Kritik af tidens fremherskende funktionalistiske, historieløse kultur, der fratager os evnen til at koncentrere og fordybe os, og efterlader et samfund uden rødder og retning.

The vast network of Drosophila geneticists spawned by Thomas Hunt Morgan's fly room in the early 20th century has justifiably received a significant amount of scholarly attention. However, most accounts of the history of Drosophila genetics focus heavily on the "boss and the boys," rather than the many other laboratory groups which also included large numbers of women. Using demographic information extracted from the Drosophila Information Service directories from 1934 to 1970, we offer a profile of the gendered division (...) of labor within Drosophila genetics in the United States during the middle decades of the 20th century. Our analysis of the gendered division of labor supports a reconsideration of laboratory practices as different forms of work. (shrink)

Illegal drugs are not inherently unclean, any more than alcohol, tobacco, or canola oil. All of these are simply chemicals that people choose to ingest for enjoyment, and that can harm our health if used to excess. Most of the sordid associations we have with illegal drugs are actually the product of the drug laws: it is because of the laws that drugs are sold on the black market, that Latin American crime bosses are made rich, that government officials are (...) corrupted, and that drug users rob others to buy drugs. (shrink)

This article challenges the unidimensional view of abusive supervisors and examines how employees respond to abuse when the transgressing boss also has a positive impact on others. Drawing on deonance and fairness theory, we propose competing hypotheses about the influence of prosocial impact. Specifically, we use deonance theory to suggest that prosocial impact might buffer the effects of abusive supervision. Alternatively, we incorporate fairness theory to predict that prosocial impact strengthens injustice perceptions and thereby worsens consequences of abuse. Two (...) field studies show support for fairness theory, demonstrating that employees perceive greater injustice, and show stronger retaliatory behaviors, when the abusive supervisor makes a positive difference in the workplace. A final field study replicates these results, while also testing the underlying cognitive process employees use to assess the interplay between “good” and “bad” supervisory characteristics. This article contributes insights to abusive supervision, prosocial impact, organizational justice, and behavioral ethics literatures. (shrink)

According to James C. Scott, in The Art of Not Being Governed, the resistance of Southeast Asian “hill peoples” to state subordination manifested itself in their deliberate abandonment of both sedentary agriculture and literacy. He argues that “tribality” (group-generated state evasion) is the polar opposite of “peasantry” (state-controlled agriculture). The hill peoples’ foraging and swiddening were thus political choices. Scott’s anthropological and geographical approach to these historical studies is admirable, but, despite his book’s subtitle (An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast (...) Asia), it lacks any reflection on the history of anarchism beyond the observation that tens of millions of persons wanted to avoid being bossed and taxed by the state. There is in the book, moreover, an absence of reflection on the oppressive nature of society: the state, Scott claims, is always repressive, whereas societies without a state are freer. This essay review asks whether the author shares with states, despite his criticism of them, a paucity of concern for the fates of individuals. (shrink)

Opinion surveys and popular media suggest that American workers are disillusioned with their employers and bosses. Governance in organizations is becoming a recognized problem. Classical works on governance call for more virtuous leaders, less selfish followers, and closer attention to the common good. These works were rejected as a basis for governing nations in the 18th century. They are unlikely to provide a basis for governing organizations in the 21st century. This article outlines a liberal-democratic approach to governing corporations, applies (...) this approach to debates over shareholder-stakeholder accountabilities, and proposes specialaccountabilities to employees. (shrink)

Do abusive supervisors benefit from their own harmful behaviors, or do they experience the same repercussions as their victims do? This article extends a growing stream of research that aims to understand how bad actors process their own negative actions, when they are most impacted by their adverse behaviors, and how their job performance is influenced as a result. We ground this research in a moral emotions perspective to suggest that enacted abusive supervision elicits prominent moral responses (i.e., shame or (...) guilt), which subsequently influence the supervisor’s own work conduct. Specifically, we suggest that feelings of guilt will prompt an abusive boss to compensate for their negative behaviors by increasing performance efforts, whereas supervisors with feelings of shame will withdraw and exhibit lower work performance. Multiple mediation results from Study 1 revealed that abusive supervisors predominantly experience shame and, in turn, reduced performance. In Study 2, we expand on these findings by considering the moderating role of supervisor core self-evaluations (CSE). We find that the negative relationship between enacted abuse and supervisor performance (through shame) is exacerbated when managers possess a fragile sense of self (i.e., low CSE). Overall, the current article adds to the argument that abusive supervisors do not profit from their own negative behaviors and that they, too, suffer performance setbacks. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Leibniz and the Natural World: Activity, Passivity, and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz’s PhilosophyMichael FutchPauline Phemister. Leibniz and the Natural World: Activity, Passivity, and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz’s Philosophy. New Synthese Historical Library, 58. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005. Pp. xiii + 293. Cloth, $149.00.Leibniz's metaphysics has long been viewed as one of the more noteworthy systems of idealism in early modern philosophy. At the ground-floor level of his austere ontology, (...) the standard view maintains that the world is not populated by bodies in space and time, but rather by immaterial, mind-like entities: monads. All the rest is a kind of ontological construction from these simple substances. In this book, Pauline Phemister seeks to overturn the idealist reading of Leibniz and to show that "the true immaterial substances in Leibniz's philosophy" are "monads that exist as animated corporeal creatures" (76). What is ontologically basic for Leibniz are not immaterial monads but "living corporeal substances" with "both mental and physical characteristics" (3).If Phemister is right, one wonders what to make of Leibniz's many endorsements of idealism, as, for instance, when he says that "the explanation of all phenomena solely through the perception of monads... with corporeal substances to be rejected, [is] useful for a fundamental investigation of things" (Leibniz to Bartholomew Des Bosses, June [End Page 162] 16, 1712). This programmatic summary is only one of numerous statements from the late period where Leibniz asserts that ultimate reality is composed of immaterial monads. One possible option would be to posit an indecisive vacillation in Leibniz's late philosophy. Rejecting this, Phemister's strategy for dealing with texts such as these—including the "New System," the "Principles of Nature and Grace," and the "Monadology"—is to dismiss them as the rhetorical subterfuge of a Leibniz who is only exoterically, not privately, a Cartesian (15, 163). Leibniz is a public Cartesian in that he "invites comparison of his rational monads with Cartesian minds" by suggesting that the former, like Cartesian minds, are immaterial and incorporeal (13). This is ostensibly only a ruse Leibniz used to ingratiate himself to a Cartesian audience, hiding from them his real view that genuine substances are always corporeal. We are not told why Leibniz would have expected an idealist philosophy that explains mind-body interaction in terms of a pre-established harmony to be well received by Cartesians, but with this hermeneutical principle in hand, Phemister has deftly insulated her criticism from textual refutation.A more pressing concern is Phemister's principle thesis that "the monad is a corporeal substance" (73). Phemister argues that monads are not complete substances unless they comprise not only a soul-like entelechy, but also primary and secondary matter: a monad is not substantially complete "without the subordinate monads that comprise its organic body" (41). What is important to note in this account is that for monads to be complete substances, they must consist of both a "soul-like aspect" and secondary matter, an organic body (133). This organic body is itself an aggregate of other corporeal substances, which are themselves combinations of entelechies and primary and secondary matter (81). The clear consequence of this is that the monad's existence as a complete substance is dependent upon the existence of other substances, namely, those substances that aggregate to form its organic body, the secondary matter that completes the monad as substance. Hence, the existence of complete substances—the only genuine substances—is ontologically derivative. This conclusion flatly contradicts Leibniz's repeated assertions that substances are ontologically basic, not depending for their existence on the existence of other substances, the very cornerstone of Leibniz's metaphysics.This account is also beset by a vicious circularity. For there to be complete substances, there must first be secondary matter, as secondary matter is a constituent of complete substances. As Phemister puts it, "both primary and secondary matter complete the dominant entelechy," making it a genuine substance (71). Without secondary matter, the dominant entelechy does not exist as a substance. But the existence of secondary matter is itself dependent upon the existence of complete substances, for secondary matter just is an aggregate of corporeal substances (84... (shrink)

We report on the small-scale (0.5 13 h - 1M, a large-scale bias of ~2.0 and a satellite fraction of 12 ± 2 per cent. Thus, these galaxies occupy haloes with average masses in between those of the higher redshift BOSS CMASS sample and the original SDSS I/II luminous red galaxy sample © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society © doi:10.1093/mnras/sts314.

Radical ecology typically brings to mind media images of ecological activists standing before loggers' saws, staging anti-nuclear marches, and confronting polluters on the high seas. Yet for more than twenty years, the activities of organizations such as the Greens and Earth First! have been influenced by a diverse, less-publicized group of radical ecological philosophers. It is their work—the philosophical underpinnings of the radical ecological movement—that is the subject of _Contesting Earth's Future_. The book offers a much-needed, balanced appraisal of radical (...) ecology's principles, goals, and limitations. Michael Zimmerman critically examines the movement's three major branches—deep ecology, social ecology, and ecofeminism. He also situates radical ecology within the complex cultural and political terrain of the late twentieth century, showing its relation to Martin Heidegger's anti-technological thought, 1960s counterculturalism, and contemporary theories of poststructuralism and postmodernity. An early and influential ecological thinker, Zimmerman is uniquely qualified to provide a broad overview of radical environmentalism and delineate its various schools of thought. He clearly describes their defining arguments and internecine disputes, among them the charge that deep ecology is an anti-modern, proto-fascist ideology. Reflecting both the movement's promise and its dangers, this book is essential reading for all those concerned with the worldwide ecological crisis. (shrink)

Four studies tested the hypothesis that a weaker belief in free will would be related to feeling less gratitude. In Studies 1a and 1b, a trait measure of free will belief was positively correlated with a measure of dispositional gratitude. In Study 2, participants whose free will belief was weakened (vs. unchanged or bolstered) reported feeling less grateful for events in their past. Study 3 used a laboratory induction of gratitude. Participants with an experimentally reduced (vs. increased) belief in free (...) will reported feeling less grateful for the favor. In Study 4, a reduced (vs. increased) belief in free will led to less gratitude in a hypothetical favor scenario. This effect was serially mediated by perceiving the benefactor as having less free will and therefore as being less sincerely motivated. These findings suggest that belief in free will is an important part of being able to feel gratitude. (shrink)

Many writers accept the following thesis about responsibility: (R) For one to be responsible for something is for one to be such that it is fitting that one be the object of some reactive attitude with respect to that thing. This thesis bears a striking resemblance to a thesis about value that is also accepted by many writers: (V) For something to be good (or neutral, or bad) is for it to be such that it is fitting that it be (...) the object of some pro-attitude (or indifference, or some contra-attitude). V has been the subject of intense debate in recent years, in part because of its incorporation into what has come to be called the “buck-passing” account of value. In particular, V is open to three challenges: that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is good is the fitting object of a pro-attitude; that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is the fitting object of a pro-attitude is good; and that, even if there is a strict equivalence between what is good and what is the fitting object of a pro-attitude, still the former is not to be analyzed in terms of the latter. The resemblance between V and R has not been previously commented on, but, once it is recognized, it is clear that R is open to challenges that resemble those to which V is vulnerable. This paper explores both the challenges to V and the parallel challenges to R and discusses responses that may be given to these challenges. The interrelation between V and R is then examined, and a general lesson is drawn concerning how to adjudicate disputes about the nature of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas was a significant contributor to the field of philosophy, phenomenology and religion. A key interpreter of Husserl, he stressed the importance of attitudes to other people in any philosophical system. For Levinas, to be a subject is to take responsibility for others as well as yourself and therefore responsibility for the one leads to justice for the many. He regarded ethics as the foundation for all other philosophy, but later admitted it could also be the foundation for theology. (...) Michael Purcell outlines the basic themes of Levinas' thought and the ways in which they might be deployed in fundamental and practical theology, and the study of the phenomenon of religion. This book will be useful for undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy, theology and religious studies, as well as those with a theological background who are approaching Levinas for the first time. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, I argued against the popular twofold Strawsonian claim that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and that, as a result, moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. Benjamin De Mesel has offered a number of objections to my argument, including in particular the objection that I mischaracterized Strawson’s view. In this article, I respond to De Mesel’s criticisms.

In this article, I outline a relational-developmental conception of emotion that situates emotional activity within a broader conception of persons as holistic, relational beings. In this model, emotions consist of felt forms of engagement with the world. As felt aspects of ongoing action, uninhibited emotional experiences are not private states that are inaccessible to other people; instead, they are revealed directly through their bodily expressions. As multicomponent processes, emotional experiences exhibit both continuity and dramatic change in development. Building on these (...) ideas, I describe an intersubjective methodology for studying developmental changes in the structure of emotional experience. I illustrate the approach with an analysis of developmental changes in the structure of anger from birth to adulthood. (shrink)

Never have the American people been lonelier, unhappier, or more in need of a swift reactionary kick in the pants. There is a better way to live--a way tested by history, a way that fulfills the deepest needs of the human spirit, and a way that promotes the pursuit of true happiness. That way is the reactionary way. In this irrepressibly provocative book, Michael Warren Davis shows you how to unleash your inner reactionary and enjoy life as God intended (...) it. In The Reactionary Mind, you'll learn: Why medieval serfs were probably happier than you are; Why we should look back fondly on the Inquisition; Why all "news" is fake news; How "conservatives" become "adagio progressives""--Provided by the publisher. (shrink)

In this far-reaching essay, historian Michael Edward Moore examines modernity as an historical epoch following the end of the medieval period -- and as a "messianic concept of time." In the early twentieth century, a debate over the meaning and origins of modernity unfolded among the philosophers Ernst Cassirer, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hans Blumenberg. These thinkers tried to resolve the puzzle of the fifteenth-century master Nicholas of Cusa. Was Cusanus the last great medieval thinker, his ideas a summa of (...) medieval tradition? Or was he a mysterious epochal figure, seated at one end of the bridge leading to modern thought? Nicholas of Cusa lived during a time of historical and existential crisis, or kairos, when medieval governments and cherished sources of unity were shaken. Likewise, the debate over his significance took place during a later phase of crisis for Europe, in the decades before and after the Second World War, when the collapse of European civilization was witnessed. Moore argues that modernity, so intently examined as an historical and spiritual problem, has significance for our contemporary sense of crisis. (shrink)

Contrary to the received opinion that Pablo Picasso conceived of Guernica only after learning of the bombing of the Basque town on 26 April 1937, and in direct response to it, in this article we demonstrate that the mural was visualized much earlier, as part of Picasso’s larger artistic and intellectual response to war. In February 1937 Picasso met with José Luis Sert, the architect of the Spanish Pavilion planned for the Paris World Fair that was to open in June. (...) That he was so quickly able to provide the architect with the exact dimensions of the mural suggests that he had already conceived a vision and plan for the painting that would only later be known as Guernica—a vision that saw him less preoccupied with iconographical minutiae than with visual problem-solving around a general theme: the types and consequences of political violence in Spain and wars past, present, and future. In searching for inspiration, Picasso paid homage to three other artists whose works reflected different aspects of this theme: Francisco Goya, Robert Capa, and David Seymour. The whole mural was painted in black and white because Picasso was certain that Guernica would be seen as a work of photojournalism, which form of journalism had only recently started to be transmitted by wire and radio services. Lastly, Picasso was confident that his painting would eventually be installed in the Prado Museum and be compared to both of Goya’s paintings, The Second of May 1808 (1814) and The Third of May 1808 (1814). To place himself as pre-eminent, Picasso made Guernica larger than either of Goya’s paintings by subsuming the former into a completely original compositional overlay. (shrink)

When things go badly, we notice that something is amiss, figure out what went wrong and why, and attempt to repair the problem. Artificial systems depend on their human designers to program in responses to every eventuality and therefore typically don’t even notice when things go wrong, following their programming over the proverbial, and in some cases literal, cliff. This article describes our work on the Meta-Cognitive Loop, a domain-general approach to giving artificial systems the ability to notice, assess, and (...) repair problems. The goal is to make artificial systems more robust. (shrink)

"Content and Comportment argues persuasively that the answer to some long-standing questions in epistemology and metaphysics lies in taking up the neglected question of the role of our bodily activity in establishing connections between representational states?knowledge and belief in particular?and their objects in the world. It takes up these ideas from both current mainstream analytic philosophy?Frege, Dummett, Davidson, Evans?and from mainstream continental work?Heidegger and his commentators and critics?and bings them together successfully in a way that should surprise only those who (...) persist in maintaining this barren dichotymization of the field."?Anthony Appiah , Princeton University. (shrink)

First published in 1976, the _Dictionary of Philosophy_ has established itself as the best available text of its kind, explaining often unfamiliar, complicated and diverse terminology. Thoroughly revised and expanded, this fourth edition provides authoritative and rigorous definitions of a broad range of philosophical concepts. Concentrating on the Western philosophical tradition,_ The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy_ offers an illuminating and informed introduction to the central issues, ideas and perspectives in core fields such as metaphysics, epistemology, and logic. It includes concise (...) biographical entries for more than one hundred major philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle through to contemporary figures such as Dummett, McDowell, Parfit and Singer. All major entries are followed by helpful suggestions for further reading, including web links, and contain extensive cross-referencing to aid access and comprehension. This edition also features a brand new guide to the most useful philosophy sites on the internet. _The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy_ is an invaluable and up-to-date resource for all students of philosophy. (shrink)

Although Lewis's personal journey was a deeply philosophical search for the most adequate worldview, the few extant books about his Christian philosophy focus on specific topics rather than his overall worldview. In this book, Michael Peterson develops a comprehensive, coherent framework for understanding Lewis's Christian worldview-from his arguments from reason, morality, and desire to his ideas about Incarnation, Trinity, and Atonement. All worldviews address fundamental questions about reality, knowledge, human nature, meaning, and so forth. Peterson therefore examines Lewis's Christian (...) approach to these same questions in interaction with other worldviews. Accenting that the intellectual strength and existential relevance of Lewis's works rest on his philosophical acumen as well as his Christian orthodoxy-which he famously called "mere Christianity"-Peterson skillfully shows how Lewis's Christian thought engages a variety of important issues raised by believers and nonbelievers alike: the problem of evil and suffering, the problem of religious diversity, the problem of meaning, the relation of prayer and providence, the relation of science and religion, the nature of humanity, and others. Just as Lewis was gifted in communicating philosophical ideas and arguments in an accessible style, Peterson has crafted a major contribution to Lewis scholarship presented in a way that will interest scholars and benefit the general reader ". (shrink)

This paper considers three general views about the nature of moral obligation and three particular answers concerning the following question: if on Monday you lend me a book that I promise to return to you by Friday, what precisely is my obligation to you and what constitutes its fulfillment? The example is borrowed from W.D. Ross, who in The Right and the Good proposed what he called the Objective View of obligation, from which he inferred what is here called the (...) First Answer to the question. In Foundations of Ethics Ross repudiated the Objective View in favor of the Subjective View, from which he inferred a Second Answer. In this paper each of the Objective and Subjective Views and the First and Second Answers are rejected in favor of the Prospective View and a Third Answer. The implications of the Prospective View for another question closely related to the original question are then investigated: what precisely is your right regarding my returning the book and what constitutes its satisfaction? (shrink)

This article studies the debate between the Neoplatonist philosophers Simplicius and John Philoponus on the question of the eternity of the world. The first part consists in a historical introduction situating their debate within the context of the conflict between Christians and Pagan in the Byzantine Empire of the first half of the sixth century. Particular attention is paid to the attitudes of these two thinkers to Aristotle's attempted proofs of the eternity of motion and time in Physics 8.1. The (...) second part traces the origins, structure and function of a particular argument used by Philoponus to argue for the world's creation within time. Philoponus takes advantage of a tension inherent in Aristotle's theory of motion, between his standard view that all motion and change is continuous and takes place in time, and his occasional admission that at least some kinds of motion and change are instantaneous. For Philoponus, God's creation of the world is precisely such an instantaneous change: it is not a motion on the part of the Creator, but is analogous to the activation of a state, which is timeless and implies no change on the part of the agent. The various transformations of this doctrine at the hands of Peripatetic, Neoplatonic, and Islamic commentators are studied, as is Philoponus' use of it in his debate against Proclus. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein famously declared that philosophy “ought really to be written only as a form of poetry,” and he even described the Tractatus as “philosophical and, at the same time, literary.” But few books have really followed up on these claims, and fewer still have focused on their relation to the special literary and artistic period in which Wittgenstein worked. This book offers the first collection to address the rich, vexed, and often contradictory relationship between modernism—the twentieth century’s predominant cultural (...) and artistic movement—and Wittgenstein, one of its preeminent and most enduring philosophers. In doing so it offers rich new understandings of both. Michael LeMahieu Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé bring together scholars in both twentieth-century philosophy and modern literary studies to put Wittgenstein into dialogue with some of modernism’s most iconic figures, including Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, Walter Benjamin, Henry James, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Adolf Loos, Robert Musil, Wallace Stevens, and Virginia Woolf. The contributors touch on two important aspects of Wittgenstein’s work and modernism itself: form and medium. They discuss issues ranging from Wittgenstein and poetics to his use of numbered propositions in the Tractatus as a virtuoso performance of modernist form; from Wittgenstein’s persistence metaphoric use of religion, music, and photography to an exploration of how he and Henry James both negotiated the relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical. Covering many other fascinating intersections of the philosopher and the arts, this book offers an important bridge across the disciplinary divides that have kept us from a fuller picture of both Wittgenstein and the larger intellectual and cultural movement of which he was a part. (shrink)

The Recurrence of the End Times: Voegelin, Hegel, and the Stop-History Movements explores the deep connection between modern political ideologies and the secular eschatological hopes and dreams of a post-Christian society.

In this paper, I consider the tremendous growth in the field of business ethics with reference to the way it is being "marketed". One hears the sales pitch that businesses ought to pay more attention to business ethics because doing so will in fact bring significant rewards. The bottom line here is self-interest. Given that the relationship between self-interest and morality has always been problematic in our tradition, I argue that we have some hard thinking to do about what the (...) bottom line in business ethics is, and about how business ethics ought to be marketed. In this regard, I briefly invoke several classics in our moral tradition and examine the ethics of business ethics in their light. (shrink)

Risks and benefit evaluation for controlled human infection studies, where healthy volunteers are deliberately exposed to infectious agents to evaluate vaccine efficacy, should be explicit, systematic, thorough, and non‐arbitrary. Decision analysis promotes these qualities using four steps: (1) determining explicit criteria and measures for evaluation, (2) identifying alternatives to the study, (3) defining the models used to estimate the measures for each alternative, and (4) running the models to produce the estimates and compare the alternatives. In this paper, we describe (...) how decision analysis might be applied by funders and regulators, as well as by others contemplating the use of novel controlled human infection studies for vaccine development and evaluation. (shrink)

In On Immunity: An Inoculation, essayist and author Eula Biss has given academics and clinicians interested in the public’s skepticism of vaccines, and of science skepticism more generally, a fresh look at what drives these phenomena. Despite public health’s continued success in maintaining high rates of coverage for vaccines across the United States, recent measles, mumps, and rubella outbreaks in the U.S. have harmed lives and indicate cracks in the vaccine uptake façade. From a public health perspective, it’s all hands (...) on deck to make sure vaccine coverage stays high. Biss’s outsiders’ view of these issues offers bioethicists, public health practitioners, and physicians much... (shrink)