This essay demonstrates how the early Enlightenment salonnière madame de Lambert advanced a novel feminist intellectual synthesis favoring women's taste and cognition, which hybridized Cartesian and honnête thought. Disputing recent interpretations of Enlightenment salonnières that emphasize the constraints of honnêteté on their thought, and those that see Lambert's feminism as misguided in emphasizing gendered sensibility, I analyze Lambert's approach as best serving her needs as an aristocratic woman within elite salon society, and show through contextualized analysis how she deployed honnêteté (...) towards feminist ends. Additionally, the analysis of Malebranche's, Poulain de la Barre's, and Lambert's arguments about the female mind's gendered embodiment illustrates that misrepresenting Cartesianism as necessarily liberatory for women, by reducing it to a rigid substance dualism, erases from view its more complex implications for gender politics in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, especially in the honnête environment of the salons. (shrink)

This essay argues that Malebranche originated the model of sensitive taste in French thought, several decades before Du Bos. It examines the highly gendered, negative physiological model of taste and of the female mind which Malebranche developed within the Cartesian framework and as a witness to Parisian salon society in which women’s taste had great cultural influence, and strongly questions the common assumption that Cartesian substance dualism necessarily contained feminist potential. The essay argues for Malebranche’s great influence in this regard, (...) connecting him to later Enlightenment critics of women’s taste such as Rousseau, and to Vitalist physicians like Le Camus. -/- All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information address the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112. (shrink)

This article explores Nicolas Malebranche's approach to fashion: an inescapable postlapsarian consequence of God's sociable design of the human mind and body as manifested in the imagination. A problematic side effect of the general laws established by God governing the soul-body relationship, fashion wreaked havoc on individuals' thinking and potential for redemption yet pointed to a larger providential plan for social benefit. These ideas led Malebranche to a distinctive nonpolitical approach to fashion—both “Enlightenment project” and theodicy—in which he sought to (...) promote, toward human liberation and salvation, an enlightened understanding of the processes that created fashion and a charitable approach to managing it. Ultimately, however, his brain-based analysis ended up limiting individual freedoms (imaginative, cognitive, and behavioral), notably for those endowed with certain kinds of minds, in ways that had long-lasting effect. It also helped lay foundations for the Enlightenment's conflicted views about fashion as individual folly and beneficial social phenomenon. -/- Cet article montre que, pour Nicolas Malebranche, la mode constitua une conséquence inévitable de la Chute et du dessin sociable et providentiel de l'esprit et du corps, manifesté dans l'imagination. Effet secondaire et problématique des lois générales établies par Dieu pour gouverner les relations entre l'esprit et le corps, la mode entrave la réflexion et l'accès au salut tout en dessinant un plan providentiel, au bénéfice de tous. A la fois projet des Lumières et théodicée, cette approche apolitique s'efforce, dans une visée mêlant libération, salut et charité, de saisir les processus qui créent la mode afin de s'en accommoder. Parce qu'elle met l'accent sur le cerveau, cette approche tend pourtant à restreindre, de manière durable, les libertés individuelles (imagination, cognition, comportement), surtout pour certains types d'esprit. Et elle montre comment, pour les Lumières, la mode peut être à la fois une folie individuelle et un phénomène à multiples vertus sociales. -/- Copyright 2022 by Society for French Historical Studies. (shrink)

This essay studies the different literary genres of Proverbs 1–9, including how they might have emerged, what social contexts generated such texts in Israel and in Egypt, and what their function might have been. A theological context is seen to be integral to both of the main genres of instruction and poem, despite the clearly more educational emphasis of the instruction texts.

Once common, therapeutic privilege—the practice whereby a physician withholds diagnostic or prognostic information from a patient intending to protect the patient—is now generally seen as unethical. However, instances of therapeutic privilege are common in some areas of clinical psychiatry. We describe therapeutic privilege in the context of borderline personality disorder, discuss the implications of diagnostic non-disclosure on integrated care and offer recommendations to promote diagnostic disclosure for this patient population. There are no data in this work.

This article presents two studies that examine cause-related marketing promotions that require consumers’ active participation. Requiring a follow-up behavior has very valuable implications for maximizing marketing expenditures and customer relationship management. Theories related to ethical behavior, like motivated reasoning and defensive denial, are used to explain when and why consumers respond negatively to these effort demands. The first study finds that consumers rationalize not participating in CRM by devaluing the sponsored cause. The second study identifies a tactic marketers can utilize (...) to neutralize consumers’ use of defensive denial. Allowing the consumer to choose the sponsored cause seems to effectively refocus their attention and increases consumers’ threshold for campaign requirements. Implications for nonprofits and marketing managers include a tendency for consumers to be more likely to perceive a firm as ethical and socially responsible when they are allowed to choose the specific cause that is supported. (shrink)

This collection of thirteen new essays is the first to examine, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, how the new technologies and global reach of the Internet are changing the theory and practice of free speech.

This article presents the results of a cross-cultural study that examines the relationship between spirituality and a consumer’s ethical predisposition, and further examines the relationship between the internalization of one’s moral identity and a consumer’s ethical predisposition. Finally, the moderating impact of cultural factors on the above relationships is tested using Hofstede’s five dimensions. Data were gathered from young adult, well-educated consumers in five different countries, namely the U.S., France, Spain, India, and Egypt. The results indicate that the more spiritual (...) an individual consumer is, the more likely that consumer is to be ethically predisposed. Furthermore, the stronger one’s internalization of a moral identity, the more likely one is to be ethically predisposed. These two relationships are further moderated by Hofstede’s cultural factors such as the degree of collectivism versus individualism in the culture. However, the strength and direction of the moderation may vary depending upon the specific Hofstede dimension. (shrink)

As of the first week of February 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in over two million people dead across the globe. This essay argues that in order to fully understand the politics arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to focus on the individual and collective experiences of death, loss, and grief. While the emerging scholarly discourse on the pandemic, particularly in political science and international relations, typically considers death only in terms of its effects on formal state-level politics (...) and as a policy objective for mitigation, we argue that focusing on the particularities of the experience of death resulting from COVID-19 can help us fully understand the ways in which the pandemic is reordering our worlds. Examining the ambiguous sociopolitical meaning of death by COVID-19 can provide broader analytical comparisons with other mass death events. Ultimately, the essay argues that centering the impact of the pandemic on the experience of death and loss directly poses the question of how politics should value human lives in the post-pandemic world, helping us better formulate the normative questions necessary for a more ethical future. (shrink)

Child abuse is surely the most agonizing psychological issue of our time. We decry the tendency to polarize around the either-or dichotomy of "recovered versus false memories," when both are likely to occur. Memory researchers seem to generalize from the mild, one-shot stressors of the laboratory to the severe repeated traumas reported by abused populations, an inferential leap that is scientifically dubious. Naturalistic studies show some post-traumatic memory impairment ; dissociativity, such as emotional numbing, detachment, and the like; but also (...) increased suggestibility . About 20% of the normal population is highly suggestible, and in these individuals it is trivially easy to show suggested amnesia, detachment, perceptual blocking, etc., as well as to suggest dramatically false memories. It is therefore vital to assess suggestibility and dissociativity in traumatized populations. Adult survivors of abuse may show both more false "memories" and more "false forgetting" than the normal population. (shrink)

Scholarship flourishes in inclusive environments where open deliberations and generative feedback expand both individual and collective thinking. Many researchers, however, have limited access to such settings, and most conventional academic conferences fall short of promises to provide them. We have written this Field Report to share our methods for cultivating a vibrant intellectual community within the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN). This is paired with insights from 21 network members on aspects that have allowed STSFAN to (...) thrive, even amid a global pandemic. Our hope is that these insights will encourage others to cultivate their own intellectual communities, where they too can receive the support they need to deepen their scholarship and strengthen their intellectual relationships. (shrink)

This book is a rich blend of analyses by leading experts from various cultures and disciplines. A compact introduction to a complex field, it illustrates biotechnology's profound impact upon the environment and society. Moreover, it underscores the vital relevance of cultural values. This book empowers readers to more critically assess biotechnology's value and effectiveness within both specific cultural and global contexts.

This open access casebook addresses complex and important ethical challenges arising when health-related research in conducted in the context of epidemics and pandemics. This book provides contextually-rich real-world case studies illustrating research ethics issues encountered by researchers, ethics reviewers and regulators around the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic. The accompanying commentaries outline relevant conceptual approaches and ethical considerations. These promote understanding and reflection on relevant ethical issues, ethical approaches and competing considerations in a manner supporting thoughtful evaluation of their implications (...) for practice. As such the casebook is relevant to academic and professional audiences with an interest in global health, research ethics, and outbreaks and epidemics. (shrink)

We propose Rhythmic Relating for autism: a system of supports for friends, therapists, parents, and educators; a system which aims to augment bidirectional communication and complement existing therapeutic approaches. We begin by summarizing the developmental significance of social timing and the social-motor-synchrony challenges observed in early autism. Meta-analyses conclude the early primacy of such challenges, yet cite the lack of focused therapies. We identify core relational parameters in support of social-motor-synchrony and systematize these using the communicative musicality constructs: pulse; quality; (...) and narrative. Rhythmic Relating aims to augment the clarity, contiguity, and pulse-beat of spontaneous behavior by recruiting rhythmic supports and relatable vitality; facilitating the predictive flow and just-ahead-in-time planning needed for good-enough social timing. From here, we describe possibilities for playful therapeutic interaction, small-step co-regulation, and layered sensorimotor integration. Lastly, we include several clinical case examples demonstrating the use of Rhythmic Relating within four different therapeutic approaches. These clinical case examples are introduced here and several more are included in the Supplementary Material. A suite of pilot intervention studies is proposed to assess the efficacy of combining Rhythmic Relating with different therapeutic approaches in playful work with individuals with autism. Further experimental hypotheses are outlined, designed to clarify the significance of certain key features of the Rhythmic Relating approach. (shrink)

Speed, flexibility, negotiated control of outcomes, savings and absence of future enmity. Why lose all this in litigation when a new user‐friendly alternative is on the increase? The author is Chief Executive of the Centre for Dispute Resolution , 7 St. Katharine's Way, London E1 9LB, and Special Professor in ADR in the University of Birmingham, England.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE CURRICULAR ROLE OF RUSSELl?S SCEPTICISM MICHAEL J. ROCKLER Interdisciplinary Studies in Education / National-Louis Universiry Evanston, 1L 60201, USA I n The Prospects of IndustriaL CiviLization, written in collaboration with his wife Dora, Bertrand Russell wrote: The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve (...) this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.· This passage reflects Russell's views on scepticism and education; he sought an educational system that would avoid indoctrination and would produce sceptical students. Scepticism, a central aspect of much of Russell's philosophic work, was a primary organizing principle of his writings on education. Russell, a major contributor to educational theory, produced two volumes on education that continue to have considerable relevance for teaching and learning in contemporary society. The first, Education and the Good Life (1926),2 inspired by the births of John and Katharine, focused on the education of young children. In Education and the Good Life, Russell identified the aims of education. These included the development ofvitality, the promotion of courage (which entails the absence of fear), sensitiveness and intelligence. When schools accomplish these ends, they produce young men and women of character who are able to contribute to the well-being of society. 1 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1923), p. 252. 2 Published in Britain as On Education: Especially in Early Childhood. The CurricuLar Role ofRusselL's Scepticism 51 Russell, who once stood for Parliament as suffragist candidate, believed in equality of education for both men and women. This position was well advanced for its time; it still encounters resistance today. As the Russells' children approached school age, he and Dora confronted the problem of their education. Russell did not want John and Katharine to experience the loneliness of education by tutors that he had faced as a child. He and Dora also wished to avoid conventional public schools because they wanted their children to be educated in a manner consistent with their sense of scepticism about society and about religion. Russell felt that exposure to any kind of traditional learning would cause his children to be indoctrinated with patriotic and religious points of view. On the other hand, he felt that the progressive schools that were available-including A. S. Neill's Summerhill-lacked intellectual rigour. As a result of these feelings and because of Dora Russell's interest in education, the Russells leased the estate of Bertrand's brother at Telegraph House in Sussex and founded what came to be known as Beacon Hill School in September 1927. With his experience at Beacon Hill in mind, Russell published a second book on education in I932-Education and the Modern WorLd.3 It argued against the notion of progressive educators that schooling should simply allow for natural growth. Russell rejected Rousseau's approach to teaching and learning, and he distanced himself from some of Dewey's early work as well. In Education and the Good Life, and in other early essays on learning theory, Russell had seemed impressed by the growing role of behaviourism in education. However, his experience at Beacon Hill and his reading ofpsychoanalytic literature weakened his acceptance of behaviourism. In Education and the Modern World Russell called for more awareness of the role of emotion in learning as well as an examination of the way in which repressed feelings affect action. Russell argued that conditioning cannot effectively develop character. Education and the Modern World ends on a discouraging note. Russell concludes that schools can only provide for full individual development if the state identifies its own interest with that of the 3 Published in Britain as Education and the Social Order. russell: the Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives M.Masrer University Libraty Press n.s. 12 (summer 1992): 50-60 ISSN 0036-01631 52 MICHAEL J. ROCKLER child. Russell was pessimistic about this possibility. For this to take place, a number of things had to occur. First, farge scale wars had to be eliminated. Second... (shrink)

If affirmative action and other ethnicity-based social programs are justified, then J. Angelo Corlett believes it is important to come to an adequate understanding of the nature of ethnicity in general and ethnic group membership in particular. In Race, Racism, and Reparations, Corlett reconceptualizes traditional ideas of race in terms of ethnicity. As he makes clear, the answers to the questions "What is a Native American?" or "What is a Latino?" have important implications for public policy, especially for those programs (...) designed to address historic injustices and economic and social imbalances among different groups in our society. Having supplanted "race" with a well-defined concept of ethnicity, the author then analyzes the nature and function of racism. Corlett argues for a notion of racism that must encompass not only racist beliefs but also racist actions, omissions, and attempted actions. His aim is to craft a definition of racism that will prove useful in legal and public policy contexts. Corlett places special emphasis on the broad questions of whether reparations for ethnic groups are desirable and what forms those reparations should take: land, money, social programs? He addresses the need for differential affirmative action programs and reparations policies—the experiences of different ethnic groups vary greatly. Arguments for reparations to Native and African Americans are considered in light of a variety of objections that are or might be raised against them. Corlett articulates and critically analyzes a number of possible proposals for reparations. (shrink)

This comprehensive text shows how various notions of logic can be viewed as notions of universal algebra providing more advanced concepts for those who have an introductory knowledge of algebraic logic, as well as those wishing to delve into more theoretical aspects.

For thousands of years, people have used nature to justify their political, moral, and social judgments. Such appeals to the moral authority of nature are still very much with us today, as heated debates over genetically modified organisms and human cloning testify. The Moral Authority of Nature offers a wide-ranging account of how people have used nature to think about what counts as good, beautiful, just, or valuable. The eighteen essays cover a diverse array of topics, including the connection of (...) cosmic and human orders in ancient Greece, medieval notions of sexual disorder, early modern contexts for categorizing individuals and judging acts as "against nature," race and the origin of humans, ecological economics, and radical feminism. The essays also range widely in time and place, from archaic Greece to early twentieth-century China, medieval Europe to contemporary America. Scholars from a wide variety of fields will welcome The Moral Authority of Nature, which provides the first sustained historical survey of its topic. Contributors: Danielle Allen, Joan Cadden, Lorraine Daston, Fa-ti Fan, Eckhardt Fuchs, Valentin Groebner, Abigail J. Lustig, Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, Katharine Park, Matt Price, Robert N. Proctor, Helmut Puff, Robert J. Richards, Londa Schiebinger, Laura Slatkin, Julia Adeney Thomas, Fernando Vidal. (shrink)

J. B. Schneewind's "The Invention of Autonomy" has been hailed as a major interpretation of modern moral thought. Schneewind's narrative, however, elides several serious interpretive issues, particularly in the transition from late medieval to early modern thought. This results in potentially distorted accounts of Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and G. W. Leibniz. Since these thinkers play a crucial role in Schneewind's argument, uncertainty over their work calls into question at least some of Schneewind's larger agenda for the history of ethics.

Jurgen Habermas' construction of a critical social theory of society grounded in communicative reason is one of the very few real philosophical inventions of recent times that demands and repays extended engagement. In this elaborate and sympathetic study which places Habermas' project in the context of critical theory as a whole past and future, J. M. Bernstein argues that despite its undoubted achievements, it contributes to the very problems of ethical dislocation and meaninglessness it aims to diagnose and remedy. Bernstein (...) further argues that the precise character of the failures of Habermas' program demonstrate the necessity for a return to the first generation critical theory of Adorno. Reading across nearly the whole range of Habermas' corpus, Recovering Ethical Life traces the development of the theory of communicative reason from its inception in Knowledge and Human Interests through its elaboration in The Theory of Communicative Action and into its defense against postmodernism in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity . In separate chapters Habermas' readings of Freud, Durkheim amd Mead, Adorno and Foucault, Castoriadis and Taylor are critically examined. The focus of Bernstein's analyses, however, is always problem centered and thematic rather than textual psychoanalytic theory as an account of self knowledge, the competing claims of ethical identity and moral reason, the place of judgment in practical reason, and the debate between philosophies of language based communities versus those oriented towards world-disclosure. Critical theory is unique among current philosophies in engaging with the problems of social injustice and nihilism by siding with an abstract moral reason that forfeits the processes of intersubjective recognition it intended to salvage. Even in the fine grain of Habermas' account of performative contradictions and the theory of discourses of application, Bernstein perceives a squandering of the resources of an ethical life in need of transfiguration. (shrink)

A partire dalla seconda metà del Novecento la questione della mostruosità è stata oggetto – insieme a quella del prodigio, da cui si differenzia soltanto parzialmente – di un crescente interesse accademico. Gli studi riguardanti la funzione antropologica, cosmologica, estetica e naturalistica dei mostri, sono oramai tanto numerosi e tanto vari nell'approccio da renderne ardua anche solo una parziale enumerazione. Difficilmente potremmo esimerci dal menzionare un autore come Jurgis Baltrušaitis, che così acutamente ha posto il tema della funzione estetica del (...) mostruoso e del deforme, e allo stesso modo non potremmo dimenticare gli ormai classici studi storici e interpretativi di Claude-Claire Kappler, Jean Céard, Jacques Le Goff, Leslie Fiedler o David Williams, la cui scelta di prender parte alla nostra rassegna ci ha sinceramente onorati. Così facendo, tuttavia, trascureremmo lavori davvero pregevoli, come (solo per dirne alcuni) il poderoso tomo prodotto da Lorraine J. Daston e Katharine Park, il prezioso volumetto di José Gil, la ricca raccolta a cura di Charles T. Wolfe, la voluminosa storia della teratologia di Olivier Roux e le profonde riflessioni di Richard Kearney. Sarebbe possibile proseguire con un elenco di molte pagine, che includerebbe senz'altro i molti e altrettanto degni di nota lavori di alcuni degli autori di questa raccolta, che, con gli altri, ringraziamo: Albrecht Classen, Peter G. Platt, Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis, David Gilmore... (shrink)

That space and time should be integrated into a single entity, spacetime, is the great insight of Einstein's special theory of relativity, and leads us to regard spacetime as a fundamental context in which to make sense of the world around us. But it is not the only one. Causality is equally important and at least as far as the special theory goes, it cannot be subsumed under a fundamentally geometrical form of explanation. In fact, the agent of propagation of (...) causal influence is electromagnetic radiation. In this examination, the authors find support for a rationalist approach to physics, never neglecting experimentation, but rejecting a simple empiricist or positivist view of science. (shrink)

Applying the tools and methods of analytic philosophy, analytic feminism is an approach adopted in discussions of sexism, classism and racism. The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Feminism presents the first comprehensive reference resource to the nature, history and significance of this growing tradition and the forms of social discrimination widely covered in feminist writings. Through individual sections on metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory, a team of esteemed philosophers examine the relationship between analytic feminism and the main areas of philosophical reflection. (...) Their engaging and original contributions explore how analytic feminists define their concepts and use logic to support their claims. Each section provides concise overviews of the main debates in feminist literature within that particular area of research, as well as introductions to each of the chapters. Together with a glossary and an annotated bibliography, this companion features an overview of the basic tools used in reading analytic philosophy. The result is an in-depth and authoritative guide to understanding analytic feminist's characteristic methods. Table of contents List of Contributors Acknowledgments Editor's Preface Part 1: Introduction 1. Introduction: What Is Analytic Feminism? Pieranna Garavaso, (University of Minnesota Morris, USA) 2. Introduction: Why Analytic Feminism? Ann Garry, (California State University, Los Angeles, USA) 3. Introduction: The Society for Analytical Feminism: Our Founding Twenty-Five Years Ago, Ann E. Cudd (College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, USA)and Kathryn J. Norlock (Trent University, USA) Part 2: Metaphysics 4. Introduction to Feminist Metaphysics, Katharine Jenkins (The University of Nottingham, UK) and Pieranna Garavaso (University of Minnesota Morris, USA) 5. Feminist Metaphysics: Can This Marriage be Saved? Jennifer McKitrick, (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA) 6. Feminist Metaphysics as Non-Ideal Metaphysics, Mari Mikkola (Humboldt University, Germany) 7. Kinds of Social Construction, Esa Diaz-Leon (University of Barcelona, Spain) 8. Gender and the Unthinkable, Natalie Stoljar (McGill University, Canada) 9. Who's Afraid of Andrea Dworkin? Feminism and the Analytic Philosophy of Sex Katharine Jenkins, (The University of Nottingham, UK) Part 3: Epistemology 10. Introduction to Feminist Epistemology, Pieranna Garavaso (University of Minnesota Morris, USA) 11. Contemporary Standpoint Theory: Tensions, Integrations, and Extensions, Sharon Crasnow (Norco College, USA) 12. Objectivity in Science: The Impact of Feminist Accounts, Evelyn Brister (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA) 13. Feminist Philosophies of Science: The Social and Contextual Nature of Science, Lynn Hankinson Nelson (University of Washington, USA) 14. Reasonableness as an Epistemic Virtue, Deborah K. Heikes (University of Alabama, USA) 15. Agnotology, Feminism, and Philosophy: Potentially the Closest of Allies, Janet A. Kourany (University of Notre Dame, USA) 16. Say Her Name: Maladjusted Epistemic Salience in the Fight Against Anti-Black Police Brutality, Ayanna De'Vante Spencer (Michigan State University, USA) 17. The Epistemology of (Compulsory) Heterosexuality, Rachel Fraser (University of Cambridge, UK) Part 4: Value Theory 18. Introduction to Value Theory, Amanda Roth (State University of New York at Geneseo, USA) and Pieranna Garavaso (University of Minnesota Morris, USA) 19. Relational Autonomy and Practical Authority, Andrea C. Westlund, (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA) 20. (Feminist) Abortion Ethics and Fetal Moral Status, Amanda Roth (State University of New York at Geneseo, USA) 21. Feminist Approaches to Advance Directives, Hilde Lindemann (Michigan State University, USA) 22. What is Sex Stereotyping and What Could Be Wrong with It? Adam Omar Hosein (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA) 23. Kant's Moral Theory and Feminist Ethics-Women, Embodiment, Care Relations, and Systemic Injustice, Helga Varden (University of Illinois, USA) 24. Resisting Oppression Revisited, Carol Hay (University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA) 25. Women and Global Injustice: Institutionalism, Capabilities, or Care? Angie Pepper (University of York, UK) 26. Feminism, Nationalism, and Transnationalism: Reconceptualizing the Contested Relationship, Ranjoo Seodu Herr (Bentley University, USA) Part 5 Basic Logical Notions Pieranna Garavaso (University of Minnesota Morris, USA) and Lory Lemke (University of Minnesota Morris, USA) A–Z of Key Terms and Concepts Pieranna Garavaso (University of Minnesota Morris, USA) . (shrink)

L'évidence du concept de la « différence » entre hommes et femmes imprègne le discours féministe contemporain. Pour aborder ce concept de façon critique, j'utilise un corpus littéraire qui nous aide à voir l'évident, le non-remarqué et l'habituel dans nos positions sexuales : les fictions utopiques en forme d'inversion des rôles sexuaux. Après une discussion détaillée de ces textes, je suggère que la vision utopique de l'écrivaine anglaise Katharine Burdekin pointe en direction d'un sentier qui pourrait nous mener hors (...) des interminables débats sur l'« essentialisme » et le « constructivisme social » comme explications de la « différence ».The obviousness of the concept of "difference" between men and women permeates contemporary feminist discourse, which has devoted much energy to explicating the sources of this " difference ". In order to take a critical look at this concept, I draw on a body of literature that helps us to see the obvious, the unnoticed, the habitual in our gendered positions : Utopian fictions cast as sex-role reversals. After discussing these texts in some detail, I argue that the Utopian vision of the british writer Katharine Burdekin hints at a path that can lead us out of the endless debates over "essentialism" and "social constructionism" as explanations of "difference". Ce texte a pour objet l'évident, et la façon dont les choses que l'on considère évidentes glissent doucement dans l'invisibilité. Je soutiendrai que c'est précisément l'évident qui doit être rendu visible, et qu'afin de récupérer l'évident nous devons trouver un point de vue, un lieu d'où l'évident perd son évidence, est délesté de l'attribut du "cela va sans dire". (shrink)

In focusing on the story of Darwin's religious doubts, scholars too often overlook Darwin's positive contribution to the study of religion. J. David Pleins traces Darwin's journey in five steps. He begins with Darwin's global voyage, where his encounter with religious and cultural diversity transformed his understanding of religion. Surprisingly, Darwin wrestles with serious theological questions even as he uncovers the evolutionary layers of religion from savage roots. Next, we follow Darwin as his doubts about traditional biblical religion take root, (...) affecting his career choice and marriage to Emma Wedgwood. Pleins then examines Darwin's secret notebooks as he searches for a materialist theory of religion. Again, other surprises loom as Darwin's reading of Comte's three stages of religion's development actually predate his reading of Malthus. Pleins explores how Darwin applied his discovery to the realm of ethics by formulating an evolutionary view of the "Golden Rule" in his Descent of Man. Finally, he considers Darwin's later reflections on the religion question, as he wrestled with whether his views led to atheism, agnosticism, or a new kind of theism. The Evolving God concludes by looking at some of the current religious debates surrounding Darwin and suggests the need for a deeper appreciation for Darwin as a religious thinker. Though he grew skeptical of traditional Christian dogma, Darwin made key discoveries concerning the role and function of religion as a natural evolutionary phenomenon. (shrink)

First published in 1952, British Empirical Philosophers is a comprehensive picture of one of the most important movements in the history of philosophic thought. In his introduction, Professor A. J. Ayer distinguishes the main problems of empiricism and gives a critical account of the ways in which the philosophers whose writings are included in this volume attempted to solve them. Editors Ayer and Raymond Winch bring together an authoritative abridgement of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding ; Bishop George Berkeley’s (...) Principles of Human Knowledge ; almost the entire first book of David Hume’s Treatise Concerning Human Nature ; and extracts from Thomas Reid’s Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man and John Stuart Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. (shrink)

This article reflects a conversation between Jan G. van der Watt and Stephan Joubert. The article serves as the introduction to the Special Collection: ‘From timely exegesis to contemporary ecclesiology: Relevant hermeneutics and provocative embodiment of faith in a Corona-defined world – Festschrift for Stephan Joubert, sub-edited by Willem Oliver ’. Following a brief bio-statement as introduction, the following issues are discussed: the collection for the Jerusalem church; relevance of theology for society; social-scientific exegesis; the ancient concept of grace; Bible (...) translation in South Africa; public theology on the electronic platform; biblical examples of leadership and electronic media in religious activities and education.Contribution: This Festschrift represents current trends in biblical scholarship and ecclesial leadership. It contributes to the public discourse in church and society, especially the role of the electronic media in current Fourth Industrial Revolution. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the question of quantitativeness – of identifying the feature that makes quantitative properties quantitative. The chapter begins with two traditional attempts at capturing what makes a property quantitative – being numerical and being determinable – and argues that neither is satisfactory. The chapter then turns to influential recent proposals which, inspired by the Representational Theory of Measurement, attempt to identify particular relations as characteristic of quantitative properties. These attempts fare better than the traditional ones, but have (...) their own limitations. It concludes with a discussion of a new recent criterion for quantitativeness, which builds on a more abstract understanding of the representational theory of measurement. (shrink)