This study explores how paradoxical tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided through organizational mythmaking. By examining the European oil and gas supermajors’ “CEO-speak” about climate change, we show how mythmaking facilitates the disregarding, diverting, and/or displacing of sustainability tensions. In doing so, our findings further illustrate how certain defensive responses are employed: regression, or retreating to the comforts of past familiarities, fantasy, or escaping the harsh reality that fossil fuels and climate change are indeed irreconcilable, and projecting, (...) or shifting blame to external actors for failing to address climate change. By highlighting the discursive effects of enacting these responses, we illustrate how the European oil and gas supermajors self-determine their inability to substantively address the complexities of climate change. We thus argue that defensive responses are not merely a form of mismanagement as the paradox and corporate sustainability literature commonly suggests, but a strategic resource that poses serious ethical concerns given the imminent danger of issues such as climate change. (shrink)

Historian Richard Hofstadter’s observations about American cold-war politics are used to contextualize Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and argue that substantive claims about the nature of scientific knowledge and scientific change found in Structure were adopted from this cold-war political culture.

George Herbert Mead, one of America’s most important and influential philosophers, a founder of pragmatism, social psychology, and symbolic interactionism, was also a keen observer of American culture and early modernism. In the period from the 1870s to 1895, Henry Northrup Castle maintained a correspondence with family members and with Mead—his best friend at Oberlin College and brother-in-law—that reveals many of the intellectual, economic, and cultural forces that shaped American thought in that complex era. Close friends of John Dewey, (...) Jane Addams, and other leading Chicago Progressives, the author of these often intimate letters comments frankly on pivotal events affecting higher education, developments at Oberlin College, Hawaii, progressivism, and the general angst that many young intellectuals were experiencing in early modern America. The letters, drawn from the Mead-Castle collection at the University of Chicago, were collected and edited by Mead after the tragic death of Henry Castle in a shipping accident in the North Sea. Working with his wife Helen Castle, he privately published fifty copies of the letters to record an important relationship and as an intellectual history of two progressive thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century. American historians, such as Robert Crunden and Gary Cook, have noted the importance of the letters to historians of the late nineteenth century. The letters are made available here using the basic Mead text of 1902. Additional insights into the connection between Mead, John Dewey, Henry and Harriet Castle, and Hawaii’s progressive kindergarten system are provided by the foundation’s executive director Alfred L. Castle. Marvin Krislov, president of Oberlin College, has added additional comments on the importance of the letters to understanding the intellectual relationship that flourished at Oberlin College. Published with the support of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation. (shrink)

In the Protagoras, Socrates argues that all the virtues are the very same knowledge of human wellbeing so that virtue is all one. But elsewhere Socrates appears to endorse that the virtues-such as courage, temperance, and reverence-are different parts of a single whole. Ambiguity interpretations harmonize the conflicting texts by taking the virtue words to be equivocal, such as between theoretical and applied expertise, or between a power and its deeds. I argue that such interpretations have failed in their specifics (...) and in general, as I defend an alternative that takes into account Socrates' higher purpose in testing others, namely to show them their ignorance of virtue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Six Poems GEORGE KALOGERIS The Atomists To see what the matter is, in all of its dense, Teeming particulars, and not through the lens Of a microscope but by the most lucid, precise, Leap of imagination: the first was Leucíppus. But it was his student, Democritus, who stated That human understanding was truly futile, Given the random collisions of atoms. Still, He blinded himself to keep from (...) being distracted. When he broke the long-jump record by two whole feet, Bob Beamon dropped to his knees, buried his face In his hands, and wept in a pit of sand—the trace Of his human, Olympian flight still fresh as a heel-print. When the earthquake struck Kalamáta, and Uncle Sotíri Lost everything, he asked a taxi driver To take him to “a nice high place by the sea. And then come back for me in half an hour.” arion 28.3 winter 2021 58 six poems One Credit Seminar on the Odes of Horace We were sitting around a polished oak table, just getting to Those famous lines near the end of the Sestius Ode: Revenant whitefaced Death is walking not knowing whether He’s going to knock at a rich man’s door or a poor man’s When one of the students (Andrew) said it was “totally weird”— Which led us to look at the paleness of Death’s appearance, Whose pallor is what, when he comes, comes with him: the sickness and shock In his ghastly face. And that’s where we stopped. And then It was Jennifer’s email, saying “I’m sorry for missing class, But I’m having panic attacks. I keep flashing back To March 19th, when I entered my dorm-room and found my boyfriend Dead of an overdose... I can get you a note... What reading should I do to be prepared for next week?” O goodlooking fortunate Sestius, don’t put your hope in the future; The night is falling, the shades are gathering around; The walls of Pluto’s shadowy house are closing you in. There who will be lord of the feast? What will it matter, What will it matter there, whether you fell in love With Lycidas, this or that girl with him, or he With her? So David Ferry’s great translation goes, And its tone of tender, knowing, bemusement is Horace’s Pitying voice, but whose pity has come to speak to us Through the whitefaced mouth of revenant Death, still going From house to house, until he gets to Jennifer’s dorm-room. And what will it matter now if Andrew was drawn to the line About fishermen hauling their caulked boats to the water? It’s late September. We’re sitting around a polished oak table Whose wood is sacred to Jove, whose lightning-bolt Has already sounded deep in the heart of Indian summer. George Kalogeris 59 Greek School The very first poem I ever knew by heart: That sing-song forsaken one assigned to me. Recited on our other Independence Day. When some of the girls were dressed in peasant costumes, And some of the boys in kilts of the freedom fighters. And the timid rest of us in our Sunday best. In the church gym, where Father Mihos called us Up to the microphone, and one by one We showed the parents what we’d learned in Greek school. In Horace’s Ode to his Lyre, the poet prays That his song will serve as the medicine of sorrows, His stricken voice the trembling instrument— Schooled as he was in Sappho, who said the ancient Prescription left a bittersweet taste in her mouth: Glukopikron. For me it’s that first-grade poem I stammer to remember: Egwo tha geino Yiatrós... “I shall grow up to be a doctor...” Just saying that, my elders perk up their ears. And even if Poetry wasn’t the kind of calling Expected of me, and one by one they all Got sick and died, it’s still the medicine That keeps them leaning forward on their folding chairs. 60 six poems Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees But evergreen the... (shrink)

A Phenomenology of the Devout Life is the first part of a three-part work, A Philosophy of Christian Life. Rather than approaching Christianity through its doctrinal statements, as philosophers of religion have often done, the book starts by offering a phenomenological description of the devout life as that is set out in the teaching of Francois de Sales and related authors. This is because for most Christians practice and life-commitments are more fundamental than formal doctrinal beliefs. Although George Pattison (...) will address the metaphysical truth-claims of Christianity in Part three, the guiding argument is that it is the Christian way of life that best reveals what these beliefs really are. As the work is a philosophical study, it does not presuppose the truth of Christianity but assumes only that there is a humanly accessible meaning to the intention to live a devout life, pleasing to God. This can be said to find expression in a certain view of selfhood that emphasizes the dimensions of feeling and will rather than intellect and that culminates in the experience of the annihilation of self. This is a model of selfhood deeply opposed to contemporary models that privilege autonomous agency and the devout life is therefore presented as offering a corrective to extreme versions of the contemporary view. (shrink)

This comment on Michael Bratman's Planning and the Stability of Intention focuses on sources of the rational stability of intentions which are not related to the presence of reflectively overrideable non-deliberative habits of (non)reconsideration. It is true that intentions have a rational resistance to reconsideration, but this stability can be understood as a by-product of the scheduling of cognitive tasks. This scheduling effect is intrinsic to all actual systems, that is, systems whose reasoning is not instantaneous or otherwise costless. Additionally, (...) rules governing practical reasoning, including rules governing reasoning with intentions, will not uniformly be subject to overrides resulting from reflective operations. Hence there is no basis for distinguishing human reasoners from artificial reasoners by reference to an alleged human capacity to reflectivity evaluate its own reasoning operations. (shrink)

The Archaeology of Semiotics and the social order of things is edited by George Nash and George Children and brings together 15 thought-provoking chapters from contributors around the world. A sequel to an earlier volume published in 1997, it tackles the problem of understanding how complex communities interact with landscape and shows how the rules concerning landscape constitute a recognised and readable grammar. The mechanisms underlying landscape grammar are both physical and mental, being based in part on the (...) mindset of the individual; the same landscape can thus evoke different meanings for different people and at different times. People's perception has greatly influenced the construction of landscapes over millennia but, until recently, the potential of this area has been largely untapped. Apart from chapters focusing solely upon human interaction with landscape, there are several which skilfully integrate artefacts and place with landscape (e.g. Gheorghiu and Sognnes). Other chapters look at the way people have marked the landscape through such mechanisms as rock-art (e.g. Clegg, Devereux, Estévez, Fossati, Kelleher and Skier). Rock-art establishes personal and communal identity in relation to landscape and it is clear that other forms of visual expression were in place which distinctively created special places within the landscape. Landscape constructs can bind cultures together; bringing the old ways of reading the landscape into contemporary life (e.g. Smiseth). Defining early and late prehistoric landscapes and segregating these into, say, mundane domestic and ritualised spaces rely on both clear and subtle archaeologies and in this volume distinct monument clustering and ritualised linearity are considered (e.g. Mason and Nash). A volume such as this cannot escape the influence of New World approaches, such as anthropology, and in many respects chapters by Bender, Muller and Merritt give context to other chapters within the book. Finally, one must consider text as a means of constructing landscape and this is considered by Heyd, who eloquently deconstructs the travel diary of a 17th century Japanese poet. This will be an important volume for archaeologists, landscape scholars and students. The many approaches used are tried and tested, forming an invaluable resource and not just another edited book. (shrink)

George Kegode, in this book, has presented a wide range of critical reflections on one of the most controversial moral issues of our times, the intentional and deliberate termination of the life of the unborn human being.

Selfish Goal Theory is compatible with a behaviorally based theory that recognizes mental processes as behaviors. Both envision choices as made by the competition of purposive processes, which are autonomous in that they are not coordinated by an agentic “self.” However, the survival of mental processes – termed “goals” or “interests,” respectively – depends on a well-documented active mechanism: reward.

Vittorio Hösle’s evaluation of the Soviet Revolution on the ground of the philosophy of history can be usefully examined from the value-pluralist perspective of Isaiah Berlin. Although Berlinwould agree with most ofHösle’s judgements on the Revolution, he would do so for very different reasons. Most importantly, Berlin would not accept the teleology that lies at the heart of the philosophy of history. For Berlin, the notion of a human telos to be realized at the end of history is a species (...) of moral monism, and so falsified, indeed rendered incoherent, by the deeply pluralist reality of human values. However, Berlin’s pluralism also seems to present a problem for the justification of liberalism, and I consider a range of responses to this difficulty. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 110 Heft: 3 Seiten: 645-648.