Virtue theorizing, long in eclipse, has revived strongly in recent times. However, virtue-type approaches predominate in non-Western cultures and dominated Western thought before the modern period. So the revival can make one wonder whether modern epistemology and ethics do not represent a kind a medieval period relative to these other historical/sociological facts. Why did virtue ethics and epistemology go into eclipse in the West during the modern period? The emerging importance of the individual may represent a kind of shock (...) of modernity that left Western virtue approaches decimated in its wake. Both Cartesian epistemology and modern rights theory represent emergent individualism, but the revival of virtue approaches recently may indicate that the shock of modernity is starting to wear off. (shrink)

In the long 20th century, modern China experienced perhaps the world’s most radical and systematic secularization process and the decimation of traditional religious and ritual cultures. This article seeks to account for this experience by engaging with postcolonial theory, a body of discourse seldom found relevant to China Studies. The article attempts a two-pronged critique of both state secularization and some aspects of existing Postcolonial Studies/theory. It shows the many ways in which nationalist elites in modern China unwittingly absorbed (...) Western Orientalist discourse even as their words and actions were ostensibly anti-colonial, and much of the article examines the consequences of this native Orientalism upon Chinese religiosities. Finally, the article suggests that one cannot discuss governmentality in modern China without understanding how it is intertwined with a sovereign power that is both archaic and, at the same time, has experienced renewal and expansion in modernity. (shrink)

In the long 20th century, modern China experienced perhaps the world’s most radical and systematic secularization process and the decimation of traditional religious and ritual cultures. This article seeks to account for this experience by engaging with postcolonial theory, a body of discourse seldom found relevant to China Studies. The article attempts a two-pronged critique of both state secularization and some aspects of existing Postcolonial Studies/theory. It shows the many ways in which nationalist elites in modern China unwittingly absorbed (...) Western Orientalist discourse even as their words and actions were ostensibly anti-colonial, and much of the article examines the consequences of this native Orientalism upon Chinese religiosities. Finally, the article suggests that one cannot discuss governmentality in modern China without understanding how it is intertwined with a sovereign power that is both archaic and, at the same time, has experienced renewal and expansion in modernity. (shrink)

“The Thirties”: here this term has nothing to do with ragtime, long-nosed Bugattis, or Maurice Chevalier. The expression instead designates the period in Europe in which three types of power emerged that, despite numerous and important differences, have one thing in common: the claim to destroy the economic, political and spiritual order by which Europe recognized itself and replace it with a “new order.” It is necessary, truthfully speaking, that we agree to extend what we call “the Thirties” a (...) bit and have them begin in 1926, the date Mussolini sends Gramsci to prison—the most eloquent sign, no doubt, of the Fascist consolidation of power in Italy. The consolidation of National Socialist power in Germany is accomplished, as is well known, in 1934, when Hitler definitively does away with a Weimar Republic that by then had for quite some time been no more than a stage prop, and a shabby one at that. In the meantime, Stalin manages for his part to decimate the Leninist old guard, remove Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin, and install the steel age of bureaucratic anonymity under the most accurate of pseudonyms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Black Horseman Lane: A ReflectionJanet PniewskiI felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach upon getting the news this particular patient, let’s call him Stan, had burned through yet another nurse case manager and it would now be my responsibility to take charge of his care. As the medical director read aloud his patient profile, “Sixty–eight year old frail appearing Caucasian male with a terminal diagnosis of...” (...) I was already formulating excuses in my head as to why I would not be able to accept this charge. However, when she finished, I dutifully replied, “Ok, I’ll give it my best shot.” At the time, I was well aware that this assignment would test my resolve and commitment to providing the same high quality compassionate [End Page 117] care to every patient, but what I did not realize was how much I would grow personally and professionally in the process.Stan was well known in the organization for being “non–compliant” and “difficult.” Through his past actions he earned the label of racist and misogynist, having zero tolerance for people whom he perceived as different from him in any way. He was profoundly disrespectful toward women and was known to abuse his animals. Having been raised in a liberal household in New Jersey, surrounded by civil rights activists, animal activists and feminists, I was genetically programmed to abhor social injustice and raised to serve as an advocate for the disenfranchised and vulnerable. Since childhood, I’ve experienced visceral reactions to acts of injustice or cruelty of any kind. The very idea of someone like Stan was appalling.I found myself assigned to Stan’s case by default. He fired his first nurse because she was African American and painted her as dishonest and incompetent. He fired his second nurse because he was male and therefore must be gay. He fired his social worker because she was overweight, which certainly meant she was lazy. He fired the chaplain because he was not Catholic and thus unworthy of having any meaningful spiritual discourse. He would not accept the recommendations of our medical director because she was a woman. His family had given up on him a long time ago. His wife left him shortly after his youngest child had gone off to college, and all four of his children were estranged. Stan’s disease was progressing, despite therapy, and he was becoming too weak to care for himself at home without hospice support. His oncologist pleaded with us to give it one more try, even though we were running out of staff. These people that Stan had dismissed so unpleasantly were my colleagues and friends. The first nurse Stan dismissed served as my ever patient and knowledgeable preceptor when I was new to hospice and fumbling my way through unfamiliar protocols. The second nurse Stan rejected was a dedicated colleague and devoted friend, supporting me through several life challenges. I had witnessed our chaplain, judged as unworthy by Stan, tirelessly provide comfort to patients, family members and staff members in the darkest of hours. I knew them all as well–meaning, competent and compassionate team members and Stan’s disrespect for them offended me.Apparently, Stan was offended as well. His oncologist revealed to us that Stan was angered by his referral to hospice. He felt abandoned. I was Stan’s last hope; however, he didn’t see it that way. Neither Stan nor I was enthusiastic about our impending partnership.Stan was an engineer by trade, and apparently very successful in business. He lived on a sprawling plantation located at the end of his private road, which he named Black Horseman Lane. As I turned down the drive, aware of his reputation as a bigot, I contemplated how Stan might have arrived at this name. With the assistance of my smartphone, I was able to ascertain that there was, indeed, a Black Horseman of the Apocalypse, which was associated with famine. Delving further, into Wikipedia, my interpretation was that the Black Horseman’s famine decimated the grain crop, sparing the olive groves and grapevines, driving up the price of grain but leaving oil and wine... (shrink)

After a sustained period of relative calm, initial teacher education and training (ITET) in Wales has seen much change in recent times since devolution and all the indications are that this change agenda is likely to escalate in both the short and long term. In order to understand what has been happening in the ITET field in Wales, our paper sets out to achieve three things: first, it has contextualised the changing ITET, political, social and economic climate within Wales. (...) Second, it has presented ITET data for Wales from the onset of devolution to the present time. Thereafter, these data have been compared and contrasted. Third, we have attempted to project our findings forward, albeit in an era which is increasingly difficult to predict given both the financial climate and ?cuts? agenda. These latter aspects may result in the longer term, at best, to ITET in Wales becoming even further fragmented or reduced in numbers to, at worst, being decimated or changed forever from the more traditional scene which was apparent in both Wales and the rest of the UK since the Robbins Report aftermath in the late 1960s. (shrink)

“Smallpox was always present, filling the churchyard with corpses, tormenting with constant fear all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover.” In 1848, British historian T.B. Macaulay first captured the picture of the devastation smallpox wreaked on its victims, but the “King (...) of Terrors,” as it was dubbed by future president John Adams, had already decimated populations in the ancient world from Greece to Egypt to China. Smallpox had no respect for authority: the earliest identified victim, Pharaoh Ramses V was but the first in a long line of monarchs and rulers who succumbed,. including the Hittite king Suppiluliumas I, Aztec Emperor Cuitlahuac, and Queen Mary II of England. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Animal Part: Human and Other Animals in the Poetic ImaginationNancy WormanMark Payne. The Animal Part: Human and Other Animals in the Poetic Imagination. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010. ix + 164 pp. Cloth, $35.Mark Payne’s elegant and unusual book addresses an elusive topic: human perceptions of animal consciousness. Focusing largely on literary artists’ senses of other animals, Payne initially approaches the conundrum of how these (...) artists devise ways to bridge this gap from a broad but distinctly personal perspective. He takes the reader with him out into a natural setting, complete with details such as the beers he drank in the evening and the driftwood on which he hung his clothes to swim, and puzzles over how we as humans make meaning from and with animals. Payne’s personally imbedded starting point grounds his insistence from the outset that we share certain aspects of our behaviors with animals and that we may even through particular experience countenance something of what might be called the animal perspective. To put it this way, however, somehow reduces the attentive grace with which Payne navigates such profound topics; while his concerns are essentially existential he is also after the delicate distinctions among phenomena that open out onto animal being, the diversities of which certain types of literary expression seek to capture.The book is divided into two sections of two chapters each, running from tropes and inhabitations of the “beast in pain” to articulations of human-animal experiences (embraced as “becoming something else”). Payne begins his exploration of how poets take account of animal lives by addressing their use of bestial otherness to capture abject and aggressive outsider experiences. As Payne demonstrates, the archaic poet Archilochus flashes his brilliant and disturbing poetic control of animal subjectivity as a means of antagonistic warning to his enemies and other iambic targets. Hipponax in contrast appears to offer up more fully inhabited images of the dog when he is down—that is, the scapegoat, the quintessential figure of abjection, the human reduced to animal status and rejected by the community of men. Hipponax is also the inventor of the iambic meter that famously “limped,” a deformity of rhythm that interested the modern American poet William Carlos Williams. In a wonderfully rich and responsive discussion, Payne shows how in his long (and last) poem, Patterson, Williams shapes his subjectivity as a “dog poet” by means of a similar inhabitation of the deformed or lowly animal, whose perspective is then celebrated as more attuned to the songs close to the ground: the sounds of the river’s run, the very local details attended [End Page 696] to by bug or snail. Here Payne claims that Williams’ “biopoetics” “keeps an ear open for the lameness of Hipponax’s choliamb in its efforts to communicate the experience of physical impediment by formal means” (48). He reveals the details of this formal engagement by tracking Williams’ use of triadic structures to capture human-animal incapacities and the vulnerabilities of imaginative work.The second discussion in this section takes on violent rejections of the continuities of human-animal experiences, which Payne likens to the myth of Satan because of the narcissistic hatred of other life forms that is central to its dynamics. This “destructivism” (a term Payne borrows from the American poet Susan Howe) originates in a sense of homelessness in the world and results in a groundless need to kill other animals, as well as in the fetishization of the artificial and inorganic. Payne’s poetic sources run from Milton to Flaubert, in whose descriptions of these lost killers he locates metonymies of this turn to artificiality. While there is something mildly disturbing in the apparently uncritical ways in which Payne represents this murderous perspective—so that, for instance, Symbolist aesthetics become consonant with its “biocide”—he captures effectively the dark fascination of this rejection of so much that is living. Against the human tendency to mass decimation of other life forms Payne sets the imagination’s attention to the “thisness” of individual things and beings. Gerard Manley Hopkins and, perhaps more surprisingly, Ezra Pound provide for Payne examples of modern poets who unfold... (shrink)

Ontology has been traditionally guided by sophia, a form of knowledge directed toward that which is eternal, permanent, necessary. This tradition finds an important early expression in the philosophical ontology of Aristotle. Yet in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle's intense concern to do justice to the world of finite contingency leads him to develop a mode of knowledge, phronsis, that implicitly challenges the hegemony of sophia and the economy of values on which it depends. Following in the tradition of the early (...) Heidegger's recognition of the ontological significance of Aristotle's Ethics and of Gadamer's appropriation of phronsis for hermeneutics, this article argues that an ontology guided by phronsis is preferable to one governed by sophia. Specifically, it suggests that by taking sophia as its paradigm, traditional philosophical ontology has historically been determined by a kind of knowledge that is incapable of critically considering the concrete historico-ethico-political conditions of its own deployment. This critique of sophia is accomplished by uncovering the economy of values that led Aristotle to privilege sophia over phronsis. It is intended to open up the possibility of developing an ontology of finite contingency based on phronsis. Such an ontology, because it is guided by and must remain responsible to the concrete individual with which it is engaged, would be ethical at its very core. (shrink)

A comprehensive, self-contained survey of the theory and applications of differential games, one of the most commonly used tools for modelling and analysing economics and management problems which are characterised by both multiperiod and strategic decision making. Although no prior knowledge of game theory is required, a basic knowledge of linear algebra, ordinary differential equations, mathematical programming and probability theory is necessary. Part One presents the theory of differential games, starting with the basic concepts of game theory and going on (...) to cover control theoretic models, Markovian equilibria with simultaneous play, differential games with hierarchical play, trigger strategy equilibria, differential games with special structures, and stochastic differential games. Part Two offers applications to capital accumulation games, industrial organization and oligopoly games, marketing, resources and environmental economics. (shrink)

This article provides a brief introduction to some contemporary challenges found in the intersection of bioethics and international criminal law involving genetic privacy, organ trafficking, genetic engineering, and cloning. These challenges push us to re-evaluate the question of whether the international criminal law should hold corporations criminally liable. I argue that a minimalist and Strawsonian conception of corporate responsibility could be useful for deterring the wrongs outlined in first few sections and in answering compelling objections to corporate criminal liability.

Perspective-taking is an important ability to imagine the world from another’s point of view. Prior studies have shown that younger adults are more likely to consider the opinions of age-based in-group members relative to out-group members. However, the cause of this priority is still unknown. We conducted three independent studies to explore the effect of intergenerational contact on younger adults’ PT toward older adults and the possible roles of stereotyping and intergroup anxiety. A total of 192 college students completed the (...) Perspective taking Scale in Study 1 after being primed with age-based intergroup relationships. The results indicated that younger adults found it more difficult to take the perspective of older adults than that of their peers. 200 college students completed the Prior Contact Scale, Intergroup Anxiety Scale, Negative Stereotype Scale, and PT Scale in Study 2. The results demonstrated that intergenerational contact improved PT toward older adults by disrupting negative stereotypes, and intergroup anxiety moderated this mediating relationship. A total of 215 college students completed the PT Scale in the context of imagining intergenerational contact in Study 3. Interestingly, imagined contact effectively increased younger adults’ ability to take older adults’ perspectives. The present research verifies that contact is important for influencing younger adults’ emotional and attitudinal factors that are critical to improving younger adults’ ability to take older people’s perspectives. This is of great significance for developing harmonious intergenerational relationships. (shrink)

At EN VII.6 1149a24-b3, Aristotle offers an argument for the conclusion that akrasia due to thumos is less shameful than akrasia due to epithumia. The reasoning in this argument is obscure, for Aristotle makes two claims in particular that are difficult to understand; first, that in some way thumos “hears” reason when it leads to akrasia, and second, that thumos responds to what it hears “as if having syllogized” to a conclusion about how to act. This paper argues that previous (...) attempts to understand these two points have failed. It offers an account of the first difficult claim, but concludes there is not enough material in the text to determine what Aristotle means when he says thumos responds “as if having syllogized”. Nevertheless, the paper ends by offering an account of this remark that is Aristotelian in inspiration, even though it admittedly goes beyond anything that can be gleaned from the text. (shrink)

This essay suggests the possibility of conceiving the transcendental synthesis of imagination in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as the understanding at work on sensibility by developing an active conception of identity according to which the distinction between the imagination and the understanding is merely nominal. Aristotle's philosophy is shown both to provide such a conception of identity and to be tacitly at work in Kant's thinking. Finally, the essay traces this position into the discussion of aesthetic judgment in the (...) Critique of Judgment. (shrink)

The Routledge Companion to Christian Ethics brings together two different but related disciplines; the first is contemplative or theoretical, asking what are the beliefs or doctrines that characterize Christianity, whilst the second is practical, asking what are the ethical practices that attend its teachings. The movement between the theoretical and practical aspects is not, however, one way, as doctrine and life are mutually informing. In this comprehensive volume, leading scholars address key topics, problems and debates in this hotly debated topic (...) within a truly global context. Comprising over thirty-five chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into three parts based on the three persons of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Within these sections, cutting-edge issues are examined, including: God and genetics; War, peace and violence; White supremacy; Creation and sexuality; Digital ethics; Transgender studies; Climate change; Immigration and refugees. Adopting a practical approach that must consider new concerns that have arisen with recent social, political, and cultural shifts, The Routledge Companion to Christian Ethics is essential reading for students and researchers in Christian ethics, religious ethics and Christianity Studies. The Handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as ethics and philosophy. (shrink)

This article explores the rise and fall of an Afrikaner psychological association: the Psychological Institute of the Republic of South Africa (PIRSA). It presents rhetorical, discursive and social analyses of presidential addresses delivered at PIRSA congresses between 1962 and 1977, identifying the emergence of a discourse of volksdiens (ethnic-national service) during the 1960s that called for the ethnic-national relevance of the discipline. With the Afrikaner nation vulnerable to the triple threat of communism, capitalism and egalitarianism, PIRSA insisted that psychological research (...) be dedicated towards addressing these and other dangers. In the 1970s, however, such appeals became less prominent as discussions of South African issues slipped off the agenda. Curiously, at a time when the apartheid state was in decline, PIRSA’s psychologists were concerned with everything but the survival of Afrikanerdom. The unraveling of PIRSA’s quest for ethnic-national relevance mirrored the disintegration of the state’s apartheid rationality, which resulted from a concatenation of political, economic and cultural upheavals. (shrink)

It seems to me that many of our deepest, most cherished, and most stalwart beliefs lack epistemic justification and yet I think we have the right to hold many of these beliefs. In this paper, I will discuss what I will call salutary beliefs and distinguish them from epistemically justified beliefs. Next, I will discuss under what conditions it is proper for us to hold salutary beliefs, and finally, I will argue, that despite the fact that they lack epistemic justification, (...) we may be as entitled to holding some salutary beliefs as we are to holding epistemically justified ones. (shrink)

While even today lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people might have cause to distrust the healthcare establishment, how much more fragile was the relationship between sexual minorities and health professionals in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic. Dissent from consensus healthcare and health research then was a question of survival in the face of political and medical intransigence. This article focuses on one version of AIDS dissent: The narrative representations of AIDS in fiction by the gay African-American fantasy writer (...) Samuel R. Delany, which rejected the rigid binarism of “safe” and “unsafe” sex practices, Delany’s evidence-based dissent. He also engaged in a related form of cultural dissent: speaking the unspeakably obscene, at a time when Silence = Death. Delany called into question both the inferential leaps based on limited epidemiological research that were represented in safer sex guidelines and the widespread public reticence about sexual behavior. (shrink)

The Photographs of the American Palestine Exploration Society. By Rachel Hallote, Felicity Cobbing, and Jeffrey B. Spurr. The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. 66. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2012. Pp. xix + 352, illus. $89.95. [Distributed by ISD, Bristol, Conn.].

A. G. Long presents a new account of the importance of conversation in Plato's philosophy.

In the Gorgias, Socrates claims to practice the true art of politics, but the peculiar politics he practices involves cultivating in each individual he encounters an erotic desire to live a life animated by the ideals of justice, beauty and the good. Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy demonstrates that what Socrates sought to do with those he encountered, Platonic writing attempts to do with readers. Christopher P. Long's attentive readings of the Protagoras, Gorgias, Phaedo, Apology, and Phaedrus invite us (...) to cultivate the habits of thinking and responding that mark the practices of both Socratic and Platonic politics. Platonic political writing is here experienced in a new way as the contours of a politics of reading emerges in which the community of readers is called to consider how a commitment to speaking the truth and acting toward justice can enrich our lives together. (shrink)

A first-century Stoic, Epictetus argued that we will always be happy if we learn to desire that things should be exactly as they are. His Enchiridion distills his teachings to illuminate a way to a tranquil life.

Some writers have so confounded government with society, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government (...) even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ... (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham was a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

Long, Kevin Review(s) of: Trent: What happened at the council, by John W. O'Malley, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 335, $39.95.

Long, Kevin Review(s) of: John Henry Newman: A developing spirituality, by Austin Cooper OMI, (Strathfield, St Paul's Publications, 2012), pp.192, $24.95.

I want to talk about some of the main objections that have been given to libertarian anarchism and my attempts to answer them. But before I start giving objections and trying to answer them, there is no point in trying to answer objections to a view unless you have given some positive reason to hold the view in the first place. So, I just want to say briefly what I think the positive case is for it before going on to (...) defend it against objections. (shrink)

本书以建设有中国特色的社会主义的实践为中心,研究和阐述了马克思主义哲学在当代世界的发展和应用。着重从当代有重大现实意义的问题入手,阐述马克思主义哲学的基本原理与精神实质。.