Prophecy fiction emerged around the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. It is suggested in this article that, like modernist literature, it articulates a reaction to, and against, modernity, providing an alternative response to its fragmenting, decentering, and spiritually draining impact on traditional societies. In contrast to the mostly cerebral engagement of modernist fiction with religious experience recently argued for by Pericles Lewis, these texts are shown to retort affirmatively and exhortatively to the widespread crisis of (...) faith of their time with literary visions of scriptural apocalyptic prophecy. It is argued that prophecy fiction amalgamates utopian and apocalyptic elements in order to promote a specific imagined community and its spatial correlative. (shrink)

If I were asked to put forward an ethical principle which I considered to be especially certain, it would be that no one can be responsible, in the properly ethical sense, for the conduct of another. Responsibility belongs essentially to the individual. The implications of this principle are much more far-reaching than is evident at first, and reflection upon them may lead many to withdraw the assent which they might otherwise be very ready to accord to this view of responsibility. (...) But if the difficulties do appear to be insurmountable, and that, very certainly, does not seem to me to be the case, then the proper procedure will be, not to revert to the barbarous notion of collective or group responsibility, but to give up altogether the view that we are accountable in any distinctively moral sense. (shrink)

If a guilty offender is justly sentenced to be punished and an innocent volunteer agrees to be punished instead, is that any reason to leave the offender unpunished? In the context of mundane criminal justice, we mostly think not. But in a religious context, some Christians do believe in penal substitution as a theory of the atonement. However, it is not just these Christians, but most of us, who are of two minds. If the punishment is an imprisonment or death, (...) we do not believe in penal substitution. But if it’s a fine, even a big fine, we mostly do. (shrink)

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of C. S. Lewis’s death, a special annotated edition of his Christian classic, The Screwtape Letters, with notes and excerpts from his other works that help illuminate this diabolical masterpiece. Since its publication in 1942, The Screwtape Letters has sold millions of copies worldwide and is recognized as a milestone in the history of popular theology. A masterpiece of satire, it offers a sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from (...) the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to “Our Father Below.” At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, The Screwtape Letters comprises the correspondence of the worldly-wise devil Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man. For the first time, The Screwtape Letters will be presented in full-text accompanied by helpful annotations in a striking two-color format. These annotations will give fans a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the popular book, providing background information, explanations of terms, historical significance, and excerpts from Lewis’s other works that more fully explain the ideas in this volume. For both expert Lewis fans and casual readers, The Screwtape Letters: Annotated Edition will be a beautiful and insightful guide to a beloved classic. (shrink)

This article introduces cultural studies of medicine to medical humanities readers. Rather than offer extended definitions of cultural studies of medicine or provide a detailed history of the domain, I have organized this introduction around a close reading and review of three recently published texts in the field. These three texts, dealing respectively with cyborg technology, AIDS, and the medical management of sexual identity problems, represent excellent examples of the opportunities and possibilities of applying cultural studies approaches to medical topics. (...) After working through these texts (and the semiotic theories which animate them), I devote my conclusion to a broader consideration of the role of cultural studies of medicine for both medical practice and medical humanities scholarship. (shrink)

Introduction: about philosophy in general and ethics in particular -- The good and bad in experience: prolegomena -- The good and bad in experience -- Semantics of the imperative -- Ethics and the logical -- Deliberate acts -- Right acts and good acts -- Right doing and the right to do -- We approach the normative finalities.

My office is in a medical building in suburban Washington, D.C. —in Bethesda, named for the Biblical healing pool. All of the offices of my building are occupied by medical specialists, representing the most sophisticated training in the application of the scientific method. Downstairs and of service to all of us is a pharmacy, looking for all the world like a research laboratory with its gleaming surface, meticulous cleanliness, micro-balances, records, reference books, and cash register. It is neatly stocked with (...) modern, physiologically-defined preparations of active, predictable drugs. Among the enzymes, hormones, antibiotics, and chemo therapeutics for neoplasm, are a few newly hatched, unfledged remedies, but most are dependable and thoroughly assayed. The intently busy, white-coated, unsentimental pharmacists serve a hard-headed group of practitioners and a neighborhood of upper-class, well-educated patients. It is disconcerting, then, to see the undersurface of this sophistication, the irrational shadows beneath the science. On the front counter of the pharmacy are displayed attractive colored advertisements and pleasantly seductive inducements to self-improvement through diet cults and foods, tranquilizers, energizers, protein supplements, happiness promisers, preparations to enhance sexuality, vitamins artfully combined, and many packeted stuffs of no rational or pretended use whatsoever. “Why,” I ask the gimlet-eyed pharmacist, “do you have this large display of ‘Il Wah Genuine Chinese Ginseng, the Miraculous Herb of Life’? Doesn't it violate your university training? Your integrity as a modernist?” “Oh,” says he, “ginseng makes you feel better! You have more energy. You can do more! Lots of athletes use it, and people who work too hard and feel exhausted. It's only $3.45 a package. The prescriptions you give me once in a while yield no profit, but I sell a lot of ginseng. I use it myself!” Bemused, I walk back to my office, wondering about the easy abandonment of rationality, and pull down a box of medicinals collected the year before at an open-air pharmacy in the riverside markets of Brazil. The box gives forth deliciously rich forest smells. The packets within contain barks, roots, seeds, all of purported medical value. Other packets have amulets, charms, and protectives. The colorful labels on some of the patent medicines invoke ancient saints and healers, and promise happiness, health, prosperity and power. The essential rationale for their use in indigenous medicine was illusive to me despite many conversations with indigenous healers, and many times I have gone through the hundreds of items trying to find the key to what Brazilian and North American people fundamentally want from a pharmacy. In both cultures, where does magic stop and science begin? Do shops in both countries vend talismans in the search for the enhanced life, and fetishes against death? How much of all drug use is ritual and inchoate expectation? How can we reduce the mystification and incrementally increase the rationality of our pharmacopeia? (shrink)

Poetry has to do with reality in its most individual aspect. It is thus at the opposite pole to science, and out of its reach. Studies like The Road to Xanadu , highly valuable though they may be in one way, do not help us in any measure to understand what poetry in itself is; nor do they heighten substantially our appreciation of poetry. This may seem rather obvious, but it is not in fact idle to say it. For our (...) thought is apt to be unduly coloured to-day by the progress of science, and some of the votaries of science are prone to regard it, in the Biblical phrase, as ‘profitable unto all things.’ These are less naïve to-day than their prototypes a century ago, and they have a subtler psychology at their disposal when they turn to art. But their view is no less pernicious for that reason. Science has very certain limits, and we only bring it into contempt by forcing upon it a forlorn and unnatural enterprise beyond its own terrain. Some scientists, and they include eminent persons like Julian Huxley, have made that mistake in regard to our ideas of right and wrong, and have endeavoured to develop a science of ethics. It is not to the purpose here to expose the confusions involved in this particular act of aggression on the part of science. Science has nothing to do, in the final analysis, with our ideas of right and wrong. And it is also true, quite apart from ultimate questions about the meaning of value, that we cannot give a scientific analysis of art. Science may indeed help us to understand matters incidental to the pursuit of artistic activities. (shrink)

Sadness and low levels of depression are adaptive since they lead the individual to try and make up a loss. By contrast, severe or clinical depression is not adaptive, but can be thought of as sadness having become malignant.

The validity of the religious quest is defended across faiths. Yet it is not only the quest, but also the way in which religions have developed which is of central significance. Their committed followers live ordinary lives in the mainstream of the world, working out their faith in relation to life. In Sensible Religion, leading thinkers in world religions explore how religions are in conversation with other disciplines, bringing a transcendent perspective to the discussion. Countering the argument that religion is (...) at root extremist and irrational, Sensible Religion brings together thoughtful reflections by leading thinkers about humanity's spiritual quest. (shrink)

Second-person relations are relations between individuals knowingly engaged in interaction with one another. These are the social contexts within which it is appropriate for one to think of and address another as ‘you’. This dissertation explores the practical consequences for agents of relating to others in this fashion. A critical analysis is offered of Stephen Darwall’s theory of moral obligations in terms of demands that can be addressed from the perspective of a second-person. On the basis of the criticisms raised, (...) a broader conception of ‘second-personal reasons’ is advanced according to which there are a variety of species of practical reasons that are essentially grounded in second-person relations between agents, besides moral obligations. A paradigm case of such a species is the reasons that are presented in requests, and one chapter of this work is devoted to explaining this power people often grant to others: to intentionally create new, discretionary reasons for them. Drawing from several historical antecedents – particularly Martin Buber, Simone Weil and Emmanuel Levinas – the analysis of second-personal reasons is extended to include a discussion of the proper object of agapic love, and a discussion of the possible significance that face-to-face encounters may have for moral epistemology. (shrink)

At the time of writing there appear to have been no electronic submissions to the Journal of Medical Ethics. It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin electronic correspondence with a consideration of some of the ethical implications of this new form of ethical dialogue.I have posted this response to Kenneth Boyd’s editorial on Mrs Pretty and Ms B1 as this article may provoke debate far beyond the medical and ethical establishment. This issue may be of tremendous concern to patients or their (...) carers who are presently suffering in circumstances similar to those described.The electronic response forum of the BMJ has been in operation for over four years.2 An editorial in the BMJ on physician assisted suicide3 has attracted 125 responses at the time of writing. An important feature of electronic responses, particularly on items that generate a lot of debate, is that the …. (shrink)

A guide to retelling your personal, family, and cultural stories to transform your life, your relationships, and the world [bullet] Applies the latest neuroscience research on memory, brain mapping, and brain plasticity to the field of narrative therapy [bullet] Details mind-mapping and narrative therapy techniques that use story to change behavior patterns in ourselves, our relationships, and our communities [bullet] Explores how narrative therapy can help replace dysfunctional cultural stories with ones that build healthier relationships with each other and the (...) planet We are born into a world of stories that quickly shapes our behavior and development without our conscious awareness. By retelling our personal, family, and cultural narratives we can transform the patterns of our own lives as well as the patterns that shape our communities and the larger social worlds in which we interact. Applying the latest neuroscience research on memory, brain mapping, and brain plasticity to the field of narrative therapy, Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy explain how the brain is specialized in the art of story-making and story-telling. They detail mind-mapping and narrative therapy techniques that use story to change behavior patterns in ourselves, our relationships, and our communities. They explore studies that reveal how memory works through story, how the brain recalls things in narrative rather than lists, and how our stories modify our physiology and facilitate health or disease. Drawing on their decades of experience in narrative therapy, the authors examine the art of helping people to change their story, providing brain-mapping practices to discover your inner storyteller and test if the stories you are living are functional or dysfunctional, healing or destructive. They explain how to create new characters and new stories, ones that excite you, help you connect with yourself, and deepen your intimate connections with others. Detailing how shared stories and language form culture, the authors also explore how narrative therapy can help replace dysfunctional cultural stories with those that offer templates for healthier relationships with each other and the planet. (shrink)

D. H. Hodgson has argued that among highly knowledgeable and rational act-Utilitarians there is no non-Circular reason to be truthful or to expect truthfulness from others; wherefore these utilitarians forfeit the benefits of communication. I reply that hodgson goes wrong by tacitly assuming that his utilitarians have no premises to reason from except those that hodgson lays down in specifying the example under consideration.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Eleusis and Athens: Documents in Finance, Religion and Politics in the Fifth Century B.CWilliam C. WestMaureen B. Cavanaugh. Eleusis and Athens: Documents in Finance, Religion and Politics in the Fifth Century B.C. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. xxiv 1 238 pp. 2 plates. 4 foldout texts. (American Classical Studies, 35)Maureen Cavanaugh states (vii) that she aims “first, to present a new text with detailed commentary of two Eleusinian account (...) inventories (IG I3 386– 87); and second, to offer a new date for the Eleusinian First-fruits decree (IG I3 78).” Having produced her text from examination of the stone in the Eleusis Museum at various times in 1978–80, she reviews the scholarship on the board of the Epistatai at Eleusis, from the creation of the board in 460 B.C. through the fourth century. The understanding of the working of this board of officials justifies her search, in part 1 of this book, for a date for the elusive First-fruits decree. She concludes that it was passed ca. 435 B.C.In part 2 she presents a thorough study of the opisthographic inventories of the Epistatai of 408/7 and 407/6 B.C. (fourteen fragments reconstructed as a single stele). The texts of IG I3 386–87 are presented conveniently on four foldout pages at the end of the book, preceded by photographs. Though small in scale, the photographs are clear and help the reader to appreciate the layout of the texts of both inscriptions in three columns beneath a heading which runs over the entire width of space used. Her text improves that of IG I3 386–87 (published 1981) in several individual readings (letters read as certain, which are dotted by C.; letters read as certain by C. which had been restored by earlier editors), but the basic character of the text and layout is not changed. The most significant difference between Cavanaugh’s text and that of IG I3 is her restoration [End Page 637] of nineteen lines at the end of the last column of no. 387, based on the appearance of these items in no. 386.A conclusion summarizes the activities of the overseers of the sanctuary in this year, near the end of the Peloponnesian War. Students of Athenian history will now use Cavanaugh’s text as the definitive document and will need to consider the implications of her proposed dating of the first-fruits decree. Set in the years leading up to the Peloponnesian War, it may be seen as a text of the period of Pericles’ leadership, seeking to bring honor to an Athenian sanctuary, rather than as a document of the late 420s, as, e.g., in Meiggs-Lewis no. 73. Cavanaugh’s date is fully supported by thoroughgoing discussion of all fifth century texts relating to this board.William C. WestUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel HillCopyright © 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)