This ethnographic study introduces the term “distressed work” to describe the emergence of chronic frictions between moral imperatives for health care workers to keep working and the dramatic increase in distress during the Covid‐19 pandemic. Interviews and observant participation conducted in a hospital intensive care unit during the Covid‐19 pandemic reveal how health care workers connected job duties with extraordinary emotional, physical, and moral burdens. We explore tensions between perceived obligations of health care professionals and the structural contexts of work. (...) Key findings cluster around the moral imperatives of health care work and the distress that work engendered as work spaces, senses of vocation, patient and family interactions, and end‐of‐life care shifted. While the danger of working beyond limits has long been an ordinary feature of health care work, it has now become a chronic crisis. Assessing this problem in terms of distressed work and its structural contexts can better address effective, worker‐informed responses to current health care labor dilemmas. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Philosophy is an exciting and accessible subject, and this engaging text acquaints students with the core problems of philosophy and the many ways in which they are and have been answered. Introducing Philosophy: A Text with Integrated Readings, Eighth Edition, insists both that philosophy is very much alive today and that it is deeply rooted in the past. Accordingly, it combines substantial original sources from significant works in the history of philosophy and current philosophy with detailed commentary and explanation that (...) help to clarify the readings. The selections range from the oldest known fragments to cutting-edge essays in feminism, multiculturalism, and cognitive science. At the end of each chapter is a summary, a list of review questions, a glossary, and a bibliography with suggestions for further reading. Important philosophical terms are carefully introduced in the text and also summarized at the end of each chapter, and brief biographies of the philosophers are provided at the end of the book. New to the Eighth Edition: Addressing the needs of a new generation of students, Robert C. Solomon has included for the first time more than 300 study and review questions. Appearing throughout the text and at the end of each chapter, these questions require immediate feedback from students. They encourage students to articulate the central ideas of what they have just read, instead of just "passing through" on the way to the next reading . New selections expand and update the chapters on religion, knowledge, mind and body, freedom, ethics, justice, and beauty. The selections include work by Charles Hartshorne, Cory Juhl, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sextus Empiricus, Edmund L. Gettier, David Braddon-Mitchell and Frank Jackson, Colin McGinn, Daniel Dennett, Harry Frankfurt, Gilbert Harman, Emma Goldman, and Arthur C. Danto. A companion website at www.oup.com/us/solomon8e features 300 study and review questions (100 multiple-choice, 100 true-or-false, and 100 fill-in-the-blank), discussion questions, chapter overviews and summaries, topical links, suggestions for further reading, and PowerPoint lecture aids. (shrink)

: Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch's introductory text, The Golem: What Everyone Should Know About Science (1993), includes a controversy about the significance of pseudosexual behavior in the parthenogenetic whiptail lizard. Collins and Pinch, basing their account on the work of Greg Myers (1990), claim that "in this area of biology, experiments are seldom possible" and that the debate has "battled to an honorable draw." I argue that a closer look at the publications of the scientists involved shows that, (...) at least by the late 1980s, it was widely accepted that pseudosexual behavior is important for reproduction in these lizards. Moreover, a variety of experiments, as well as laboratory and field observations, proved decisive in this acceptance. (shrink)

Medieval Jewish intellectuals living in Muslim and Christian lands were strongly concerned to recover what they regarded as a 'lost' Jewish philosophical tradition. As part of this project they transmitted and produced many philosophical and scientific works and commentaries, as well as philosophical commentary on scripture, in Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew, the principal literary languages of medieval Jewry. This volume presents translations of seven prominent medieval Jewish rationalists: Saadia Gaon, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Moses Maimonides, Isaac Albalag, Moses of Narbonne, Levi (...) Gersonides, Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo - including, for the first time in English, the complete Falaquera abridgement of Gabirol's Source of Life. These works range over topics that are both theological and philosophical, but they are characterized by two overarching principles: the unity of truth, and its accessibility to human reason. (shrink)

Like Henry Harris, I began doing intensive research on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit in the mid-sixties. I recall going through all the chapters as a graduate student during one academic year, and looking around for commentaries. The only English-language commentary available was Loewenberg's Hegel's Phenomenology: Dialogues in the Life of Mind, which was suggestive of the dialectic taking place in the book, but not much help in getting over the “rough spots”. This gave me an incentive to work through Jean (...) Hyppolite's commentary, not yet translated into English, with my basic reading-knowledge of French. My 1976 Hegel's Phenomenology, Part I: Analysis and Commentary was one of the first in a long line of Anglophone commentaries. Harris in his introduction to Vol. I. mentions this effort at “analysis”, along with Findlay's “analysis” accompanying the 1977 Miller translation of the Phenomenology, as incentives for the inclusion of his own improved running analysis in the present commentary. I have included discussions of numerous partial or complete commentaries on Hegel's Phenomenology in review articles published in 1971 in the American Philosophical Quarterly and Teorema, in 1979 in the American Philosophical Quarterly, and in 1981 in Hegel-Studien. Harris has the advantage of producing the most recent of all these commentaries, and in a way offers us a compendium of everything that has been done on the Phenomenology. His analysis and commentary includes a survey of the literature, in which almost all previous laborers in the field can find themselves commended or criticized in the endnotes. Thus I find comments like “Kainz has completely misunderstood the argument here”, “This is a point which Kainz has grasped more definitely than most commentators”, “[Kainz] does not deserve the brickbat Flay hurls at him”, and so forth. Other commentators, living and dead – Flay, Pöggeler, Navickas, Kenneth and Merold Westphal, Heidegger, Lauer, Werner Becker, Kojève, Wahl, Hyppolite, Labarrière, Bonsiepen, Forster, Shklar, Solomon, Werner Marx, and Robert Williams — are similarly discussed and critiqued. For some of us Anglophone commentators, such remarks may seem like red marks on essays from a patient professor. But certainly no one will mind, since Harris has spent more time and energy on this very specialized project than any of us. In fact, some former commentators almost have a “conflict of interest” in reviewing Harris' work, since so many of us have benefited at various points in our research from Harris' personal support and criticism. But in academics, as in life, mentors cannot always be assured of loyalty. (shrink)

Generic propositions are statements that make general claims about ‘kinds’ that are found in a wide variety of written genres and speech. By definition, generics do not include in their structure any reference to the conditions under which they hold true. Their misuse in popular scientific writing, however, can erode the public’s confidence in the process of science itself when they discover that conclusions are highly contingent on certain truth conditions. The language used in scholarly scientific papers often includes qualifiers (...) and hedges, the epistemological consequences of which have been explored by Bruno Latour, Thomas Kuhn, Ian Hacking and others. Some research shows that abstracts, however, of-ten include generic statements that are not warranted by the scientific evidence described in the full text. Similarly, when accounts of scientific discoveries appear in popular media, journalists often remove qualifiers, hedges and context markers that existed in the original study. Studies in anthropology by Joseph Dumit, Annemarie Mol, Harris Solomon and others explore the human reactions to such pronouncements. One possible solution to the over-use of generics in scientific abstracts, especially for studies that rely on human subjects, is the inclusion of a mandatory section entitled “Constraints on Generality,” as suggested by Gutiérrez and Rogoff. Other suggestions include using less nominalized verbs and more past-tense descriptions of what actually occurred in the particular study. (shrink)

The family is hotly contested ideological terrain. Some defend the traditional two-parent heterosexual family while others welcome its demise. Opinions vary about how much control parents should have over their children's upbringing. Family Values provides a major new theoretical account of the morality and politics of the family, telling us why the family is valuable, who has the right to parent, and what rights parents should—and should not—have over their children. Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift argue that parent-child relationships (...) produce the "familial relationship goods" that people need to flourish. Children's healthy development depends on intimate relationships with authoritative adults, while the distinctive joys and challenges of parenting are part of a fulfilling life for adults. Yet the relationships that make these goods possible have little to do with biology, and do not require the extensive rights that parents currently enjoy. Challenging some of our most commonly held beliefs about the family, Brighouse and Swift explain why a child's interest in autonomy severely limits parents' right to shape their children's values, and why parents have no fundamental right to confer wealth or advantage on their children. Family Values reaffirms the vital importance of the family as a social institution while challenging its role in the reproduction of social inequality and carefully balancing the interests of parents and children. (shrink)

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Bullshit, the case for worrying less about the rich and more about the poor Economic inequality is one of the most divisive issues of our time. Yet few would argue that inequality is a greater evil than poverty. The poor suffer because they don't have enough, not because others have more, and some have far too much. So why do many people appear to be more distressed by the rich (...) than by the poor? In this provocative book, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of On Bullshit presents a compelling and unsettling response to those who believe that the goal of social justice should be economic equality or less inequality. Harry Frankfurt, one of the most influential moral philosophers in the world, argues that we are morally obligated to eliminate poverty—not achieve equality or reduce inequality. Our focus should be on making sure everyone has a sufficient amount to live a decent life. To focus instead on inequality is distracting and alienating. At the same time, Frankfurt argues that the conjunction of vast wealth and poverty is offensive. If we dedicate ourselves to making sure everyone has enough, we may reduce inequality as a side effect. But it’s essential to see that the ultimate goal of justice is to end poverty, not inequality. A serious challenge to cherished beliefs on both the political left and right, On Inequality promises to have a profound impact on one of the great debates of our time. (shrink)

Zu den Gründungsmythen der Postmoderne gehört, dass sich die Kunst vom Neuheitsanspruch der Moderne verabschiedet habe. Tatsächlich wurde dieser Anspruch aber nicht preisgegeben, sondern nur reformuliert. Folgte die avancierte Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert weithin einer Materialästhetik, wie sie sich zum Beispiel im Kubismus oder in der seriellen Musik manifestierte, lässt sich heute eine Hinwendung zur Gehaltsästhetik beobachten. Neuheit wird von Künstlern wie Ai Weiwei oder Damien Hirst nicht länger im ästhetischen Material gesucht, sondern in dem durch ein Werk artikulierten neuen (...) ästhetischen Gehalt. Diese gehaltsästhetische Wende der Künste ist die Quintessenz von Harry Lehmanns Kunstphilosophie. Auf der Grundlage einer Theorie der ästhetischen Eigenwerte, zu denen Schönheit, Erhabenheit, Ereignis und Ambivalenz gehören, erzählt er die europäische Kunstgeschichte neu als eine Geschichte der ästhetischen Erfahrung. Zahlreiche Beispiele aus den Bildenden Künsten, der Dichtung und der Musik, aber auch aus Werbung, Mode und Design machen diesen Paradigmenwechsel in den Künsten anschaulich und evident. (shrink)

It has often been noted that there is some tension between engaging in decision-making and believing that one’s choices might be predetermined. The possibility that our choices are predetermined forces us to consider, in our decisions, act-state pairs which are inconsistent, and hence to which we cannot assign sensible utilities. But the reasoning which justifies two-boxing in Newcomb’s problem also justifies associating a non-zero causal probability with these inconsistent act-state pairs. Put together these undefined utilities and non-zero probabilities entail that (...) expected utilities are undefined whenever it is a possibility that our choices are predetermined. There are three ways to solve the problem, but all of them suffer serious costs: always assume that, contrary to our evidence, the outcome of our present decision-making is not predetermined; give up the reasoning that justifies unconditional two-boxing in Newcomb’s problem; or allow epistemically impossible outcomes to contribute to expected utility, leading to the wrong results in a series of cases introduced by Ahmed :665–685, 2014a, Evidence, decision and causality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014b). However they choose to respond, causal decision theorists cannot remain silent: the intuitive tension between decision-making and the possibility of predetermination can be made precise, and resolving it will require giving up something. Causal decision theorists have a predetermination problem. (shrink)

Sociology is becoming fragmented. With specialised fields spinning off beyond the capacity of a unifying theoretical frame to embrace them, the prospect exists that sociology's vital centre may not hold. Proceeding from a social constructionist perspective, this work examines the existence and probes the origins of the specialised sociological fields of social problems and social movements. Conceptual ambiguities that currently plague both specialisations are noted, as are their effective theoretical isolation from general sociological theory. Each field is traced to its (...) roots in sociology's formative period in the nineteenth century. Two modes of doing sociology are found to have evolved, respectively, in the United Stales and in Continental Europe, each conditioned by distinctive historical experiences and resonating with the prevailing social and political concerns on the two continents. American sociology emerged in response to social perceptions that progress is inhibited by a proliferation of 'social problems'. Continental European sociology arose in reaction to Enlightenment principles failing to be institutionalised, inviting the perceived social threat of either revolution or anarchy. Both sociologies are thus seen as ideologically contaminated, and their respective dominant perspectives, through the 1950s, are contrasted as the 'social problem orientation' and the 'social movement orientation'. Comparative analysis of these orientatations probes such issues as ahistorical vs. historical treatments: methodological individualism vs. collectivism: differential conceptions of class; the discipline's need to inhibit ideological contagion through a sociological reconstruction of prevailing social constructions of reality; the vital distinction between structural and processual conceptualisations. The study concludes that temporality serves as a crucial but much-neglected dimension in much of American sociology. So-called social problems and social movements are found to be grounded in essentially similar empirical social circumstances, with their alternate conceptualisations attributable to differential time-frames through which such circumstances are sociologically apprehended. This points to the potential theoretical integration of these two fields. Scientific, ideological. and social policy implications of alternative constructions of reality are also explored. (shrink)

"Introduces the issues and controversies of contemporary moral philosophy. It gets students to struggle with the big questions of morality while it also relates these questions to practical issues, especially racism, global warming, moral education, and abortion. Providing a practical method for thinking about moral issues--a method based largely on the golden rule--it is written simply and clearly throughout."--Provided by publisher.

Crowning six decades of literary, rhetorical, and historical scholarship, Harry Berger, Jr., offers readers another trenchant reading. Berger subverts the usual interpretations of Plato’s kalos kagathos, showing Socrates to be trapped in a double ventriloquism, tethered to his interlocutors’ speech acts even as they are tethered to his. Plato’s Republic and Protagoras both reserve a small but significant place for a poet who differs from Homer and Hesiod: the lyric poet Simonides of Ceos. In the Protagoras, Socrates takes apart (...) a poem attributed to Simonides and uses this to finish off the famous and supposedly dangerous sophist, Protagoras. Couch City is a close reading of the comic procedures Socrates deploys against Protagoras as he reduces him to silence. But it also shows that Socrates takes the danger posed by Protagoras and his fellow sophists seriously. Even if they are represented as buffoons, sophists are among the charismatic authority figures—poets, rhapsodes, seers, orators, and lawgivers—who promote views harmful to Athenian democracy. Socrates uses Simonides’s poem to show how sophists not only practice misinterpretation but are unable to defend against it. Berger ports his roots as a pioneering literary theorist into this rhetorical discussion, balancing ideas such as speech-act theory with hard-nosed philology. The result is a provocative and counterintuitive reassessment of Plato’s engagement with democracy. (shrink)

In 1990 at the Jomtein Conference in Thailand organised by UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank the 157 governments present agreed to a Declaration, the World Declaration on Education for All that signalled their commitment to achieve Education for All (EFA) by 2000. EFA was not defined succinctly, but was laid out as comprising: universal access to education services ‘of quality’; equity with regard to removing disparities ‘in access to learning opportunities’ for certain groups (girls.

In a period in which capital has been on the offensive for many years, using debt and financial crises as rationales for wielding austerity to hammer down wages and social services and terrorism as an excuse for attacking civil liberties, it is important to realize that the origins of this long period of crisis lay in the struggles of people to free their lives from the endless subordination to work within a society organized as a gigantic social factory. In both (...) the self-proclaimed capitalist West and socialist East the managers of that subordination, whether in private enterprise or the state, repeatedly found their plans undermined by people who refused to play by their rules and who elaborated activities and social relationships that escaped their control. The refusal of their rules meant crisis for the managers; the elaboration of other ways of being—whether characterized as the crafting of civil society or as autonomous self-valorization—meant crisis for and freedom from society-as-work-machine. As always, the capitalist response has involved instrumentalization and repression; basically its managers have sought to harness what they could and eliminate what they could not. For a long time instrumentali-zation was most obvious in the West and repression was most obvious in the East, yet both were always at play everywhere, and everywhere those responses were resisted and often escaped. It was that resistance and those escapes that led to the unleashing of the monetary weapons of financialization and their current employment to convert crisis-for-capital into crisis-for-us. It is in past and present resistance and escapes that we must discover both our weaknesses and our strengths in order to overcome capital’s current offensive and to elaborate new worlds. It is the overall thesis of this paper that Marx’s labor theory of value still provides vital aid in helping us understand these historical developments. (shrink)

TWENTY QUESTIONS, one of the best selling introduction to philosophy anthologies available today, presents a proven, well-acclaimed forum for introducing students to the rich variety of philosophical reflection. Animated by some of philosophy's more concrete questions--questions that students are likely to have pondered long before signing up for their first philosophy classes--TWENTY QUESTIONS fosters the creative exploration of many renowned classical and contemporary thinkers' responses to the very same questions.

Departing from the usual discussions of public morality, and considering the moral interests of the community as a whole, this book is a contribution to this intensely debated theme and considers how public morality can be justified in theory and accommodated in practice in a liberal society.