanding of the humanities. When trying to satisfy this requirement I shall relate "presence" to representation. Then I focus (...) on a variant of representation in which the past is allowed to travel to the present as a kind of "stowaway" , so that the past is literally "present" in historical representation. I appeal to Runia's notion of so-called "parallel processes" for an analysis of this variant of historical representation. (shrink)

Reading the Republic without reference to the less familiar Laws can lead to a distorted view of Plato's political theory. In the Republic the philosopher describes his ideal city; in his last and longest work he deals with the more detailed considerations involved in setting up a second-best 'practical utopia.' The relative neglect of the Laws has stemmed largely from the obscurity of its style and the apparent chaos of its organization so that, although good translations now exist, students of (...) philosophy and political science still find the text inaccessible. This first full-length philosophical introduction to the Laws will therefore prove invaluable. The opening chapters describe the general character of the dialogue and set it in the context of Plato's political philosophy as a whole. Each of the remaining chapters deals with a single topic, ranging over material scattered through the text and so drawing together the threads of the argument in a stimulating and readily comprehensible way. Those topics include education, punishment, responsibility, religion, virtue and pleasure as well as political matters and law itself. Throughout, the author encourages the reader to think critically about Plato's ideas and to see their relevance to present-day philosophical debate. No knowledge of Greek is required and only a limited background in philosophy. Although aimed primarily at students, the book will also be of interest to more advanced readers since it provides for the first time a philosophical, as opposed to linguistic or historical, commentary on the Laws in English. (shrink)

"The chief business of twentieth-century philosophy” is “to reckon with twentieth-century history," claimed R. G. Collingwood. In this remarkable collection of essays, Frank Ankersmit demonstrates the prescience of that remark and goes a long way toward meeting its challenge. Responding to the work of Hayden White, Arthur Danto, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, he examines such issues as the difference between historical representation and artistic expression, the status of metaphor in historical description, and the relation of postmodernism to historicism. Ankersmit's fluent grasp (...) of European thought and his ability to incorporate concepts from literary theory, art history, the philosophy of science, and political thought into his analyses assure that this collection will interest readers throughout the humanities. (shrink)

Narrativist philosophy of history rejects all attempts to establish an epistemological link between the past and its historical representation. Two forms of narrativism should be distinguished. The first form attacks epistemology by stressing the autonomy of historical writing with regard to the past itself ; the second form does the same by de-contextualizing the elements of the past—the very idea of the past thus becomes problematic and epistemological queries can no longer even be formulated. The first form of narrativism is (...) synthetical, suggesting that the historian should construct broad panoramical views of the past ; the second, on the contrary, aims at a dispersive dissolution of the past. The article concentrates upon the dispersive form of narrativism. It is exemplified in Ginzburg's 'micro-storie'. The implication that these 'micro-storie' should not primarily be seen as historiography in the proper sense of the word but rather as a form of narrativist philosophy of history (expressing a theory of historical representation) is accepted wholeheartedly. It is shown that the 'micro-storie' come very close to Derrida's deconstructivist reading of texts. For in both cases we have to do with 'ruptures' announcing themselves in small, seemingly insignificant details. The conclusion of the article is that the synthetical and the dispersive forms of narrativism need each other and that we can give meaning to the concept of an objective historical reality only if we accept both of them. (shrink)