Antonio Gramsci was one of the most original political thinkers in Western Marxism and an exceptional intellectual. Arrested and imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926, Gramsci died before fully regaining his freedom, yet he wrote extensive letters while incarcerated, rich with insight into the physical and psychological tortures of prison. In meticulous detail, Gramsci records how political prisoners, himself included, contend with the fear of illness and death and the rules and regulations that threaten to efface their individuality. (...) Forming an incomparable link between Gramsci's intellectual passion and his emotional vulnerability, _Letters from Prison_ shows a man reconstructing his life while being separated from it, struggling to recapture the primary relationships that once defined his identity. Frank Rosengarten divides more than four hundred Gramsci letters into two companion volumes, complete with a chronology of the thinker's crucial life experiences, biographical notes on his correspondents, and a bibliography of works cited in his letters. (shrink)

BOOK REVIEWS 157 Antonio Gramsci. Letters from Prison. ~ vols. Frank Rosengarten, editor. Raymond Rosenthal, translator. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Pp. xxi + 374; 43 I. Cloth, $35.oo each. This is the most complete and authoritative edition of Antonio Gramsci's prison letters available in any language. Raymond Rosenthal's translation of the 486 letters pub- lished in these two volumes is reliable and gives a good sense of the colloquial style of the original. Frank Rosengarten's (...) extensive notes, together with his introduction, rep- resent a significant piece of Gramsci scholarship. Written in the decade that Gramsci spent in various Italian prisons between his arrest in November a926 and his death in April 1937, Letters from Prison provides an invaluable link between the human drama of Gramsci's prison experience -- the grind- ing prison routine, his failing health, the difficulty of maintaining a relationship with his wife and sons in Moscow, his estrangement.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:13o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:1 JANUARY 1990 ceived scope of philosophy in the Renaissance, in comparison with the Middle Ages and early modern periods. Most impressive of all, aside from the extremely high quality of all its parts, is this volume's fidelity to its subject and the placement of that subject in an accurate historical context. For that we have to thank each contributor, and, most (...) of all, the vision of Charles Schmitt. In addition to setdng a new standard for a reference work of this type, The CambridgeHistory of ReniassancePhilosophymay well prove to be his most enduring legacy. MARCIA L. COLISn Oberlin College Pietro Redondi. GalileoHeretic. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Pp. x + 356. $29.95. The trial of Galileo by the Inquisition in 1633 is a classic episode that invites continual reinterpretation and reevaluation for all sorts of reasons. Karl yon Gebler's Galileoand the Roman Curia (1879) was partly a response to the availability of new documents; Giorgio de Santillana's Crime of Galileo (1955) was partly meant to shed light on the phenomenon of McCarthyism; Arthur Koestler's Sleepwalkers (1959) was partly intended to come to terms with the crisis of secularism; Jerome Langford's Galileo, Science, and the Church (1966) was partly an updating of the apologetic interpretation; Stillman Drake's Galileo(198o) was partly a personal synthesis of his and others' recent contributions to scholarship. Such reappraisals perform a valuable function, and so one welcomes this translation of a 1983 Italian book, for it advances a radically new interpretation. Redondi was motivated by his accidental discovery of a document in the Roman Archiv.es of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith--the current name of the Inquisition. The document is an anonymous complaint about Galileo's Assayer(1623). The complaint is that this book advances an atomic theory of matter, that this theory conflicts with the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, and that therefore the book is heretical. The specific element of atomism that worries the writer is the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, including the thesis that secondary qualities do not really exist in the object but only in the subject. The doctrine of the Eucharist asserts that the consecration of bread and wine (which occurs during mass) involves the miracle of transubstantiation: the bread and wine retain all their accidental qualities, but their substance changes into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The conflict is that atomism would make transubstantiation impossible, for all accidental qualities of bread and wine are sensory manifestations of their atoms. Thus, if the qualities do not change, neither do the atoms. But if the atoms do not change, neither does the substance. This complaint is anonymous only in the sense that the document lacks a signature, and there is no other way for us to know the identity of the author. But the complaint is written in the form of a letter to an authoritative churchman, and the author asks the addressee to let him know whether his accusation is correct and what action should be taken about the matter. Thus, it is obvious that the plaintiff was known to the addressee. BOOK REVIEWS 131 Normally such a discovery would lead one to search the archives in question to learn from other documents as much relevant information as possible: not only the identity of the letter's author and addressee, but its date, its repercussions, and so on. But the Roman Archives of the Inquisition are, understandably, not generally open to scholars. Redondi himself had been granted a rare privilege by being allowed to consult some specific manuscripts in connection with his project which, though related, did not involve Galileo's trial as such. Therefore, in the excitement of his discovery, Redondi did the next best thing he could do. He was led to the following. According to Redondi, the complaint's author was Orazio Grassi, a Jesuit with whom Galileo had a bitter dispute about comets, which occasioned The Assayer, among other works. The complaint was written in 1624 or a6~5, at which time no action was taken by the Inquisition, partly... (shrink)

In this study, we propose and test a model of the effects of organizational ethical culture and organizational architecture on the perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers. This study also examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture and moral acceptability judgment, hypothesizing that moral acceptability judgment is an important stage in the ethical decision-making process. Based on a field study in one of the largest financial institutions in Europe, we found that organizational ethical culture was significantly related to the (...) perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers and to the moral acceptability judgment of this type of unethical behavior. No support was found for the claim that features of organizational architecture are associated with the perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers. This is the first study to document the differential effects of organizational architecture and organizational ethical culture on perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers, in wholesale banking. Implications for managers and future research are discussed. (shrink)

In a field dominated by research on moral prescription and moral prediction, there is poor understanding of the place of moral perceptions in organizations alongside philosophical ethics and causal models of ethical outcomes. As leadership failures continue to plague organizational health and firms recognize the wide-ranging impact of subjective bias, scholars and practitioners need a renewed frame of reference from which to reconceptualize their current understanding of ethics as perceived in individuals. Based on an assessment and selection perspective from the (...) field of human resource management, an alternative to conventional deductive-prescriptive approaches is proposed based on a pluralistic concept referred to as moral goodness. An inductive-descriptive theory-building framework is constructed based on three interrelated streams of inquiry to yield insight concerning both formal and informal instances of assessment. Recommendations are proposed for the application of the framework to future research and practice. (shrink)

La sociologie exerce sur la vie des idées dans les démocraties modernes une influence importante, mais ambiguë. Dans sa dimension scientifique, elle a réalisé une remarquable percée dans l’explication des phénomènes politiques, moraux et religieux. Elle a montré que la souveraineté du peuple dans une démocratie représentative n’a rien d’utopique, mais aussi que les démocraties représentatives sont menacées par une dérive oligarchique, et expliqué pourquoi la France l’est davantage que ses voisines. Elle a enrichi la réflexion philosophique sur le sens (...) moral et permis d’expliquer les changements tendanciels de la sensibilité morale. Elle a proposé une explication des croyances religieuses et une vision des relations entre religion et modernité qui contraste avec celle de la philosophie des Lumières. Malheureusement, ces percées de la sociologie scientifique restent trop peu visibles. (shrink)

Philosophy is one of the most intimidating and difficult of disciplines, as any of its students can attest. This book is an important entry in a distinctive new series from Routledge: "The Great Philosophers." Breaking down obstacles to understanding the ideas of history's greatest thinkers, these brief, accessible, and affordable volumes offer essential introductions to the great philosophers of the Western tradition from Plato to Wittgenstein.In just 64 pages, each author, a specialist on his subject, places the philosopher and his (...) ideas into historical perspective. Each volume explains, in simple terms, the basic concepts, enriching the narrative through the effective use of biographical detail. And instead of attempting to explain the philosopher's entire intellectual history, which can be daunting, this series takes one central theme in each philosopher's work, using it to unfold the philosopher's thoughts. (shrink)

The question of the limits of reason, not just within philosophy but also in the modern sciences, is arguably more important than ever given numerous recent commentaries on “life,” “reality,” meaning, purpose, pointlessness and so on, emanating not from philosophers or metaphysicians, but rather from physicists and biologists such as Steven Weinberg and Richard Dawkins. It will be argued that such commentaries concerning the “pointlessness” of the universe, or the purpose of “life,” and other such things, are flawed and unconvincing, (...) not least because they seem to overlook or forget a number of well known and significant philosophical contributions on the question of limits, particularly by Kant, but also by Hume, Russell and Sir A J Ayer. (shrink)

This edition focuses on Aron's lifelong attempt to bridge the gap between knowledge and action and to understand the dialectical relationship between history ...

The continuity of the platonic tradition during the Middle Ages ... ; together with, Plato's Parmenides in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

A critical analysis and evaluation of McNamara's book, "The Neuroscience of Religious Experience".

Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1895. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres.As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature.Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare (...) and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

C. I. Lewis was one of the most important thinkers of his generation. In this book, Sandra B. Rosenthal explores Lewis’s philosophical vision, and links his thought to the traditions of classical American pragmatism. Tracing Lewis’s influences, she explains the central concepts informing his thinking and how he developed a unique and practical vision of the human experience. She shows how Lewis contributed to the enrichment and expansion of pragmatism, opening new paths of constructive dialogue with other traditions. This (...) book will become a standard reference for readers who want to know more about one of American philosophy’s most distinguished minds. (shrink)

Participants attempted to solve a modified version of Wason's selection task. Variables were: sizes of the sets referenced by a specified assertion, form of the assertion, thematic content of the assertion, and the need for sampling or not. In Experiment 1, participants were given enough information to determine the truth or falsity of the specified assertion with certainty; in Experiment 2, they had to rely on sampling and could not determine the assertion's truth or falsity with certainty. Performance was better (...) in Experiment 1 than in Experiment 2, but in both cases much better than what is typically obtained with the conventional selection task. The results support the hypothesis that performance of the selection task is sensitive to the sizes of the sets involved, add credence to the conclusion that framing the task in a thematically meaningful way can facilitate performance, and demonstrate that facilitation does not require deontic reasoning or a well-known convention being involved. The relationship between expressed confidence and level of performance is consistent with other studies showing the former to be a good predictor of the latter. (shrink)

Abstract I consider Paul Thompson’s Agrarian Vision from the perspective of the philosophy of technology, especially as it relates to certain questions about public engagement and deliberative democracy around food issues. Is it able to promote an attitudinal shift or reorientation in values to overcome the view of “food as device” so that conscientious engagement in the food system by consumers can become more the norm? Next, I consider briefly, some questions to which it must face up in order to (...) move closer in dismantling the barriers that inhibit the capacity for virtuous caretaking of the food system at various levels. Lastly, and more deeply, how successful might agrarianism be in inculcating citizenship values (ones that go beyond food ethics as a private affair), for the democratization of agricultural technologies? Might the Jeffersonian foundation to which the agrarianism (a la) Thompson appeals need something like a contemporary theory of justice in order to facilitate the reconstitution of our politico-moral selves? How can it help guide appropriate ruminations on the intra and intergenerational question, “What do we want the shape of our current and future social and political institutions to look like in relation to food?” Content Type Journal Article Category Articles Pages 1-10 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9339-x Authors Raymond Anthony, Department of Philosophy, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK 99508, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863. (shrink)