‘Every now and then a book appears which is literally ahead of its time ... The Political Unconscious is such a book ... it sets new standards of what a classic work is.’ – Slavoj Zizek In this ground-breaking and influential study, Fredric Jameson explores the complex place and function of literature within culture. A landmark publication, The Political Unconscious takes its place as one of the most meaningful works of the twentieth century. First published: 1983.

This is a comparative review of four books for classroom and instructor use: Ethics and Animals, by Lori Gruen; Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals, by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce; Animal Ethics in Con­text, by Clare Palmer; and Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents: The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy, by Gary Steiner. The books range from original scholarship in ethics suitable for the undergraduate and graduate level, to broad historical surveys and analysis of (...) thought about animals in the Western philosophical tradition that could be used as research tools for professors, to books squarely pitched at the undergraduate classroom. Each book is different and worthwhile, and suited to different purposes and student populations. (shrink)

This book is a critical examination of John Rawls's account of the normative grounds of international law, arguing that Rawls unjustifiably treats groups - rather than particular persons - as foundational to his model of international justice.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How Few Words Can the Shortest Story Have?Amihud GileadOf the best shortest story, we have only tales. According to one of them, Ernest Hemingway was proud of being the author of a story written in merely six words: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." He considered this as his best story.1 Interviewing Gary Paulsen, Lori Atkins Goodson heard another version:Probably the best writing ever done was by Hemingway (...) and several other writers—I think it was in North Africa. During a drunken discussion, somebody said that they should write the best and shortest story they could write. They all had stories. Hemingway came up with six words: "For sale: Baby shoes. Never used."... Isn't that great? That's all there is. Six words. There's a book, there's a movie, there's a short story, there's a poem—anything you want to do with those six words, you can do it. It's just amazing what you can do with your words.2I greatly prefer the first version to the second despite its musicality or semi-rhythm. The minor colon is better than the major full stop and the capital letters. The whole story is genuinely minor in tone, and its great power rests upon this tone. "Used" is much less evocative and more commercially practical than "worn." "Used" draws the attention to the shoes, whereas "worn" intimately relates to the dead baby. Yes indeed, these six words can initiate a book, a feature movie, and the like; yet, as you will see below, I prefer to think about a whole world centered around, or arising out of, Hemingway's six words. Whether his six-words story is the shortest ever written is quite a different question, which will not be discussed in this paper.A very short story may comprise more than six words, say, seventeen, [End Page 119] such as the following: "The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door" ("Knock" by Fredric Brown).3Which of these two stories is the better? The shorter one, Hemingway's story in the first version. Why? Not only because there is not a single superfluous word or, even, a letter or punctuation mark; each word, each mark must be there, each is necessary for the story. Hemingway's six words create or initiate a whole story, actually a universe, of sorrow, bereavement, mourning, solitude, silence, untimely death, despair, loss, and tragedy.4 Thus, each word in this story gets the utmost meaningfulness or significance that a word may have. Hemingway's story shows us a tragic world of dread "in a handful of" six words, each of which is very simple. In contrast, although Brown's story bears a lot of tension and it is quite enigmatic (Who is knocking on the door? God, the Devil, an alien? Or is it simply a hallucination?), it conveys much less in seventeen words than do Hemingway's six. Brown's seventeen words do not create or reveal a world, let alone a universe. They create some tension, perhaps a thrill, possibly an enigma but not a world. There is certainly some puzzle that the reader may attempt to solve, but not much more.Even in this respect, Hemingway's story is more enigmatic: What is the purpose of the sale of this baby's shoes? Is there some hope that what cannot be used for the lost baby will be useful for another, living baby? Or is it the stinginess of the dead baby's parents or relatives? Or is it their poverty that forces them to sell even these little shoes? Or is it their wish not to possess these shoes any longer despite their great significance? Regarding this last possibility, it is more suitable to sell them than to throw them away. In any of these possibilities, the shoes have some value. And the enigma under discussion is certainly tragic in any of these possibilities.In contrast, Brown's story suggests merely a puzzle, not a tragic enigma. Such a puzzle may be found even in pulp fiction, not in fine writing, whereas... (shrink)

Examines various aspects of anarchism relevant to or illuminated by legal theory.

Examines Richard Swinburne's joint case for an orthodox Christian understanding of incarnation and resurrection.

Western philosophy since Descartes has been marked by certain seminal books whose concern is the nature and scope of human knowledge. After Descartes Meditations, works by Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant are perhaps the most familiar and enduringly influential examples. Quine’s Word and Object (1960) does not conspicuously announce itself as a successor to these, but that is very much what it is. And after Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, it is amongst the most likely of the philosophical fruits of the 20th (...) century to attain something like the prestige of those earlier works (setting aside the century’s great achievements in pure logic and immediately related areas). Yet unlike so many of those earlier works, Quine’s book has the rare virtue in philosophy that it is possible, for readers here and now, to entertain seriously the possibility that its principal claims are literally true. (shrink)

This article describes the emerging bipartisan political coalition supporting commercial competitiveness as a rationale for research and development, points to selected changes in legal and funding structures in the 1980s that stem from the success of the new political coalition and suggests some of the connections between these changes and academic science and technology, and examines the consequences of these changes for universities. The study uses longitudinal secondary data on changes in business strategies and corporate structures that made business elites (...) in the defense and health industries consider supporting competitiveness R&D policies. The article identifies and assesses an array of national R&D legislation concerned with competitiveness that was passed in the 1980s and 1990s and that has implications for academic R&D. The effects of competitiveness R&D policies on universities and academic science and technology are appraised by analyzing changes in time-series data on science and technology indicators compiled by the National Science Foundation. (shrink)

Dewey's enduring insights into democratic politics are still relevant today. Dewey grounded his political ideals historically within the American democratic experience and sought to adapt Jeffersonian idealism to the corporate-industrial age. Like Jefferson, Dewey maintained that the roots of the American political tradition are moral, not merely a means to material gain. Dewey's theory of democracy was designed to reconcile freedom with authority, social stability with the need for reform, and universal standards with specific circumstances.

Nevertheless, when we cannot specify how a statement may actually be false it has a special methodological status for us, according to Putnam—it is contextually a priori . In these circumstances, he suggests, it is epistemically reasonable for us to accept the statement without evidence and hold it immune from disconfirmation.

In this essay, I examine the changes effected by the English political theorist James Harrington (1611-77) in both classical deliberative (political) rhetoric and classical republicanism and the relationship between these changes. I argue here that the author of The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) offers a model of deliberative rhetoric that is distict from the classical model: classical deliberative oratory was popular, but Harrington's vision of deliberative rhetoric was elitist; classical deliberative oratory made use of emotional apppeals, but Harrington's deliberative rhetoric (...) excluded emotional appeals; and classical deliberative oratory was determined by the speaker's rhetorical knowledge and moral character, whereas Harrington's political rhetoric was regulated by a complex set of institutional procedures. (shrink)

This paper uses the notion of Galois-connection to examine the relation between valuation-spaces and logics. Every valuation-space gives rise to a logic, and every logic gives rise to a valuation space, where the resulting pair of functions form a Galois-connection, and the composite functions are closure-operators. A valuation-space (resp., logic) is said to be complete precisely if it is Galois-closed. Two theorems are proven. A logic is complete if and only if it is reflexive and transitive. A valuation-space is complete (...) if and only if it is closed under formation of super-valuations. (shrink)

The project of “religious epistemology,” as it has developed and thrived among certain analytic philosophers over the last thirty years, has seldom exhibited a strong historical sensibility. Nonetheless, contemporary discussions of the rationality of religious belief obviously have important antecedents in the history of modern philosophy, particularly in the history of the Enlightenment project that so strongly challenged traditional religious belief. This paper develops two themes from this history that I will try to show are particularly important for understanding contemporary (...) issues about the rationality of religious belief: the affirmation of ordinary life, and the question of radical evil in human nature. (shrink)

Risk management of nanotechnology is challenged by the enormous uncertainties about the risks, benefits, properties, and future direction of nanotechnology applications. Because of these uncertainties, traditional risk management principles such as acceptable risk, cost–benefit analysis, and feasibility are unworkable, as is the newest risk management principle, the precautionary principle. Yet, simply waiting for these uncertainties to be resolved before undertaking risk management efforts would not be prudent, in part because of the growing public concerns about nanotechnology driven by risk perception (...) heuristics such as affect and availability. A more reflexive, incremental, and cooperative risk management approach is required, which not only will help manage emerging risks from nanotechnology applications, but will also create a new risk management model for managing future emerging technologies. (shrink)

The crisis of Covid‐19 has forced us to notice two things: our human interdependence and American society's tolerance for what Nancy Krieger has called “inequalities embodied in health inequities,” reflected in data on Covid‐19 mortality and geographies. Care is integral to our recovery from this catastrophe and to the development of sustainable public health policies and practices that promote societal resilience and reduce the vulnerabilities of our citizens. Drawing on the insights of Joan Tronto and Eva Feder Kittay, we argue (...) that the ethics of care offers a critical alternative to utilitarian and deontological approaches and provides a street‐ready framework for integration into public health deliberations to anchor public policy and investments concerning the recovery and future well‐being of America's citizens and society. (shrink)

There is much we do not know about nanotechnology. Despite its tremendous promise, nanotechnology today is mostly forecast and fervent hope. Predictions that spending on nanotechnology will increase from current levels of $13 billion to more than $1 trillion by 2015 are no more than that – simply predictions. Hopes that nanotechnology will be an essential part of solving the globe's energy, food, and water problems should be tempered by recalling a century of revolutionary technologies that failed to live up (...) to their early promise such as nuclear energy, supersonic airplanes, or gene therapy. Many other questions continue to nip at nanotechnology's heels, not the least of which are debates about what is and is not technically feasible. Despite these uncertainties, we can have complete confidence in one aspect of nanotechnology's future – it will be subject to a host of regulations. (shrink)

Is the human tendency toward musicality better thought of as the product of a specific, evolved instinct or an acquired skill? Developmental and evolutionary arguments are considered, along with issues of domain‐specificity. The article also considers the question of why humans might be consistently and intensely drawn to music if musicality is not in fact the product of a specifically evolved instinct.

This article first refines the question of Kant's relation to Hume's skepticism, and then considers the evidence for Kant's attitude toward Hume in three contexts: the A Critique, the Prolegomena, and the B Critique. My thesis is that in the A Critique Kant viewed skepticism positively, as a necessary reaction to dogmatism and a spur toward critique. In his initial statement of the critical philosophy Kant treated Hume as an ally in curbing dogmatism, but one who stopped short of what (...) was really needed: a full critique of reason, to establish the boundaries of metaphysical cognition. Kant found fault with Hume's analyses of cognition and experience, and specifically his failure to see the crucial importance of synthetic a priori cognition in metaphysics. In particular, he held that Hume's empiricist account of cognition could neither explain the synthetic a priori cognition actually found in mathematics and natural science, nor provide a principled account of the limits on what can be known--and what can be thought--through the pure concepts of the understanding. According to Kant, Hume therefore failed in his attempt to determine the limits of metaphysics, whereas Kant succeeded because his transcendental philosophy provided a thorough account of cognition, its structure and limits. In the Prolegomena and the B Critique Kant distinguished his position more sharply from Hume's. He also adopted a more negative attitude toward "skeptical idealism" than before; but he attributed such skepticism to Descartes, not Hume. Prior to the B Critique Kant did not see Hume as attacking natural science or ordinary cognition. In none of the three works was Kant's main aim to "answer the skeptic." His primary aim was what he said it was: to firmly establish the boundary of metaphysics, by discovering the elements of human cognition and fixing its proper domain. His purported discoveries about the limits of metaphysical cognition meant that the traditional objects of metaphysical knowledge, God, the soul, and the world as it is in itself, are unknowable, hence that traditional metaphysics itself is impossible. Besides settling the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics, his findings would also prevent the illegitimate extension of principles of sensibility to God and the noumenal self, an extension that would threaten the metaphysics of morals by incorrectly denying the thinkability of noumenal freedom, and that might otherwise lead to "materialism, fatalism, atheism, and freethinking unbelief" (B xxxiv). (shrink)

Collectively, Atkins examines their pursuit of sexual justice, the ideologies of manhood they challenged, the different types of gay spaces they created (geographic, architectural, online), and political obstacles they have encountered.

_Fifty Key Thinkers on Religion_ is an accessible guide to the most important and widely studied theorists on religion of the last 300 years. Arranged chronologically, the book explores the lives, works and ideas of key writers across a truly interdisciplinary range, from sociologists to psychologists. Thinkers covered include: Friedrich Nietzsche James Frazer Sigmund Freud Emile Durkheim Ludwig Wittgenstein Mary Douglas Talal Asad Søren Kierkegaard Providing an indispensable one volume map of our understanding of religion in the west, the book (...) is fully cross-referenced throughout and provides authoritative guides to important primary and secondary texts for students wishing to take their studies further. (shrink)

This paper examines various views—religious, scientific, philosophical—on the meaning and significance of world history. The view it defends is a phenomenological, non-metaphysical one, i.e., it is one that does not seek to understand history in the light of end-states lying beyond time and history but which seeks, rather, to lay bare the logic at work within the contingency of events. Taking as its focus the phenomenon of globalization, the paper seeks to make explicit the global ontology that is implicit in (...) philosophical hermeneutics. The thesis it defends in this regard is that, to the degree that it prevails and by reason of a kind of “functional necessity,” globalization is capable of bringing into being a global ethic of mutuality and reciprocity. (shrink)

This article examines Simpson's paradox as applied to the theory of probabilites and percentages. The author discusses possible flaws in the paradox and compares it to the Sure Thing Principle, statistical inference, causal inference and probabilistic analyses of causation.

We model happiness as a measurement tool used to rank alternative actions. Evolution favors a happiness function that measures the individual’s success in relative terms. The optimal function, in particular, is based on a time-varying reference point –or performance benchmark –that is updated over time in a statistically optimal way in order to match the individual’s potential. Habits and peer comparisons arise as special cases of such updating process. This updating also results in a volatile level of happiness that continuously (...) reverts to its long-term mean. Throughout, we draw a parallel with a problem of optimal incentives, which allows us to apply statistical insights from agency theory to the study of happiness. (shrink)