"This collection of essays continues the work of James Boyd White in the rhetorical and literary analysis of law as a system for the creation of meaning. White's interest is in the intellectual and ethical possibilities of law, which he sees not merely as a logical enterprise, nor as a mere matter of politics and power, but rather as involving the activity of the whole mind, including its imaginative and affective capacities." "The essays here are united by two (...) basic themes: the idea that law can usefully be regarded not only as a set of rules designed to produce results in the material world, as it usually is, but also as an imaginative and intellectual activity that has as its end the claim of meaning for human experience, both individual and collective; and, second, the idea that education, including in the law, works by the constant modification of expectation by experience." "From Expectation to Experience will interest lawyers, legal scholars, students of law, as well as those engaged in the fields of law and literature, ethics and literature, and rhetoric."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

In this book, James Boyd White shows how texts by some of our most important thinkers and writers—including Plato, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Mandela, and Lincoln—answer these questions, not in the abstract, but in the way they wrestle ...

I want to begin with the simple and obvious point, supported by common experience, that it is extremely difficult to talk about religion at all, whether we are trying to do so within a discipline, such as law or psychology or anthropology, or in speaking in more informal ways with our friends. There are many reasons for this: it is in the nature of religious experience to be ineffable or mysterious, at least for some people or in some religions; different (...) religions imagine the world and its human inhabitants, and their histories, in ways that are enormously different and plainly unbridgeable; and there is no superlanguage into which all religions can all be translated, for purposes either of comparison or of mutual intelligibility. What is more, it seems to be nearly always the case that one religion's deepest truths and commitments, its fundamental narratives, appear simply irrational, even weird, to those who belong to another tradition; this means that in any attempt to study and talk about a religion other than one's own there is a necessary element of patronization, at least whenever we are studying beliefs we could not imagine ourselves sharing.Yet it is of enormous importance to attempt to learn to talk about religion well, if we possibly can, if only for the obvious political and practical reason that religious divisions, both within nations and among them, are often intractable and bitter, and mutual understanding very difficult to attain. And it is hard even to imagine an intellectually respectable way of doing this. Think of the anthropologist of religion for example: is he or she to assume that there is a cross-cultural phenomenon called `religion', and if so on what basis? `Religion' is our word, and why should we assume that the Samburu of Kenya or the Hindus of the Indian subcontinent have practices or beliefs that parallel what we know in the west? . Or consider the psychologist, say the psychotherapist working on analytic principles: is he or she to regard the religious beliefs and experiences of a patient as fantasies and wishes of a pathological kind, of which the patient should be cured? Or as healthy formations? If the latter, how can that position possibly be explained in the language of psychology?Or think of the historian of the Middle Ages, interested say in architecture or philosophy: how is she to come to understand the world of religious meaning in which the people whose work she is describing lived, and how can she represent it in anything other than reduced terms? Or, to shift to another field, how is the economist to think about the tensions between the premises of his economic thought and those of the religious life of his culture, in which he perhaps participates?My aim here will not be to presume to offer any final answer to the question of my title, How to talk about religion — I think there is none — but rather to explore it in a tentative and inconclusive way, with the hope of complicating our sense of the importance and interest both of the question itself and of our own performed responses to it. (shrink)

I want to begin with the simple and obvious point, supported by common experience, that it is extremely difficult to talk about religion at all, whether we are trying to do so within a discipline, such as law or psychology or anthropology, or in speaking in more informal ways with our friends. There are many reasons for this: it is in the nature of religious experience to be ineffable or mysterious, at least for some people or in some religions; different (...) religions imagine the world and its human inhabitants, and their histories, in ways that are enormously different and plainly unbridgeable; and there is no superlanguage into which all religions can all be translated, for purposes either of comparison or of mutual intelligibility. What is more, it seems to be nearly always the case that one religion's deepest truths and commitments, its fundamental narratives, appear simply irrational, even weird, to those who belong to another tradition; this means that in any attempt to study and talk about a religion other than one's own there is a necessary element of patronization, at least whenever we are studying beliefs we could not imagine ourselves sharing.Yet it is of enormous importance to attempt to learn to talk about religion well, if we possibly can, if only for the obvious political and practical reason that religious divisions, both within nations and among them, are often intractable and bitter, and mutual understanding very difficult to attain. And it is hard even to imagine an intellectually respectable way of doing this. Think of the anthropologist of religion for example: is he or she to assume that there is a cross-cultural phenomenon called `religion', and if so on what basis? `Religion' is our word, and why should we assume that the Samburu of Kenya or the Hindus of the Indian subcontinent have practices or beliefs that parallel what we know in the west? . Or consider the psychologist, say the psychotherapist working on analytic principles: is he or she to regard the religious beliefs and experiences of a patient as fantasies and wishes of a pathological kind, of which the patient should be cured? Or as healthy formations? If the latter, how can that position possibly be explained in the language of psychology?Or think of the historian of the Middle Ages, interested say in architecture or philosophy: how is she to come to understand the world of religious meaning in which the people whose work she is describing lived, and how can she represent it in anything other than reduced terms? Or, to shift to another field, how is the economist to think about the tensions between the premises of his economic thought and those of the religious life of his culture, in which he perhaps participates?My aim here will not be to presume to offer any final answer to the question of my title, How to talk about religion — I think there is none — but rather to explore it in a tentative and inconclusive way, with the hope of complicating our sense of the importance and interest both of the question itself and of our own performed responses to it. (shrink)

What do we know when we know the law? Not a set of rules or theories, but a set of practices that are at bottom practices of reading--reading the texts of the law, reading the world--and writing (including of course speaking), especially writing in news ways in the inherited language of the law. Legal knowledge is a writer's knowledge. It always has as one of its deepest themes the question of justice. These themes are explored through an examination of the (...) Model Penal Code, which respect to which I ask what it would be like to learn this material with an eye to using it as a language of thought and argument. It is full of tensions and fissures about the most important matters, including its conceptions of justice and the purposes of criminal law, its central ideas of blameworthiness as a function of intention or state of mind, and its conception of proportionality. These can be seen as defects to be cured, or as reflections of irremediable tensions deep in our thought about these matters which it is a virtue not a vice of the Code to render explicit. To shift from legislative to judge-made law, I next examine Holmes's famous opinions in Shenck and Abrams, which I read in the light offered by the Model Penal Code, using that text to help define the criminal law issues presented in the two cases. This in turn helps define Holmes's achievement in these cases as a transformation of the criminal law, which leads to his constitutional doctrine. Finally, I analyze Brandeis's opinion in Whitney as an intellectual and rhetorical achievement of a different, and more extraordinary, kind. In all of these, the idea is to demonstrate how it is that legal knowledge is a writer's knowledge: for the drafter of statutes, for the composer of judicial opinions applying statutory and constitutional law alike, and for the lawyer thinking through and arguing a case. (shrink)

The author, in this series of essays, depicts the law as an essentially literary, rhetorical, and ethical activity. The topics discussed include a talk to students entering law school, describing the intellectual activity of the law, an exploration of the structure of legal thought and expression, and a dialogue which explores the ethics of argument.

The law is a not an abstract system or scheme of rules, as we often speak of it, but an inherently unstable structure of thought and expression. It is built upon a distinct set of dynamic and dialogic tensions, which include: tensions between ordinary language and legal language; between legal language and the specialized discourses of other fields; between language itself and the mute world that lies beneath it; between opposing lawyers; between conflicting but justifiable ways of giving meaning to (...) the rules and principles of law; between substantive and procedural lines of thought; between law and justice; between the past, the present, and the future. Each of these tensions is present whenever a lawyer or judge goes to work. None of them can be resolved by resort to a rule or other directive, but must be addressed anew by the lawyer and judge in each case as it arises, by the exercise of an art of language and mind that is defined by the nature of these tensions themselves. (shrink)

On a June afternoon in 1960 Karl Hess 3rd, an assistant to the president of Ohio's vast Champion Paper and Fibre Company, was driving toward Cincinnati, lost in the manipulative thoughts common to rising young executives. Suddenly the sound of a police siren intruded and he pulled over, perplexed but not alarmed, for in his world the police menaced not.

This is an interpretation of the experiential/religious meaning of Japanese Shrine Shinto as taught us primarily by the priests at Tsubaki Grand Shrine, Suzuka, Mie Prefecture. As a heuristic device, we suggest lines of comparison between the thought and practice of the Tsubaki priests and two Western thinkers: the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber and the French philosopher Georges Bataille. This in turn allows the construction of three interpretive categories that we believe illuminate both the Shintō worldview and Shintō ritual practice.

Historically, entities with a vested interest in a product that critics have suggested is harmful have consistently used research to back their claims that the product is safe. Prominent examples are: tobacco, lead, bisphenol A, and atrazine. Research literature indicates that about 80–90% of studies with industry affiliation found no harm from the product, while only about 10–20% of studies without industry affiliation found no harm. In parallel to other historical debates, recent studies examining a possible relationship between mercury exposure (...) and autism spectrum disorder show a similar dichotomy. Studies sponsored and supported by industry or entities with an apparent conflict of interest have most often shown no evidence of harm or no “consistent” evidence of harm, while studies without such affiliations report positive evidence of a Hg/autism association. The potentially causal relationship between Hg exposure and ASD differs from other toxic products since there is a broad coalition of entities for whom a conflict of interest arises. These include influential governmental public health entities, the pharmaceutical industry, and even the coal burning industry. This review includes a systematic literature search of original studies on the potential relationship between Hg and ASD from 1999 to August 2015, finding that of the studies with public health and/or industry affiliation, 86% reported no relationship between Hg and ASD. However, among studies without public health and/or industry affiliation, only 21% find no relationship between Hg and ASD. The discrepancy in these results suggests a bias indicative of a conflict of interest. (shrink)

Linkage of population-based administrative data is a valuable tool for combining detailed individual-level information from different sources for research. While not a substitute for classical studies based on primary data collection, analyses of linked administrative data can answer questions that require large sample sizes or detailed data on hard-to-reach populations, and generate evidence with a high level of external validity and applicability for policy making. There are unique challenges in the appropriate research use of linked administrative data, for example with (...) respect to bias from linkage errors where records cannot be linked or are linked together incorrectly. For confidentiality and other reasons, the separation of data linkage processes and analysis of linked data is generally regarded as best practice. However, the ‘black box’ of data linkage can make it difficult for researchers to judge the reliability of the resulting linked data for their required purposes. This article aims to provide an overview of challenges in linking administrative data for research. We aim to increase understanding of the implications of the data linkage environment and privacy preservation; the linkage process itself and linkage quality and potential bias in linked data. We draw on examples from a number of countries to illustrate a range of approaches for data linkage in different contexts. (shrink)

This penetrating book sheds light on the psychology of fundamentalism, with a particular focus on those who become extremists and fanatics. What accounts for the violence that emerges among some fundamentalist groups? The contributors to this book identify several factors: a radical dualism, in which all aspects of life are bluntly categorized as either good or evil; a destructive inclination to interpret authoritative texts, laws, and teachings in the most literal of terms; an extreme and totalized conversion experience; paranoid thinking; (...) and an apocalyptic world view. After examining each of these concepts in detail, and showing the ways in which they lead to violence among widely disparate groups, these engrossing essays explore such areas as fundamentalism in the American experience and among jihadists, and they illuminate aspects of the same psychology that contributed to such historical crises as the French Revolution, the Nazi movement, and post-Partition Hindu religious practice. (shrink)

Historically, entities with a vested interest in a product that critics have suggested is harmful have consistently used research to back their claims that the product is safe. Prominent examples are: tobacco, lead, bisphenol A, and atrazine. Research literature indicates that about 80–90 % of studies with industry affiliation found no harm from the product, while only about 10–20 % of studies without industry affiliation found no harm. In parallel to other historical debates, recent studies examining a possible relationship between (...) mercury exposure and autism spectrum disorder show a similar dichotomy. Studies sponsored and supported by industry or entities with an apparent conflict of interest have most often shown no evidence of harm or no “consistent” evidence of harm, while studies without such affiliations report positive evidence of a Hg/autism association. The potentially causal relationship between Hg exposure and ASD differs from other toxic products since there is a broad coalition of entities for whom a conflict of interest arises. These include influential governmental public health entities, the pharmaceutical industry, and even the coal burning industry. This review includes a systematic literature search of original studies on the potential relationship between Hg and ASD from 1999 to date, finding that of the studies with public health and/or industry affiliation, 86 % reported no relationship between Hg and ASD. However, among studies without public health and/or industry affiliation, only 19 % find no relationship between Hg and ASD. The discrepancy in these results suggests a bias indicative of a conflict of interest. (shrink)

Freedom of association holds an uneasy place in the pantheon of liberal freedoms. Whereas freedom of association and the abundant plurality of groups that accompany it have been embraced by modern and contemporary liberals, this was not always the case. Unlike more canonical freedoms of speech, press, property, petition, assembly, and religious conscience, the freedom of association was rarely extolled by classical liberal thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Indeed Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Adam Smith, and others seem to (...) have regarded freedom of association with some trepidation because of the violent, irrational, and factional behavior of groups. This chapter illuminates these anti-associational assumptions in the writings of James Madison. Although Madison famously deplored political associations as sources of faction and civil dissension, he differed from other members of the Founding generation in his willingness to defend associational freedom. Madison's writings also shed light on the unenumerated status of the freedom of association in American constitutional law. (shrink)

This volume consists of autobiographical by the following scholars, together with pictures and autographs: Raven I. McDavid, Jr., Henry M. Hoenigswald, John B. Carroll, William G. Moulton, Archibald A. Hill, Yakov Malkiel, Charles F. Hockett, Harold B. Allen, William Bright, Einar Haugen, George S. Lane, Frederic G. Cassidy, James B. McMillan, Winfred P. Lehmann, Fred W. Householder, and Dell Hymes. A master list of references, and an index of persons conclude the volume.

Various exploration in astrophysics has revealed many breakthroughs nowadays, not only with respect to James Webb Telescope, but also recent finding related to water and ice deposits in the Moon surface. Those new findings seem to bring us to new questions related to origin of Earth, Moon and the entire Universe.

This paper examines the idea that ethics might be understood as a domain of straightforwardly empirical inquiry with reference to two of its defenders. Sam Harris has recently urged that ethics is simply the scientific study of welfare and how best to maximize it. That is of course to presuppose the truth of utilitarianism, something Harris considers too obvious to be sensibly contested. Richard Boyd's more nuanced and thoughtful position takes the truth of the ethical theory he favours to (...) be determined by what best explains the success of moral practice over its history. But what is to count here as success is too theory dependent for this to be helpful. From consideration of both Harris and Boyd, the conclusion emerges that once we have satisfied ourselves by ethical reflection about what we ought to do, it may then be a straightforwardly empirical question how to do it, but that arriving at that point, the core concern of the moral philosopher, is far less clearly a straightforwardly empirical affair. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that metaphor is indispensable for various purposes. What I shall call the ‘Indispensability Thesis’ is the view that we use at least some metaphors to think, to express, to communicate, or to discover what cannot be thought, expressed, communicated, or discovered without metaphor. I argue in this paper that support for the Indispensability Thesis is based on several confusions. I criticize arguments presented by Stephen Yablo, Berys Gaut, Richard Boyd, and Elisabeth Camp for the Indispensability Thesis, (...) and distinguish it from several plausible claims with which it is easily confused. Although I do not show that the thesis is false, I provide seven grounds for suspicion of our sense (if we have it) that some metaphors are indispensable for the purposes claimed by advocates of the Indispensability Thesis. (shrink)

Thomas Eisele explores the premise that the Socratic method of inquiry need not teach only negative lessons. Instead, Eisele contends, the Socratic method is cyclical: we start negatively by recognizing our illusions, but end positively through a process of recollection performed in response to our disillusionment, which ultimately leads to renewal. Thus, a positive lesson about our resources as philosophical investigators, as students and teachers, becomes available to participants in Socrates' robust conversational inquiry. __Bitter Knowledge __includes Eisele's detailed readings of (...) Socrates' teaching techniques in three fundamental Platonic dialogues, _Protagoras, Meno_, and _Theaetetus_, as well as his engagement with contemporary authorities such as Gregory Vlastos, Martha Nussbaum, and Stanley Cavell. Written in a highly engaging and accessible style, this book will appeal to students and scholars in philosophy, classics, law, rhetoric, and education. "This book is original, fresh, and of very high quality, opening up these Platonic texts, central to Western culture, in new ways. In addition, it establishes a method that others can use and apply to the other dialogues. It would be a wonderful text to assign in courses in philosophy, basic humanities, education, and law." --_James Boyd White, University of Michigan_ "Through his thoughtful and incisive readings of Plato, Thomas Eisele puts Socrates in a new light. In Eisele's hands, Socrates offers us a method not simply for philosophy but for the challenges of life and mind. This superb book builds on the great readings of Plato, adding to the richness of our understanding of the enigmatic figure of Socrates. These are profound readings of Plato." --_Dennis Patterson, Rutgers University School of Law_ "Eisele's book is much more than an erudite, seductive, and imaginative exploration of three central Platonic dialogues. It is also a fine general treatment of philosophy, discussing the kind of finality or closure to which philosophical questions are susceptible and the appropriate stance of the inquirer. It considers the pedagogy of philosophy and law brilliantly." --_Thomas Morawetz, University of Connecticut School of Law_. (shrink)

Three recent books—Richard Posner's Law and Literature, Stanley Fish's Doing What Comes Naturally, and James Boyd White's Justice as Translation— struggle over the relationship of law and literature. Fish and White defend the relevance of literature to law; Posner tries to kill the nascent law and literature movement by hugging it to death. Posner's literary criticism is belles‐lettristic, concerned chiefly with how “great” a work is. Fish's is social, emphasizing the interpretative community. White attempts to make a new (...) community, in which we come to understand one another by an effort of translation. White's vision is attractive, though it surrenders Science to non‐translation. As the sage said, even in science it is translation, and rhetoric, all the way down. (shrink)

Arthur W. H. Adkins's writings have sparked debates among a wide range of scholars over the nature of ancient Greek ethics and its relevance to modern times. Demonstrating the breadth of his influence, the essays in this volume reveal how leading classicists, philosophers, legal theorists, and scholars of religion have incorporated Adkins's thought into their own diverse research. The timely subjects addressed by the contributors include the relation between literature and moral understanding, moral and nonmoral values, and the contemporary meaning (...) of ancient Greek ethics. The volume also includes an essay from the late Adkins himself illustrating his methodology in an analysis of the "Speech of Lysias" in Plato's _Phaedrus_. _The Greeks and Us_ will interest all those concerned with how ancient moral values do or do not differ from our own. Contributors include Arthur W. H. Adkins, Stephanie Nelson, Martha C. Nussbaum, Paul Schollmeier, James Boyd White, Bernard Williams, and Lee Yearley. Commentaries by Wendy Doniger, Charles M. Gray, David Grene, Robert B. Louden, Richard Posner, and Candace Vogler. (shrink)

This book is about what makes law possible. A stranger to contemporary legal practice might think such a book unnecessary, but the eight authors of this book share the view that what makes law possible is under siege today. The authors also share the hope that by exploring how law is a humanistic practice that involves whole persons, the siege will be reversed. The pathbreaking work of University of Michigan Law professor Joseph Vining provides the authors' focus for their varied (...) analyses of how law works not through force but, instead, through affinity.Vining's four books and other writings, spanning four decades, reveal the hidden connections by which men and women freely create and sustain a world of meaning through the phenomena we associate with law. Drawing on legal philosophy, theology, musicology, and other humanistic disciplines, the authors join Vining in discovering how law is, as Vining has written, “evidence of view and belief far stronger than academic statement or introspection can provide.” Law as Vining and the other authors reveal it is evidence of our better selves, not of the totalizing and brutalizing selves humans are capable of becoming, sometimes even under cover of law.In addition to the three editors, the book's authors are Joseph Vining, Rev. John McCausland, Hon. John T. Noonan, Jr., Steven Smith, and James Boyd White.Lawyers and all who care about law, the human future, and what human freedom can do to connect person to person as valued will find much to ponder in the chapters of this book. By avoiding jargon and the cliché, the authors follow Vining's lead in illuminating the deep springs of law's vitality and authority. (shrink)

Books Reviewed in this Article: Transforming Bible Study. By Walter Wink. Pp.175, London, SCM Press, 1981, £3.50. Isaiah 1–39. By R.E. Clements. Pp.xvi. 301, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1980, £3.95. Isaiah 40–66. By R.N. Whybray. Pp.301, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1975, Reprinted 1981, £3.95. Die Gestalt Jesu in den synoptischen Evangelien. By Heinrich Kahlefeld. Pp.264, Frankfurt, Verlag Josef Knecht, 1981, no price given. Following Jesus: Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark. By Ernest Best. Pp.283, Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1981, (...) £15.00, £5.95. The Origin of Paul's Gospel. By Seyoon Kim. Pp.xii, 391, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1981, 78 DM. An die Römer. By Ernst Käsemann. Pp.xvi, 411, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1980, 48 DM. Les Récits de Resurrection des Morts dans le Nouveau Testament. By Gerard Rochais. Pp.xv, 252, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £15.00. Prêtres Anciens, Prétre Nouveau selon le Nouveau Testament. By Albert Vanhoye. Pp.366, Paris Editions du Seuil, 1980, no price given. Woman in the World of Jesus. By Evelyn and Frank Stagg. Pp.292, Edinburgh, The St Andrew Press, 1981, no price given. Jesus, Man and the Church. By Karl Rahner. Pp.260, London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1981, £14.50. Jesus Lord and Savior: A Theopathic Christology and Soteriology. By William M. Thompson. Pp.ix, 287, Leominster, Fowler Wright, 1981, £7.45. God and World in Schleiermacher's ‘Dialektik’ and ‘Glaubenslehre’. Criticism and the Methodology of Dogmatics. By John E. Thiel. Pp.xiv, 239, Bern, Frankfurt and Las Vegas, Peter Lang, 1981, SF 49.50. Ministry: A Case for Change. By Edward Schillebeeckx. Pp.ix, 165, London, SCM Press, 1981, £4.95. The Sacraments: Readings in Contemporary Sacramental Theology. Edited by Michael J. Taylor. Pp.274, New York, Alba House, 1981, $7.95. Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith. A Report by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England. Pp.ix, 310, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.50. Confessing the Faith in the Church of England Today. By R.T. Beckwith. Pp.36, Oxford, La timer House, 1981, £1.00. A Kind of Noah's Ark? The Anglican Commitment to Comprehensiveness. By J.I. Packer. Pp.39, Oxford, Latimer House, 1981, £1.00. Reasonable Belief: A Survey of the Christian Faith. By Anthony Hanson and Richard Hanson. Pp.xii, 283, Oxford University Press, 1981, £8.50. Doctrine in the Church of England. The 1938 Report with a new introduction by G.W.H. Lampe. Pp.lx, 242, London, SPCK, 1982, £8.50. The Divine Right of the Papacy in Recent Ecumenical Theology. By J. Michael Miller. Pp.xvi, 322, Rome, Università Gregoriana Editrice, 1980, 18,000 Lire. Der heilige Geist in der Theologie von Heribert Mühlen: Versucheiner Darstellung und Würdigung. By John B. Banawiratma. Pp.ix, 310, Frankfurt and Bern: Peter D. Lang, 1981, SFr. 60.00. Standing Before God: Studies on Prayer in Scriptures and Tradition with Essays in Honor of John M. Oesterreicher. Edited by Asher Frinkel and Lawrence Frizzell. Pp.410, New York, Ktav Publishing House, 1981, $29.50. Judaism and Healing. By J. David Bleich. Pp.xiii, 199, New York, Ktav, 1981, $15.00. The Diversity of Moral Thinking. By Neil Cooper. Pp.x, 303, Oxford, Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1981, £15.00. L'Homme: Sujet ou Objet? By Jacques Croteau. Pp.260, Montreal, Bellarmin: Tournai, Desclée et Cie, 1981, $15.00. The Texture of Knowledge: An Essay on Religion and Science. By James W. Jones. Pp.97, Washington, University Press of America, 1981, no price given. Cosmos and Creator. By Stanley L. Jaki. Pp.xii, 168, Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, 1980, £6.75. Dante, Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos. By Patrick Boyde. Pp.vii, 408, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £30.00. Dissidence et Philosophie au Mayen Âge. By E.L. Fortin. Pp.201, Montreal, Bellarmin, 1981, $12.00. The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton. By Richard Acworth. Pp.x, 388, Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1979, 74 DM. Philosophy and Ideology in Hume's Political Thought. By David Miller. Pp.xii, 218, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, £15.00. Hegelianism. By John Edward Toews. Pp.x, 450, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, £25.00. One Hundred Years of Thomism. Edited by V.B. Brezik. Pp.210, Houston, Centre for Thomistic Studies, 1981, no price given. Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process. By J.V. Femia. Pp.xiii, 303, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, £17.50. Greek and Roman Slavery. By Thomas Wiedemann. Pp.xvi, 284, London, Croom Helm, 1981, £10.95, £5.95. Prophecy and Millenarianism. Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves. Edited by Ann Williams. Pp.x, 355, London, Longman, 1980, £25.00. Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate. By Felicity Heal. Pp.xv, 353, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, £17.50. Radical Religious Movements in Early Modern Europe. By Michael Mullett. Pp.xxiv, 193, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1980, £10.50. The Jesuits. By J.C.H. Aveling. Pp.390, London, Blond and Briggs, 1981, £16.95. The Beginnings of Ideology. By Donald R. Kelley. Pp.xv, 351, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £24.00. Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516–1700. By J.C. Davis. Pp.x, 427, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £25.00. Eastern Politics of the Vatican 1917–1979. By Hansjakob Stehle. Pp.466, Athens, Ohio University Press, 1981, £16.20, £8.10. Structuralism or Criticism? By Geoffrey Strickland. Pp.viii, 209, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £17.50. The Call of God: The Theme of Vocation in the Poetry of Donne and Herbert. By Robert B. Shaw. Pp.xiii, 123, Cambridge, Mass., Cowley Publications, 1981, $5.00. John and Charles Wesley: Selected Prayers, Hymns, Journal Notes, Sermons, Letters and Treatises. Edited by Frank Whaling. Pp.xx, 412, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.95. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. By Robert D. Pelton. Pp.312, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980, £15.00. (shrink)

El editor reúne a distintos miembros de la Advisory Council of the British Humanist Association para escribir sobre conceptos, tales como la moralidad, la educación moral, la ética, los medios de comunicación, la muerte o el futuro. Algunos de estos autores son: Cyril Bibby, Raymond Firth, Margaret Knight, Lord Francis Williams, Antony Flew, Peter Henderson, James Hemming, Morris Ginsberg, Lord Ritchie-Calder, Lord Boyd Orr, Kathleen Nott, Brigid Brophy, Cristopher Longuet-Higgins, Kingsley Martin, P. Sargant Florence, Theodore Besterman, F.A.E. Crew, (...) H.J. Eysenck o Sir Karl Popper. (shrink)

Evolutionary scholars advance two major sorts of hypotheses to explain big events, such as the origin of agriculture. One hypothesis assumes that natural selection is so powerful that organisms are always close to an evolutionary equilibrium with current environment. Thus, any major changes will be a result of external processes having to do with the environment. The other camp imagines that evolution is a slow, halting, and biased process that is limited and directed by internal obstacles that thwart what natural (...) selection favors, for example, a particular somatic arrangement that is difficult to “engineer” quickly. Both kinds of constraints were probably involved in the trajectory leading to agriculture but perhaps at different timescales. (shrink)

James Warren responds to Sandis's preceding article.

James Yerkes undertakes a systematic exploration of the full range of Hegel’s works to discover what philosophical, religious, and historical significance Hegel attributed to the Christian witness that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ.

Fully updated and revised by James Penner and Emmanuel Melissaris, McCoubrey & White's Textbook on Jurisprudence clearly breaks down the complexities of this often daunting yet fascinating subject. Sophisticated ideas are explained concisely and with clarity, ensuring the reader is aware of the subtleties of the subject yet not overwhelmed. With chapters dedicated to both key concepts and leading theorists, this text takes a wide-ranging look at jurisprudence and places central ideas in context. In particular this text centres around (...) one of the leading theorists, H.L.A Hart, and considers the landscape of jurisprudence in relation to his seminal The Concept of Law, looking at the key ideas which influenced him and considering the response to his work. Coverage of post-modern and feminist legal theory is also included, alongside discussion of key theorists such as Hobbes, Kant, and Rawls.Logically organised to support the topics commonly taught on jurisprudence and legal theory courses, this text provides an easy-to-follow and digestible account of this wide-ranging subject, making it the ideal companion text for further reading and research throughout your course. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 32.2 (2002) 3-19 [Access article in PDF] (Queer) Theory and the Universal Alternative James Penney Judith Butler. Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death. New York: Columbia UP, 2000. Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek. Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. London: Verso, 2000. In October 2000, just a few weeks before the US presidential election, a young, fashionable, handsome man handed me a (...) political leaflet while I crossed Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. I didn't give it much thought at the time (apart from noticing that the boy was kind of cute): I was in transit toward the 4th Street subway station and the Port Authority where I would catch the bus back to Cornell. When I decided to write a review essay on the current state of poststructuralism, Marxism, and queer theory through the lens of the two books listed above, I discovered I had lost the pamphlet, certain that my hostile reaction to what I considered its fundamental conservatism and trendy political correctness had unconsciously caused its mysterious disappearance.When I rediscovered the leaflet in the chaos of my move away from Ithaca, I realized that my relation to it had been hysterical: I was reluctant to address its traumatic content, unwilling to excavate my multiple frustrations at the apparent impossibility of being a homosexual and a socialist in America. And yet I couldn't really forget about it either: though not an American citizen and therefore unable to vote, I found myself equally unable simply to dismiss the leaflet as a mere inconsequential symptom of the pseudo-democracy that America has always been, or unequivocally to endorse the snooty CBC/Queen Street condescension of my fellow Canadian Lefties toward the primitive, superficial, liberal (in the worst psychologistic sense), irremediably ideological, and thoroughly depressing state of American political discourse. "Those poor Americans," the far-from-irrelevant logic goes. "They either unquestioningly submit to the individualistic fantasy of the American Dream in order to participate in the 'political process,' or they become hermetically imprisoned in their pseudo-political anti-statist minoritarianism, too cool and too radical to condescend to the public sphere." After six years in the United States, I've now become aware that my inability to swallow much of contemporary queer theory—authored overwhelmingly by young, elite-educated Americans with relatively narrow political horizons—is mostly due to the manner in which it articulates numerous political assumptions fundamentally alien to my own socialization in a country whose political differences from the US are insufficiently appreciated in that nation, and in which extremes of climate and geography have engendered a collectivist ethos in many ways fundamentally hostile to the American-style extreme individualism with which I had lived for so many years.But the interest of this sort of political autobiography is in this context undoubtedly limited. What—you might now find yourself impatiently wondering if you don't already [End Page 3] know—were the contents of this famous pamphlet? And what exactly was my problem with it? Published by a coalition of queer voters in New York called the Empire State Pride Agenda, the pamphlet presented extremely selective profiles of the main candidates, both Democrat and Republican, running for the offices of President, US Senator, State Senator, and Member of the State Assembly. Each profile summarized the history of a candidate's positions with respect to rights issues of concern to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons. The profiles made no concerted effort to represent the candidates' perspectives on any other issue: gun control, education, foreign policy, the death penalty, taxation, health care (generally speaking, that is to say above and beyond the issues related to AIDS-related illness and reproductive rights); only policies directly concerning civil rights for nonheterosexual citizens were thoroughly broached.I should confess that once I got the general idea I threw the pamphlet away in disgust: "Am I supposed to feel interpellated," I asked myself in full hysterical Althusserian mode, "by this utterly pseudo-political claptrap?" Is this what it means to be gay and political in America... (shrink)

Anthropology is a complex, wide-ranging, and ever changing field. Yet, despite its diversity, certain major themes do occur in the understandings of the world that anthropologists have offered. In this clear, coherent, and well-crafted book, James L. Peacock spells out the central concepts, distinctive methodologies, and philosophical as well as practical issues of cultural anthropology. Designed to supplement standard textbooks and monographs, the book focuses on the premises that underlie the facts that the former kinds of works generally present. (...) Free from unnecessarily abstract theoretical language and based on compelling concrete anecdote and engaging illustration, it is written in terms understandable to the anthropological novice, as well as being of value to the professional. The book's three main concerns are the substance, method, and significance of anthropology. In his discussion of substance, method, and significance of anthropology, such as the concept of culture, as well as holism. In writing about method, he explores the distinctive character of ethnographic fieldwork and raises questions of interpretation and comparison. Finally, he considers the relevance of anthropology with respect to both its practical application and what it contributes to understanding of human affairs. Using the photographic metaphors of 'harsh light' and 'soft focus', Peacock characterizes the anthropological worldview as consisting of two elements: on the one hand, a concern with the basic reality of the human condition, free of cultural influence; on the other, a broadly based holism that attempts to grasp all aspects of that condition, including its relation to the anthropologist. His book will appeal widely to readers interested in anthropology, at all levels. (shrink)

Values are missing from American politics. But should religion and government mix? A. James Reichley makes the provocative case that without a strong moral basis, American democracy is in trouble. The author's deep background in political theory and American Constitutional history allows him to propose practical steps for a constitutionally valid relationship between religion and public life. He surveys the seven major value systems currently competing for America's heart and soul and convincingly demonstrates that only one—what Reichley calls 'transcendent (...) idealism'—is the way to secure America's future. He then goes an extra step by pointing out examples of successful, morally-based public policies addressing critical social problems ranging from drug abuse to single parenthood to school choice. What's God got to do with good government? In The Values Connection, the answer is everything. (shrink)