In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Freud between Oedipus and the Sphinx MIRIAM LEONARD Areproduction of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s neo-classical painting Oedipus and the Sphinx famously hung over Freud’s couch in his consulting room at Berggasse 19 [figure 1]. Nobody doubts the significance of the figure of Oedipus to the development of Freud’s thought, arion 28.3 winter 2021 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, (1780–1867). Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1808. Oil on canvas. Photo Credit : Scala/ Art Resource, (...) NY. 132 freud between oedipus and the sphinx but the presence of the Sphinx in this picture raises a series of questions about Freud’s interests which have not been as extensively explored. Indeed, this is far from being the only depiction of the Sphinx which graced Freud’s study. A large etching of the Sphinx at Giza was displayed amongst his bookshelves and a terracotta figurine was amongst his most prized objects.1 These representations of the Sphinx testify to Freud’s broader fascination with Egyptian culture—a fascination which, as we have seen, manifests itself both in his writings and his collection of antiquities. Judith Butler and George Steiner have wondered: “what would happen if psychoanalysis were to have taken Antigone rather than Oedipus as its point of departure?”2 I want to reformulate their question to ask, what would happen if Freud had taken the Sphinx rather than Oedipus as his point of departure? With this counterfactual, I hope to deepen the exploration already undertaken in the previous two articles about Egypt as an origin myth for psychoanalysis—an origin both for the development of the self and for the history of humanity. One possibility, suggested by Edward Said in his last work, Freud and the Non European, is that Freud’s turn to Egypt opened psychoanalysis to a less Eurocentric perspective. For Said, Freud’s foregrounding of Egypt and his interest in the crossover of “non-European” and “European ” cultures testified to his openness and his frustration with the nationalist and racist theories which were so prevalent at the end of his life.3 Said’s claims are compelling but as he would have been the first to note, Freud’s Egyptomania could equally be captive to orientalizing fantasies.4 In what follows I trace the evidence for Freud’s fascination with Egypt and, reading it hieroglyphically (as he would invite us to do), I speculate about its possible impacts on psychoanalysis as art and / or science. Ingres’s first version of Oedipus and the Sphinx—the painting whose reproduction Freud displayed—was completed in 1808. Ingres originally painted the picture in Rome where Miriam Leonard 133 he was studying at the French Academy. In common with other students at the academy, Ingres was required to produce figure studies and the original version of this painting was focused on Oedipus and the representation of his bodily form. Ingres had asked his model to use the same pose as the classical statue of Hermes with the Sandal which is displayed in the Louvre. As François de Vergnette writes: “The clarity of the contours, the muted use of chiaroscuro and the slight surface relief given to the figure of Oedipus add an archaic flavor to the picture. This archaism had its roots in Ingres’s taste for Greek vases.”5 But it is the impact of a different Mediterranean culture which can be felt in Ingres’s depiction of Oedipus’ counterpart. While Oedipus embodies the Winckelmannian Hellenic ideal, the Sphinx is represented in all her oriental glory. Ingres painted this image just ten years after Napoleon had lead his troops and “savants” into Egypt. Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign gave rise to a widespread fascination with ancient Egyptian culture and its impact on the arts was immense. In choosing to represent Oedipus in his encounter with the Sphinx, Ingres was able to draw on this new aesthetic of orientalism.6 Even before Napoleon ’s expedition, the Sphinx had become a potent visual representation of the mystery of ancient Egypt and of ancient Egypt as mystery. Ingres reworked this image during the course of his career and gave the Sphinx an ever greater prominence. In Ingres ’s depiction, the Sphinx’s orientalism... (shrink)

From 1993-96, artist Rainer Ganahl held six reading seminars with six different bibliographies in six different countries and entitled this public project; "IMPORTED -- A READING SEMINAR, Or How to Reinvent the Coffee Table: 25 Books for Instant Use." Imported -- A Reading Seminar is an extension of that project and gathers together a collection of texts with the common theme of import. For this volume, Ganahl invited a series of authors who have an intimate relation with each country he (...) visited to contribute texts or interviews addressing the consequences of exchange, globalization, nationalism, multinationalism, Orientalism, Eurocentrism, tourism, languages, theory, desires, identity, and politics from a variety of perspectives.The interview between Kojin Karatani and Sabu Kohso, included in this volume, addresses important economical and political aspects along with its instrumentality in the construction of nations and of race consciousness; Bill Arning's text demonstrates how the author came to understand through his experience as a curator that sexuality always has a specific cultural context; Coco Fusco deals with issues of prostitution in socialist countries now in the process of transition to capitalism; dealing with displacement of collective identities and their representation, Sami Naïr asks the question: What is it to be Arab? And Sylvere Lotringer: How can one become a foreigner in a foreign country. The resulting volume includes texts in English, Japanese, Russian, German, and French by nineteen different authors. Knowledge of a foreign language helps, but is not necessary. Along with those already mentioned included are texts by Julia Kristeva, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Zeigam Azizov, Lisa Adkins, Dan Bacalzo, Benjamin Buchloh, Karen Kelsky, Dana Leonard, Edward Soja, Victor Tupitsyn, Wulf Schmidt-Wulfen. (shrink)

While researchers have examined the types of ethical issues that arise in long-term care, few studies have explored long-term care nurses’ experiences of moral distress and fewer still have examined responses to initial moral distress. Using an interpretive description approach, 15 nurses working in long-term care settings within one city in Canada were interviewed about their responses to experiences of initial moral distress, resources or supports they identified as helpful or potentially helpful in dealing with these situations, and factors that (...) hindered nurses in their responses. Using a thematic analysis process, three major themes were identified from the nurses’ experiences: (i) the context of the situation matters; (ii) the value of coming together as a team; and (iii) looking for outside direction. The work of responding to initial moral distress was more fruitful if opportunities existed to discuss conflicts with other team members and if managers supported nurses in moving their concerns forward through meetings or conversations with the team, physician, or family. Access to objective others and opportunities for education about ethics were also identified as important for dealing with value conflicts. (shrink)

Abstract:In this paper, I offer my reading of John Dewey's Art as Experience and propose implications for music education based on Dewey's ideas. Three principal questions guide my task: What are some key ideas in Dewey's theory of art? How does Dewey's theory of art fit within his larger theory of experience? What are the implications of Dewey's ideas for music education? As I shall show, art for Dewey is rooted in nature, civilizes humans, serves as social glue, and has (...) an important role in society throughout most of human history. Modern life, however, separates art and life; there is a need to restore the continuity between art and the ordinary processes of living, a task that Dewey undertakes by positing the notion of art as experience. Dewey's ideas support an expanded curriculum in music education, one in which popular music may be included alongside Western classical music and music from diverse cultures. However, artistic and educational discernment are needed, which necessitates the need for music educators to be sufficiently steeped in varied musical traditions and styles. (shrink)

Two self-paced reading experiments investigated several factors that influence the comprehension complexity of singly-embedded relative clauses (RCs) in English. Three factors were manipulated in Experiment 1, resulting in three main effects. First, object-extracted RCs were read more slowly than subject-extracted RCs, replicating previous work. Second, RCs that were embedded within the sentential complement of a noun were read more slowly than comparable RCs that were not embedded in this way. Third, and most interestingly, object-modifying RCs were read (...) more slowly than subject-modifying relative clauses. This result contradicts one of the central tenets of complexity research: that nested sentences are harder to understand than their right-branching equivalents (e.g., Miller and Chomsky 1963). It is hypothesized that this result followed from a combination of two information-flow factors: (1) background information is usually presented early in a sentence; and (2) restrictive RCs—the form of the RCs in Experiment 1—usually convey background information. Experiment 2 tested this hypothesis by comparing restrictive and non-restrictive RCs— which generally provide new information—in both subject- and objectmodifying positions. The results of the experiment were as predicted by the information-flow account: Only restrictive RCs were read more slowly when modifying objects. It is concluded that both resource and information-flow factors need to be considered in explaining RC complexity effects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Chiao-Wei Liu, "Response to Leonard Tan and Mengchen Lu, 'I Wish to be Wordless': Philosophizing through the Chinese Guqin," Philosophy of Music Education Review 26, no. 2 (Fall, 2018): 199–202Leonard Tan and Mengchen LuChiao-Wei Liu's response to our paper raised important issues regarding the translation and interpretation of Chinese philosophical texts, our construals of Truth and ethical awakening, differences between the various Chinese philosophical traditions, and (...) the importance of recognizing students' selves as music educators work with them through diverse musical traditions. In this paper, we respond to each of these issues in turn.Liu rightly pointed out that the translation and interpretation of classical Chinese texts is complex. To support her argument, she cited a phrase from the [End Page 210] Zhuangzi that was quoted in our paper ("The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap") and noted that it has often been used "to attribute to one's ungrateful attitude after receiving help from others."1 Taken on its own as a standalone, this reading appears plausible. Our interpretation, however, takes into account the quote in its original context:荃者所以在魚，得魚而忘荃；The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap.蹄者所以在兔，得兔而忘蹄；The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare.言者所以在意，得意而忘言。Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.吾安得忘言之人而與之言哉？Where can I find someone who has forgotten words so I can talk with the person?"2In each of the first three phrases, there are six characters followed by five. This pattern indicates that the first three phrases should be read as a whole rather than independently, which then lead to the final phrase–the playful climax which reveals that Zhuangzi's purpose here is to discuss language. The fish trap and rabbit snares are metaphors for words, while the fish and the rabbit are metaphors for meaning. Each of the first three phrases convey the same idea that if we get overly hung up on the means (that is, the fish trap, the rabbit snare, and words), we will never get to the Dao. Taken as a whole, the passage conveys the idea of words being mere means to the Dao, rather than the Dao itself, which supports the central theme of our paper: Philosophizing without words. Indeed, as Liu noted, the translation and interpretation of Chinese philosophical texts is a complex one, to which we add the importance of context.In our paper, we drew on the Buddhist notion of mingxin jianxing (明心見性) to explain how a guqin player quietly and meditatively clears her heart-mind before playing the instrument so that she can search for Truth within and discover her innermost self. Extending and adapting our ideas for contemporary music education, we proposed that music education is not just an outward journey to learn about composers, but also an inward one to learn about the self. Liu's construal of our work as claiming that "Truth does not reside within the [End Page 211] performer or the music, but is located in the space where the two are in sync" and also that "qualities aligned with the music are ethically good, whereas those that differ are not"3 extend our writing in ways we did not intend. Quite on the contrary, we agree with Liu that different students have different needs, hence our proposition for students to search inwards and discover themselves.In like vein, we agree with Liu that "when music learning becomes a means of assimilating toward one prescribed/predetermined standard, regardless of students' lived realities or how they make sense of the world, teaching then ceases to be moral."4 As noted in our paper, we are not in favor of a standards-based approach to music education that is rigid; similarly, we do not advocate the prescription of moral standards. The moral stories associated with the guqin tradition are heuristic; they aim to inspire ethical awakening, not to impose moral standards, and are therefore neither mechanistic nor to be... (shrink)

Edwards's ontology, derived from his cosmology, harmonized with his theology. All three were derived from his trinitarian model and all three coalesced into a harmonious whole.

Taking passages from Heraclitus, Parmenides, Lucretius, and Cicero as well as Plato andAristotle, this guide provides an insight into the influence of its ..

In the middle decades of the twentieth century phenomenology grew from a local philosophy in a few German towns into a movement that spanned Europe. In Converts to the Real, Edward Baring uncovers an unexpected force behind this prodigious growth: Catholicism. Participating in a tightly-knit transnational community, Catholics helped shuttle ideas between national traditions that were otherwise inward-looking and parochial. In the first half of the twentieth century, they wrote many of the first articles and books introducing phenomenological ideas (...) to new contexts. They even organized the rescue of Edmund Husserl's manuscripts out of Nazi Germany in 1938. But the Catholic fascination with phenomenology was intermixed with a profound anxiety. Catholics worried that phenomenological ideas might prove dangerous to the faith, a possibility exemplified by the intellectual trajectory of Martin Heidegger, whose movement away from the Church was facilitated by his reading of Husserl. Converts to the Real uncovers a surprising genealogy for post-war European thought, with important implications for our understanding of the process of secularization and for the set of schools and ideas we now call "continental philosophy."--. (shrink)

This article has two parts. On the one hand, it summarizes a lot of the work I have done over the last 10 years. The summary starts with three phenomenological insights: into temporalization, into intersubjectivity, and into foundations. It ends with a discussion of ethics based on Kant and Bergson. On the other hand, the article presents my responses to three commentators on my work: Emilia Angelova, Edward S. Casey, and Samir Haddad. All three raise important questions about my (...) work. All three bring me back to the main point of my work: strategies for letting others be free. Thus, to use a phrase that probably seems out of date, this article could have been called “strategies of deconstruction.”. (shrink)

Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism is increasingly influencing the shape of the world from business and politics to achieving personal goals. Here, Leonard Peikoff—Rand’s heir—explains how you can communicate philosophical ideas with conviction, logic, and, most of all, reason. Based on a series of lectures presented by Peikoff, Objective Communication shows how to apply Objectivist principles to the problem of achieving clarity both in thought and in communication. Peikoff teaches readers how to write, speak, and argue on the subject (...) of philosophical ideas—ideas pertaining to profoundly important issues ranging from the question of the existence of God to the nature and proper limits of government power. Including enlightening discussions of a wide range of Objectivist topics—such as the primacy of consciousness, the pitfalls of rationalistic thinking, and the true meaning of the word “altruism,” as well as in-depth analysis of some of Ayn Rand’s own writings—Peikoff’s Objective Communication is essential reading for anyone interested in Ayn Rand’s philosophy. (shrink)

Reassesses the philosophical and pedagogical contributions of Protagoras Protagoras and Logos brings together in a meaningful synthesis the contributions and rhetoric of the first and most famous of the Older Sophists, Protagoras of Abdera. Most accounts of Protagoras rely on the somewhat hostile reports of Plato and Aristotle. By focusing on Protagoras's own surviving words, this study corrects many long-standing misinterpretations and presents significant facts: Protagoras was a first-rate philosophical thinker who positively influenced the theories of Plato and Aristotle, and (...) Protagoras pioneered the study of language and was the first theorist of rhetoric. In addition to illustrating valuable methods of translating and reading fifth-century B.C.E. Greek passages, the book marshals evidence for the important philological conclusion that the Greek word translated as rhetoric was a coinage by Plato in the early fourth century. -/- In this second edition, Edward Schiappa reassesses the philosophical and pedagogical contributions of Protagoras. Schiappa argues that traditional accounts of Protagoras are hampered by mistaken assumptions about the Sophists and the teaching of the art of rhetoric in the fifth century. He shows that, contrary to tradition, the so-called Older Sophists investigated and taught the skills of logos, which is closer to modern conceptions of critical reasoning than of persuasive oratory. Schiappa also offers interpretations for each of Protagoras's major surviving fragments and examines Protagoras's contributions to the theory and practice of Greek education, politics, and philosophy. In a new afterword Schiappa addresses historiographical issues that have occupied scholars in rhetorical studies over the past ten years, and throughout the study he provides references to scholarship from the last decade that has refined his views on Protagoras and other Sophists. (shrink)

History and chronicle, by B. Croce.--History as a system, by J. Ortega y Gasset.--The idea of history, by R. G. Collingwood.--The historian's purpose; history and metahistory, by A. Bullock.--What are historians trying to do? By H. Pirenne.--What are historical facts? By C. Becker.--The concept of scientific history, by I. Berlin.--Reason in history, by G. W. F. Hegel.--The hedgehog and the fox, by I. Berlin.--What is history? By E. H. Carr.--Faith and history, by R. Niebuhr.--The world and the west, by A. (...) Toynbee.--Debates with historians, by P. Geyl.--Has history any meaning? By K. R. Popper.--Historical inevitability, by I. Berlin.--On fortune and misfortune in history, by J. Burckhardt.--Selected readings (p. 179-181). (shrink)

In discussions of arts and culture, food and drink are often relegated to the realms of mere decoration or mere necessity. However, like the term taste, which begins as one of the five senses but comes to be understood as the most sweeping term for human sensibility, eating and drinking can also be fundamental aesthetic experiences. In this book, author Leonard Barkan covers millennia of Western aesthetic and cultural activity, tracing the history of eating and drinking across literature, art, (...) philosophy, statecraft, religion, and historiography. Drawing on a myriad of historical and analytic perspectives, Barkan demonstrates how the materials of the dining table, the flavor and pleasure of food, and hunger and satiety are central to life and culture. He explores what it means to "read for the food" in works of art, literature, and philosophy, and demonstrates the central role that food played in Roman civilization. He examines the deeply culinary qualities of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, the relationship between food and drink and the culture of the Renaissance, and the literal acts of consumption that are endowed with sacred significance. By uncovering the gastronomic underplot in cultural and artistic works, Barkan proposes an interdisciplinary approach to the relation between sense experience and aesthetic experience, and considers what it means to move from the margins to the center in a study of culture. (shrink)

Imprecise probabilities are often modelled with representors, or sets of probability functions. In the recent literature, two ways of interpreting representors have emerged as especially prominent: vagueness interpretations, according to which each probability function in the set represents how the agent's beliefs would be if any vagueness were precisified away; and comparativist interpretations, according to which the set represents those comparative confidence relations that are common to all probability functions therein. I argue that these interpretations have some important limitations. I (...) also propose an alternative—the functional interpretation—according to which representors are best interpreted by reference to the roles they play in the theories that make use of them. (shrink)

Taking into account significant developments in the metaphysical thinking of E. J. Lowe over the past 20 years, _More Kinds of Being:A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms_ presents a thorough reworking and expansion of the 1989 edition of _Kinds of Being_ Brings many of the original ideas and arguments put forth in _Kinds of Being_ thoroughly up to date in light of new developments Features a thorough reworking and expansion of the earlier work, rather (...) than just a new edition Reflects the author's conversion to what he calls 'the four-category ontology,' a metaphysical system that takes its inspiration from Aristotle Provides a unified discussion of individuation and identity that should prove to be essential reading for philosophers working in metaphysics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rome and Baetica: Urbanization in Southern Spain, c. 50 B.C.–A.D. 150Leonard A. CurchinA. T. Fear. Rome and Baetica: Urbanization in Southern Spain, c. 50 B.C.–A.D. 150. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xii 1 292 pp. 3 maps. Cloth, $75. (Oxford Classical Monographs)The Roman province of Baetica has not received a comprehensive treatment since R. Thouvenot’s Essai sur la province romaine de Bétique (Paris 1940; 2d ed. 1973). Since then, (...) important epigraphic finds such as the Tabula Irnitana (AE 1986, 333) and archaeological excavations have greatly modified our understanding of the structure of Roman cities in this province. Fear endeavors to assess the urban phenomenon in Roman Baetica in light of this new evidence. Rather than “Urbanization,” his subtitle might better have read “Urban Change,” since Baetica had already been largely urbanized by the Carthaginians and Iberians, and the real issue is how the native cities were affected by the Roman presence. The author himself concedes that Baetica had a “native urban tradition,” whereas there is “little firm evidence that Rome pursued an active urbanizing policy” (27–29). He also shows that while Romanization may have been passive from a Roman perspective, the inhabitants were actively involved in “bottom-up” initiatives to improve the status and amenities of their cities.An introductory chapter surveys Baetican geography and examines an anthropological model of colonialism. Since Fear later questions “whether the premisses of such a model... are in fact of any use when looking at the life of a Roman province” (274), it is unclear why he includes it at all. The next chapter discusses the characteristics of an ancient city, and (with a range of examples from Britain to Palestine) how urbanism was diffused in new areas. Listing the features of a city mentioned—but incidentally, rather than as a definition—in the Digest, Fear examines to what extent these are reflected in the laws of Urso and Irni. This seems an artificial and otiose exercise, since the colony of Urso and the municipium of Irni were unquestionably cities, even if the Urso law, for instance, contains no reference to bath houses. Moreover, Fear’s tendency to use interchangeably the terms “town” and “city” obscures the issue of urban definition; the pre-Roman oppida of the Baetican highlands may have been towns, but were not cities.Chapter 3 investigates the state of urbanism (including colonies like Carteia and Corduba) in southern Spain around 50 b.c. Fear challenges conventional opinion by discounting the conventus as a major factor in urbanization and by questioning whether mining brought large numbers of Italians to the province. He also shows that while the legends on local coinage were Latinized, the designs (bull, Melqart, Iberian cavalryman) remained pre-Roman. The next chapter asks whether the Late Republican colonies were really miniature replicas of Rome, as Aulus Gellius (16.13) suggests. Fear argues that while the colonies did imitate Rome in such features as law and public architecture, they were “content to adapt native structures” (104) in other areas. This was because the Baetican colonies were not founded on “greenfield” sites (such as Emerita in [End Page 143] Lusitania) but were superimposed on indigenous settlements, thereby including a substantial proportion of Spanish incolae who inevitably had an “Iberianizing” influence on the colonists.The chapter on the Julio-Claudian period is primarily an analysis of the elder Pliny’s list of Baetican privileged towns. Fear finds very few cases in which we can state with certainty whether municipia were of Roman or Latin status. He also maintains that the distinctive cognomina assigned to the cities did not confer legal status (contra M. I. Henderson, JRS 32 [1942] 6, who saw them as “flowery colonial titles”) but simply helped distinguish between homonymous place names. Chapter 6 considers the impact of the Flavian Municipal Law, which Fear sees as a general blueprint, a lawyer’s vision of what life should be like in a municipium. As such the law makes unrealistic assumptions, for instance (in the section on enrollment of iudices) that all the residents will have tria nomina. As for the effect of the law on the inhabitants... (shrink)

This paper responds to Kathleen Stock’s attempt to explain a puzzling fact, at least from her standpoint: widespread assertions that some people who are biologically male are women and some people who are biologically female are men. She regards these assertions as made while immersed in a fiction. Stock rejects an alternative explanation – that a lot of these people have read Judith Butler or 1970s feminism. Clarifying that explanation reveals it to be not so easy to dismiss.

According to Froula, Paradise Lost is aimed at affirming or reaffirming the power of orthodox authority, by locating its source in an invisible being beyond understanding or question. In this respect, Milton’s own authority is analogous to that of the metaphorical priest in the Virginia Woolf passage quoted at the beginning of Froula’s essay, who can claim a direct connection, presumably derived from the laying on of hands, with this original authority to which the rest of us have no access. (...) It is an odd analogy: Milton and a priest. It sorts very badly with everything we know about Milton, who was dedicated to the eradication of formal instutitional authority in favor of freedom of conscience. What is more important, such a view sorts oddly with the working of Paradise Lost itself.If we try to read Paradise Lost as an attempt to affirm orthodox authority by mystifying it, we run immediately into some major problems well before “Hee for God only, shee for God in him.” The first of these problems is Satan, who is, as we all know, in many ways an impressively heroic figure. Satan directly affirms the autonomy that Eve is said to be made to repress in the story she tells of her creation in book 4. This Satanic affirmation, moreover, is also made to depend upon a creation story. In book 5, responding to Abdiel’s argument that he owes gratitude to God for his creation, Satan says that he doesn’t remember any time when he was not as he is. The notion that God created him is, Satan declares, a “strange point and new” . If Milton’s purpose in the poem is the affirmation of authority, why has he made the proponent of autonomy and rebellion into such an impressive figure? Edward Pechter, associate professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal, is the author of Dryden’s Classical Theory of Literature and is currently completing a book on Shakespeare and contemporary theory. (shrink)

In this chapter, Craig shows how the Image of God doctrine works as an interpretative tool. Applied to the philosophy of Hume, it helps to illuminate textual detail that would otherwise not be fully intelligible, and it modifies, sometimes reverses, the received view of his philosophy. Craig argues that, in combining a sceptical epistemology with a thoroughgoing naturalism, Hume aimed at nothing less than the destruction of the doctrine of the image of God, and substituted for it an anthropology which (...) looked not to the divine but to the natural world for its methods and results. This claim is supported by detailed analyses of Hume’s epistemology, ontology, and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This chapter examines central philosophical themes and doctrines of twentieth century philosophy in the light of the Agency Theory. Craig argues that despite the unpopularity of philosophical visions of high generality in contemporary philosophy, the Agency Theory is the one vision, or Weltbild, on which much twentieth century philosophy explicitly or implicitly relies. It is evident in the philosophical doctrines of the Vienna Circle, with its radically emotivist accounts of value and radically conventionalist accounts of the a priori. It is (...) evident in the numerous attacks on moral realism, which invite us, instead of thinking about morality not in terms of an independent realm of moral facts that obtain independently of our thinking about them, to see ourselves as the creators of ethical value. It is evident in existentialism, with its belief in absolute human freedom and its demand for absolute moral independence, manifested in the existentialist ethics of authenticity. It is evident in the prevalence of ‘opacity’, our willing acceptance of brute facts without further explanation as long as our beliefs about those facts are reliable. Finally, the dominance of the Agency Theory is evident in epistemology, where the community has taken over many responsibilities that the individual used to have, as well as in the theory of meaning, where accounts of meaning are given in terms of the use of words in a linguistic community, as by Wittgenstein and Austin, or in terms of the speaker’s environment, as in the externalist account of meaning advocated by Putnam. But, as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four illustrate, too much enthusiasm for human activity has its dangers. (shrink)

This ambitious literary history traces the American novel from its emergence in the late eighteenth century to its diverse incarnations in the multi-ethnic, multi-media culture of the present day. In a set of original essays by renowned scholars from all over the world, the volume extends important critical debates and frames new ones. Offering new views of American classics, it also breaks new ground to show the role of popular genres - such as science fiction and mystery novels - in (...) the creation of the literary tradition. One of the original features of this book is the dialogue between the essays, highlighting cross-currents between authors and their works as well as across historical periods. While offering a narrative of the development of the genre, the History reflects the multiple methodologies that have informed readings of the American novel and will change the way scholars and readers think about American literary history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Alexandra Kertz-Welzel’s “Two Souls, Alas, Reside within My Breast”: Reflections on German and American Music Education Regarding the Internationalization of Music EducationPhilosophy of Music Education Review, 21, no.1 (Spring 2013): 52–65Leonard TanAs a Singaporean who, like Kertz-Welzel, spent four years residing in the United States, I read the article with great interest. Born to traditional Chinese parents, I was raised steeped in Confucian values, savored Chinese (...) operas, and spoke Mandarin as a child. When I went to school in postcolonial Singapore, however, the medium of instruction was primarily English. I read Enid Blyton in primary school, Shakespeare in secondary school, and Chaucer in Junior College. My university studies in music were Western-centric. All seemed fine until my doctoral studies in the United States when I was inspired by my music education professor to revisit my cultural roots and to read Chinese philosophy. It was [End Page 113] no easy task reading the original texts—they were written on bamboo slips more than two thousand years ago in classical Chinese, and I needed tuition from my mother. Nevertheless, as I worked my way slowly but surely through each character, one thing became unmistakably clear: although I had read more Western than Asian philosophy, many ideas in the ancient Chinese texts resonate with the innermost recesses of my being and are unmistakably a part of who I am as a Chinese Singaporean, albeit one schooled in Western ways.Two souls, alas, have been residing within my breast! Like Kertz-Welzel, I had to find a way to reconcile my two scholarly identities. How may one negotiate the seeming chasm between the Chinese and Western philosophical worlds? In this paper, I sketch some insights gleaned from my journey into the world of comparative philosophy, specifically, classical Chinese philosophy and American pragmatism. In particular, I address two obstacles to the internationalization of music education identified by Kertz-Welzel, namely, the tendency for researchers to know only one scholarly tradition well, and the use of English as an international language. I then proffer Dewey’s metaphor of “friendship” as a way of charting a new “silk road”—one that blends Eastern and Western ideas—for the philosophy of music education.As noted by Kertz-Welzel, many researchers only know one scholarly tradition well. Dangers lurk when scholars have limited knowledge of foreign philosophical enterprises. To begin with, one may fall into the trap of stereotypical preconceptions. For example, I have been asked if it were methodologically sound to juxtapose Chinese philosophical aphorisms with the closely argued texts of the American pragmatists. The basis of this critique is understandable: think Confucius and aphoristic phrases that teach humans how to lead moral lives immediately spring to mind; think Dewey and one is reminded of the depth and breadth of his philosophical arguments. Chinese philosophical texts, however, are by no means mere aphorisms. While the Analects of Confucius may, prima facie, appear as if it were a random collection of brief sayings, many passages relate to one another and cohere as a philosophy. The rich commentarial tradition that spans over two thousand years further augment the range of insights embedded in the Analects. Post Confucius, Xunzi, the philosopher best known for his argument that human nature is evil and ought to be cultivated through ritual (li 禮) and music (yue 乐), articulated his philosophy through thirty-two books that rival Dewey in richness and complexity.1 For two souls to reside within one breast, one has to remain vigilant against potential stereotypes.The tendency to know only one scholarly tradition well may also inadvertently cause one to judge a foreign philosophical tradition using the standards of the familiar one. When encountering Confucius for the first time, scholars schooled in European philosophy may, as Hegel did, criticize him for being a [End Page 114] shallow moralizer obsessed with rituals (li 禮) rather than a speculative philosopher concerned with theoretical matters.2 Such a judgment is misguided as it ignores the fact that the Chinese philosophical tradition was founded on a set of metaphysical assumptions that differed from its Greek counterpart. Seeing the cosmos in discrete, quantitative, and unchanging terms, the ancient... (shrink)

As the subtitle indicates, this article examines Russell Ford's new book on Deleuze's 1953 Empiricism and Subjectivity. Ford's book especially illuminates Deleuze's book on Hume in two ways. First, he shows how Deleuze's first book intervenes in an ongoing debate in French philosophy between transcendence and immanence. Second, Ford provides an intense reading of Deleuze's first book. The question, however, that Ford's book aims to answer is the nature of empiricism itself. My article reconstructs the precise definition of empiricism found (...) in Experience and Empiricism. But also, because Ford stresses the priority of the practical in Deleuze's interpretation of Hume, my article, near the end, shows how Deleuze's view of the practical in his 1968 Difference and Repetition contests the view of the practical presented in Deleuze's Empiricism and Subjectivity. (shrink)

: This article provides a close reading of Democracy and Education, situated in the context of Dewey's work prior to and during World War I, to illuminate the close tie between Dewey's overriding concerns during this period and today's educational concerns. The analysis suggests two projects for contemporary democratic educators.

Jonathan Lowe argues that metaphysics should be restored to a central position in philosophy, as the most fundamental form of inquiry, whose findings underpin those of all other disciplines. He portrays metaphysics as charting the possibilities of existence, by identifying the categories of being and the relations between them. He sets out his own original metaphysical system, within which he seeks to answer many of the deepest questions in philosophy. 'a very rich book... deserves to be read carefully by (...) anyone interested in any of the many subjects he discusses.' Katherine Hawley, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science. (shrink)