In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 450-451 [Access article in PDF] Simon May. Nietzsche's Ethics and His War on 'Morality.' New York: Oxford University, The Clarendon Press, 1999. Pp. xi + 212. Cloth, $45.00. When Friedrich Nietzsche reviewed his career during his final year of intellectual activity, he wrote in Ecce Homo (1888) that his "campaign against morality" began with the publication of Daybreak (1880) eight years (...) earlier. With this autobiographical remark in mind, Simon May appropriately develops his study of Nietzsche's ethics, Nietzsche's Ethics and His War on "Morality," by attending to Nietzsche's writings of the 1880's, using the relatively late On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) as his textual keystone.For the sake of his English-speaking readers' convenience, May reiterates Walter Kaufmann's familiar translations of Nietzsche's works in all of his book's citations, and keeps a relatively tight leash on his references to Nietzsche's pre-1880 works and unpublished notebooks. Historical guideposts to authors within Nietzsche's surrounding cultural context are also limited, and the book unfolds around May's reflections on Nietzsche's publications, supplemented by contemporary references to the works of Bernard Williams in matters concerning ethics, and by references to a substantial number of English-speaking Nietzsche scholars in matters concerning Nietzsche's valuation of truth. Such are the book's methodological contours, which are defensible, but which will probably disappoint those who have philosophical sensibilities that are more philologically and historically pronounced.May divides his book in half, the first segment of which reviews a series of familiar Nietzschean thematics, Nietzsche's conception of values, his distinction between master and slave moralities, his analysis of guilt and bad conscience, his conception of life enhancement, and his conception of the ascetic ideal, all with the prospect of suggesting that Nietzsche's ethical ideal is best encapsulated by the phrase, "become what one is." This ideal, as May understands it, is to develop oneself maximally in a life-enhancing way, given the parameters of one's natural capacities. Although one would expect May to associate this prescription with Nietzsche's conception of the "superhuman" (Übermensch), he thought-provokingly sets the ideal of "becoming what one is" directly against Nietzsche's Übermensch, arguing that the latter is, in fact, "unattainable and undesirable." According to May, Nietzsche's discussion of the superhuman type is distractingly unrealistic, chiefly because a perfectly sovereign individual, unlike us, would be an infallible "man-god" (117) and would have nothing left to overcome.The second half of May's study concentrates on Nietzsche's crucial revaluation of the value of truth. May argues that although Nietzsche rejects an unconditional value for truth and its associated ascetic ideal, it is nonetheless consistent to "passionately" value truth and remain a Nietzschean life-enhancer. May respects Nietzsche's perspectivism, but his interpretation clearly runs against the grain of the more extremely relativistic, "anti-truth," readings of Nietzsche.May's short volume contains plenty of food for disagreement. To cite one notable example, May maintains that "with Nietzsche there is not even an attempt to produce a systematic safety net against cruelty... and, to this extent, his philosophy licenses the atrocities of a Hitler" (132). May's fundamental reason is that since unfettered cruelty is consistent with what he understands to be Nietzsche's radically individualist [End Page 450] principle of life-enhancement, the Nietzschean conception of life-enhancement is ethically deficient. Some of Nietzsche's remarks do provoke May's criticism, but common knowledge also tells us that unfettered cruelty often backfires into either physical or spiritual self-destruction. So a wise Nietzschean would not "license" brutality. Neither, however, would such a Nietzschean seek to erect an absolute barrier against unfettered brutality, but would more discriminatingly consider what wisdom dictates in each circumstance, given the interests of life.May's study intends to exclude from the philosophically best interpretation of Nietzsche, what are recognized by most people as ethically undesirable qualities. His study also renders Nietzsche's key ideas workable, accessible, and palatable... (shrink)

The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn, is the twenty-fourth volume in the "Library of Living Philosophers"—a series founded in 1938 by Paul Arthur Schlipp, the aim of which has been to represent some of the world's greatest living philosophers. In keeping with this tradition, the 600-page Gadamer volume contains an invaluable and lengthy autobiographical sketch by Gadamer himself, along with wide-ranging critical and interpretive essays by twenty-nine scholars. The essays address the foundations of philosophical hermeneutics, the (...) significance of beauty, art, and æsthetics to hermeneutic theory, the Socratic-Platonic sources of Gadamer's outlook, the relationship between Gadamer's hermeneutics and the characteristic perspectives of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, questions concerning Gadamer's connection to political affairs in twentieth-century Germany, and the nuances of Martin Heidegger's profound influence on Gadamer's thought. The essays divide evenly into those which take issue with Gadamer and those which interpretively and sympathetically elaborate on Gadamerian themes. Of the twenty-nine authors, twenty-six were teaching at North American colleges and universities at the time of writing. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Non‐Scientific Confirmations of Schopenhauer's Metaphysics in “The Wisdom Deposited in Language,” Zhu Xi's Neo‐Confucianism, Animal Magnetism and Magic Scientific Confirmations of Schopenhauer's Metaphysics in Plant and Animal Physiology, Comparative Anatomy and Physical Astronomy The Independence of Will from Intellect The Will as Kant's “Thing‐in‐Itself” Schopenhauer's Paradoxical References to the Brain Some Nietzsche‐Related Parerga in On the Will in Nature Notes References Further Reading.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 80-97 [Access article in PDF] Literary Truth as Dreamlike Expression in Foucault's and Borges's "Chinese Encyclopedia" Robert Wicks ALTHOUGH THE TOPIC REMAINS MOSTLY unexplored, Michel Foucault had an aesthetic and intellectual attraction towards writers and artists in the Spanish-speaking tradition. For example, at the conclusion of his Histoire de la folie (Madness and Civilization, 1961)—a book which brought him extensive intellectual recognition (...) in France—Foucault drew his readers' attention to José de Goya y Lucientes's (1746-1828) well-known etching, El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters, Plate 43 of Los Caprichos, 1797). In Foucault's estimation, by revealing a "night which is doubtless that of classical unreason," Goya's work represented a socially removed condition within which people encounter "what is most solitary" and experience what is "deepest" within themselves. With his reference to Goya's imagery, Foucault illustrated a major theme of his history of madness, namely, how people referred to as "mentally ill" experienced a gradual, physical exclusion from participation in public society, and how they were eventually isolated in a more frightening way: within their physical confinement, they were subject to techniques of psychological and spiritual alienation that reduced them to a condition of utter solitude.In a comparable, if not more central manner, Foucault used as thematic motifs for the preface, first and second chapters of a book for which he is widely known, Les Mots et les choses (The Order of Things, 1966), the work of three major writers and artists from the Spanish-speaking world: Jorges Luis Borges (1899-1986), Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), and Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). Among these references, the most popular is probably Foucault's discussion of [End Page 80] Velázquez's Las Meninas—a painting which captured Foucault's interest as a perfect exemplar of its time period—and which inspired him to devote the entire first chapter of his book to decoding the mechanics of its perspectival arrangement. And within the community of those who read, write and discuss the interrelationship between Foucault's thought, literary theory and the contemporary emphasis upon the multivocal quality of textual meaning, Foucault's citation of an excerpt from a short story by Borges—the subject of this essay—is also familiar. Foucault introduced his 1966 book, The Order of Things, with the following words: This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a "certain Chinese encyclopedia" in which it is written that "animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies." In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. 1The short story from which Foucault extracted the above, quasi-cubistic, excerpt was published in Borges's 1952 collection, Otras Inquisiciones (Other Inquisitions), and is entitled, "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins." Although this story's entirety is rarely surveyed in discussions of Foucault, appreciating its broader contents helps illuminate why Foucault began The Order of Things with this entertaining and bizarre segment. Borges's original... (shrink)

Introduces students to the context, key themes and influence of Schopenhauer's major work, a key text in 19th Century German thought.

This chapter contains section titled: I the Rejection of a Mind‐Independent reality II kant's theory of perception III kant's use of the term“object” IV the logic of manifestation Notes Further Reading.

More than two hundred years after the publication of his seminal The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer's influence is still felt in philosophy and beyond. As one of the most readable and central philosophers of the 19th century, his work inspired the most influential thinkers and artists of his time, including Nietzsche, Freud, and Wagner. Though known primarily as a herald of philosophical pessimism, the full range of his contributions is displayed here in a collection of thirty-one essays (...) on the forefront of Schopenhauer scholarship. Essays written by contemporary Schopenhauer scholars explore his central notions, including the will, empirical knowledge, and the sublime, and widens to the interplay of ethics and religion with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Authors confront difficult aspects of Schopenhauer's work and legacy--for example, the extent to which Schopenhauer adopted ideas from his predecessors compared to how much was original and visionary in his central claim that reality is a blind, senseless "will," the effectiveness of his philosophy in the field of scientific explanation and extrasensory phenomena, and the role of beauty and sublimity in his outlook. Essays also challenge prevailing assumptions about Schopenhauer by exploring the fundamental role of compassion in his moral theory, the Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist aspects of his philosophy, and the importance of asceticism in his views on the meaning of life. The collection is an internationally constituted work that reflects upon Schopenhauer's philosophy with authors presently working across the globe. It demonstrates fully the richness of Schopenhauer's work and his lasting impact on philosophy and psychoanalysis, as well as upon music, the visual arts, and literature. (shrink)

Kant: A Complete Introduction covers the key areas that students are expected to be confident in, outlining the basics in clear English, and then providing added-value features like summaries of key books, and even lists of questions you might be asked in your seminar or exam. In doing so, Professor Wicks introduces you to all of Kant's key works, including The Critique of Pure Reason"--Page 4 of cover.

This innovative volume presents an insightful philosophical portrait of the life and work of Arthur Schopenhauer. Focuses on the concept of the sublime as it clarifies Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory, moral theory and asceticism Explores the substantial relationships between Schopenhauer’s philosophy and Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity Defends Schopenhauer’s position that absolute truth can be known and described as a blindly striving, all-permeating, universal “Will” Examines the influence of Asian philosophy on Schopenhauer Describes the relationships between Schopenhauer’s thought and that of Hegel, (...) Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I a universal will without purpose II the purposelessness of schopenhauer's Thing‐in‐Itself III life as embittering: Schopenhauer and buddhism Notes Further Reading.

This chapter contains sections titled: Eighteenth‐and Nineteenth‐Century Anticipations of French Existentialism Existentialist Implications of the Nineteenth‐Century Emphasis upon Life: Instinct, Individuality, and Absurdity Concreteness and Absurdity Freedom, Anxiety, and Authenticity Morality French Existentialism's Influence.

This chapter contains section titled: I empathy as the foundation of moral awareness II intelligible, empirical, and acquired character III humanity's sublime anguish Notes Further Reading.

This essay critically examines the view recently set forth by Paul Guyer that Kant's theories of artistic beauty and artistic creativity exclusively coincide with this theory of natural beauty. I note that very great works of art, although they may indeed be beautiful, also tend to be sublime. To acknowledge the sense of awe which attends those great works of art which are also beautiful, I argue that Kant's theory of sublimity must also be included within an accurate interpretation of (...) Kant's account of artistic beauty, and maintain that Guyer's exclusive reference to Kant's theory of natural beauty will not suffice. (shrink)

Kant’s _Critique of Judgment_ is one of the most important texts in the history of modern aesthetics. This _GuideBook _discusses the _Third Critique_ section by section, and introduces and assesses: Kant's life and the background of the _Critique of Judgment_ the ideas and text of the _Critique of Judgment_, including a critical explanation of Kant’s theories of natural beauty the continuing relevance of Kant’s work to contemporary philosophy and aesthetics. This _GuideBook_ is an accessible introduction to a notoriously difficult work (...) and will be essential reading for students of Kant and aesthetics. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Works by Schopenhauer Selected Books About Schopenhauer's Philosophy Other Related Works.

This chapter contains sections titled: Foucault's Life The Experience of Growth and Liberation The Influence of Martin Heidegger Foucault as “Archaeologist” Genealogy, Power/Knowledge, and Surveillance Self‐Control and Self‐Artistry Conclusion: Liberation and Social Self‐Construction.

This chapter contains section titled: I the world's essence: Rational or irrational? II labor, imprisonment, and christianity III the world as will and representation and“Self‐Consciousness” in hegel's phenomenology Notes Further reading.

This chapter contains section titled: I the question of life's value II funereal imagery and nietzsche's theory of tragedy III schopenhauer's moral awareness and eternal recurrence IV the eternalistic illusion of supreme health V nietzsche's madness and eternalistic consciousness Notes Further Reading.

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more fact-oriented (...) and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more fact-oriented (...) and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 112-122 [Access article in PDF] Being in the Dry Zen Landscape Reading Zen In The Rocks — The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden, by François Berthier, trans. with a philosophical essay by Graham Parkes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 166 pp., $20.00. The austere simplicity of Zen rock gardens is also an allusive and elusive one, as the two enjoyable essays that (...) comprise Reading Zen in the Rocks — The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden eloquently indicate. More so than the phenomena they describe, these essays appeal to a wide audience, and they read easily, invitingly, and informatively. In this textual performance, the French art-historian, François Berthier, stands side-by-side with the Scottish philosopher of comparative East-West studies, Graham Parkes, to provide a textual and visual presentation that intends, via an appropriate complementarity of content, to introduce the karesansui (dry landscape) style of Japanese garden to the general reader. Parkes — a masterful and accomplished translator — renders into English, Berthier's 1989 work, Le jardin du Ryoanji — Lire le Zen dans les pierres [The Garden of Ryoanji — Reading Zen in the Rocks], and fills some philosophical gaps with his own equal-length [End Page 112] essay, "The Role of Rock in the Japanese Dry Landscape Garden." Though judiciously focused to achieve expository economy, the two essays jointly provide a handy introduction to the complicated artistic, philosophic, religious, and cultural phenomenon popularly known as the "Zen rock garden."As a distinguishing landscape-architectural feature of many Zen monasteries in Japan and abroad, the karesansui garden reinforces the contemplative religious atmosphere and, as the frequent photographs of meditating monks quietly positioned in their rock gardens tend to suggest, they guide the perceiver into the calm and earthy mentality typical of Zen Buddhism. Berthier notes, accordingly, that the gardens provide "an image of the [Buddhistically interpreted] universe in its most condensed form" in which people can discern their "true faces" (p. 6). Ideally, one could contemplate a Zen garden and, if one were equipped with the proper background in Zen training, be stimulated to experience a Zen Buddhist enlightenment.Such are the immediate expectations elicited from a book whose cover depicts a Zen monk contemplating an expanse of bare gravel, and which sets the title word "Zen" in large letters over the monk's back. It comes as a surprise, then, that there is far less pure Zen in these essays than one would anticipate from this English-language presentation of Berthier's book. In the French version, as can be seen above, the word "Zen" appears only in the book's subtitle, and the Zen-specific anticipations are more submerged as a result.It would be an overstatement to identify the phrase "Zen rock garden" as a misnomer, but Berthier and Parkes implicitly demonstrate that the karesansui style of Japanese garden is not an exclusively Zen phenomenon, but is intimately linked with Chinese Daoism, Shintoism, not to mention versions of Buddhism that historically precede, and are significantly different from, Zen Buddhism. Perhaps unintentionally, this book raises the question, "What measure of Zen, in fact, do the paradigmatic "Zen" rock gardens such as the garden at Ryoanji (c. 1500, in Kyoto, and the archetype of Japanese dry landscape gardens) embody?"We can approach this question by considering the meaning of the Japanese word, "karesansui," which Parkes translates accurately as "dry landscape." The title of the book announces that the subject is "the Japanese dry landscape garden," but it is important to recall (as one learns briefly in the final pages) the further linguistic resonances of the prefix "kare." What does not emerge through in the usual translation of "kare" as "dry," is the added association to the English term "withered," for one would translate, for instance, the Japanese terms "kare kusa," "kare ashi," "kare giku," and "kareha," as "withered grass," "withered reed," "withered chrysanthemums," and "withered leaves," respectively. The term "kareki" (bare tree), along with the others, also indicates how the prefixed "kare" suggests wintertime, withering, drying out, something that has... (shrink)

In the first sentence of his thematically innovative book, Mark A. Cheetham informs us that Kant, Art, and Art History “examines the far-reaching and varied reception of Immanuel Kant’s thought in art history and the practicing visual arts from the late eighteenth century to the present”. This is surely a long-overdue project in Kant scholarship, and Cheetham deserves praise for having finally put this intellectual ball into play. He then sets one of his methodological assumptions squarely on the table: “there (...) is no pure Kant and no secure border between the many areas that he has influenced”. Cheetham recognizes no secure borders between “art,” “art history,” and “philosophy,” since Kant clearly influenced all three. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:348 BOOK REVIEWS to God's commandments is "the way and condition of salvation" (VS # 12). Now obedience to the commandments entails, in addition to a good motivation or a willingness to strive, the conformity of an action's object to the specifying content of the commandment. What is the significance of a commandment to honor one's father and mother, if it does not specify actions? The commandments of God (...) specify what kinds of action are, or are not, in conformity with the true good of man. In his analysis of the moral act, the Pope holds that the object of the act is "the primary and decisive element for moral judgment" (VS # 79). Actions which by the nature of their object are unable to be ordered to man's true end can never be "good" actions. Further, he notes that acts, even individual acts, are determinative of the goodness or badness of the person. These points are summarized nicely in the following passage: Activity is morally good when it attests to and expresses the voluntary ordering of the person to his ultimate end and the conformity of a concrete action with the human good as it is acknowledged in its truth by reason. If the object of the concrete action is not in harmony with the true good of the person, the choice of that action makes our will and ourselves morally evil, thus putting us in conflict with our ultimate end, the supreme good, God himself (VS # 72). I believe that Keenan's study commendably highlights the freedom of the will in the order of exercise, and its power to exercise dominion over the intellect in the order of specification. Keenan also insightfully emphasizes the central role of the love of God as the root of our striving to live well. Yet any willing can only be consequent to some knowing. Further, the willingness to strive and be determined, if it is good, is a willingness to be determined, or specified, by the true good known by reason and faith. This willingness, which is a crucial element in moral goodness, must be completed by actions in conformity with the true good. Human goodness is in freely, and lovingly, living out the truth of human nature and its end. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. JOHN A. D. CUDDEBACK Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth. By JOHN FINNIS. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. 113. $24.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper). Not long after his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Alasdair MacIntyre told a group of Catholic bishops: " As a matter of autobio- BOOK REVIEWS 349 graphical fact, I came to the conclusion that there were exceptionless and binding [moral] norms prior to and quite independently of any faith in Divine Revelation." Within the Church Macintyre entered, however, there existed, and exists, widespread doubt and confusion about "moral absolutes" or " exceptionless moral norms." Certain eminent Catholic moral theologians today dissent from Pope John Paul's teaching that " there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object." In the face of this dissent, John Finnis has produced a powerful philosophical and theological defense of the papal teaching. Moral Absolutes presents the 1988 Michael J. McGivney Lectures which Finnis delivered at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. The hook consists of four chapters: "Foundations," "Clarifications," "Christian Witness," and "Challenge and Response." Like Macintyre, Finnis maintains that the authority of scripture and tradition supplement reason's grasp of certain specific types of act as intrinsically wicked and, therefore, never to he performed. Although his goal is to vindicate the proposition that there are moral absolutes, rather than to say which, or even how many, moral norms qualify as " exceptionless " (and therefore as, in the relevant sense of the term, " absolute "), his examples include norms against abortion (and, more generally, the direct killing of innocent human beings), adultery, fornication, contraception, homosexual sex, blasphemy, and disclaimer of the faith. As Finnis observes, the Church's tradition of proclaiming these norms and their absoluteness is "massively solid." Against certain neoscholastic... (shrink)

The story of this book of 'materials on Ludwik Fleck' is also the story of the reception of Ludwik Fleck. In this volume, some essential materials which have been produced by that reception have been gathered together.

Stakeholder theory focuses on how more value is created if stakeholder relationships are governed by ethical principles such as integrity, respect, fairness, generosity and inclusiveness. However, it has not adequately addressed strategies that stakeholders perceive as harmful to their interests and how this perception can even lead some stakeholders to view the firm’s strategies as unethical. To fill the void, this paper directly addresses strategies that stakeholders perceive as harmful to their interests, or what we refer to as harmful stakeholder (...) strategies. Specifically, it identifies factors associated with stakeholder perceptions of harm that are likely to cause them to consider a strategy unethical, examines the negative implications for firms that pursue such strategies in terms of likely stakeholder responses and damage to stakeholder relationships, and provides theory to help explain how firms are likely to respond to stakeholder claims that a strategy is unethical, based on factors such as the strategic importance of the claim to the firm, how long the strategy has been in use, the costs of remediation, the risk of stakeholder mobilization or new regulation, and whether firms can reasonably rationalize their actions. Assessing harm allows a firm to make a more accurate estimate of the costs of a strategy and can assist managers in allocating resources intended to reduce or remediate harm. (shrink)