The essence of a policy evaluation of the personnel situation in the amalgamated municipalities is to investigate the degree to which the amalgamation as instrument achieved the present objectives and thedegree to which the instruments used have contributed to it. Such an evaluation is complicated by the fact that insufficient attention was given to the objectives in the amalgamation policy and to the time period within which they had to be achieved. From the analysis, it appears, in any case, that (...) the number of personnel grew after the amalgamation in the local administrations more than in others. This applies in particular to the public welfare agencies. This growth is probably to be ascribed more to the social evolution than to the amalgamation operation. The demonstration of scale effects is not easy because of the lack of diachronic studies. The fact that large municipalities have relatively more personnel than small municipalities may not be deduced from an increase of the population. The diachronic study of the percentage of the total expenditures for personnel shows that this part has decreased, which could indicate a scale effect. However, one has, at this time, insufficient information of the factors that explain the amount of personnel so that a change in that amount cannot simply be ascribed to the amalgamation. At the same time, the hypothesis is formulated that the amalgamation of the municipalities as a policy measure bas not brought about many changes on the level of policy implementation. This can be explained by the lack of an accompanying strategy for change. It does not suffice to vote for a law to bring about a fundamental change. (shrink)

Roger Ariew presents a new account of Descartes as a philosopher who sought to engage his contemporaries and society. He argues that the Principles of Philosophy was written to rival Scholastic textbooks, and considers Descartes' enterprise in contrast to the tradition it was designed to replace and in relation to the works of the first Cartesians.

A textbook designed for the mandatory semester ethics course at the United States Naval Academy by USNA Ethics Section, with contributions by the Distinguished Chair in Ethics.

Art v. aestheticism : the case of Walter Pater -- The importance of T.E. Hulme -- A craving for reality : T.S. Eliot today -- Wallace Stevens : metaphysical claims adjuster -- The permanent Auden -- The first half of Muriel Spark -- The qualities of Robert Musil -- James Fitzjames Stephen v. John Stuart Mill -- The legacy of Friedrich Nietzsche -- The world according to Satre -- The perversions of Michel Foucault -- The anguishes of E.M. Cioran -- (...) The trivialization of outrage -- "The two cultures" today -- Frances Fukuyama and the end of hisory -- Josef Pieper : leisure and its discontents. (shrink)

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world’s economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon of Confucianism offers alternative (...) values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges. When searching for resources to respond to the world’s problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single actors pursuing their own self-interests in competition or collaboration with other players. As is now widely appreciated, Confucian culture celebrates the relational values of deference and interdependence—that is, relationally constituted persons are understood as embedded in and nurtured by unique, transactional patterns of relations. This is a concept of person that contrasts starkly with the discrete, self-determining individual, an artifact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European approaches to modernization that has become closely associated with liberal democracy. Examining the meaning and value of Confucianism in the twenty-first century, the contributors—leading scholars from universities around the world—wrestle with several key questions: What are Confucian values within the context of the disparate cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? What is their current significance? What are the limits and historical failings of Confucianism and how are these to be critically addressed? How must Confucian culture be reformed if it is to become relevant as an international resource for positive change? Their answers vary, but all agree that only a vital and critical Confucianism will have relevance for an emerging world cultural order. (shrink)

In this volume, representatives of different cultures and with alternative conceptions of human realization explore themes at the intersection of a changing ...

本书介绍了中国式的超越和西方文化超越的神学论;理性、关联性与过程语言;中国的性别歧视观;儒家思想与实用主义;儒家民主主义等内容。.

At the end of 2013, China introduced what it calls the ‘One Belt, One Road Initiative’. From a Chinese perspective, this initiative is nothing less than a strategy...

Tianxia--conventionally translated as "all-under-Heaven"--in everyday Chinese parlance simply means "the world." But tianxia is also a geopolitical term found in canonical writings that has a deeper historical and philosophical significance. Although there are many understandings of tianxia in this literature, interpretations within the Chinese process cosmology generally begin with an ecological understanding of intra-national relations that acknowledge the mutuality and interdependence of all economic and political activity. This volume contextualizes the tianxia vision of geopolitical order within a variety of strategies (...) drawn from a broad spectrum of cultures and peoples: Buddhist, Islamic, Indian, African, Confucian, European. The conversation among the contributors is guided by several central questions: Is tianxia the only model of cosmopolitanism? Are there ideas and ideals comparable to tianxia that exist in other cultures? What alternative perspectives of global justice have inspired Western, Indian, Islamic, Buddhist, and African cultural traditions? The fundamental premise here is that in order for a planetary tianxia system to be relevant and significant for the present time and for our vision of the future, it must acknowledge the plurality of moral ideals defining the world's cultures while at the same time seek practical ways to formulate a minimalist morality that can provide the solidarity needed to bring the world's people together. (shrink)

I am grateful that a set of fine scholars would be willing to reflect upon and write about Descartes and the First Cartesians. Their efforts are greatly appreciated and, on the whole, their observations are sound. It should be evident that I do not consider the work to be the final word on the subject of Descartes and Cartesians, that is, something exhaustive of it or complete for any of its topics. In fact, every time I reconsider an issue from (...) my book, I find that there is more to be said even in respect to what I wrote about in great detail. I will reply to the commentators in the following order: 1. Domenico Collacciani; 2. Lucian Petrescu; 3. Martine... (shrink)

Archaeology's Visual Culture explores archaeology through the lens of visual culture theory. The insistent visuality of archaeology is a key stimulus for the imaginative and creative interpretation of our encounters with the past, acknowledging the multiplicity of meanings that cohere around artifacts, archaeological sites and museum displays. Archaeology's Visual Culture investigates the nature of this projection, revealing an embedded subjectivity in the imagery of archaeology. Using a wide range of case studies the book highlights the way archaeologists view objects and (...) the consequences that ensue from ways of seeing"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The author compares two very different guides to Atlas Shrugged. The first, by Curry and Trifiletti, is a more straightforward though thoughtful examination, in sequence, of the novel's thirty chapters, while the second, by Tracinski, is a collection of mostly freestanding, insightful, and inspirational essays. Special focus is given to the treatment in each book of the length and literary merit of Galt's speech.

Sexual experimentation, living together, raising children outside of marriage, remarriage after divorce, and same-sex relationships...These behaviours have become common in the wider society as well as among Christians and Catholic Christians. Not only do they think and act differently than the official Church teaching, but they do so convinced that they are acting rightly. This challenges ethics to respond by what can be called an 'ethics of mercy', by meeting people where they are and helping them to grow towards the (...) fullness of life and love. Such a pastoral and educational ethics of growth should dare to stand within the tension between what is desirable and what is attainable, without surrendering the 'pro-vocative' idea of conjugal covenant as the basis for the family. Mercy is needed not only after ethics but in ethics. In harmony with Pope Francis's plea for a 'gospel of mercy', this book seeks a middle way between merciless rigourism and relativising subjectivism. It proposes an ethics of redemption that accompanies people on their way to meaningful living and loving, grounded in a spirituality that springs from the salvation offered in Jesus. (shrink)

Anthropology of the Brain In this unique exploration of the mysteries of the human brain, Roger Bartra shows that consciousness is a phenomenon that occurs not only in the mind but also in an external network, a symbolic system. He argues that the symbolic systems created by humans in art, language, in cooking or in dress, are the key to understanding human consciousness.

Une métaphysique de la création continue, une éthique de la personne, sujet actif et créateur, tels sont les fondements philosophiques du socialisme. Le travail intellectuel, force de production en développement, qui entrera en contradiction avec les rapports de production tels qu'ils existent actuellement, et assurera le contrôle du Capital qui sera public et non plus privé, voilà ce qui constitue le fondement social du socialisme. Si la démocratie, c'est l'incarnation de l'exigence de liberté, la république, c'est la démocratie vivifiée par (...) l'aspiration à l'égalité, et le socialisme, c'est la république orientée vers ses fins par l'instauration du règne de la justice, par la transformation progressive de la propriété capitaliste en propriété sociale et par l'appel à la fraternité. Le socialisme est un idéal qui vise le changement radical de la société. (shrink)