(English abstract further below.) -/- Wer denkt, Polyamorie erfordere ein geringeres Maß an Verpflichtung als Zweierbeziehungen, der liegt gründlich daneben. Wie aber gestaltet sich polyamoröse wechselseitige Verpflichtung idealerweise? In diesem Beitrag untersuche ich, ob sich ein bestimmtes, auf Iris Murdochs Konzeption von Liebe als gerechter Aufmerksamkeit beruhendes Ideal wechselseitiger Verpflichtung in romantischen Partnerschaften fruchtbar auf polyamoröse Beziehungsgeflechte anwenden lässt. Ich beginne damit, Murdochs im deutschsprachigen Raum kaum rezipierte Liebeskonzeption ausführlich darzustellen und diese dabei von Simone Weils Position abzugrenzen, der Murdoch (...) wesentliche Elemente entnimmt. In einem zweiten Schritt skizziere ich das von Murdochs Position inspirierte Ideal wechselseitiger Verpflichtung. In Auseinandersetzung mit Überlegungen, die John Enman-Beech und Julienne Obadia mit Blick auf die in polyamorösen Beziehungsgeflechten verbreitete Praxis angestellt haben, Beziehungsvereinbarungen einzugehen, werbe ich drittens für die skizzierte Idealkonzeption, indem ich zeige, dass sich mit ihr den von Enman-Beech und Obadia aufgeworfenen Herausforderungen, die sich im Zuge intrapolykularer Beziehungsvereinbarungen stellen, in zwei Hinsichten mit Erfolg begegnen lässt. Erstens hebe ich hervor, dass eine am skizzierten Ideal orientierte Praxis bereits die Art von prozeduralen Normen implementiert, auf deren Bedeutung Enman-Beech zu Recht hinweist. Zweitens argumentiere ich dafür, dass das skizzierte Ideal nicht den Schwierigkeiten ausgesetzt ist, die sich nach Obadia mit denjenigen Elementen intrapolykularer Beziehungsvereinbarungen verbinden, die sie als Vertragskomplex bezeichnet, und ein weniger pessimistisches Bild davon nahelegt, wie vermittelst solcher Beziehungsvereinbarungen konstituierte Individuen aufzufassen sind. -/- ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this paper, I focus on a certain ideal conception of how lovers may commit to each other in polyamorous relationships. Drawing on an analysis of Iris Murdoch’s adaptation of Simone Weil’s ideas, I sketch what I have elsewhere called the ideal lovers’ pledge—a conception of a commitment between lovers that is spelled out in terms of Weil’s and Murdoch’s shared notion of love as just attention. I then argue that this conception is well-suited to meet certain challenges that arise in the context of thinking about relationship agreements in polyamorous relationships, challenges that have been brought out in recent work by John Enman-Beech and Julienne Obadia. First, I show that practices of forging relationship agreements in polyamorous relationships that are oriented toward the ideal I propose will naturally implement the kind of procedural norms that Enman-Beech rightly highlights. Second, I argue that the ideal I propose does not generate the kinds of problems that according to Obadia arise due to a constellation of assumptions that she thinks underlie the practice of forging relationship agreements in polyamorous relationships – a constellation she dubs the contract complex. The proposed ideal thus suggests an alternative under-standing of such agreements and implies a less pessimistic account of what kind of individuals are constituted by way of forging such agreements. (shrink)

A useful guide to best practice including reviews of the latest and most helpful tests available. In Part One, contributors discuss the theory of reading assessment including issues such as screening, legal aspects, memory and visual problems, computer based assessment and the dyslexias. Part Two contains the review section where experts give comprehensive reviews of named tests.

Objectives—To evaluate a departmental computer system.Design—a. Direct comparison of the time taken to use a manual system with the time taken to use a computer system for lung function evaluation, loan of equipment and production of correspondence. b. Analysis of the accuracy of data capture before and after the introduction of the computer system. c. Analysis of the comparative running costs of the manual and computer systems.Setting—Within a department of respiratory medicine serving a hospital of 1323 beds.Main Outcome Measures—a. Time (...) taken to perform functions with the assistance of computerised methods, in comparison to the manual method used alone. b. Accuracy of data capture. c. Relative running costs.Results—a. The computer system was significantly faster than the manual system for lung function evaluation, loan of equipment, and checking for overdue equipment. The production of correspondence was slightly slower with the computer. b. All outpatient episodes, but only 43 of 65 of inpatient episodes, were captured. Lung function and managerial report data were accurate using both manual and computerised methods. The manual system for equipment loans was inefficient, and use of the computer resulted in the recovery of 221 nebulisers. c. Development costs for 1988–1990 were high. Only £1200 to £1845 per year was recovered directly from staff time saved by the computer but larger savings resulted from changes in work practice. After 10 years the projected deficit is £10 000 per annum in running costs.Conclusions—In comparison with the manual methods, the computer system has shown significant advantages which provide accurate information, with significant favourable effects on working practices. In evaluating computer systems used in clinical practice it is essential to ensure that the projected work practice benefits are achieved without unacceptable costs in staff time, inaccurate data and high financial outlay. (shrink)

Artistic labour was exemplary for Utopian Socialist theories of 'attractive labour', and Marxist theories of 'nonalienated labour', but the rise of the anti-work movement and current theories of 'fully automated luxury communism' have seen art topple from its privileged place within the left's political imaginary as the artist has been reconceived as a prototype of the precarious 24/7 worker. 'Art and Postcapitalism' argues that art remains essential for thinking about the intersection of labour, capitalism and postcapitalism not insofar as it (...) merges work and pleasure but as an example of noncapitalist production. Reassessing the contemporary politics of work by revisiting debates about art, technology and in the nineteenth and twentieth century, Dave Beech challenges the aesthetics of labour in John Ruskin, William Morris and Oscar Wilde with a value theory of the supersession of capitalism that sheds light on the anti-work theory by Silvia Federici, Andre Gorz, Kathi Weeks and Maurizio Lazzarato, as well as the technological Cockayne of Srnicek and Williams and Paul Mason. Formulating a critique of contemporary postcapitalism, and developing a new understanding of art and labour within the political project of the supersession of value production, this book is essential for activists, scholars and anyone interested in the real and imagined escape routes from capitalism. (shrink)

In the accounts we give of one another, claims about our abilities appear to be indispensable. Some abilities are so widespread that many who have them take them for granted, such as the ability to walk, or to write one's name, or to tell a hawk from a handsaw. Others are comparatively rare and notable, such as the ability to hit a Major League fastball, or to compose a symphony, or to tell an elm from a beech. In either (...) case, however, when we ascribe such abilities to one another we have the impression that we are making claims that, whether they are worth saying or not, are at least sometimes true. The impression of truth exerts a pressure towards giving a philosophical theory of ability. It is not an option, at least at the outset, to dismiss all our talk of ability as fiction or outright falsehood. A theory of ability can be reasonably expected to say what it is to have an ability in a way that vindicates the appearance of truth. Such a theory will deserve the name “philosophical” insofar as it gives an account, not of this or that range of abilities, but of abilities generally. (shrink)

In this philosophical memoir I trace out the part that Roy Bhaskar's philosophy of science played in the development of a non-reductive account of realism in art and cultural theory in the 1970s and 1980s in the UK, and the part his Dialectic played in the theorization of the concept of the philistine developed by myself and Dave Beech between 1996 and 1998. Our de-positivization of the concept as a symptomatic negation of the bourgeois ‘aesthete’ drew extensively on Bhaskar's (...) notion of absence as a real absence. This in turn, allowed us to bring Bhaskar's realism and Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory into alignment, where the philistine plays a similar, if undeveloped and untheorized role. Overall, the article marks a recognition of the continuing possibilities of Dialectic for a theory of negation in contemporary art and cultural theory. (shrink)

Marrying the map -- Headwaters -- Compatriots -- Saint Beech -- After olive picking -- Hunter in the sky -- Gifts of prophecy -- The broken sheepfold -- Mowing -- Dust of snow -- Inheriting Mount Tom -- Forever wild again -- Into the wind -- Maggie Brook.

After modernism and postmodernism, it is argued, the everyday supposedly is where a democracy of taste is brought into being - the place where art goes to recover its customary and collective pleasures, and where the shared pleasures of popular culture are indulged, from celebrity magazines to shopping malls. John Roberts argues that this understanding of the everyday downgrades its revolutionary meaning and philosophical implications. Bringing radical political theory back to the centre of the discussion, he shows how notions (...) of cultural democratization have been oversimplified. Asserting that the everyday should not be narrowly identified with the popular, Roberts critiques the way in which the concept is now overly associated with consumption and 'ordinariness'. Engaging with the work of key thinkers including, Lukacs, Arvatov, Benjamin, Lefebvre, Gramsci, Barthes, Vaneigem, and de Certeau, Roberts shows how the concept of the everyday continues to be central to debates on ideology, revolution and praxis. He offers a lucid account of different approaches that developed over the course of the twentieth century, making this an ideal book for anyone looking for a politicised approach to cultural theory. John Roberts is a Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester University Press, 1997) and The Philistine Controversy (Verso, with Dave Beech, 2002), plus other books and numerous articles, in Radical Philosophy and elsewhere. (shrink)

It is commonly recognized that ‘ought’ is a semantically flexible word admitting of more “objective” and more “subjective” senses. Which of these senses (if any) is the one that is of central concern in normative ethics? According to some philosophers, the sense ‘ought’ that is centrally at issue in normative ethics is the sense of ‘ought’ that features in the various ‘ought’ questions that rational subjects aim to answer when deliberating about what to do. An assumption of this proposal is (...) that there is a single deliberative sense of ‘ought’ that is the focus of rational and morally conscientious deliberation. In this paper, I contest this assumption. I raise objections to various attempts at characterizing this alleged deliberative ‘ought’ (giving special attention to a sophisticated account from Kiesewetter (2017)) and argue that deliberation can serve rational decision-making even if it is not ultimately focused on some normatively privileged sense of ‘ought.’. (shrink)

Dasgupta poses a serious challenge to realism about natural properties. He argues that there is no acceptable explanation of why natural properties deserve the value realists assign to them and are consequently absent of value. In response, this paper defines and defends an alternative non-explanatory account of normativity compatible with realism. Unlike Lewis and Sider, who believe it is sufficient to defend realism solely on realist terms, I engage with the challenge on unfriendly grounds by revealing a tu quoque. Dasgupta (...) and anti-realists face a similar challenge to that directed against realism: one that not only undermines the objection to realism by legitimising non-explanatory normativity but leaves them facing a significant dilemma. (shrink)

The social and political turbulence of the present requires a different framework to interpret artistic developments than was used a century ago. This book surveys the resurgence of sociopolitical aesthetics, tracing key currents of theory and practice, and mapping them against the dominant motif of the last decade: crisis. Drawing upon key artists and theorists within this field - including Gregory Sholette, John Roberts, Dave Beech, Gail Day, Martha Rosler, Kirstin Stakemieir and Marina Vishmidt - this book locates (...) the configurations of sociopolitical aesthetics that might energize struggles that are emerging within a radically altered political terrain. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 199-200 [Access article in PDF] Benedict's Dharma James Wiseman Monastic Interreligious Dialogue Bulletin The book Benedict's Dharma: Buddhists Reflect on the Rule of Saint Benedict was published by Riverhead Books in the late summer of 2001. Several years in the making, the volume was edited by Patrick Henry, director of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. (...) It contains the reflections of four Buddhist authors—Norman Fischer, Joseph Goldstein, Judith Simmer-Brown, and Yifa—on selected parts of the Rule of Saint Benedict and has already met with such success that plans are underway to have it translated into several foreign languages.To coincide with the publication of the book, the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID) board decided to hold a conference at Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove, Indiana, from September 21-23, 2001. Originally all four of the Buddhist authors had intended to come, but in light of the terrorist attacks of September 11, Norman Fischer and Joseph Goldstein felt it was more important that they remain with their own communities during those days. However, Judith Simmer-Brown and Yifa did attend, along with more than a hundred other persons. The attendees included Father Patrick Barry, the former abbot of Ampleforth Abbey in England, who is currently residing at St. Louis Abbey in Missouri. His sensitive translation of the Rule of Saint Benedict is included as an appendix to Benedict's Dharma.On the opening evening, Father William Skudlarek, OSB, the chair of the MID board, extended a warm welcome to those attending and then introduced Patrick Henry, who served as moderator of the entire conference. Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB, who had worked closely on the project from its inception and had written an afterword to the book, spoke on the Rule of Benedict as a "trellis," which is the root meaning of the Latin and Greek words translated as "rule." Just as a trellis in a garden provides a structure for the plant climbing on it, so does the Rule of Saint Benedict establish a framework on which a life can grow. Brother David's talk was followed by the assigning of "dyads," groups of two participants each; the pairs would use allotted times during the conference for dialogue about matters raised in the general sessions.The next day, Saturday, September 22, began with sitting meditation in the monastery chapel, followed by the service of Morning Praise with the resident community of Benedictine sisters. Various other activities were in the conference schedule, [End Page 199] but especially prominent were talks given by Christian monastics as their responses to the book out of their own experience of living according to the Benedictine Rule. The first of these talks was given by Sister Sarah Schwartzberg of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. Her assigned topic was the section of the book Benedict's Dharma dealing with the themes of "freedom and forgiveness." Following a late-morning Eucharist and lunch, two presentations were made in the afternoon: Abbot Francis Cline, OCSO, of Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina, reflected on "discipline and spontaneity," and Father Columba Stewart, OSB, of Saint John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota, spoke on the part of the book focusing on "tradition and adaptation." Those attending the conference again joined the resident community for vespers in the monastery chapel and then, after dinner, heard Father James Wiseman, OSB, of Saint Anselm's Abbey in Washington, D.C., speak on the themes of "leadership and humility" as these had been treated by the Buddhist authors in the last section of the book.The Sunday schedule began in a way similar to that of Saturday, with morning talks by the Buddhist scholar the Venerable Heng Sure and the MID chair Father Skudlarek. After Eucharist, Judith Simmer-Brown made some extemporaneous closing remarks to thank persons who had worked so hard to make the entire project a success. She also expressed pleasant surprise at how positively the book had been received. In her own words, "I think I speak for all... (shrink)

The article concerns the problem of reference in general, and the controversy internalism - externalism in particular. The author presents and discusses John R. Searle's criticism of Hilary Putnam's famous arguments for causal theory of reference: the elms-beech example and the Twin Earth example. Instead of external theory of reference Searle proposes his own intentional theory of reference. According to that theory the reference of a name is determined by intentional content of that name. The name is used (...) properly only when used to indicate an object contained in its intentional content. On the ground of intentional theory of reference this feature of names is called casual self-referentiality. Searle underlines that intentional content is not necessarily verbal. In fact he allows non-conceptual, for example perceptual content. The problem of direct reference is closely connected to the question of de dicto and de re beliefs. In conclusion some drawbacks of Searle's theory are shown. Namely allowing object a name refers to to be a part of the intentional content of the name Searle seems to be very close external theory of reference he is fighting against. (shrink)

Levack, John Having just read another poem about how a city-bred agnostic finds God after spending a weekend away in the Australian bush..

John Milton was not only the greatest English Renaissance poet but also devoted twenty years to prose writing in the advancement of religious, civil and political liberties. The height of his public career was as chief propagandist to the Commonwealth regime which came into being following the execution of King Charles I in 1649. The first of the two complete texts in this volume, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, was easily the most radical justification of the regicide at (...) the time. In the second, A Defence of the People of England, Milton undertook to vindicate the Commonwealth's cause to Europe as a whole. They are central to an understanding both of the development of Milton's political thought and the climax of the English Revolution itself. This is the first time that fully annotated versions have been published together in one volume, and incorporates a wholly new translation of the Defence. The introduction outlines the complexity of the ideological landscape which Milton had to negotiate, and in particular the points at which he departed radically from his sixteenth-century predecessors. Further aids to students include a full chronology of Milton's life and important contemporary events, a select bibliography and biographies of persons mentioned in the text. (shrink)

In Reshaping Reason, John McCumber breathes new life into American philosophy. Moving past the tired divide between "analytic" and "continental" camps, he proposes new directions to unite a discipline which has become more unfocused and invisible. McCumber recommends a new set of rational tools to enable philosophers and then puts these tools to work to redefine epistemology, ontology, and ethics. Reshaping Reason explores philosophy's achievements and failures in a cold light and paves the way for the discipline to become (...) more meaningful and relevant to society at large. (shrink)

John Robertson; XV*—Hume on Practical Reason, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 90, Issue 1, 1 June 1990, Pages 267–282, https://doi.org/10.1093/a.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PLATO'S STATESMAN STORY: THE BIRTH OF FICTION RECONCEIVED by John Tomasi In "Plato's Atlantis Story and the Birth of Fiction," Christopher Gill wants to distinguish the story ofAdantis in the Critias from Plato's earlier stories—like diat in the Statesman.1 These stories, Gill claims, belong to different literary genres. While the Statesman story is but another example of fable, the Adantis story of the Critias represents the first example—the (...) first in Plato and indeed the earliest in all Western written culture—of an exciting new literary genre: narrative fiction. Gill describes narrative fiction as a kind ofgame into which the author invites his audience to join. The invitation to play the game of fiction is an invitation "to share in the willing and conscious acceptance of the false as true" (p. 65). The audience is provided the opportunity to become "willfully self-deceived" about the story's truth. Perhaps the main constraint on a story's belonging to the genre of fiction is the author's ability to transmit this special invitation to his reader. Gill says one major way to do this is by a framework of introductory signals which are mixed in a certain way. The Adantis story, as Gill claims, seems to be framed with signals that a self-deception game is about to begin. Socrates says Critias is like a playwright competing in front of an audience (108a). Gill reads line 107 to mean that Critias is concerned direcdy with "the problem of giving his narrative the illusory realism which he says audiences require." Also, Gill says, "the fact that it is a game is signalled by the overt claim to historical truth in a context in which we are not disposed to accept the claim" (p. 72). Plato thus introduces the Adantis story with a delicate mixture ofconflictingclaims about the story's factual status. Gill suggests the reader should interpret this special mixture of signals as being a Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 348-358 John Tomasi349 sort of invitation to "make pretend," to play a pleasant game, to allow die reader to become willfully self-deceived. Within die Adantis story itself diere are further marks of die fiction genre. Narrative fiction can be a compelling game, and good fiction writers often slip into the game themselves, writing with a concern for detail and with a word choice so sensitive that the reader may feel that die writer too must believe in this fictional world. The Adantis story certainly exhibits this mark of fiction. As Gill puts it, in writing about Adantis Plato seems at times to have become "momentarily infatuated with the world he is creating."2 Such infatuation, exhibited especially perhaps in the detailed descriptions in the Critias of the splendors of the Adantean city and in the passionate portrayal of the growth of hubris in the citizens' hearts, is perhaps what gives the Adantis story some of its special potency, what makes it especially gripping to us (116c—ll7e; 121a-c). Clearly, it is a story with which writer as well as reader might develop an intimate relationship. In Plato's Atlantis story the framing signals are mixed with a deliberate subtlety, and the reader at times senses the writer's infatuation with his own tale. The Adantis story is thus crafted to get from the reader what Plato is after: "a willed self-deception, a chosen suspension ofincredulity for the duration of the story." Gill concludes, "This new element of intended complicity in the fictional game makes his work the first piece of deliberately fictional narrative in Greek literature" (p. 76). Gill's argumentthat the Adantis story belongs to the genre ofnarrative fiction is provocative and on the whole convincing. But is the Adantis story really the first Western instance of that genre? Is it even Plato's first attempt at fiction? I think it is not. I would like now to examine the storywithin the Statesman, a storywhich Gill says was probablywritten before the Adantis story. Might the Statesman story be a still earlier instance of narrative fiction? The signals framing the Statesman story are mixed indeed. At first, the Stranger tells young Socrates that... (shrink)

John Stuart Mill is the philosopher of liberalism. Or so some people think. Others disagree; they may give that status to Locke, or (perhaps) to Kant. Or they may think the question frivolous and insist – boringly but, I cannot deny, sensibly – that no one thinker is the philosopher of liberalism.

Thornhill, John Shortly after completing my article, 'Reflections on the Gospel: after Reading Christopher Dawson', I read for the first time, C.H. Dodd's Gospel and Law, lectures given at Columbia University in 1950. This challenging work by a leading scholar prompted me to make the comparison between Protestant and Catholic approaches to the Gospel I have attempted in the present article.

Collins, John Francis; Carroll, Sandra In the April 2012 edition of The Australasian Catholic Record John Duiker presented a useful overview and history of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal titled 'Spreading the Culture of Pentecost in the Midst of Disenchantment.' According to Duiker the CCR as an ecclesial movement 'has its origins in a retreat that was held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the USA in February 1967.' Describing this event as a Pentecost experience Duiker writes that (...) the movement that was started by this event 'spread to other college campuses and continued to spread right across the world, and now exists in over 220 countries and has touched the lives of over 120 million Catholics.' Duiker's article draws on Charles Taylor's thesis that our post-enlightenment Western culture has been emptied-out of the idea of God's providence leading to 'a diminishing of the necessity of grace and a fading of the sense of mystery.' Duiker then presents a case for CCR being recognised 'as an example for the re-enchantment of a post-Enlightenment secular world.'. (shrink)

Collins, John Francis; Carroll, Sandra The publication of the 'Norms for the Formation of Permanent Deacons and Guidelines for the Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons' by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, in August 2016, has renewed focus on the role of permanent deacon. This article uses a heuristic structure to discuss the role of the permanent deacon in the Catholic Church in Australia. It then provides a historical perspective and background on the worker priest movement from the mid-twentieth (...) century to explore the possibility of its application to the contemporary role of permanent deacon. (shrink)

_Screen, Culture, Psyche_ illuminates recent developments in Jungian modes of media analysis, and illustrates how psychoanalytic theories have been adapted to allow for the interpretation of films and television programmes, employing Post-Jungian methods in the deep reading of a whole range of films. Readings of this kind can demonstrate the way that some films bear the psychological projections not only of their makers but of their audience, and assess the manner in which films engage the writer’s own psyche. Seeking to (...) go beyond existing theories, John Izod explores the question of whether Jungian screen analysis can work for ordinary filmgoers - can what functions for the scholar be said to be true for people without a background in Jung’s ideas? Through detailed readings of a number of films and programmes, John Izod builds on the work previously done by Jungian film analysts, and moves on to contemplate the level of audience engagement. Offering deep readings of films directed by Kubrick and Bernardo Bertolucci, as well as satirical comedy, documentaries and twenty-first century Westerns, the book explores the extent to which they manage to make the psychological impact on spectators that films of a similar kind have done on Jungian writers. The author concludes that the screen texts with the best likelihood of impacting the culture of the audience through their collective psychological force fall at opposite ends of the size and budget range: highly personal documentaries, and the most affecting of mainstream genre movies. This innovative text will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and therapists, as well as students and scholars of film with an interest in understanding how screen products work psychologically to engage the viewer. (shrink)

This article is the basis of an invited talk at KR-96 in 1996 November. It has been modified from the version that appeared in the preprints of that meeting. There is an html version, a.dvi version,.pdf version and a.ps version. Up to: Main McCarthy page Up to: Send comments to mccarthy @stanford.edu. I sometimes make changes suggested in them. - John McCarthy.

Donald M. MacKinnon has been one of the most important and influential of post-war British theologians and religious philosophers. Generally eclectic, frequently allusive, usually intellectually generous, persistently richly challenging and always astonishingly erudite, he had a significant impact on the development and subsequent theological work of the likes of Rowan Williams, Nicholas Lash, David Ford and John Milbank. A younger generation largely emerging from Cambridge, but with influence elsewhere, has more recently brought MacKinnon's normally occasionalist writing to a larger (...) audience worldwide where it is beginning to receive noteworthy attention. In this collection several of MacKinnon's most outstanding papers not yet published in book format is collected together with an Editorial Introduction by a former student of one of MacKinnon's own students. They range from his reflections on theology as educational, the nature of moral reasoning, considerations of ecclesial practice, dogmatics and hope. Here is another reminder of MacKinnon's intellectual brilliance. (shrink)

Art of seeing, John Rajchman argues in his essay, was in the center of Michel Foucault’s critical attention as well as practice. Foucault himself was a visual thinker and writer. More importantly, however, the ways in which historically changing vision determines not only what is seen, but what can be seen, are one of his major concerns. Rupture with self-evidences is then the first step one must take to make the invisible – yet not hidden – power visible. Th (...) e invisibility of power, seen as the invisible light that makes other things visible, is what makes it tolerable. Knowledge and the practice of knowing themselves are constructed by the technology of the visual, such as the diff erent types of spaces that bring about specific visibility. In Foucault’s histories, the prison or the clinic are such spaces that have visualized criminality, sexuality or madness in particular manner. However, problematization of these things needs to go beyond new ways of looking at them and has to question their entire field of vision. This implies that Foucauldian ethics is less concerned with what we do about things themselves, instead, it rather asks how we see them in the first place and how can they be seen differently. It thus requires not to look within us, on the contrary, we should look out, from outside of ourselves. (shrink)

Johnson, Bilovich, and Tuckett set out a helpful framework for thinking about how humans make decisions under radical uncertainty and contrast this with classical decision theory. We show that classical theories assume so little about psychology that they are not necessarily in conflict with this approach, broadening its appeal.

This paper sought to develop a literature review-based framework for fitting research projects into philosophies of research. The philosophical underpinning of the study to optimize the financial performance of pension funds through asset allocation and portfolio management decisions was used as a case in point. The paper argues that all knowledge generation processes should be deeply rooted in philosophy if they are to produce reliable solutions to research problems. The study established that the research approaches and the science of doing (...) research need to be informed by the philosophical positions of reality, knowledge, logic and ethical stance of the researcher. It is also noted that the philosophical positions of the researcher should be derived from the objective or subjective nature of the variables in the research problem. In relation to optimizing the financial performance of pension funds, the study concluded that pragmatism is the most appropriate guiding philosophy for determining the ontological, epistemological, axiological and methodological positions of the researcher. It is also concluded that the mixed method research paradigm, implemented through the explanatory sequential design is a better approach to comprehensively understand the subject matter since pension fund financial performance is a function of both subjective and objective factors. (shrink)

John Frame gives us an accessible introduction to "triperspectival" study-where theological issues are fruitfully viewed from multiple perspectives without compromise to their unity and truth. Book jacket.

Nietzsche's Voices, the latest volume of John Sallis's Collected Writings, presents his two-semester lecture course on Nietzsche offered in the Philosophy Department of Duquesne University during the school year 1971-72. "Nietzsche is easy to read; his is apparently the easiest of all the great philosophies. Yet the easy intelligibility is deceptive. Nietzsche's writings make us believe we have understood when in fact we have not. His philosophy is actually the exact opposite of easy," says Sallis. He first discusses Nietzsche's (...) life and the relevance of the classical Greeks to his thought. Then, in invigorating detail, Sallis discusses Nietzsche's views on truth, morality, and the death of God. The final lecture covers Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche's influential but highly debated work of philosophical fiction. Nietzsche's Voices represents an essential introduction to the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, as presented by one of today's most significant philosophers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John Allman PAUL DE MAN, DECONSTRUCTION, AND DISCIPLESHIP God may be dead, but his vocabulary lives on, oddly enough, in the militandy secular pages of recent literary theory. Just when we thought it was safe to plunge the depths of postmodernism without the muddying mystifications of worship, religious language seems to have resurrected itself and is walking once again on the troubled waters of literary criticism. In an (...) essay on "The Institutional Control of Interpretation," forexample, Frank Kermode suggests that the Church offers us the best model for understanding the "exegetical activities" ofliterary critics everywhere: "self-perpetuating, hierarchical, authoritative, much concerned with questions of canon, and wont, as we are, to distinguish sharply between initiate and uninitiate readings, the Church is a model we would do well to consider as we attempt to understand our own practice."1 We can find traces of sacred vocabulary in the description not only of the Church of Criticism in general, but also of particular sects within this institution, even those determined to undermine the notion that anything is sacred. In fact, religious language seems most abundant in critical assessments ofdeconstruction, by all appearances the most iconoclastic of recent modes of interpretation. Gerald Graff, for example, argues that the deconstructive project transforms literature into "a vehicle for a nihilistic metaphysics, an anti-didactic form of preaching." Literature becomes "once again the great oracle of truth, but now the truth is that there is no truth. In a curiously inverted restatement of the religion of literature, the literary work is made the sole source of truth only in the sense that it alone refuses to succumb to the delusion that the truth can be spoken."2 Focusing on the style rather than the Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 324-339 John Allman325 dogma of deconstruction, Mark Felperin echoes a number of theorists (both radical and conservative) when he comments that de Man, Derrida, and their brethren, much like "high priests ofa new mystery cult," are guilty of "a deliberate obscurantism designed to exclude all but an elite—only those who already know will understand and be saved."3 And John Ellis suggests that "deconstructive logic" is simply a crude version of "a standard formula in many branches of religious mysticism."4 Clearly, Ellis, Graff, and others so stigmatize deconstruction not by way of providing neutral descriptions of an interpretive approach, but rather as part of a polemical strategy intended to expose flaws in deconstruction—its hypocrisy, its elitism, its unoriginality. Despite this appropriation of religious language in the rhetoric denouncing deconstruction, it seems to me to be both possible and useful to examine how religious vocabulary might offer a fair as well as illuminating means of describing rather than proscribing the critical phenomenon known as deconstruction. In particular, I would like to look at the ways in which the relation between the originators ofdeconstruction and their successors resembles that between master and disciple. To those sympathetic to deconstruction, such an approach may seem inappropriate, if not hostile; deconstructionists, accustomed to charges that they are presenting a metaphysics of absence, a religion of antirepresentationalism, have consistentiy denied that their practices are in any way religious. What I would like to suggest, however, is that deconstruction, like the texts it reads, is governed by the very forces it resists. By studying the relation between one "exemplary" deconstructive critic— Paul de Man—and one of his influencial students—Barbara Johnson—I hope to illustrate how the survival of deconstruction depends paradoxically on its ability to both resist and restore the powers that shape the relation between master and disciple. Particularly useful in the context ofmy argument are the observations of two sociologists of religion, Joachim Wach and Max Weber, whose sociological perspective permits them to comment on the dynamics of the master-disciple relationship without referring to any particular set of beliefs or teachings. Wach's essay "Master and Disciple" is especially helpful, for he begins his discussion of this dynamic by contrasting the relation between master and disciple with that between teacher and student. For Wach, the essential difference between master and teacher is that the teacher "gives a definite subject matter" while the master "provides only... (shrink)

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Keywords: geology instrument probe Earth interior crust magma core crack underground nuclear explosion molten iron China Syndrome melting rock Published in the December-2003 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine ; This column was written and submitted 06/22/2003 and is copyrighted ©2003 by John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.

John Drummond; Foucault for Students of Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 34, Issue 4, 7 March 2003, Pages 709–719, https://doi.org/10.1111/.

Human Rights and Common Good collects John Finnis's wide-ranging work on central issues in political philosophy. The subjects explored include the general theory of political community and justice; the nature and role of human rights; national territory and migrants' and non-citizens' rights; the justification of punishment; and the public control of euthanasia, abortion, and marriage.

This paper has two parts. The first is an exposition of John Foster's argument that ultimate reality, whatever else it might be, is not physical, and could not be. The second part is a somewhat tentative discussion of this argument, in which I consider ways it might be challenged or amended. I suggest that while Foster's argument may not render materialism untenable, at the very least it forces the materialist to adopt certain other controversial views, and so is a (...) force to be reckoned with. I shall use the term physical anti-realism to denote the thesis that ultimate reality does not, and cannot possibly, contain anything material or physical. By physicalism I mean the doctrine that ultimate reality can be physical, at least in part. What Foster means by "ultimate reality" will be explained shortly, but it can be taken roughly to mean: the world as it really is, objectively, as opposed to how it appears to be, or how we conceive it to be. The full-scale version of Foster's argument for physical anti-realism is to be found in the first eleven chapters of The Case for Idealism.2 In the remaining six chapters, he argues that the best way of accommodating this negative result is to adopt a version of phenomenalism, by holding that the physical world exists, but only as a "creation" of contingent constraints on the course of human sensory experience. In what follows, I shall be concerned only with the negative part of Foster's argument, his case against physicalism. Foster himself has recently provided a shorter version of his argument, in "The Succinct Case for Idealism".3 The latter work, henceforth The Succinct Case, as opposed to just The Case, is mainly given over to the anti-realist argument, and provides an excellent introduction to it. The exposition which follows may well be longer than the entire Succinct Case. (shrink)

An important book, one that can truly be called seminal. --America In a popular, informal style, the Jesuit author of many theological books and articles explores the question of interpersonal commitments . . . His book should do much to clarify a great deal of muddy thinking on a critical issue. --Library Journal Haughey is not addressing one life-style, but is writing for all, since all of us are committed to someone or something. His book is carefully written and deserves (...) careful reading. --Best Sellers John C. Haughey, SJ, is the author of 'The Holy Use of Money' and 'Should Anyone Say Forever?'. (shrink)

This is French version of John Stuart Mill's essay "On Nature" accompanied by a introduction by the translator and a lexicon of English words (used in moral philosophy) often wrongly translated into French and a short reflection on the two senses of the word "law" that often cause confusion.