© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

This article draws on data from a study of the transition to motherhood to contribute to feminist theorizing of embodiment. Three bodily aspects of women's gendered sense of self are identified as undergoing possible change during this period—sensuality, shape, and space. The work of Arthur Frank is drawn on to theorize shifts in women's experience of these dimensions, and the author shows how the white, middle-class women studied could use such discourses around the body as resources in renegotiating their social (...) positioning. This empirical analysis demonstrates how physical changes may facilitate challenging the dominant body norms, although the work of Robert Connell indicates that social control may also be a consequence of such bodily conceptualizations. This article therefore uses its empirical analysis to contribute to theorizing the connections between bodily practices and gendered identity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT How are scientists made? How, as young adults, have they discovered a scientific vocation and career? Through formal schooling, typically; but in the field sciences also through practical apprenticeship—through work. This essay presents the story of a frontier farm lad who became a career naturalist as a hired collector of animal specimens in the American West. Family and work are the leitmotifs of Vernon Bailey's story. It was family farming—bringing in the hay and finding the cows—that connected (...) class='Hi'>Bailey's love of skilled outdoor work with a desire to know nature scientifically. Traveling and working with professional naturalists, he came to see himself as a professional as well. His socialization was less a replacement than a layering of two identities, family and career. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIs offering hazard pay ethically permissible when the pay premium is the only reason that a dangerous job is accepted? Robert C. Hughes argues that it is not. Central to his argument is the claim that in such cases, workers intend the foreseeable risks of harm as a means to the pay premium. Herein I question the plausibility of this claim and then develop a conception of the concept of means sufficient to make it plausible. By so doing, I (...) provide support for Hughes’s stringent position. (shrink)

In Sugar Cane the novelist Paul Bailey describes what happens when someone is exposed at an impressionable age to religion in a brutally corrupt or merely stupid form and has to come to terms with that exposure: whether healing might be possible and what that healing might look like. Bailey suggests an alternative narrative, where, despite the suffering of his characters, the word ‘religion’ means more to him than it does to Irvin Yalom, who wrote of his belief (...) after his own childhood exposure to the authoritarianism of his parents’ Jewish orthodoxy, that ‘faith, like so many other early irrational beliefs and fears, is a burden’. (shrink)

What grounds the moral significance of the intend/foresee distinction? To put the question another way, what reason do we have for believing that moral absolutes apply with respect to intended effects, but not foreseeable but unintended (bad) effects? Joseph Boyle has provided an answer that relies on the idea that persons can find themselves in situations of “moral impossibility”—situations in which every available option foreseeably will give rise to bad effects. However, Robert Anderson has put Boyle’s answer into question (...) by arguing, in essence, as follows: the choice to do nothing gives rise to no effects at all; one can always simply choose to do nothing; therefore, it is not the case that situations of moral impossibility obtain. In response, Boyle has argued that Anderson’s conception of the effects of the choice to do nothing is implausible and, further, that the choice to do nothing gives rise to effects just as do other choices. In this essay, I address and extend this debate. (shrink)

_First Philosophy: Knowledge and Reality_ brings together classic and ground-breaking readings on epistemology and the philosophy of science. Andrew Bailey’s highly regarded introductory anthology has been revised and updated in this new edition. The comprehensive introductory material for each chapter and selection remains, and new sections on philosophical puzzles and paradoxes and philosophical terminology have been added. New readings include Edmund Gettier on justified true belief, Wesley Salmon on induction, and Helen Longino on feminist science.

The almost simultaneous and overlapping discoveries of Mendel's forgotten work by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Erik von Tschermak gave rise to an intense rivalry, some jealousy, and more than a little illfeeling. De Vries, the first to announce the discovery, has been subjected to the charge that he wished to conceal his discovery and to obtain for himself the credit for having discovered what we now call Mendelism. This charge involves the statement that de Vries gave credit to (...) Mendel only after he had found that others had also read Mendel's papers. The evidence on which this charge is based is sketchy, and we can now show that at least that portion of it that is based on supposed alteration in the proof of de Vries' paper in the Berichte is without foundation. Unfortunately, de Vries gave three different accounts of how he was led to Mendel's work. Two of these involve Liberty Hyde Bailey.Bailey had listed Mendel's papers in a bibliography that he published in 1892 in The Rural Library. Bailey did not include this bibliography in the first edition (1895) of Plant Breeding or in its reprinting in 1896 and 1897. He did include the bibliography in the second edition (1902), but this was after de Vries and others had called attention to Mendel. In 1899, both Bailey and de Vries gave papers at the Hybrid Conference held at Chiswick, England, but we have no record of their having discussed Mendel. What evidence we have indicates that, at this time, neither of them had read Mendel's papers.De Vries wrote to Bailey that it was Bailey's listing of Mendel in the bibliography published in The Rural Library that led to his discovery of Mendel. Later, de Vries wrote to H. F. Roberts that he had first found a reference to Mendel in Bailey's Plant Breeding of 1895, where the bibliographic reference to Mendel's papers was not published. Finally, de Vries told Th. J. Stomps, who succeeded him at the University of Amsterdam, that he had first learned of Mendel early in 1900 from a reprint of Mendel's paper sent him by his friend Professor M. W. Beyerinck. Our present evidence favors Stomp's account as it shows that de Vries had not read Mendel's papers in 1899 but had early in 1900.Attempts to pinpoint de Vries' discovery of Mendel are aided in part, and in part confused, by the fact that he published five relevant papers in 1900. These papers were in press simultaneously, and some of them were altered in proof. Further confusion is due to the fact that at least three of them were published in the reverse order of their acceptance for publication. Unfortunately we do not have the crucial dates for all of the papers.J. Roy. Hort. Soc. 24: 69–75. A definitely pre-Mendelian paper given on 11 July 1899, and published in 1900 (possibly in April). The evidence for an alteration in proof after de Vries had read Mendel is shown by the fact that de Vries described a ratio of 99 to 54 as a 3 to 1 ratio.Rev. gén. botan. 12: 129–137. A Mendelian paper, giving the 3 to 1 ratio in the F2 generation of a cross between starchy and sugary corn. The paper is not dated by de Vries but it was published in the volume, 128 pages ahead of a paper de Vries dated 19 March. In a footnote, de Vries cites a paper by Correns that was published on 25 January, so we can tell that it was written or corrected in proof after this date. Here Correns showed de Vries that he had already read Mendel's paper. Any attempt by de Vries to ignore Mendel or get credit for Mendelism after 25 January would have been senseless. This date was nearly two months before de Vries' Berichte paper was submitted for publication.Ber. deut. botan. Ges. 18: 83–90. Accepted for publication 14 march, published 25 April. This paper gives Mendel full credit and stimulated the publications of Correns and von Tschermak. As de Vries was aware that Correns already knew of Mendel when the paper was first submitted, there was no occasion to alter it in proof.Rev. gén. botan. 12: 257–271. Dated by de Vries 19 March, but the proof was read after June. De Vries cites von Tschermak's paper in the Berichte that was published in June. The Revue paper is a Mendelian paper, and Mendel is cited on the last page.C. R. Acad. Sci. (Paris) 130: 845–847. Accepted for publication 26 March 1900. Reprint received by Correns 21 April. Mendel is not mentioned but de Vries' use of terms told Correns that de Vries had read Mendel's paper. First of the papers to be published, it caused Correns to assume that de Vries wanted the credit that was due Mendel.The three discoverers of Mendel did not form a mutual admiration society. (shrink)

Author Robert Wright shows how Buddhist meditative practice can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and deepen your appreciation of beauty and other people." -- Adapted from book jacket.

Despite a heightened political discourse surrounding food choices, few studies have identified connections between political beliefs and consumer perceptions. Using gluten as an example, this article identifies how political opinions relate to opinions of food products. If an avoidance of gluten is a biological condition and not a social construct, there should be no correlation between political opinions and gluten avoidance. Our study uncovers a complex relationship between the social construction of gluten avoidance and the potential role of political views. (...) Perhaps most surprising, we find that supporters of Donald Trump are more likely to identify as avoiding gluten, relative to non-supporters. Findings suggest that future research might benefit from considering the political beliefs of consumers when estimating models of food demand. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Theory of International Bioethics: Multiculturalism, Postmodernism, and the Bankruptcy of Fundamentalism 1Robert Baker (bio)AbstractThis first of two articles analyzing the justifiability of international bioethical codes and of cross-cultural moral judgments reviews “moral fundamentalism,” the theory that cross-cultural moral judgments and international bioethical codes are justified by certain “basic” or “fundamental” moral principles that are universally accepted in all cultures and eras. Initially propounded by the judges at the (...) 1947 Nuremberg Tribunal, moral fundamentalism has become the received justification of international bioethics, and of cross-temporal and cross-cultural moral judgments. Yet today we are said to live in a multicultural and postmodern world. This article assesses the challenges that multiculturalism and postmodernism pose to fundamentalism and concludes that these challenges render the position philosophically untenable, thereby undermining the received conception of the foundations of international bioethics. The second article, which follows, offers an alternative model—a model of negotiated moral order—as a viable justification for international bioethics and for transcultural and transtemporal moral judgments.Man in the Twentieth Century can not be circumscribed by the standards of any single culture.American Anthropological Association (1948) in a statement officially denouncing the 1948 United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights.Recently... so-called “liberal” medicine has revived the old rights of a clinic understood in terms of a special contract, a tacit pact made between one man and another. This patient gaze has even been attributed the power of assuming [a role in clinical decision making].Miracles are not so easy to come by....Michel Foucault (1975, p. 5) [End Page 201]An Overview of the AnalysisInternational bioethics originated in the trauma of the Holocaust, specifically, in the 1946–1947 Nuremberg “Doctors Trial” when a tribunal of three American judges convicted Nazi medical researchers of “crimes against humanity.” In justifying their judgment, the Nuremberg Tribunal cited 10 principles for morally permissible research, which, they claimed, were based on “fundamental” principles that civilized societies “all agree” upon and accept as the foundations of their “moral, ethical, and legal” norms. Foremost among the principles was one stating that morally permissible human experiments require the informed voluntary consent of the subject. The Nuremberg judgment soon became associated with the ideal of human rights declared in the 1948 United Nations Charter. These two ideas—fundamental principles of morality and human rights—have been linked in all major formulations of international bioethics promulgated in the past 50 years, including the Council of Europe’s 1997 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Biomedicine (Council of Europe 1997; Dommel and Alexander 1997). In this paper, I explore the received justification for international bioethics—the idea that it is grounded in fundamental principles accepted in all societies—tracing it from its initial, almost off-hand, promulgation by the Nuremberg Tribunal, through its more thoughtful development by such bioethicists as Ruth Macklin, to its more complex use by the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.After a brief review of the evolution of the received justification, I discuss the viability of this justification in the face of the critique implicit in two important intellectual movements: multiculturalism and postmodernism. In the international context, multiculturalism asserts the claim that there are no common moral principles shared by all cultures. Postmodernism asserts a similar claim against all universal standards, moral and nonmoral. In the 1990s, bioethicists have attempted to respond to these claims in various ways. These responses are documented, analyzed, and then shown to be “bankrupt,” in the sense that they undercut the most important objective of moral fundamentalism: the justification of transcultural moral judgments, such as the condemnation of the Nazi doctors.A second article, which follows the present one in the same issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, revisits the contractarian tradition [End Page 202] of Hobbes and Locke, as it has been reinterpreted by David Gauthier (1986), John Rawls (1971, 1993), and Robert Nozick (1974), to develop the idea of negotiated moral order as the basis of international bioethics. When conceptualized as a negotiated moral order, international bioethics can accept the genuine insights... (shrink)

An exploration of the theories, histories, practices, and contradictions of liberalism today. What does it mean to be a liberal in neoliberal times? This collection of short essays attempts to show how liberals and the wider concept of liberalism remain relevant in what many perceive to be a highly illiberal age. Liberalism in the broader sense revolves around tolerance, progress, humanitarianism, objectivity, reason, democracy, and human rights. Liberalism's emphasis on individual rights opened a theoretical pathway to neoliberalism, through private property, (...) a classically minimal liberal state, and the efficiency of “free markets.” In practice, neoliberalism is associated less with the economic deregulation championed by its advocates than the re-regulation of the economy to protect financial capital. Liberalism in Neoliberal Times engages with the theories, histories, practices, and contradictions of liberalism, viewing it in relation to four central areas of public life: human rights, ethnicity and gender, education, and the media. The contributors explore the transformations in as well as the transformative aspects of liberalism and highlight both its liberating and limiting capacities. The book contends that liberalism—in all its forms—continues to underpin specific institutions such as the university, the free press, the courts, and, of course, parliamentary democracy. Liberal ideas are regularly mobilized in areas such as counterterrorism, minority rights, privacy, and the pursuit of knowledge. This book contends that while we may not agree on much, we can certainly agree that an understanding of liberalism and its emancipatory capacity is simply too important to be left to the liberals Contributors Alejandro Abraham-Hamanoiel, Patrick Ainley, Abdullahi An-Na'im, Michael Bailey, Haim Bresheeth, Başak Çalı, David Chandler, William Davies, Costas Douzinas, Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman, Roberto Gargarella, Priyamvada Gopal, Jonathan Hardy, John Holmwood, Ratna Kapur, Gholam Khiabany, Ray Kiely, Monika Krause, Deepa Kumar, Arun Kundnani, Colin Leys, Howard Littler, Kathleen Lynch, Robert W. McChesney, Nivedita Menon, Toby Miller, Kate Nash, Joan Pedro-Carañana, Julian Petley, Anne Phillips, Jonathan Rosenhead, Annabelle Sreberny, John Steel, Michael Wayne, Milly Williamson. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 602-603 [Access article in PDF] Paul B. Thompson and Thomas C. Hilde, editors. The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism. The Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 342. Cloth, $39.95. If "racial memory" is a viable concept, then the enduring paradigm of human productivity is agriculture, whose seventy-century dominion Western industry and urbanization have eclipsed only (...) within the last two hundred years. The fifteen essays collected here explore America's distinctive form of agrarianism: where individualism, democracy, and a seemingly endless frontier transcended European quarrels over "commons" versus "containment." These values also helped forge our indigenous philosophy—pragmatism—and it is the confluence of these two distinctive American forms that intrigues each of these authors.The essays fall roughly into three groups: 1) historical queries whose connection to pragmatism is marginal, 2) expositions of the agrarian roots of pragmatism, and 3) estimates of the influence of classical pragmatism on the recent rise of neoagrarianism. The first category offers sparkling essays by Charles Taliaferro, James Campbell, Paul B. Thompson, Robert S. Corrington, and Douglas R. Anderson. Together these scholars sketch a history from colonial times to the mid-twentieth century—from Jefferson's "noble agrarian" to the agony of reconstruction, which hastened the split between Northern transcendentalists and Southern romantics. There are some surprises: Franklin outshines even Jefferson with his balanced vision of self-improvement and community weal, and Jefferson's correspondent Crèvecoueur emerges as a visionary who foresaw farming as a wholesome and integrated way of life a century before Emerson and Thoreau. Thomas C. Hilde finds an engagingly pragmatic notion of community in Josiah Royce, and Richard E. Hart discovers Dewey's sense of concrete experience in the novels of John Steinbeck. The contributions of neglected figures such as Francois Quesnay, Liberty Hyde Bailey, John Brewster, and A Whitney Griswold are also recovered.Turning to the second group, though obviously an irresistible title the notion that classical pragmatism is robustly "rooted" in agrarianism is slightly disingenuous. Peirce and James have no direct ties to agrarianism. And though Dewey's themes of innovation, social intelligence, community, and a conception of experience broadly inclusive of organisms and environments reflect obvious affinities, they do not show that pragmatism grew directly from or is a variant of agrarianism. Happily, the pieces on Dewey contributed by Larry A. Hickman and Armen Marsoobian harbor no such illusions, [End Page 602] and Dewey is specifically disassociated from the claim that agriculture is a privileged form of experience.The third, and perhaps most significant, aim of the volume is to bring pragmatic insights into the recent groundswell toward neoagrarianism. Where traditional agrarianism was polarized between the domination of nature and its romantic beatification, the movement pioneered by Wendell Berry in the 1970s portrays the farmer as a nurturer whose goal is to seek an optimal harmony in the health of the land, the family, the community, and the country. In this James A. Montmarquet finds a Deweyan respect for an encompassing "situation," a unity of fact and value in stark opposition to the "corporate" mentality of specialization and success measured in economic gain alone. For Jeffrey Burkhardt, land grant universities must renew their original commitment to the family farm by distancing themselves from the forces of positivism and scientism—the technocrats and bio-chemical engineers who have imperiled both the land and the communities who depend upon it. Neither Montmarquette nor Burkhardt are looking for handouts, or for a return to the "idyllic" life of the one-horse plow. They emphasize moral training and a combination of practices designed to support the sustainability of the smaller farm in a competitive marketplace.One author compares the mention of agrarianism in philosophical discourse to committing a rude act in public. Clearly, however, mere "respectability" is not enough. If the contributors to this volume are correct, agrarianism is a lantern that may illuminate our ongoing search for wholeness and integrity. Frank X. Ryan Kent State University... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Theory of International Bioethics: The Negotiable and the Non-NegotiableRobert Baker (bio)AbstractThe preceding article in this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal presents the argument that “moral fundamentalism,” the position that international bioethics rests on “basic” or “fundamental” moral principles that are universally accepted in all eras and cultures, collapses under a variety of multicultural and postmodern critiques. The present article looks to the contractarian tradition of (...) Hobbes and Locke—as reinterpreted by David Gauthier, Robert Nozick, and John Rawls—for an alternative justification for international bioethics. Drawing on the central themes of this tradition, it is argued that international bioethics can be rationally reconstructed as a negotiated moral order that respects culturally and individually defined areas of nonnegotiability. Further, the theory of a negotiated moral order is consistent with traditional ideals about human rights, is flexible enough to absorb the genuine insights of multiculturalism and postmodernism, and yet is strong enough to justify transcultural and transtemporal moral judgments, including the condemnation of the Nazi doctors at Nuremberg. This theory also is consistent with the history of the ethics of human subjects experimentation and offers insights into current controversies such as the controversy over changing the consent rule for experiments in emergency medicine and the controversy over exempting certain clinical trials of inexpensive treatments for preventing the perinatal transmission of AIDS from the ethical standards of the sponsoring country.The Preamble to the Council of Europe’s (1997) Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, the most recently ratified code of international bioethics, is noteworthy because it never mentions “principles,” the concept most frequently cited by the fundamentalists as basic to international bioethics. Instead it stresses rights, a concept that has been utterly ignored by the fundamentalist theorists of international bioethics. The Preamble exemplifies a conception of international [End Page 233] bioethics as an ethics of covenants and conventions grounded in human rights. In the full text of the Preamble, the term “rights” appears eight times and the expressions “convention” and “covenant” are used six times; the term “principle” does not appear at all. In this essay, I develop a theoretical framework for international bioethics based on conventions, covenants, and areas of “nonnegotiability”—a concept that serves as a functional analogue to the traditional notion of “human rights.” I also shall argue that, unlike the theory of basic principles central to moral fundamentalism, the theory of negotiated morality appears immune to the multicultural and postmodern critiques of international bioethics that were analyzed in the preceding article in this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (Baker 1998).Negotiated Moral Order: A Model for International BioethicsReconsidering ContractarianismThe linkage of “conventions” and “covenants” with human rights that is evident in the Council of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine traces back directly to the moral and political theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Such philosophers as David Gauthier (1986), Robert Nozick (1974), and John Rawls (1971, 1993) recently have reinvigorated this classic contractarian line of analysis. In this section, I shall reconsider classical contractarian theory from a perspective informed by these more recent analyses.The most riveting feature of all forms of contractarian theory is the metaphor of the contract itself, particularly the legitimating role it accords to assent. Because contractarians look to the assent of those who would be bound by a moral norm as ultimately the sole source of a norm’s legitimacy, the most important corollary of contractarian moral theory is that moral norms are illegitimate insofar as agents either in principle could not, hypothetically would not, or actually will not rationally assent to be bound by them. Contractarians also argue that because legal norms are legitimated by acceptance of the authority of those who promulgate them, the authority of such norms is bounded by the actual or hypothetical assent of the governed. These features of contractarian analysis generate the correlative concepts of human rights and civil rights.Less often remarked, but nonetheless integral to the metaphor of the social contract, is the contractarian recognition that the interests of the [End Page 234] parties who contract to form civil society are naturally in conflict (or, as Hobbes put... (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This article investigates the experience of individual learners who have been allocated learning support in the further education system in England. The particular focus is on interviewees’ constructions of their emotional and psychic experiences. Through the adoption of a psycho-social perspective, learners’ tendency to ‘idealise’ their learning support workers is understood as a strategy for coping with the anxiety generated by a range of previous experiences. The implications for policy-makers are discussed.

This volume reflects the breadth of Alexy's philosophy, identifies new areas of inquiry and offers a new impetus to the discourse theory of law.

Seventeen obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the British Academy: Shackleton Bailey; James Barr; William Beasley; Lord Blake; Julian Budden; Lord Bullock; Robert Carson, Laurence Cohen; Charles Feinstein; Henry Gifford; Peter Holt; Emrys Jones; Robert Megarry; Edward Oates; Maurice Wiles; Brian Woledge; Austin Woolrych.

Can it be rational to be religious? Robert Audi gives a persuasive positive answer through an account of rationality and a rich, nuanced understanding of what religious commitment means. It is not just a matter of belief, but of emotions and attitudes such as faith and hope, of one's outlook on the world, and of commitment to live in certain ways.

Building on his long-standing work in metaphysics and Asian philosophy, Robert Cummings Neville presents a series of essays that cumulatively articulate a contemporary, progressive Confucian position as a global philosophy. Through analysis of the metaphysical and moral traditions of Confucianism, Neville brings these traditions into the twenty-first century. According to Confucianism, rituals define most of our relations with other individuals, social institutions, and nature, and while rituals make possible the positive institutions of high human civilization, they may also lead (...) to harmful behaviors, including racism, xenophobia, and sexism. Neville argues that the amendment of rituals that institutionalize oppression is a positive task, which should be undertaken from within a skillfully ritualized life rather than in the form of external criticism. Confucianism, in Neville's hands, is a left-wing, progressive, liberal political philosophy, one that can address institutionalized oppression and suggest a path for moving forward. (shrink)