Stanley Rosen's book is the first full-length study of the Sophist in English and one of the most complete in any language. He follows the stages of the dialogue in sequence and offers an exhaustive analysis of the philosophical questions that come to light as Theaetetus and the Eleatic Stranger pursue the sophist through philosophical debate. Rosen finds the central problem of the dialogue in the relation between original and image; he shows how this distinction underlies all subsequent technical (...) themes and analyzes in detail such problems as non-being or negation and false statement. Arguing that the dialogue must be treated as a dramatic unity, he pays careful attention throughout to the setting, the events, the language used, and the relations between the natures of the speakers and the topics under discussion. (shrink)

Based on the author's ethnographic research in India, the book explores the psychology of Hinduism, and offers an innovative synthesis of psychoanylsis with modern anthropological theories of cultural difference. Stanley N. Kurtz offers a new interpretation of the multiple "mother goddesses" of Hinduism, and explores how this multiplicity is key to understanding early childhood experience in which a child is raised by many "mothers" in the Hindu joint family. Arguing that traditional psychoanalytic approaches to Indian culture have applied Western (...) models without regard to differing cultural circumstances, Kurtz suggests that immersion in a joint family plays a central role in the development of feelings and needs which are carried over into adult life. The book concludes with a briefr comparison of mothering in India and contemporary America. _All the Mothers Are One_ makes a significant contribution to the growing debate concerning the role of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of culture and the study of cross-cultural human development. (shrink)

Stanley Hauerwas begins this volume with a vigorous response to the charge of sectarianism leveled against his work by James Gustafson, among others. "Show me where I am wrong about God, Jesus, the limits of liberalism, the nature of the virtues, or the doctrine of the church," Hauerwas replies to his critics, "but do not shortcut that task by calling me a sectarian."The essays that follow explore in a lucid, compelling, firm, and provocative way the church's nature, message, and (...) ministry in the world. Hauerwas writes on the church as God's new language, on clerical character, on the pastor as prophet, on the ministry of the local congregation, on grace and public virtue, and on the relation of church and university.Underlying Hauerwas's argument is his conviction that "the most important knowledge Christian convictions involve, and there is much worth knowing for which Christians have no special claim, requires a transformation of the self. Christianity is no 'world view,' not a form of primitive metaphysics, that can be assessed in comparison to alternative 'world views.' Rather, Christians are people who remain convinced that the truthfulness of their beliefs must be demonstrated in their lives. There is a sense in which Christian convictions are self-referential, but the reference is not to propositions but to lives.". (shrink)

Objecting to a restrictive view of morality that limits moral philosophy and religious ethics to what can be logically displayed, this essay seeks to expand our understanding of morality in a way that permits one to account for intentionality in the moral life. It claims that religion makes a contribution to our moral behavior beyond that of motivating one to be moral. The author argues that a right understanding of the relationship of thought and action is essential if we are (...) correctly to understand the relationship of religion and morality. He concludes that "story" and principles have interdependent roles to play in the full variety of our moral life. (shrink)

This article discusses preliminary data on advancing what we know about “sacred sites” and their effects on dreaming. Thirty‐five volunteers spent between one and five nights in one of four unfamiliar outdoor sacred sites in England and Wales. Another volunteer awakened them following the observation of rapid eye movement and asked for dream recall. The same volunteers monitored their own dreams in familiar home surroundings, keeping dream diaries. Equal numbers of site dreams and home dream reports were obtained for each (...) volunteer. The 204 dream reports had previously been subjected to inspection for bizarre and paranormal content, with no significant differences. This analysis used the Hall—Van de Castle Scale, and several differences were found, most notably more aggressive content in site dreams and more friendly content in home dreams. In addition, home dream reports contained more incidences of failure, striving, and success. A number of explanations were proposed for these differences, including expectancy, suggestion, the effect of unfamiliar surroundings, and possible anomalous properties of the sacred sites. (shrink)

As his editor John L. Stanley points out, Georges Sorel was "that fascinating polymath." This volume, the third in his selected works in the English language published by Transaction, emphasizes Sorel's extraordinary writings in the philosophy of science, religion, culture, and art. For those who know Sorel only as author of Reflections on Violence, the present volume will come as a forceful reminder of the range and depth of Sorelian efforts to construct a world view. Sorel is throughout concerned (...) with the moral development of human beings. In this sense, his writings on politics are of a piece with his writings on religion, "facticity" of human history and society. Sorel's earliest writings were on religion, and key portions of that period are reflected in selections here. And he went on from there to study the sociology of science, the ways in which science fits into the cultural history of civilization and present day social relationships of industrial society. Stanley provides a profound framework based on two decades of close study and translation of Sorel's texts. He helps to explain how the partial theories of Sorel lead to holistic intellectual consequences, how the psychological method does not foreclose political activism, and how historical limits can be transformed against a background of aesthetics or considerations of taste. He shows that Sorel comes as a close as Manheim and Simmel and Durkheim to the creation of a modern social science--albeit he lacks the overall philosophical theorems of people like Marx and Weber. In Sorel we have a first-class mind at work. And in Stanley, we have a first-class analyst at work. Together, the volume adds up to something special for the political scientist, sociologist, art historian, theologian--in short for those to whom the ideal of a human science endures. John L. Stanley is professor of political science at the University of California at Riverside. He is the author of The Sociology of Virtue: The Political and Social Theories of Georges Sorel. He has written many articles and reviews on the history of European political theory. With his wife, Charlotte Stanley, he has been long engaged in the translation of the works of Georges Sorel. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Each year since 1983 the American Council of Learned Societies has invited one of America's leading scholars to deliver the Haskins Lecture, in honor of Charles Homer Haskins, a distinguished scholar and teacher who was instrumental in the founding of the ACLS. In this volume, which commemorates the 75th anniversary of the ACLS, Douglas Greenberg and Stanley Katz bring together the lectures presented by ten of America's most distinguished scholars. Each lecture is a personal and intellectual glimpse into the (...) "life of learning" of such leading scholars as Maynard Mack, Annemarie Schimmel, and John Hope Franklin. The lectures focus on self-reflection of lives dedicated to learning, rather than on scholarship in the usual sense of the term. Ranging from being forced to learn Latin to painful memories of war and racism, the lecturers all recount stories from their eventful lives. Each offers thoughts on the body of work he or she has produced and the forces, personal and intellectual, that have shaped it. The scholars bring something of their disciplines to the lecture, sharing not only personal anecdotes but their love of learning. (shrink)

This paper examines the foreign direct investment decision from an ethical perspective, and considers the moral agency involved in such decisions, with emphasis upon the corporate decision-maker. Historical capital allocation models once regarded as both financially and ethically normative are shown to be deficient in today's environment. Work of modern western philososphical and theological ethicists is included in analyses of the applicability of selected ethical approaches or metaphors to multinational foreign direct investment decisions and the corporate manager's role and responsibility (...) as corporate decision-maker and moral agent. The ethical perspectives reviewed can serve as an aid to the individual manager's determination of what constitutes a responsible exercise of decision-making power. (shrink)

This essay traces Gustafson's understanding of the methodological significance of history and time for theological ethics. I argue that Gustafson qualifies his original thoroughgoing historicist perspective in the interest of developing a natural theology and ethics. His continuing emphasis on a historical perspective, I suggest, is best understood by attending to his recommendation that the theologian's task is best captured by the image of the "participant.".

Remembering Fermi MORREL H. COHEN Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University Frelinghuysen Road. Piscataway, NJ 08854-8019 USA and Department ...

Debates about freedom, an ideal continually contested, were first set out in their modern version by the eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His ideas and analyses were taken up during the philosophical enlightenment, often invoked during the French Revolution, and still resonate in contemporary discussions of freedom. This volume, first published in 2010, examines Rousseau's many approaches to the concept of freedom, in the context of his thought on literature, religion, music, theater, women, the body, and the arts. Its expert (...) contributors cross disciplinary frontiers to develop thought-provoking new angles on Rousseau's thought. By taking freedom as the guiding principle of their analysis, the essays form a cohesive account of Rousseau's writings. (shrink)

This essay advances an interpretation of early Christian codex books, which goes beyond Catherine Pickstock’s critique of Jacques Derrida. Firstly, it summarizes Derrida’s deconstruction of Plato’s Phaedrus and introduces his understanding of writing as différance. Secondly, it outlines Pickstock’s After Writing in order to understand her emphasis upon the liturgical nature of platonic dialogue. It is here that an ambiguity emerges between writing and codex books in Pickstock’s account. In response, the insights of book historians such as Roger Chartier will (...) be brought to bear in order to understand the longer history of the codex, which sees the printing press as a continuation of the early transition from roll to codex in the second century of the Common Era. It has long been noted that Christians of this period were early and pervasive adopters of codex binding for their sacred literature. By summarizing the reasons why, it will be shown how the codex expressed early Christian religious concerns. (shrink)

What role does religious transcendence play in liberal democracies? In Jürgen Habermas’s early political theory of the bourgeois public sphere, religion was downplayed if not dismissed completely. In the past several years however, he has developed a greater interest in religion. Habermas seems to like the positive solidarity-forming effects religion can have on communities that mediate in a public sphere between private individuals and state authority. However, in light of continuing terrorist activity, he is deeply critical of any sort of (...) other worldly transcendence that is too open to violent cooption. Nonetheless, Habermas relates his renewal of a critically engaged public sphere of debate to universalized rational procedures which he discusses in light of a philosophical notion of “detranscendentalization.” However, if it is the case that the solidarity of communities is being eroded by the influences of mass media and free market globalization as Habermas claims, then a further reflection on the way religious communities form around shared transcendent beliefs is required. Are his detranscendentalized rational procedures of critical debate adequate in inspiring the critical power communities need to solidify themselves against state authority? It is in light of this questions that I will develop the thought of Karl Barth. (shrink)

Having acknowledged the recurrent theme of education in Stanley Cavell's work, the discussion addresses the topic of scepticism, especially as this emerges in the interpretation of Wittgenstein. Questions concerning rule‐following, language and society are then turned towards political philosophy, specifically with regard to John Rawls. The discussion examines the idea of the social contract, the nature of moral reasoning and the possibility of our lives' being above reproach, as well as Rawls's criticisms of Nietzschean perfectionism. This lays the way (...) for the broaching of questions of race and America. The theme of the ordinary, which emerges variously in Cavell's reflections on Emerson, Wittgenstein and Austin, is taken up and extended into a consideration of Thoreau's ‘experiment in living’. The conversation closes with brief remarks about happiness. (shrink)

Included here are twenty essays from renowned scholars, honoring Stanley Rosen, whose work in ancient and modern philosophy is among the most influential today.

Michael Winkelman, who is a senior lecturer in the department of anthropology, Arizona State University, and director of its ethnographic field school, has provided a rich overview of the neurophenomenology of shamanism in his book, Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness. Written in the tradition of Laughlin, McManus, and d'Aquili's 1992 classic, Brain, Symbol, and Experience: Toward a Neurophenomenology of Consciousness, Winkelman considers shamanism in many of its facets. He explores shamanism's social and symbolic content, and the implications of its (...) neurological underpinnings both for shamanic practitioners and for their clients. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell has been a brilliant, idiosyncratic, and controversial presence in American philosophy, literary criticism, and cultural studies for years. Even as he continues to produce new writing of a high standard -- an example of which is included in this collection -- his work has elicited responses from a new generation of writers in Europe and America. This collection showcases this new work, while illustrating the variety of Cavell's interests: in the "ordinary language" philosophy of Wittgenstein and Austin, (...) in film criticism and theory, in literature, psychoanalysis, and the American transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The collection also reprints Richard Rorty's early review of Cavell's magnum opus, The Claim of Reason (1979), and it concludes with Cavell's substantial set of responses to the essays, a highlight of which is his engagement with Rorty. (shrink)

Development and Evolution surveys and illuminates the key themes of rapidly changing fields and areas of controversy that the redefining the theory and philosophy of biology. It continues Stanley Salthe's investigation of evolutionary theory, begun in his influential book Evolving Hierarchical Systems, while negating the implicit philosophical mechanisms of much of that work. Here Salthe attempts to reinitiate a theory of biology from the perspective of development rather than from that of evolution, recognizing the applicability of general systems thinking (...) to biological and social phenomena and pointing towards a non-Darwinian and even a postmodern biology. (shrink)

Gorgeous black and white photographs of machines built to unlock the secrets of the universe.