It has been my object in the present work to investigate the problems of ethics in the light of an examination of the facts of moral life. One reason for this procedure is my desire to conduct the reader by the same path that I myself have followed in approaching ethical questions.

Although neuroscience is currently gaining wide acceptance in organization science and management studies, some important questions remain unanswered and may hinder the development of so-called organizational neuroscience. Specifically, it appears that the usefulness and the applications of neuroscience methods to organization science are still unclear. Hence, the paper addresses this by examining the role of psychophysiology in investigating implicit emotional experience in organizational behaviors and by discussing how concepts from affective sciences and psychophysiological methods could provide a more complete picture (...) of emotion in organization. Finally, we discuss some important points that should be carefully considered before using psychophysiological measurements in organization science. (shrink)

What is the role of a notion of truth in our form of life? What is it to possess a notion of truth? How different would we be, if we did not possess a notion of truth? Gulliver’s description of three peoples encountered during his fifth travel will help me to answer. One might say that the basic anti-realist tenet is that we should explain the notion of truth by connecting it with our practice of assertion. In this sense the (...) outcome of my commentary of the fifth part of Gulliver’s Travels will amount to a non-reductive anti-realist conception of truth. It can be called a dialectical conception of truth because it focuses on a particular way of resolving disagreements: an epistemically virtuous practice of verbal exchange that cares for truth. The main thesis is that an implicit awareness of the epistemically virtuous practice is a necessary condition for being in full possession of the notion of truth. The commentary will also involve an argument against deflationism and a critique of some claims made by Huw Price. (shrink)

This article introduces a little-known woman philosopher, Julia Gulliver, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fottowing a biographical sketch, the article discusses four illustrations of Gulliver's philosophical work. These illustrations deal with freedom and determinism, philosophy of religion, democracy, and philosophy of education. A concluding estimate of Gulliver's legacy suggests that her significance lies mainly in her applied philosophy and in her leadership as a philosophically-minded educator.

Are the houyhnhnms, the rational horses Gulliver meets in the fourth chapter of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), meant as role models for man? I think there are reasons to doubt this view. To illustrate this claim, I’ll compare Swift’s portrayal of the houyhnhnms with Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). There, Kant explicates that man is no ‘purely rational being’ but a ‘sensual rational being’. We’ll see that this characterization has tremendous consequences for the justification of (...) Kant’s moral principle. Similarly, Swift designates man as an animal rationis capax, i.e. an animal which is only capable of reasoning, but not wholly governed by it. Violations of moral norms are hence very likely to occur. Concluding, I shall argue that the houyhnhnms are no role-models because their morality runs counter to human nature. Instead, they serve to show that man adheres to an illusion. (shrink)

Travel provides countless opportunities for wonder. The breadth of human experience enabled by traversing new territory includes curiosity, excitement, and surprise. However, achieving this breadth may well be better left unfulfilled. Gulliver’s interactions with the King of Brobdingnag in Book II of Gulliver’s Travels (1726) raise interesting questions regarding travel and its effects on the traveller. This essay argues that Gulliver’s Travels draws upon Locke’s insights into travel as an endeavour with the potential to be didactic, ultimately presenting a case (...) against the universal benefit of embarking on a voyage. Swift’s text offers little hope for the existence of the type of traveller who would be improved rather than corrupted by the experience, which suggests that wonders of travel ought to be avoided. This generates a counter-Enlightenment riposte to liberal assumptions concerning the possibility and likelihood of individual edification through pursuing the wonders of travel. (shrink)

For principled and substantially philosophical reasons, based largely on his reform of natural history by inverting the Paleyan notion of overarching and purposeful beneficence in the construction of organisms, Darwin built his theory of selection at the single causal level of individual bodies engaged in unconscious struggle for their own reproductive success. But the central logic of the theory allows selection to work effectively on entities at several levels of a genealogical hierarchy, provided that they embody a set of requisite (...) features for defining evolutionary individuality. Genes, cell lineages, demes, species, and clades-as well as Darwin’s favoured organisms-embody these requisite features in enough cases to form important levels of selection in the history of life. R. A. Fisher explicitly recognized the unassailable logic of species selection, but denied that thsi real process could be important in evolution because, compared with the production of new organisms within a species, the origin of new species is so rare, and the number of species within most clades so low. I review this and other classical arguments against higher-level selection, and conclude that they are invalid in practice for interdemic selection, and false in principle for species selection. Punctuated equilibrium defines the individuality of species and refutes Fisher’s classical argument based on cycle time. In the second part of the paper, I argue that we have failed to appreciate the range and power of selection at levels above and below the organismic because we falsely extrapolate the defining properties of organisms to these other levels, and then regard the other levels as impotent because their effective individuals differ so much from organisms. We would better appreciate the power and generality of hierarchical models of selection if we grasped two key principles: first, that levels can interact in all modes, and not only in the negative style that, for heuristic and operational reasons, has received almost exclusive attention in the existing literature; and second, that each hierarchical level differs from all others in substantial and interesting ways, both in the style and frequency of patterns in change and causal modes. (shrink)

Does Gulliver's apparent equiphilia (love for equines) at the conclusion of Jonathan Swift's satire signify madness or misanthropy? I say neither, and propose that the neighing narrator is a satirical figure encompassing the animal debate between Michel de Montaigne and René Descartes. Swift's satire, I argue, addresses the early-modern controversy over human-animal distinctions by dramatizing a profound skepticism toward human reason. Swift's stance is registered in a vacillation between literalization of human-animal conversations, lampooning Montaigne, and satirizing Cartesian mechanism. I conclude (...) that the greatest paradox of _Gulliver's Travels_ is that Swift's satirization of skepticism is an endorsement of skepticism itself. (shrink)

Článek se zabývá některými epistemologickými důsledky, které s sebou přineslo užívání optických přístrojů v 17. století. Jako ilustrativní rámec těchto důsledků jsem zvolil slavný Swiftův román Gulliverovy cesty, který představuje literární a imagina­tivní kontext těchto objevů. V první části se pokouším nastínit důvody nemyslitelnosti užívání optických přístrojů v řecké přírodní filosofii. Také představuji antropologický objev lidské nepodstatnosti v kosmu zapříčiněné teleskopickým pozorováním oblohy. Druhá část se zabývá karteziánským pojetím vnímání a jeho významem pro chápání mikroskopického pozorování. Výsledkem mikroskopické zkušenosti bylo (...) hořké odha­lení neprivilegovaného statutu lidského vnímání světa. Ve třetí části je naznačeno, že moderní optické přístroje chápali novověcí vědci (a po nich i Swift) jako prostředky, které ukazují epistemologickou nepřístupnost skutečné podstaty přírody. Epistemo­logická zdrženlivost raně novověké vědy byla ovšem kompenzována ideou pokroku. Swift, který stál na straně anciens ve slavné querelle, však nepovažoval ideu vědeckého pokroku za přesvědčivé řešení, ačkoliv nemohl odmítnout nové vědecké vidění světa. Nakonec mohl pouze snít o lepší, dávném, utopickém světě věčné moudrosti. (shrink)

L'anarchisme a ses dévots incapables de penser sans le secours du catéchisme fabriqué par l'historiographie dominante du militantisme. Si l'on veut l'envisager en dehors des clous, il faut moins croire la légende que découvrir l'histoire de ce formidable mouvement dans l'histoire. Afin de construire l'anarchie dans les actes et lui donner son actualité, allons au-delà du catéchisme à l'aide d'une théorie contemporaine: le postanarchisme. Cette expression recouvre toute pensée qui conserve un certain nombre des idéaux de l'anarchisme classique, mais les (...) dépasse au profit d'une pensée libertaire contemporaine. Chacun connaît le géant Gulliver et personne n'ignore l'existence des lilliputiens. Si le géant peut être immobilisé au sol, ça n'est pas par le pouvoir macrologique d'un seul, mais par la multiplication micrologique des petits liens. L'addition de petites forces constitue une formidable puissance politique libertaire. Je nomme cette logique "Principe de Gulliver". La révolution ne se fera plus par le haut, dans la violence, avec le sang et la terreur, imposée par le bras armé d'une avant-garde sans foi ni loi, mais par le bas, de façon immanente, contractuelle, pragmatique, pacifique. L'ouvrage s'ouvre sur un "Autoportrait au drapeau noir" qui est une autobiographie sous le signe de l'anarchisme. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein y Jonathan Swift. El primero desde la filosofía y el segundo desde la literatura. Por una parte, están las anotaciones de Wittgenstein en sus Investigaciones Filosóficas y en el libro Sobre la certeza . Por otra parte, está la novela de Swift titulada Los Viajes de Gulliver . Ambos autores, a pesar de sus diferencias discursivas, plantean un asunto problemático respecto al quehacer filosófico: los giros y malabarismos lingüísticos en los que suele caer la filosofía por su afán (...) de certezas y de establecer principios universales. A partir de las inquietudes de Wittgenstein y las parodias de Jonathan Swift, se realiza un diagnóstico del quehacer filosófico desde sus manías y sus hábitos discursivos. Wittgenstein nos deja las preguntas abiertas. Swift nos deja la posibilidad de responder desde el ámbito de la risa. Y en el presente ensayo se pretende partir de ambos autores para hablar de la filosofía desde el lugar de la comedia. (shrink)

The recovery of ancient skepticism in the sixteenth century had broad consequences in various intellectual domains, including fictional discourse. In the following centuries several authors echoed skeptical philosophical discourse and made literary use of skepticism. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is inserted in the hall of the modern writers who echoed and assimilated the skeptical tradition. Satires as A Tale of a Tub (1704), The Battle of Books (1704) and Gulliver's Travels (1726) are framed with marks of skepticism. Thus, my purpose is (...) to present a study on the incorporation of skeptical aspects and arguments in Swift's fictional and satirical discourse. I will try to show that Swift assimilates and uses artifices of skeptical discourse, and therefore, given his relation and knowledge of this tradition, has a place in the history of skeptical thinking. (shrink)

Cet article étudie la réinterprétation et l’appropriation de l’exotisme dans les traductions-adaptations des voyages imaginaires du xviiie siècle, tout particulièrement celles de Desfontaines (Les Voyages du capitaine Lemuel Gulliver), de Berault-Bercastel (Voyages récréatifs du chevalier de Quevedo) et de Louis de Mailly (Les Trois Princes de Sarendip). Les traducteurs ont comme objectif d’adapter l’oeuvre au « goût de la France » : ils sont aux prises avec un double exotisme, celui décrit dans le voyage et celui intrinsèque à l’oeuvre. Leur (...) travail d’adaptation repose sur la recherche des équivalences culturelles, sur la suppression des passages subversifs et sur la conservation d’une représentation convenue de l’ailleurs et du merveilleux. Certains traducteurs vont jusqu’à réécrire une grande partie de ces ouvrages afin que le genre littéraire corresponde à celui du voyage. (shrink)

Inspired by Voltaire's stay in England, this is one of the key works of the Enlightenment. Exactly contemporary with Gulliver's Travels and The Beggar's Opera, Voltaire's controversial pronouncements on politics, philosophy, religion, and literature have placed the Letters among the great Augustan satires. Voltaire wrote most of the book in English, in which he was fluent and witty, and it fast became a bestseller in Britain. He re-wrote it in French as the Lettres philosophiques, and current editions in English translate (...) his French. This edition restores for the modern reader Voltaire's own English text, allowing us to appreciate him as a stylist at first hand. It is the only critical edition of the original text and, as well as providing an introduction and notes, it includes intriguing accounts of Voltaire by contemporary English observers. (shrink)

In 1759, at the height of the Seven Years' War, when Great Britain was suffering a series of military reversals, Montagu considered his country's plight in an historical context formed by the study of five ancient republics: Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Carthage, and Rome. Montagu's focus on the ancient republics gives his contribution a distinctive twist to the chorus of voices lamenting Britain's decline, and his analysis exerted influence in three momentous eighteenth-century crises: the Seven Years' War, the American War of (...) Independence, and the French Revolution. This is the first modern edition of Montagu's work. Edward Wortley Montagu (1713 -1776) was the son of a wealthy British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He was a student of oriental languages at the University of Leiden, which apparently proved useful during the peace negotiations at Aix-la-Chapelle which concluded the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on English literature from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. He is the editor of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (2012) for Cambridge University Press. (shrink)

This book traces the career development and influence on American intellectual life of the first twenty women to earn a PhD in philosophy in the United States. Rogers explores the factors that led these women to pursue careers in academic philosophy, examines the ideas they developed, and evaluates the impact they had on the academic and social worlds they inhabited. This volume investigates not only the success stories of such women as Eliza Ritchie, Julia Gulliver, and Christine Ladd-Franklin, to name (...) a few, but also the policies and practices that made it difficult or impossible for others to succeed. (shrink)

The publication of George Psalmanazar's Description of Formosa (1704–1705) and the controversy surrounding the young man who claimed to be ‘a Native of Formosa, An Island subject to the Emperor of Japan,’ must place text and author among the most audacious examples of literary fraud in any language. Psalmanazar's Formosa fabrications—including claims of endemic polygamy, cannibalism, and child sacrifice—titillated and appalled his contemporaries, including Jonathan Swift, who paid mock tribute to the ‘famous Salmanaazor’ in A Modest Proposal (1729), crediting the (...) ‘Formosan’ with being the true genius behind the plan ‘for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country’. Little attention has been paid to the possibility that Psalmanazar may have been a source for other Swift satires, including the little-known An Account of the Court and Empire of Japan (1727–1728), and major texts such as Gulliver’s Travels (1726). This essay aims to bring the image of one of the 18th century's more entertaining personalities into sharper resolution, and to explore the possibility that his influence on Swift was greater than has been generally suspected. (shrink)

On method, discursive logics, and epistemology -- Questions of medieval discursive practice -- From the middle ages to the (w)hole of Utopia -- Kepler, his Dream, and the analysis and pattern of thought -- Campanella and Bacon: concerning structures of mind -- The masculine birth of time -- Cyrano and the experimental discourse -- The myth of sun and moon -- The difficulty of writing -- Crusoe rights his story -- Gulliver's critique of Euclid -- Emergence, consolidation, and dominance of (...) a discourse. (shrink)

In 1980, Furio Jesi admitted that he agreed with Swift's Gulliver, who regarded himself almost like a "houyhnhnm", one of the intelligent horses he met during his travels. Cavalletti's essay introduces this Dossierabout Jesi by tracing the secret symmetry between the mythologist, the Jew, the passionate reader of Kafka. These multiple personification of Jesi allows to reach a level of writing which is not only characterized by a historical and learned research, but also involves a personal, intimate and biographical dimension. (...) Thus, the subject matter of Jesi's research provides the opportunity for a narrative which is also a research of the self. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deceit, Desire, and The Dunciad:Mimetic Theory and Alexander PopeAllan Doolittle (bio)Anxiety expressed over what is often termed "information overload"1 is by no means solely a phenomenon of our electronic age. Recent scholarship has traced this concern as far back as the early modern period. The increased production and dissemination of books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a source of "wonder and anxiety"2 for authors and prompted the (...) need for a "substantial reorganization of the intellectual world."3 Seventeenth-century French scholar and critic Adrien Baillet gave warning of an impending barbarism unless there was a "separating [of] those books which we must throw out or leave in oblivion from those which one should save."4 The most recognizable expression of this imperative to sort the printed wheat from the chaff comes from the voices of some of eighteenth-century England's most studied, most admired, yet also detested authors, the Scriblerians. From this celebrated literary group came "the three great Tory satires, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, John Gay's Fables and Alexander Pope's The Dunciad."5Christian Thorne, in his discussion of these works in relation to the rise of the public sphere in early modern England, defines the Scriblerian rallying cry as a protest against "the rise of print culture... in which signification will [End Page 1] run amok, flooding the polity with an undifferentiated mass of contradictory opinions and arguments and thus corroding traditional forms of citizenship or civic virtue."6 Pope saw the deluge of aspiring authors and their printed output as a destructive force, a force that had a leveling effect on what he perceived as the traditional structure of the cultural hierarchy. In this article, I will look specifically at the career of Alexander Pope and his lifelong struggle against all but a small number of those who populated what Samuel Johnson called the "Age of Authors."Pope's career is indelibly marked with conflict. This conflict stemmed from Pope's untiring efforts to regulate the field in which he worked, to promote himself and his friends, and to do everything at his disposal to thwart the efforts of those whom he saw as threatening his literary endeavors. His adversaries, most often the professional ranks of Grub Street writers and publishers, served as fodder for Pope's satire and were deeply entwined in Pope's literary output. However, the adversaries he most wanted to be rid of—the primary target of his purposeful and brilliant satire—were not the "hackney scribblers" typical of Grub Street but those most threatening to Pope's professional writing career: "verbal critics" or literary scholars.7 The threat came in the form of the newly emerging critical techniques of philological scholarship. It is my contention that the literary scholars possessed knowledge that Pope showed himself to be desirous of, but that he was incapable of attaining.In this paper I will apply René Girard's mimetic theory both to Pope's relationships with these scholars and to his depiction of them in The Dunciad. The application of Girard's theory helps to explain Pope's motivation in writing, expanding, and obsessing over a poem that was seemingly more trouble than it was worth. The publication history of the poem, which is "exceedingly complicated,"8 "cost [Pope] as much pains as anything [he] ever wrote"9 and brought down an avalanche of ridicule and abuse on him, prompting many to wonder "what can possibly have impelled him to do what he did?"10 This article will go some distance toward answering this question and will also provide insight into the way The Dunciad operated in the service of Pope's attempt to shape the literary culture of early-eighteenth-century England. I will do what no critic to date has yet attempted: I will use Girard's theory to clarify the relationship between Pope's work with the classics and that of his rival classical scholars, and to show how these two threads are woven into his magnum opus, The Dunciad.René Girard's insightful and controversial theory of the nature and origin of human culture may be grouped into three... (shrink)

Methuselah, it is said, lived 969 years. His state of health at death is not revealed. It can only be surmised that he was surely not robust and, no doubt, was subject to all of the infirmities of old age and the tragic indignities associated with senility.Jonathan Swift captured well the “curse” of immortality when, in Gulliver's Travels, he created a group of individuals, the Struldbrugs, who, when encountered, dulled what had heretofore been an appetite for perpetual life. The Struldbrugs (...) were allowed to be born totally exempt from the “calamity of human Nature,” in that their minds were free “and disingaged, without the Weight and De pression of Spirits caused by the continued Apprehension of Death.” They were thus condemned “to a perpetual continuance in the World.” In his travels, Gulliver found some Struldbrugs well over 1,000 years old. (shrink)