The nursing profession has a long history of advocating for social justice and health equity, and both values profoundly infuse nursing ethics, theory, and education. Homecare nursing occurs between the patient's daily life at home and the public health care system. Therefore, homecare nurses ideally possess insight into the living conditions and social determinants of health that their patients experience. This interpretive phenomenological study explores the strategies employed by homecare nurses to fight health inequity and advance social justice. Data were (...) collected through participant observations, situational interviews, and small group interviews with 12 homecare nurses from two municipalities. Three analytical approaches were used: paradigm cases, exemplars, and thematic analysis. The data identified two primary strategies homecare nurses use to circumvent, solve, and mitigate the negative consequences of social determinants of health on patients' care and treatment: “Negotiating practice” and “Aligning practice.” “Negotiating practice” ensures that care and treatment are delivered in a way acceptable to all involved. “Aligning practice” ensures cohesion, progression in the treatment and care trajectory, and support for patients and relatives in navigating the system. Both strategies are part of nurses' largely hidden work, reflecting the nursing profession's position as nested between the individual patient and the system. (shrink)

Recently, two apparently quite different duality-based approaches to automata minimisation have appeared. One is based on ideas that originated from the controllability-observability duality from systems theory, and the other is based on ideas derived from Stone-type dualities specifically linking coalgebras with algebraic structures derived from modal logics. In the present paper, we develop a more abstract view and unify the two approaches. We show that dualities, or more generally dual adjunctions, between categories can be lifted to dual adjunctions between categories (...) of coalgebras and algebras, and from there to automata with initial as well as final states. As in the Stone-duality approach, algebras are essentially logics for reasoning about the automata. By exploiting the ability to pass between these categories, we show that one can minimize the corresponding automata. We give an abstract minimisation algorithm that has several instances, including the celebrated Brzozowski minimisation algorithm. We further develop three examples that have been treated in previous works: deterministic Kripke frames based on a Stone-type duality, weighted automata based on the self-duality of semimodules, and topological automata based on Gelfand duality. As a new example, we develop alternating automata based on the discrete duality between sets and complete atomic Boolean algebras. (shrink)

Since the 1970s, estrogen have sometimes been used in adolescent girls to reduce very tall adult expected height. Worries about long-term effects have led to a proposal to link treatment data with cancer registers. How should one deal with informed consent for such a study? We designed a qualitative study with semi-structured telephone interviews. From 1200 women who were to be followed-up in cancer registers, we randomly selected 22 women. Major themes were a wish to be involved and a positive (...) attitude to the proposed register research. The women did not express worry after reading the study protocol, but did convey considerable frustration that this research had not been initiated earlier. Active consent was not seen as crucial. We found strong interest in a high participation rate and a concern over missing data. The selection of information and consent or the decision to go ahead without consent in register follow-up is a delicate balancing act. Study participants wish to be contacted, but acknowledge the primary goal of answering important questions. Our study provides support for safeguarding privacy in epidemiological linkage studies and in follow-up of medical treatment without losing the scientific value by requesting for informed consent. (shrink)

Animal ethicists have recently debated the ethical questions raised by disenhancing animals to improve their welfare. Here, we focus on the particular case of breeding hens for commercial egg-laying systems to become blind, in order to benefit their welfare. Many people find breeding blind hens intuitively repellent, yet ‘welfare-only’ positions appear to be committed to endorsing this possibility if it produces welfare gains. We call this the ‘Blind Hens’ Challenge’. In this paper, we argue that there are both empirical and (...) theoretical reasons why even those adopting ‘welfare-only’ views should be concerned about breeding blind hens. But we also argue that alternative views, which (for example) claim that it is important to respect the telos or rights of an animal, do not offer a more convincing solution to questions raised by the possibility of disenhancing animals for their own benefit. (shrink)

Accounts of propositional attitude reporting which invoke contextual variation in semantic content have become increasingly popular, with good reason: our intuitions about the truth conditions of such reports vary with context. This paper poses a problem for such accounts, arguing that any reasonable candidate source for this contextual variation will yield very counterintuitive results. The accounts, then, cannot achieve their goal of accommodating our truth conditional intuitions. This leaves us with a serious puzzle. Theorists must either give up on the (...) goal of agreement with our truth conditional intuitions, or find a different source for contextual variation. (shrink)

The tragic experience of the XX century, the worth expression of which was Holocaust, challenges the fundamental values of civilized society. Its terrifying symbol is Auschwitz, extermination camp, Universe of terror – “the kingdom not of this world”. Its understanding is beyond classical concepts of good and evil and can not be described in the usual categories of crime and punishment. The entrance to this “kingdom” can be illustrated by Dante’s words written at the entrance to Hell (Inferno): “Abandon all (...) hope, ye who enter here”. Finding no help, either in God or in human Reason, the shattered mind has to seek a new “measure of all things” to perceive wisdom born in despair. (shrink)

“Power is the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action” With these words, Carolyn Heilbran urges women to rewrite their lives. Their angry and frustrated voices, heard in the privacy of letters and quiet conversations, tell their true stories, while their public biographies are sentimental and passive. Women, she says, need to learn how to declare their right to public power. With this advice In mind, I recently joined a conversation with colleagues from the University (...) of Nebraska Medical Center about issues in global bioethics. (shrink)

This article is a reply to Karori Mbugua’s article titled “The Problem of Hell Revisited: Towards a Gentler Theology of Hell” (Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya, New Series, Vol.3 No.2, December 2011, pp.93-103). The present article does not in any way seek to argue for or against the existence of eternal damnation. Instead, it advances the view that while Mbugua raises important philosophical issues around the question of eternal damnation, those questions deserve a more (...) incisive treatment than Mbugua accorded them. The article further argues that as with all other matters touching on the way things are rather than the way they ought to be, the answer to the question as to whether or not eternal damnation exists cannot be determined by our opinions - its existence or nonexistence is an objective fact. Consequently, philosophers cannot revise the fact to their liking; what they can do is to accept or reject the doctrine of eternal damnation altogether on rational grounds, but with no assurance that the objective fact is on their chosen side. (shrink)

Questioning gender is about taking an active, critical role in the technological design of our daily behaviour. It is a deconstruction of the oppositions that exist in the discourses of Ambient Intelligence designers, the ICT industry and computer scientists. What underlies the assumption that Ambient Intelligence will, by disappearing into our environment, bring humans both an easy and entertaining life? The gender perspective can uncover power relations within the promotion and realisation of Ambient Intelligence that satisfy an obvious wish for (...) a technological heaven. The deconstruction of the promise of progress and a better life reveals what is overvalued, what is undervalued and what is ignored. This paper is a deconstruction of the view, currently prevalent in the discourses of Ambient Intelligence; a view of humans and the way they live. A view that will influence the way women and men will be allowed to construct their lives. (shrink)

Born of a terrible insomnia--"a dizzying lucidity which would turn even paradise into hell"--this book presents the youthful Cioran, a self- described "Nietzsche still complete with his Zarathustra, his poses, his mystical clown's tricks, a whole circus of the heights." On the Heights of Despair shows Cioran's first grappling with themes he would return to in his mature works: despair and decay, absurdity and alienation, futility and the irrationality of existence. It also presents Cioran as a connoisseur of apocalypse, a (...) theoretician of despair, for whom writing and philosophy both share the "lyrical virtues" that alone lead to a metaphysical revelation. "No modern writer twists the knife with Cioran's dexterity. . . . His writing . . . is informed with the bitterness of genuine compassion."--Bill Marx, Boston Phoenix "The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran's short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming. . . . Puts him in the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard."-- Publishers Weekly, starred review "This is self-pity as epigram, the sort of dyspeptic pronouncement that gets most people kicked out of bed but that has kept Mr. Cioran going for the rest of his life."--Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review Emil M. Cioran (1911-1995) is the author of numerous works, including The Fall into Time, A Short History of Decay, and Tears and Saints. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Inner Life of Catholic Reform: From the Council of Trent to the Enlightenment by Ulrich LehnerCarlos M. N. EireThe Inner Life of Catholic Reform: From the Council of Trent to the Enlightenment. By Ulrich Lehner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 294. $37.99 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-19-762060-1.This marvelous book encapsulates the seismic shift in perspective that has taken place in the study of early modern Catholicism (...) in the past four decades, and, at the same time, it sharpens the historiographical cutting edge of this new approach. Instead of focusing on the Council of Trent, the papacy, the Inquisition, religious orders, institutional reforms, political issues, theological wrangling, heroic saintly figures, or any of the many other external features of reform that previously dominated scholarship on Catholic reform, Lehner dives deeply into sources that shed light on what many scholars have taken to calling “lived religion,” that is, on the myriad ways in which the lives of the Catholic faithful were transformed. As he puts it, his book focuses on “spiritual resources” and rediscovers “neglected perspectives by shedding light on the forms and methods early modern Catholics used to ‘reform’ themselves and achieve spiritual progress” (ix, 1).This is a detail-oriented book, a brilliant interweaving of cultural, intellectual, and social history reminiscent of the best histoire total produced by the Annales school. It is based on the premise that all assertions must be firmly grounded on evidence, a methodological principle to which Lehner adheres in exemplary fashion. Relying on a vast array of texts, he seeks to prove that the early modern Catholic concept of “church reform” was firmly centered on spiritual values, and that the chief aim behind every proposed or implemented change was “the conversion and sanctification of the sinful self” (2). [End Page 697]By focusing on the inner dimensions of Catholic reform, rather than the outward structural dimensions that have traditionally attracted attention, Lehner does not dismiss the significance of structural reforms. His approach to “lived religion” is reminiscent of Thomas Aquinas’s take on the role played by divine grace in the transformation of human beings: “grace does not destroy nature,” said St. Thomas, “but rather perfects it.” Lehner turns this theological dictum into a historiographical one. As he puts it: “Writing the history of transformative spiritual methods and actions of early modern Catholics does not deny these [other] dimensions and does not seek to replace them, but rather complements and elucidates them” (3).Lehner’s fact-driven examination of the myriad ways in which the inner transformation of individuals effected positive changes in the Church and society focuses on nine specific aspects of daily life. Beginning with an analysis of the general dynamics of reform, he proceeds to dissect reforms in nine key components of Catholic culture: the priesthood, sermons, catechesis, family life, lay associations, the sacraments of the Eucharist and confession, prayer, symbols and images, and devotion to Saints Mary and Joseph.Arguing that the spiritual side of reform, or “inner reform,” as he calls it, “represents core ideas and values of early modern Catholic identity, individually and collectively,” Lehner strives to show the ultimate value of his approach through a wealth of details, perhaps with potential critics in mind who might accuse him for valuing subjectivity over objectivity. But he vanquishes any such critics. Ultimately, his thousands of details support his claim that previous interpretations of early modern Catholic reforms that focused primarily on structural issues are not necessarily more “objective,” but actually perpetuate “a chimerical picture of a religion emptied of everything precious to contemporary believers” (158).Much of what Lehner highlights in this book relates to the emotions in one way or another, that is, to reforming impulses that affected the heart as much as the intellect, but he avoids reductionism, positing that much of the inner reform of Catholicism struck a careful yet tenuous balance between opposing dialectical poles. The Church, he insists, aimed at people’s hearts as much as their minds, and instilled fear of hell and purgatory as much as it stressed mercy and salvation. Sermons, he says, leaned toward preaching fear, but the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 37-57 [Access article in PDF] Gersonides on Providence: A Jewish Chapter in the History of the General Will Steven Nadler The notion of the "general will" has proven to be one of the more influential and at the same time enduringly perplexing concepts in the history of ideas. Its most famous appearance is of course, in Rousseau's political philosophy as the (...) expression, ideally embodied in the sovereign's commands, of what is in the common or public interest. The general will (la volonté générale) is, Rousseau says, the will of "the body of the people," that is, "the will that one has a citizen" for the common good. It thus stands in contrast to the "particular will" (la volonté particulière), the expression of one's individual and particularistic preference.1 In this political context, what gives the general will its generality is the universality of interest it represents. Its scope extends to all citizens and it specifies what is in the best interest of the members of the body politic as a whole. Although the general will may or may not coincide with each and every individual's private interest, all citizens are, as a matter of fact, properly served by its fulfillment.In his book The General Will Before Rousseau, Patrick Riley demonstrates how this central idea of eighteenth-century political thought actually has its origins in seventeenth-century theological debates over divine, not human, justice. The mystery [of the origins of the general will] is solved when one realizes that the term volonté générale was well established in the seventeenth-century, though not primarily as a political idea. In fact, the notion of "general will" was originally a theological one, referring to the kind of will that God (supposedly) had in deciding who would be granted grace sufficient for salvation and who would be consigned to hell. The [End Page 37] question at issue was: if "God wills that all men be saved"--as St. Paul asserts in a letter to his disciple Timothy--does he have a general will that produces universal salvation? And if he does not, why does he will particularly that some men not be saved? 2Part of the problem to which the appeal to God's general will was thought by some to afford a solution was the apparent injustice in the distribution of grace. Grace seemed to fall abundantly upon those who were not deserving of it and unprepared to use it properly and insufficiently, and all too rarely upon those who, it was believed, were most worthy of it. Malebranche, for one, believed that God wills, with a general volition, that all people be saved; other factors, however, hinder that "simple" volition from being carried out. But this question about divine aid was simply one element in a larger body of questions--extending across the realms of both nature and grace--about evil in God's creation: why is there sin, suffering, and imperfection in the world if the world was created and is governed by a wise, just, and omnipotent God? As Riley shows--and as I shall briefly review--the notion of the general will was employed by some early modern theologians in an attempt at theodicy, that is, an explanation or justification of God's ways in the face of such a conundrum.My aim in this paper is to take Riley's project one step further. I show that the use of the generality of divine purpose and effect that one finds in seventeenth-century theological discussions of the problem of evil appears in a similar form in an even earlier theodicean context. In his account of divine providence and especially in his explanation of why in this lifetime righteous people suffer and wicked people prosper, the fourteenth-century rabbi and philosopher Levi ben Gershom--Gersonides (or, to use his Hebrew acronym, RaLBaG)--appeals to the generality of the ways of nature established by God much... (shrink)

Combining time travel with certain kinds of supertask, this paper proposes a novel model for Hell. Temporally-closed spacetimes allow otherwise impossible opportunities for material kinds of damnation and reveal surprising limitations on metaphysical objections to Hell. Prima facie, eternal damnation requires either infinite amounts of time or time for the damned to speed-up arbitrarily. However, spatiotemporally finite ‘time travel’ universes can host unending personal torment for infinitely many physical beings, while keeping fixed finite limits on rates of temporal passage. Such (...) ‘Hilbert's Inferno’ spacetimes suggest neither materialism nor the finitude of time and space need forbid Hell. A material Hell can be spatiotemporally finite yet eternal for its inhabitants. Hilbert's Inferno also sheds light on Hell's location and accessibility, and shows that some spacetimes are intrinsically better suited to punishment than reward. (shrink)

There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man – but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point . The hell–fire of life consumes only the select among men. The rest stand in front of it, warming their hands.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bataille and Mysticism: A “Dazzling Dissolution”Amy Hollywood (bio)Within Georges Bataille’s texts of the late 1930s and 1940s, in particular those later brought together in the tripartite Atheological Summa, he repeatedly suggests that his primary models for writing and experience are the texts of the Christian and non-Western mystical traditions (often represented, in Bataille, by women’s writings) and those of Friedrich Nietzsche. 1 Inner Experience opens with evocations of Nietzsche, (...) and the final volume of the trilogy, On Nietzsche, is “devoted” to his work. References to mystical writings occur throughout Inner Experience and Guilty, and significant portions of both texts can be read as providing “guides” for inner experience analogous to the “itineraries” of Angela of Foligno (d. 1309) and Teresa of Avila (d. 1582) or as spiritual daybooks like those of Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. ca. 1275). These models are, I think, the key to understanding Bataille’s own writing strategies in the Atheological Summa. 2 Despite their apparent divergence, moreover, Bataille insists that mystical and Nietzschean texts reflect and are constitutive of the same experience and writing practice.Like both Nietzsche and the mystics, Bataille’s “antigeneric” writing mixes genres and styles within and between texts. 3 Throughout the course of his career, experience and writing are in a constant state of movement, flux, or chaos (to echo Bataille’s self-description in On Nietzsche). The Atheological Summa encapsulates within what purport to be three unified books the diversity of genres and styles that run throughout Bataille’s corpus as a whole. They contain ample quotation of Nietzsche’s texts and those of the mystics—undigested hunks and fragments of these allusive writings 4 —together with philosophical reflections, confessional meditations, diary fragments, letters, and, at the end of On Nietzsche, a set of six brief historical and theoretical appendices. Anything broaching traditional textual commentary is reserved for the margins of these nonbooks. Like many mystics, particularly women who were denied access to the traditional genres of sermon, biblical commentary, and philosophical or theological treatise, and like Nietzsche, who eschews and subverts traditional genre distinctions, Bataille comments and critiques through practice rather than exposition. Although Bataille acknowledges the oddity of his coupling the mystics and Nietzsche, he also rigorously defends it, arguing for a mystical and ecstatic experience in Nietzsche’s work. 5 As I hope to show, Bataille’s [End Page 74] experience of the failures of mysticism and of Nietzsche speak to each other and lead to Bataille’s necessary apostasy as his true discipleship.Repetition of the divergences between Bataille and the mystics, first stated by Bataille himself in Inner Experience, has become something of a commonplace, yet his claims have not been sufficiently explored or challenged. So, for example, Alain Arnauld and Giséle Excoffon-Lafarge unproblematically assert that despite all proximities between Bataille’s texts and those of the mystics, they differ in their aims or aimlessness. Michel Surya joins a host of other scholars whose primary concern is to demonstrate (against the insinuations of Sartre, made now almost fifty years ago) that Bataille was not a Christian. Whereas the mystics’ path ends with the divine encounter, Bataille renounces all objects, aims, or end for his quest and his desire. 6 Most importantly, he rejects all idealism and any hope for salvation. Bataille himself insists on his divergence from the Christian mystics in Inner Experience and Guilty. At the same time, his citations and mimings of central texts from the Christian mystical tradition show that what fascinates him within these writings is precisely the moment in which the soul desires “to live without a why,” embracing the suffering of hell—understood as the absence of/from the “object” of desire—as desire. 7 In a move later echoed by Jacques Lacan, Bataille claims that some medieval mystics attained that beyond of which he writes, but without knowing anything about it: “Exuberance is the point where we let go of Christianity. Angela of Foligno attained it and described it, but didn’t know it.” 8Commentators follow Bataille in resisting his identification with the mystics, then, whereas Nietzsche is a less troubling model for Bataille and his readers. In fact, Bataille... (shrink)

From young children, with their guileless, searching questions, to the recently bereaved, trying to make sense of tragic loss, humans wrestle with our relationship to God--and with God's essence, motivations, and power--throughout our lives: Why does God permit catastrophe and senseless tragedy, again and again? Is God's power limited in any way? Can He change the past? Does He know the future? Why does God require prayer? Why does He not provide stronger evidence of His presence? Whom does God consign (...) to hell, and why? Does God change? Suffer? What can we make of the conflicting diversity within world religions, of the many gods of different religious traditions? Such questions engage, confront, and perplex us on a daily basis. In this rich, concise volume, leading philosophers who have long pondered God's nature and ways take on these core problems and present their findings in a manner likely to engage believer and non-believer, general reader and specialist alike. (shrink)

Many people, at one time or another, struggle with faith issues about sin, guilt, punishment, and hell. But a segment of the population, many of them Catholic, are so afraid of sin that their lives are marked with anxiety and fear. These people suffer from an affliction called scrupulosity. This book provides specific answers to questions and concerns related to sin, confession, self-worth, sexuality, prayer, God's forgiveness, thoughts, dreams, fantasies, and other issues. It offers words of encouragement and helpful suggestions (...) to those who suffer from this affliction and for those who counsel them. (shrink)

All of the world's religions refer to death in some way. Everyone is somewhat familiar with stories about where we go or what happens to us after death. From an early age, we have all heard stories of heaven or hell or some other version of paradise. Many of us believed such stories, and a great number of us still do. When considering that such stories manage to persist in modern times, an age of science and logic, we can be (...) sure that death is an issue to which humans attach great importance. In a sense, the idea of an afterlife can be a great source of comfort to those whose death is imminent, as well as to their loved ones. Those who have led especially difficult lives can look forward to a more pleasant world, while those who have enjoyed happiness and abundance have the chance to experience more good fortune. To those left behind, the idea of an afterlife presents the chance to meet a loved one again. We may not be conscious of it, but such hopes and expectations stay with us throughout our lives. If such an afterlife does exist, then there is no reason to avoid or fear death. Moreover, if we believe that another life awaits us, then we would believe that we are only separated from our loved ones temporarily before being reunited with them later on. (shrink)

G.E.M. Anscombe famously remarked that an adequate philosophy of psychology was needed before we could do ethics. Fifty years have passed, and we should now ask what significance our best theories of the psychology of agency have for moral philosophy. My focus is on non-moral conceptions of autonomy and self-governance that emphasize the limits of deliberation -- the way in which one's cares render certain options unthinkable, one's intentions and policies filter out what is inconsistent with them, and one's resolutions (...) function to block further reflection. I argue that we can expect this deliberative "silencing" to lead to moral failures that occur because the morally correct option was filtered out of the agent's deliberation. I think it follows from these conceptions of self-governance that we should be considered culpable for unwitting acts and omissions, even if they express no ill will, moral indifference, or blameworthy evaluative judgments. The question is whether this consequence is acceptable. Either way, the potential tradeoff between self-governance and moral attentiveness is a source of doubt about recent attempts to ground the normativity of rationality in our concern for self-governance. (shrink)

The term ra ḥ ma/mercy is one of the key terms of the Holy Qur’ ā n and it has many connotations. Two names of God, ra ḥ mān and ra ḥ ῑm and their manifestations are contained in these connotations. So the two names explicitly tackled in our paper. While ra ḥ mān is the proper name indicating the absolute being and the source of all existence, ra ḥ ῑm is much narrower. The exegetical tradition emphasizes that God is (...) ra ḥ mān, i.e. provides existence and sustenance to all creatures in this world while ra ḥ ῑm gives guidance and salvation to those who just deserve it here. Ra ḥ mān and ra ḥ ῑm are used in the Qur’ān asyndetonically, i.e. without the copula wāw ( ﻭ ): in the form of ar-ra ḥ mān ar-ra ḥ ῑm not ar-ra ḥ mān va ’r- ra ḥ ῑm, indicating that these two names signify One (God) and that they appear in His actions simultaneously and instantaneously, not consecutively. Key Terms: Ra ḥ ma/mercy; rule of mercy; principle of hope; divine assistance; heaven and hell. (shrink)

Independent on Sunday October 2nd One of the country's lead­ing philosophical counsellers, and chairman of the Society for Philosophy in Practice (SPP), Tim LeBon, said it typically took around six 50 ­minute sessions for a client to move from confusion to resolution. Mr LeBon, who has 'published a book on the subject, Wise Therapy, said philoso­phy was perfectly suited to this type of therapy, dealing as it does with timeless human issues such as love, purpose, happiness and emo­tional challenges. `Wise (...) Therapy, is part of a series aimed at promoting an integrative attitude as its ethos. Among all the many perspectives of psychotherapists and counselors, philosophy needs to take its place and needs to find its voice. Tim LeBon has provided an effective means by which counselors can bring philosophy into their work with clients' - APPA journal `Tim Le Bon's Wise Therapy is a comprehensible and well argued book dealing with the practical therapeutic applications of philosophical research that may well be of interest to philosophers but -- as the author himself intends -- will be of most obvious benefit to therapists and counselors, both by informing their dialogue with clients in new ways and by helping them become more informed about ways to resolve the ethical dilemmas arising within the context of their own work' - Metapsychology `A fascinating workshop for therapists and clients, backed up a thorough degree if philosophical acuity' - Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis `I strongly recommend the book for philosophers as well as practitioners, teachers, students and supervisors in counselling and psychotherapy' - Self and Society `Provides some additional and valuable arrows for the therapist's quiver' - Irvin Yalom, author of Love's Executioner `Like Aristotle, Tim LeBon examines what is said and extracts what is best from it…. There are many fascinating exercises designed to bring out and enlighten the client's values, conception of the good life, well-being, happiness, pleasure, and the proper place of reason in life…. Wise Therapy is well written and engaging. The case histories are illuminating examples of therapeutic techniques at work, the thought experiments are well designed, and the philosophical position adapted from the internal debates of the philosophers is level headed…. I recommend it highly to philosophers with an interest in counselling, and psychological counsellors with an interest in philosophy' - Jeff Mason, The Philosophers' Magazine `Tim LeBon has… authored a text which should become a staple on the philosophical counsellor's bookshelf…. Wise Therapy is a concise, well-written book…. His ability to relate philosophical concepts to counselling concerns is admirable and attests to the skill and knowledge he possesses as a working counsellor. But, by far the most important part of Tim LeBon's book to PC is the last chapter, "The Counsellor's Philosophical Toolbox"' - Craig Munns in The Examined Life ` Tim LeBon has done a good job of offering practical approaches to some of the most important and vexing issues that arise in counselling…. Tim LeBon's book contains helpful suggestions, practical information, and useful examples, and would make a good addition to the library of any counsellors willing to allow philosophy to turn mere client sessions into wise therapy' - Peter Raabe, Practical Philosophy Wise Therapy is an original and practical guide to how philosophy can benefit counselling and psychotherapy. Tim LeBon argues that therapy, informed by philosophy, can help clients make better decision and achieve emotional wisdom. He uses philosophical approaches to explore issues of right and wrong, the emotions and reasons, well-being and the meaning of life, and develops a 'counsellor's toolbox' of techniques that can help practitioners apply the wisdom of philosophy to good therapeutic practice. For counsellors who may find philosophical approaches to therapy useful, this work addresses key philosophical topics - the emotions, free will, the meaning of life and ethics. It is jargon-free where possible and assumes no previous philosophical training. From The Independent, 16th November 2004 Plato is my agony aunt It was the end of a love affair that broke her heart. Could the wisdom of the great philosophers show her how to be happy again? Claire Smith tries a novel form of therapy "The unexamined life is not worth living," Socrates said. Nor is the life you're left with after your boyfriend has left you for another woman - at least, that's how it felt in October last year when mine broke rank and went off with an art student from Cleveland, Ohio. We were over there for the opening of his new art exhibition. He'd flown over four days before me and had met her at a party. Supposedly, they "connected". The five months that followed were a roller-coaster of confusion, vitriol and despair. I knew there'd been problems in our relationship. We saw the world very differently; he delighted in the charm of the ordinary, I wanted maximum divinity. He walked; I galloped. He drank tea; I loathed the stuff. But, along the banks of the Thames, we'd made a promise to always stick together. Our love was something unique: "transcendental", I called it. And besides, we recycled. Surely a commitment to save the world would save our relationship? Alas, no. So there I was, a woman scorned. Hell truly hath no greater fury. And what made it worse was that I still believed in our transcendental love. If I wanted to change the way I was feeling, I needed to alter the way I was thinking. But how? A few bottles of wine and a sharp blow to the head might have done the trick. Fortunately, there's an older, more trusted way of turning your head on its head that counsellors are starting to use: philosophy. The idea of employing Plato as an agony aunt was begun in 1981 by the German philosopher Gerd Achenbach. Although philosophy spends a lot of its time asking real-life questions that affect real-life people - What is happiness? And is it always wrong to lie? - most of the debate goes on in ivory towers. What Achenbach and subsequent philosophers including Tim LeBon, the chairman of the UK's Society for Philosophy in Practice, wanted to do was "give practical application" to this gigantic library of great thoughts. So how does it work? Like most types of therapy, you sign up for a set of sessions. "Two would give you a new perspective on one issue; six would help you to make a major life-decision, like a career change; with 12 you can start to rethink your entire life philosophy," explains LeBon. Each session lasts 50 minutes and costs £50 - and, no, you don't have to have any previous knowledge of philosophy. "If you think of Friends, it would suit Ross and Chandler more than Joey," LeBon says. "It's for anyone who wants to make their emotions more intelligent. Or for those who have tried other kinds of therapy, and want something more cerebral." The first session begins with the patient venting off about whatever's troubling them. The rant over, the counsellor then picks out some key concepts that are crucial to the problem - in the case of heartbreak, it is love and happiness that come hurtling to the fore - and then gets the patient to define what they mean. So, what is love? What is happiness? To kick-start the patient's thinking, LeBon describes what a great philosopher had to say about it. In my case, he tells me what Plato wrote about love in his Symposium: that to stop man fighting the gods, Zeus decided to cut each human in two, so they would lose their strength. "This, then, is the source of our desire to love each other," Plato said. "Each of us is a 'matching half' of a human whole, because each was sliced like a flatfish, two out of one, and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him." This method of probing what we might think are "obvious" ideas, such as love and happiness, was devised by Socrates in the squares of Athens. "The only I thing I know is that I know nothing at all," he boasted. What Socrates showed was that although many of the thinkers of his time thought they knew what justice, happiness and goodness meant, their understanding was tied in to their personal agenda and world view, and, what's more, when pushed, their ideas often contradicted themselves. A bit like me on love. Whereas part of my understanding of love was something that gave life meaning, made it worth living and bound us together, I also believed that true love was "transcendental": that it was out of this world, and it didn't matter if the two people who loved each other couldn't get along in the day-to-day. Love was bigger than the mundane. But when it came to the next stage of the therapy, critical thinking - "to check out whether your assumptions stand up to examination" - I walked head first into a contradiction. If I think love's purpose is to make life worth living, but then say it's irrelevant to daily life, surely my two ideas of love are not compatible? As the cogs in my brain start to creak into motion, I feel myself taking a step back from my predicament: thinking about how I've been thinking. This idea I had of transcendental love might have started off as a romantic dream. But when the relationship stopped working, and I found myself feeling trapped and frustrated, I used it to justify the mechanics of a relationship that just didn't work in the daily grind. I used it to lie to myself. In the final stage, LeBon gets me to start thinking about how to go forward. "You can't change what has happened," he says. "You can't change that he's left you, or how you behaved in the relationship. So, as the Stoics did, let's work on controlling the controllables: the things that you can change." To work out what can be changed, he gets me to try out a thought experiment, a method often used in philosophy to imagine other worlds where people can have different codes of behaviour. Thought experiments shatter your preconceived ideas of how the world should be and let your imagination run wild to how the world could be. "I find Viktor Frankl very useful here, the Austrian psychiatrist and concentration-camp survivor who actually believed that everything in life happens for a purpose," LeBon says. "Suppose this break-up did happen for a reason that will work to your benefit," he suggests. "What might that be? The answer might be that you can now focus on something important that was denied in the relationship. Or - the Hollywood version - so you'll meet someone who is really right for you." Temporarily freed of any sense of responsibility for the relationship that was, and its sorry demise, the list came fast. I could now travel more; he didn't like me travelling on my own, but too often he didn't want to go anywhere, preferring to stay in his studio and make art. I'd love to meet someone with a similar sense of adventure to mine. For the first time in two years, I was being honest with myself about what I really wanted - listening to those voices that we all have inside our heads, and too often try to muzzle. So did philosophy save me? Well, I'm now dating a travel writer I have to run to keep up with. I still haven't got over the fact that my replacement came from Cleveland, Ohio. But I guess I never will. Tim LeBon can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] A FEW WORDS FROM THE WISE Compiled by Ed Caesar · "At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet" - Plato · "There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness" - Friedrich Nietzsche · "That man shall live as his own master and in happiness who can say each day 'I have lived'" - Horace · "The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue... Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy" - Aristotle · "There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than friendship" - Thomas Aquinas · "Whatever you do... love those who love you" - Voltaire · "Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination" - Immanuel Kant · "Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious. The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy" - Jiddu Krishnamurti · "Love is an ideal thing. Marriage is a real thing" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I shrink, therefore I am Therapy has many answers, but some questions require the help of a philosopher, says Clint Witchalls Sunday November 21, 2004 The Observer Danny had worked in the City of London for 10 years. As a research analyst, stockbroker and fund manager, he'd made a lot of valuable contacts, earnt a lot of cash, and learnt some important business skills. However, as he approached his mid-thirties, he no longer felt good about himself or what he did for a living, and he found his colleagues cold and unfriendly. A chronic illness made him realise his mortality, and he began to reassess his priorities. Danny had been struggling with his career conundrum for nearly five years when he met David Arnaud, a philosophical counsellor. After a few soul-searching sessions, Danny arrived at a decision. Today, he teaches economics to sixth-formers, and he loves it. 'It's a much better lifestyle,' he says. Many people are turning to philosophical counsellors to get answers to questions such as: 'How do I make sense of myself?' 'What is important to me?' 'Where am I going?' These are perhaps not the sort of questions that require psychiatric intervention, but Arnaud, who recently completed the first empirical study of philosophical counselling in the UK, has found that within just five sessions the majority of clients, with important decisions to make, tend to move from a state of concern and confusion to a resolution. Modern philosophical counselling can be traced back to 1981, when the philosopher Gerd Achenbach opened the first practice near Cologne. Achenbach referred to the new discipline as 'therapy for the sane.' Today, there are hundreds of philosophical counsellors around the world, with the movement particularly strong in the US, Britain and the Netherlands. 'The dilemmas people face aren't always primarily psychological,' says Alex Howard, a philosophical counsellor from Newcastle. 'If people face problems that are social or economic, it doesn't make sense to define their problems in purely psychological terms.' Tim LeBon, a founder member of the Society for Philosophy in Practice (SPP) and author of Wise Therapy, adds: 'We are faced with far more life choices than our grandparents, yet have far fewer resources to deal with them. Our grandparents may have gone to a priest or to other family members for advice; most people don't trust these solutions any more and so want to make their own well-informed, well thought-out choices. Philosophical counselling can help these people - people in mid-life crises who are wondering how to make the most of the rest of their life. People who want to take stock of their values.' Where stressed executives might once have been prescribed a course of tranquillisers or antidepressants, they can now get a dose of Bertrand Russell instead: 'Success is too dearly purchased if all the other ingredients have been sacrificed to obtain it.' While some philosophical counsellors do recommend books for their clients to read, most sessions are about helping the client identify faulty thoughts. For example, a briefing in Aristotelian logic might show a client why their beliefs are erroneous. The person might infer that they're a screw-up because they've screwed up. The counsellor could point out that they're making an error called 'fallacy of composition' - that is, what's true of the part isn't necessarily true of the whole. In philosophical counselling, problems aren't pathologised as they are by the psychiatric profession, and the dialogue between client and counsellor is more like a meeting of equals, compared to many therapies where the client is treated like a patient and seen as someone who is, in some way, inadequate. 'Anybody can benefit from philosophical counselling,' says Howard. 'But it does require someone who is willing to take stock.' Lou Marinoff, author of international bestseller Plato Not Prozac! has done much to promote philosophical counselling. 'Some people who have stabilised their neurochemistry and validated their emotions now wish to examine or re-examine the criteria of their beliefs, the principles of their conduct, or the meaning of their lives,' he says. 'With whom shall they do this? Psychologists and psychiatrists can shed light on such issues - as can rabbis, priests, imams and gurus. Philosophers are now rejoining the ranks of helpers.' LeBon believes certain therapies (such as cognitive behavioural therapy) don't go far enough in helping their clients. 'For instance, if you are anxious about your relationship, a cognitive therapist would try to dispute your catastrophising and jump to conclusions to make you feel less anxious,' says LeBon. 'A philosophical counsellor would do this, but would also look for existential meaning in your anxiety - perhaps you really don't want to be in the relationship and that is what your anxiety is telling you.' LeBon also gives short shrift to psychoanalysts. 'There's very little evidence for the Freudian unconscious, and it's time to move on to more intellectually satisfying and helpful therapies,' he says. However, Alain de Botton, the man who popularised philosophy as self-help, isn't ready to bury psychologists and their ilk just yet. 'The truth is that psychoanalysis grew out of philosophy - it's not some completely new idea, and in fact, done properly, psychoanalysis is philosophical anyway. It may even be dangerous to the mental health of some people to suggest a philosopher rather than a properly trained analyst. The knowledge of analysts when it comes to many emotional problems is now much greater than that of most philosophers.' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004. (shrink)

Quid est veritas? -- What is science? how we understand the physical world -- What a piece of work is man: the rise of the social sciences -- Educational science and pseudo science -- Multiple intelligences: if everyone's smart, no one is -- My NLP and brain gym hell -- Group work: failing better, together -- I'm with stupid: emotional intelligence -- Buck Rogers and the 21st century curriculum -- Techno, techno, techno, techno: digital natives in flipped classrooms -- The (...) holy trinity of the three-part lesson -- There are no such things as learning styles -- Game over: the gamification of education -- Learning to learn to learn to learn -- The hard smell: smell/ dance/ box/sing yourself smarter/ happier/ healthier -- Thinking hats on! -- School uniform armageddon -- What everyone in education should do next. (shrink)

Daoist Identity is an exploration of the various means by which Daoists over the centuries have created an identity for themselves. Using modern sociological studies of identity formation as its foundation, it brings together a representative sample of in-depth analyses by eminent American and Japanese scholars in the field. The discussion begins with critical examinations of the ways identity was found among the early movements of the Way of Great Peace and the Celestial Masters. The role of sacred texts and (...) literary culture in Daoist identity formation is discussed. The volume then focuses on lineage formation and the increasing role of popular religious practices, such as spirit-writing, in modern Daoism since the Song dynasty. Finally it discusses the Daoist adaptation and reinterpretation of Buddhist rites, such as the feeding of souls in hell and the use of ritual gestures, and the changes made in contemporary Daoism in relation to traditional rites and popular practices. Contributors: Asano Haruji, Suzanne Cahill, M. Csikszentmihalyi, Edward L. Davis, Terry F. Kleeman, Livia Kohn, Mabuchi Masaya, Maruyama Hiroshi, Mitamura Keiko, Mori Yuria, Peter Nickerson, Charles D. Orzech, Harold D. Roth, Shiga Ichiko, Tsuchiya Masaaki. (shrink)

Study of the some aspects of the imaginary Jesuit and of the images that built on California. The "ignacianos" elaborated a model based on the concentric fields' Dante, where God appeared in the bright Heaven and a cruel demon in the dark Hell, such as can be still perceived in the paintings of the Californian churches and the descriptions offered by Jesuits. Here we study the proposals of the parents Juan Mª Salvatierra, Segismundo Taraval, Michael Vanegas, Andrés Burriel, Juan Jacobo (...) Baegert, Miguel del Barco, Francisco Javier Alegre Francisco Javier Clavijero, Francisco Ma Píccolo, and Francisco Javier Carranza. It is concluded with a paragraph of Echevarría, which contends that the idea of the Jesuits was "that people lives mostly in the border, near the edge between the earthly and the celestial". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When Doctors Get It WrongKonrad BlairThe BeginningIt was a gloomy winter day as I sat in the back of the car while my father and mother drove me to another appointment in Pittsburgh. It was and wasn’t like so many car trips of my childhood for so many doctors’ appointments. The same deadening silence filled [End Page 89] the car as we drew closer to our destination. My parents (...) never discussed the appointments with me and I just learned to never ask. This appointment was different though; it came about as a result of request by a psychology professor who was conducting a follow–up study on individuals treated by the team of endocrinologists I saw as a child.The professor had reached out to me through my parents, since that was the only contact information available. It had been more than ten years since I had seen any of the doctors who treated me as a child. I was living in another state when I received the call from my mother informing me of the request for my participation in the study. I was really quite shocked; in all the years I was treated in early childhood and adolescence, no one had ever asked me how I felt about the treatment I received. I knew I had a medical condition, but no one ever explained to me why I needed so many appointments, and why I had to take medicine three times a day. No one told me why, when I was two or three years old, I had surgery that left me with memories of gauze and a catheter between my legs, or why medical residents still wanted to examine me, or why I had to be humiliated and ashamed, again and again. I was in my early 30’s by this time. Surely if my condition was so important that someone wanted to talk to me now, so many years later, the conversation would have already happened?!My parents dropped me off at the scheduled location for the interview. The professor introduced himself and his colleague. I didn’t recognize them, which meant they weren’t the doctors who had treated me. I remember feeling somewhat relieved, as I never liked the doctors who treated me as a child. I remembered my last appointment there, and feeling that I was escaping from captivity, that I was free to go on with my life.I wasn’t sure what to expect from this meeting. The professor told me that to date no one had completed any follow–up on the pediatric patients treated by the hospital’s endocrinology team to see how they were faring in life. He said he thought that was quite odd, so had decided to take on the project himself. He began by asking, “so, D_____, [I went by another name then] how are you doing at this point in your life?”I felt a sudden surge of rage, and, to my own surprise, I found myself responding angrily, “Why the hell do you care? It’s been over ten years and nobody, I mean nobody gives a rat’s ass as to how I’m doing and coping with the ramifications of the treatment I received from Dr. X.” Looking back, more than ten years after this meeting, I can see that I had been angry for a long time. I had been compliant and knew to play my role as a good girl. I had a good job, and I was married, but I knew I was far from happy.And so with that first question began what would be the long painful journey to discovering what had been hidden from me for over half my life, the source of my confusion and unparalleled frustration. What I had experienced throughout my childhood would permeate every aspect of my being and perception of myself for years to come. Every day I had to confront the effects of that experience just to live another day.The MiddleI was in shock and disbelief as I read and reread the letter my attorney presented to me from the very group of... (shrink)

Judgment aggregation theory, which concerns the translation of individual judgments on logical propositions into consistent group judgments, has shown that group consistency generally cannot be guaranteed if each proposition is treated independently from the others. Developing the right method of abandoning independence is thus a high-priority goal. However, little work has been done in this area outside of a few simple approaches. To fill the gap, we compare four methods based on distance metrics between judgment sets. The methods generalize the (...) premise-based and sequential priority approaches to judgment aggregation, as well as distance-based preference aggregation. They each guarantee group consistency and implement a range of distinct functions with different properties, broadening the available tools for social choice. A central result is that only one of these methods (not previously considered in the literature) satisfies three attractive properties for all reasonable metrics. (shrink)

On Humour and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible. Edited by Y. T. Radday and A. Brenner.The Trouble With Kings: The Composition of rhe Book of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History. By Steven L. McKenzie.Sacred Space: An Approach to the Zheology of the Epistle to the Hebrews. By Marie E. Isaacs.Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra. By Michael Edward StonePaul the Convert: iShe Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee. By Alan F. Segal.Creative Biblical Exegesis: Christian (...) and Jewish Hermeneutics through the Centuries. Edited by Benjamin Uffenheimer and Henning Graf Reventlow.The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Escharology. By Brian E. Daley.The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church. By Alexandre Faivre, translated by David Smith.Pastoral Life and Practice in the Early Church. By Carl A. Volz.The Making of the Creeds. By Frances Young.La correzione fratenia in s. Agosrino. By Agostino Clerici.Beaup and Revelation in the Thought of St Augustine. By Carol Harrison.Grace, Politics and Desire. Edited by Hugo Meynell.Boerhius and Aquinas. By Ralph McInerny.The Weight of Glory. A Vision and Practice for Christian Faith: The Future of Liberal Theology. Edited by D. W. Hardy and P. H. Sedgwick.Atonenrent and Incarnation. By Vernon White.Tragic Method and Tragic Theology: Evil in Contemporary Drama and Religious Thought. By L. D. Bouchard.Parmenides of Elea, Fragments: A Text and Translation, with an Introduction. By David Gallop.Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy. By Nicholas Denyer.Weakness of the Will. By Justin Gosling.Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy. Vol. I, edited by Monica Asztalos, John E. Murdoch and Ilkka Niiniluoto.Episcopal Power and Norenrine Sociev. 1000–1320. By George W. Dameron.Matins, Lauds and Vespers for St David's Day. By Owain Tudor Edwards.More's ‘Utopia’. By Dominic Baker‐Smith.Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisitionfrom the Basque Lands to Sicily. By William Monter.Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834, By Stephen Haliczer.The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe. By Piero Camporesi, translated by Lucinda Byatt.Lucrecia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth‐Centun Spain. By Richard L. Kagan.Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth‐Century Spain: The Alumbrados. By Alastair Hamilton.Japan's Encounter with Christianiry: The Catholic Mission in Pre‐Modern Japan. By Neil S. Fujita.Galileo, Bellannine and the Bible. By Richard J.Augustine Baker's Inner Light: A Study in English Recusant Spirituality. By James Gaffney.The Prorestarit Evaqelical Awakening. By W. R. Ward.The Study of Anglicanism. Edited by Stephen Sykes and John Booty.The Anglican Tradition: A Handbook of Sources. Edited by G. R. Evans and J. Robert Wright.The Restoration Church of England, 1646‐1689. By John Spurr.Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. By Jon Butler.A Woman Styled Bold: The Life of Cornelia Connelly, 1809–1879. By Radegunde Flaxman.Cane Ridge: America's Pentecost. By Paul K. Conkin.Revivalism and Social Change: Christianio, Nation Building and the Market in the Nineteenth‐Century United States. By George M. Thomas.Church and State: The English Experience. By Adrian Hastings.Evelyn Underhill: Artist of the Infinite Life. By Dana Greene.Northern Ireland: Fairh and Faction. By Maurice Irvine.The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics, arid Religion in Ireland. By John Fulton.Shattered Vows: Exodus from the Priesthood. By David Rice.Making Saints: Inside the Vatican: Who Become Saints, Who Do Not, and Why. By Kenneth L. Woodward.Ecclesiae Memoria: Miscellanea in onorr del R. P. Josef Metzler, O. M. I. Edited by Willi Henkel. (shrink)

In this second issue of volume one, a welcome feature are those articles that bring to our readers, new historical information about women philosophers, new analyses of important positions supported by and questions addressed by select women philosophers, as well as articles that compare and contrast the views of several women philosophers on particular topics. This issue reflects on the context of women’s theoretical contributions, with articles that address the question of women’s agency and the historical account through which women (...) were acknowledged (or not) as originators of or contributors to important theoretical developments within the mentioned disciplines. In recent decades an overwhelming amount of philosophical works by women has been made available by historians of philosophy. This issue reflects those strides towards recovering philosophical writings by women. Issue 2 of this volume is organized chronologically and starts with a paper from Jonathan Head: “Anne Conway on Heaven and Hell”. Conway’s The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690) offers representations of heaven and hell, revising our conventional image of hell. Conway presents hell in a way that she believes is more consistent with the postulate of a loving and just God. In part, Conway denies the possibility of eternal torment and emphasizes the benefits that suffering brings to a living being. Conway describes heaven as a realm of “perfect rest” where creatures enjoy unity and harmony with Christ and other heavenly spirits. This state involves an increasing understanding of the world, a continual process of perfection and harmony with other heavenly spirits. The article concludes with a description of Conway’s eschatology in the broader intellectual context of the revival of Origenist theology in its intellectual setting and in the changing framework of eschatological thought in the early Quaker community. Monica M. Mastrantonio discusses in her paper, “Lady Mary Wortley Montagu – a philosopher? The epistolary woman, because women could not be called Philosophers, Scientists, Entrepreneurs” aspects of a different and new transcultural worldview that reflects diversity and knowledge combined with philosophy in a new way. In the past, there were two roles with which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was associated. One was her experience at the Turkish Embassy, where she highlighted cultural diversity. A second role she was associated with was international travel. Mastrantonio argues that Montagu was more than a literary aristocrat who could describe customs and traditions from abroad. Using Montagu’s complete letters, the author brings into discussion the fact that Montagu was also a vaccine entrepreneur and a journalist on political and urban issues, paving the way for discussions on philosophical questions. Many letter writers of the 16th and 17th centuries were already feminists who were politically and artistically active in their time and wrote letters with precision and expertise. The letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu are an important aspect in building a transcultural worldview in which diversity and knowledge combine with philosophy differently than it was before. In this short but engaging article, “American Women in the Transcendental and Pragmatist Movements”, Carol Bensick provides an overview of two important philosophical movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Transcendentalism and the Pragmatism that emerged in part from that movement. In the course of identifying numerous women who contributed to both movements, Bensick examines how some of them were included in the early history of American philosophy, only to be omitted from later histories. Bensick argues that the recent designation of women philosophers as “feminist pragmatists” is historically an inaccurate identification and one that pragmatists did not use to describe themselves. The French philosopher Simone Weil, the Swiss Jeanne Hersch and the Spanish Maria Zambrano each examined how bodily elements function in the rational search for truth. In his paper Oblique Paths to Truth: Myth and Bodily Elements in Simone Weil, Jeanne Hersch and Maria Zambrano, Piergiacomo Severini examines popular “body” myths referred to by these philosophers and analyses the language they use to express that bodily elements precede consciousness and reason. Through these myths/stories we learn that truth cannot be known directly through objects. Instead, the “knowing subject” necessarily elaborates indirect paths to transcendent truth. Severini argues that the effort to reintegrate the human attachment to the marginal world is peculiar to women philosophers in the history of philosophy and thus points to an alternative path to the human search for meaning that differs from the mainstream of Western male philosophy. As a philosopher, Hedwig Conrad-Martius has been intensively engaged throughout her life in researching the question of what reality is and has contrasted her reflections with those of Husserl and others. In her contribution “Conrad-Martius: the ´Real-Reality of the World – in Dialogue with Aristotle, Aquinas and Husserl”, author Irene Breuer deals with Conrad-Martius’ concepts of reality as “real reality”, with being, existence and essence and relates them to the concepts in Aristotle, Aquinas and Husserl. She discusses once again the questions of the hypostasis of being – by which the author claims that this is about the noema itself, and about the emergence of being in particular. The author’s thesis is that although Conrad-Martius rejects transcendental reduction, Conrad-Martius does accept eidetic reduction and the positing of a sphere of primordial and given facts. Driving this sphere back into a transphysical realm, it can provide a ground for Husserl’s sphere of original facts, which itself remains beyond the reach of phenomenological enquiries. Consequently, the author concludes, Conrad-Martius and Husserl meet here in their investigations, and yes, they complement each other, at a point where “the real bursts into reality”. Join us in unveiling this universe of women’s ideas. We are happy to welcome our contributors and readers, as we improve our understanding of the history of philosophical ideas by adding new perspectives and new insights. We enter a new universe of praiseworthy ideas by women theorists, one that will doubtlessly contribute to a world description that is more accurate than a narrative written without these voices. Philosophy starts here. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.3 (2000) 53-71 [Access article in PDF] Ghostly Politics Jann Matlock [Figures]The failure of the Second Republic, as we know well, thanks to Marx, was a matter of ghostly politics.1 Successful revolutions succeeded—claimed Marx—in "waking the dead" in order to glorify the new struggles. Unsuccessful revolutions parodied, as in 1848, the old ones. The Second Republic failed to find again "the spirit of revolution" ("den Geist der Revolution"); (...) instead, it made its "ghost walk about again" ["Der 18te Brumaire" 116].2The "conjurations of the dead" ("Totenbeschwörungen") [115] of the failed Second Republic—and of the Second Empire, which crowned its disastrous experiment—were nowhere more apparent than in the obsession that swept France in 1853 within months after Louis-Napoléon declared himself Emperor in the spectral shadow of his great-uncle, as contemporary Louis Figuier described:Suddenly—it was near the last days of April 1853—Paris woke up prey to the [Table-]turning epidemic, and the newspapers, which finally had to break the silence, informed us that [the epidemic] had simultaneously burst forth in Strasbourg, in Marseille, in Bordeaux, in Toulouse, and in all our other great population centers. For the public, it was, at first, only a simple amusement to which people everywhere surrendered themselves amidst great bursts of laughter. Pedestal tables [guéridons], [other kinds of] tables, hats, plates and washbasins—everything that was within reach—were called into service. Some people succeeded. Others—and these were the greater number—failed at the experiment; they accused the successful of deception [supercherie], and the successful, in their turn, accused the unsuccessful of failing to believe. "They turn; they donít turn": that summed up all the debates on this subject, and these were the only two terms through which, among the vulgar, the question of the tables was thrashed about. In our country, always quite frivolous about serious matters, though sometimes extreme in its credulousness and sometimes absurd in its skepticism, the tables were for the larger share of people only an amusement, only a way to kill time in society. Quarrels were frequent [End Page 53] on this subject. People denied. People confirmed. People laughed—when they were not losing their tempers.Nevertheless, the phenomenon soon appeared to make progress, and this was quite another story. Not only did the tables turn, but they spoke and wrote; they rose up and held themselves in the air without any strings—or at least without any visible ones. The tables gave consultations, discovered secrets buried in the most profound mystery, put the world of the living in communication with the world of the dead, and finally, behaved in such a way to let people believe they were haunted by spirits [hantées par des esprits]. [294-95] The Baron Du Potet, editor of the Journal du magnétisme, remarked in the summer of 1853 that "The tables are making one hell of a noise! —Enter into the porter's lodge, you'll see him make his table turn; go to the home of a judge, of a lawyer, of an archbishop even, and their tables are turning—after dinner, of course. It seems that they are even interrogating tables in palaces" [643]. Alexandre Erdan, author of an 1855 book on "the religious excentricities" of contemporary France, denounced the table turning as "a universal monomania" and declared it the "the characteristic event" of the year 1853, "that memorable period of universal mental estrangement" [71]. Daumier honored the trend in May and June 1853 with a series of a dozen caricatures called La Fluidomanie.3 Caricaturist Cham continued to ridicule its believers well into the year 1853 [Fig. 1].4 Louis Huart, author of a series of satirical articles in the opposition newspaper Le Charivari recounted a debate between two scholars on the subject: "Sir, are you for tables turning or for tables not turning," asked the first. The second replied, "It's all the same to me so long as the table is well served and it doesn't turn while I'm eating." Huart's conclusion, not dissimilar to that of most... (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we made. (...) It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Day in the Life of a Spanish InterpreterGianna O'LearyThe good thing about Mondays is they almost guarantee I'll be able to sleep at least until 8 am. If I have a double shift, my supervisor will try to "un-zombie me" for the night as much as possible.I get out of my car and head to the three small offices that are the interpreter's dominion. It takes me about (...) ten minutes because the hospital is huge, and our offices are located on the other side of the building. One office is my supervisor's, the other is the sign language supervisor's, and the third is for all of us Spanish interpreters working today.My first hour is all about phones. I sit at the desk and open EPIC, the hospital software where doctors, nurses, therapists, and yes, interpreters, work with the rest of the staff. I listen to the first voicemail; it's nothing unusual. It's from a mom who needs a follow-up appointment with Neurology. I call Mom back (at Children's, all our clients' parents are "Mom" and "Dad," they seem to like it, and I never heard a complaint about it). Her daughter has a seizure disorder, and she's due for a followup. They need to do it because the girl is growing, and she is outgrowing her Keppra medication; the doctor will probably increase the dose. They will also do an EEG to make sure her seizure activity is under control.I continue picking up the phone, listening to messages, calling people back, and documenting the messages that were not answered. Other interpreters will take them later and try to call them again. In the meantime, when nobody answers, I translate a few of the forms for the Autism clinic. Their patients are usually two to three years old, and moms are usually worried they have not talked yet. Usually, when asked what they want for their child, their answer is for them to talk and act like normal children. If you work at a children's hospital, it's a very common goal.My first appointment of the day is with the ENT (ears, nose, and throat) clinic. I go to the clinic's virtual space and see the patient has not arrived. Five minutes later, there is no sign of him, so I call them. Mom forgot about the appointment, and she is very apologetic. We reschedule it and I let ENT know. Then, I send a message to the hospital interpreter to ask if they need help. "Yes, please!" Someone just asked them to go help with rounds. Can I go?"Sure! Send me the name and number of the room."I am glad to have this little app on my phone, and that we text more than anything when we need help. It helps me keep everything on track. I have an anxiety disorder so severe that when I get anxious (and work always makes me anxious), my brain imitates symptoms of ADHD. I do not have ADHD per se, but if I think I am making a mistake, that I am not learning fast enough, or, that lives could be in danger (like, for example, in a hospital), my thoughts race, and it is very hard for me to focus on anything. For functionality purposes, I suffer from ADHD about 70% of the time I'm at work.This little app can be my personal hell. If I am interpreting for a doctor and the pager goes off, my mind will not rest. My anxiety takes over. What if it's urgent? What if someone—not only someone—but a child, is dying? If I haven't checked my messages and the pager is going off, my mind is, too. It has been almost two years since I started this job, and so far, nobody has died during my service, so my brain understands it may be ok to relax a little. In the end, anxiety is anxiety, and it will get you. It will find something to worry about. Anxiety shines with creativity and thrives in a high-paced... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Down the Medical Rabbit HoleAnonymous ThreeEditors’ Note: This woman’s child was treated for an astrocytoma at 8–years–old. The surgery included tumor resection and placement of a ventricular peritoneal shunt, which manages the flow, drainage and pressure of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF ) throughout the brain and spinal column.Am I aliveWhat’s this pain I feelAching insideMaking me kneelDown to the groundSubmissiveLike I’ve been sentTo Hell–AnonymousI am making a time capsule (...) of words. If I don’t write these words now, how will I remember? It is for her. She will need these words to know who she is.They took her at the lowest point, when she was barfing and admitting she needed to be in the emergency room (ER). And they stripped her of the ability to use her words to defend herself.“There’s really no reason for you to be here. The x–ray of your shunt tubing looks fine. The CT of your head looks fine. You should think about going home.” I start to speak, but she is speaking so I wait to hear what she will say.“I was worried since my side hurts so bad that maybe it was my appendix and I didn’t want it to burst and then have the infection go up my shunt, I know someone that that happened to, and then my head was exploding and I threw–up.”“That’s when we have to come in to the ER “ I say. “We’ve done this before. We wait until the last possible moment before coming. You’ve seen us here for almost 12 hours now, but we waited more than 24 hours before coming and she was just like this the whole time.”“One of the only things we can see that might be wrong is that we think she might be constipated.”“I try to stay on top of it, ”My 20-year-old says. “I’ve been taking more pain killers lately because my head is always killing me and I push myself to make it to class. But I take stuff to make it easier for me so I don’t get constipated. Last Wednesday during class my head was exploding and I had to vomit. I don’t think my shunt is broken. But...”I interrupt, which is my job, because they are not hearing her, still she gives me hated looks, “She spends two days in bed laying basically flat so she can spend one day or even a few hours vertical the next day. This has been progressing for a while. Last May she had surgery for a CSF leak in her spine. But the headaches are different this time.”“We really think you should consider going home, the tests we’ve done look good.”This is the part that always happens, the part where I say you go into the twilight zone or down Alice’s rabbit hole. In May I had to demand that she have the right to sit up, pain free in the hospital for two hours before leaving. And that is how they admitted her, Mother wants her to sit upright.Here we are again 15 days before Christmas back in the ER—they, meaning the white coats, disbelieving us.She broke then, like a piece of a falling statue, an arm or a leg or part of a shoulder busting off. “I can’t go on like this, my head is exploding and I push myself so hard just to walk across campus [End Page 18] and when I’m sitting in class I know I shouldn’t be there, it’s just so hard. I had a surgery in April last year to replace my shunt and I never really bounced back, and then they found the cyst in my back and the leak and after that surgery I just couldn’t get any energy and my head still hurt.”They don’t know that she never tells anyone any of this.“I know you don’t see anything on her scans,” I say. They always look fine... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Arrows of Apollo BROOKE CLARK To Aachchi If thou beest he; But O how fallen, how changed From him who in the happy realms of light Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine Myriads though bright— —Milton, Paradise Lost i. Today, slumped at my desk, I glimpsed the sun. I wasn’t certain how long I had sat facing my own face’s dim reflection in my computer screen—chin ringed with (...) fat, the sharp-lined contours of my youth long gone, my cheekbones hidden, my bright gaze gone flat— and then—there—on the left side of my face a glow my slightest movement would erase. How that stippling brought me back to life: I felt like I was walking once again through woods where sunlight touched the trees in leaf. I felt warmth prickle up beneath my skin as though the flesh responded to the brief caress of light which brought hope rushing in, as though Apollo had reached down and laid his brilliant fingertips on what he’d made. A sharp, metallic rattle cut the air; Helen had stood up to close the blinds— Helen, too devoid of soul to care that some of us might greet the sun as friends. Her only comment was, “Jeez, what a glare!” arion 27.2 fall 2019 Sweet moments often come to such harsh ends: some people are too coarse for fragile joys, and spoil light with darkness, peace with noise. Helen was such a woman: lumpy, heavy, seemingly formed exclusively of fat, barely mobile yet constantly sweaty, like some malevolent Buddha, she sat and meditated acts of petty cruelty; each time she closed the blinds I heard, “Take that!” in their harsh snap, and felt as if she knew I longed for light, so wouldn’t let it through. Another bitter, desk-bound endomorph (although she would have seemed an Aphrodite to those who carved the Venus of Willendorf), and fated by her own obesity to be struck down and swiftly carried off by a sudden, massive coronary, in line at some all-you-can-eat buffet— she wasn’t worth my notice anyway, although she kept impinging on my sight, but then I caught the slight trace of a smirk when I turned back towards the vanished light (instead of going quietly back to work) and said, “The blinds were fine—it’s not too bright for me—without a window, it feels dark.” Helen snorted: “No thanks—too hot out there. I’m roastin’ like a turkey over here.” Who would not hate the court from which there lies no avenue or hope for an appeal? Her desk was on the coveted window side while mine sat boxed against an inside wall, and that gave Helen power over blinds and sunlight—that was office protocol. 64 the arrows of apollo I longed to feel Apollo’s fingertips but this slug-goddess ruled in grim eclipse. I felt like Milton’s Satan when he fell, plumbing so great a depth from such a height and measuring the lowest pits of Hell, prostrate, near dead—I sat, deprived of light, walled in by my grey-sided cubicle, and sank beneath my own despair’s dead weight. But why should Helen have the power to plunge me into darkness? I deserved revenge— revenge for all the time I’d wasted here, revenge for every hope that slowly died, revenge for every minute of every year, revenge for every bold attempt untried, revenge for every lonely, bitter tear I’d swallowed, choked back, or held in, uncried. Helen became, in that one poisoned moment, the symbol and the source of all my torment. Brooke Clark 65 ii. Boredom was my soul mate; the days slid by unused and empty; I sat and watched them go, hardly recalling that once even I had clung to aspirations—but it was so uncomfortably easy to let them die. I’d turned into a man I didn’t know: in youth, I’d never compromise or settle— so it seemed now—but memory gilds the nettle. Instead of working, I listened to the flies that mobbed the windows, struggling to get out; freedom stretched away... (shrink)

Quantum mechanical measurements on a physical system are represented by observables - Hermitian operators on the state space of the observed system. It is an important question whether all observables may be realized, in principle, as measurements on a physical system. Dirac’s influential text ( [1], page 37) makes the following assertion on the question: The question now presents itself – Can every observable be measured? The answer theoretically is yes. In practice it may be very awkward, or perhaps even (...) beyond the ingenuity of the experimenter, to devise an apparatus which could measure some particular observable, but the theory always allows one to imagine that the measurement can be made. This Letter re-examines the question of whether it is possible, even in principle, to measure every quantum mechanical observable. Unexpectedly, ideas from com-. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:240 Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Mary Anna Evans Mary Anna Evans Personal Continuum The scent of gasoline is neither attractive nor repulsive. It falls somewhere on the continuum between. It is medicinal, but without the acrid bitterness of medicine. It draws children like a drug, but only when their parents aren’t hovering to warn of danger. Adults know about fire and poisoning and long-range carcinogenic (...) doom. Children only know that the odor around gas pumps smells naughty and fun, until their lips open and the flavor of petroleum turns their stomachs. Why do some things smell so much better than they taste? Gasoline, unlike honey, draws humans but not flies. Sarah was not thinking of fire, poisoning, or doom when she fitted the long metal nozzle into the mouth of her car’s fuel tank. She was trying not to think at all, though the customary thoughts slipped in. None of them were about gasoline. The pump’s air pollution control system was working well but not perfectly, so it took a moment for the odor to reach her nose. Her body roused and snarled at her. The baby. What are you thinking? If you breathe those fumes, what will they do to the baby? A moment passed while her body checked itself, remembering what it already knew. There was no baby. Where is the baby? Mary Anna Evans 241 The frantic voice didn’t echo between her ears. It had nothing to do with her brain at all. It was more than thought. It came from a place deeper than thought, and it wasn’t hers. Her body said things she didn’t want to say, and it needed things she didn’t need. Her body wanted things that were not good for her. Again, Where is the baby? And then, the darker question. What did you do? “Nothing,” she said aloud, since there was no one to hear. I didn’t do anything but bleed. I’m still bleeding. She resisted the instinct to clap her hands over her ears to shut out the voice that couldn’t be shut out. Her defiant hold on the nozzle kept her upright. She listened to the rhythmic throb of the pump. Refusing to turn her face from the gasoline’s stench, she opened her mouth and let the fumes seep in. * * * “Hello, sweetheart,” Frederick said as he came in the door. His peck on the cheek didn’t linger, so Sarah knew there would be no more expressions of affection that day. He had read in a self-help book that it was important for couples to use terms of endearment as a form of bonding. Physical displays of affection were important, too, or so said the self-affirmed relationship expert who wrote the book. In public, displays of affection affirmed the pair bond. In private, even a quick smooch forced men and women to secrete an attachment chemical called oxy-whatever. Oh, hell. She was a chemist. She knew what oxytocin was. She was just mystified by the notion of reading a book to find out how to get some. He turned away and went into the kitchen to fetch the marinating chicken. He always grilled when it was his night to cook. She had come to wonder whether modern men were drawn to cook with fire by an ageold hunter instinct, or whether they were attracted to an activity that put a well-insulated exterior wall between them and the women who remained inside to toss the salads. All across America, every warm summer night, lonely women toss salads and hope for romance. His head poked in the back door. “I bought slivered almonds and croutons.” 242 Mary Anna Evans Her “Thanks for remembering, sweetheart,” bounced off the closing door. Shit. She could have spared herself that soulless term of endearment. Leaving the lettuce in the refrigerator, she thrust her soapy hands under warm running water, because even thinking the word “shit” made the idea of handling raw food appalling. Her body, which had forgotten again that she’d lost the baby, approved of her caution. She guarded her thoughts against disturbing its... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 361 ing should gravitate, it is no wonder that many say: " There are no clear answers." Finally, I wonder if casuistry can even deal with the most significant ethical issue facing medicine in the immediate future: The construction of a system in the United States which will provide adequate health care for all citizens. Director, Center for Health Care Ethics Saint Louis University Medical Center KEVIN (...) O'ROURKE, O.P. Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions. Edited By GAVIN D'CosTA. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1990. Pp. xii + 218. $16.95 (paper). There are two ways of reading ·this remarkably stimulating collection of essays. At one level it is a vigorous rebuttal of an earlier book in the "Faith Meets Faith Series" entitled The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, edited by John Hick and Paul Knitter; D'Costa's sub-title, "The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions," is a conscious polemical riposte. On the second level it purports to propose an alternative theology of religions which would on the one hand retain the claim of Christian uniqueness but on the other be not exclusivistic but genuinely pluralistic and, therefore, fruitful for interreligious dialogue. In my judgment, the book achieves its first objective well, furnishing an impressive array of counter-arguments to the pluralistic thesis. Indeed, like a swarm of tacklers ganging up on the hapless quarterback, so many contributors attack the same points of the pluralistic proposal that readers must have the impression of witnessing an overkill. On the other hand, the book's positive construction of a theology of religions suffers from vagueness and even internal contradictions. It is a classical case of people banding together because they know what they are against (in this case, the proposal to regard all religions as equally valid ways of salvation, with none allowed to claim superiority and exclusiveness) but not yet able to determine what they are for (except to retain the claim of Christian uniqueness). The volume contains 14 essays divided into three groups. The first three discuss the implications of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity for interreligious dialogue (Rowan Williams, Gavin D'Costa, and Christoph Schwobel); the next five explore the relevance of christology in the context of religious pluralism (M. M. Thomas, Francis X. Clooney, John B. Cobb, Jr., Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Monika Hell- 362 BOOK REVIEWS wig) ; the last six examine the epistemological and hermeneutical issues of religious pluralism (J. A. DiNoia, Lesslie Newbigin, Jurgen Moltmann, Paul J. Griffith, John Milbank, and Kenneth Surin). The editor has done an excellent job of summarizing the main points of each essay; it is therefore unnecessary to replicate his effort. My intention in this review is not to examine each essay individually; space would not permit such an undertaking. Rather I shall list the major criticisms made by the contributors against the pluralistic thesis and then examine their rather diverse positive proposals. Before doing so, however, it would be useful to describe briefly the essential thesis of The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, which is under attack. Its contributors argue that due to the rise of historical consciousness, the nature of God as Absolute Mystery, and the obligation to promote peace and justice, the Christian claim to uniqueness and superiority as a way to salvation should be abandoned. Instead of the exclusivist and inclusivist theologies of religions, they propose the pluralist position that Christianity is one among the many religions, equally valid and mutually complementary. What do the contributors to Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered find wrong with this pluralist thesis? A complete list of their objections cannot be furnished here, but these are some of the more important ones. First, the pluralists are as imperialistic as the exclusivists and inclusivists they denounce because they impose their (Western) notions of religion, dialogue, social justice, and so on, on other religionists (D'Costa, Newbigin, Griffiths). Hence the pluralist thesis is logically incoherent. Secondly, the pluralists wrongly presume that there is such a thing as a common core of religious experience which functions as a genus of the different species of religions (Newbigin, Milbank, Cobb). Thirdly, pluralists neglect the... (shrink)