Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol. By David Z. Moster. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pp. xv + 144, illus. $54.99. The Etrog Citron : Tradition and Research. Essays on the Scientific, Halachic and Historical Significance of the Etrog. Edited by eliezer goldSchmidT and moShe bar-JoSeph. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 2018. Pp. 24 + 14 + 480, illus. IS96. [Hebrew with English abstracts].

The Unity of Reason is the first major study of Kant's account of reason. It argues that Kant's wide-ranging interests and goals can only be understood by redirecting attention from epistemological questions of his work to those concerning the nature of reason. Rather than accepting a notion of reason given by his predecessors, a fundamental aim of Kant's philosophy is to reconceive the nature of reason. This enables us to understand Kant's insistence on the unity of theoretical and practical reason (...) as well as his claim that his metaphysics was driven by practical and political ends. Neiman begins by discussing the historical roots of Kant's conception of reason, and by showing Kant's solution to problems which earlier conceptions left unresolved. Kant's notion of reason itself is examined through a discussion of all the activities Kant attributes to reason. In separate chapters discussing the role of reason in science, morality, religion, and philosophy, Neiman explores Kant's distinctions between reason and knowledge, and his difficult account of the regulative principles of reason. Through examination of these principles in Kant's major and minor writings, The Unity of Reason provides a fundamentally new perspective on Kant's entire work. (shrink)

Susan Hekman believes we are witnessing an intellectual sea change. The main features of this change are found in dichotomies between language and reality, discourse and materiality. Hekman proposes that it is possible to find a more intimate connection between these pairs, one that does not privilege one over the other. By grounding her work in feminist thought and employing analytic philosophy, scientific theory, and linguistic theory, Hekman shows how language and reality can be understood as an indissoluble unit. (...) In this broadly synthetic work, she offers a new interpretation of questions of science, modernism, postmodernism, and feminism so as to build knowledge of reality and extend how we deal with nature and our increasingly diverse experiences of it. (shrink)

Considering everything from Nike ads, emaciated models, and surgically altered breasts to the culture wars and the O.J. Simpson trial, Susan Bordo deciphers the hidden life of cultural images and the impact they have on our lives. She builds on the provocative themes introduced in her acclaimed work _Unbearable Weight_—which explores the social and political underpinnings of women's obsession with bodily image—to offer a singularly readable and perceptive interpretation of our image-saturated culture. As it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish (...) between appearance and reality, she argues, we need to rehabilitate the notion that not all versions of reality are equally trustworthy. Bordo writes with deep compassion, unnerving honesty, and bracing intelligence. Looking to the body and bodily practices as a concrete arena where cultural fantasies and anxieties are played out, she examines the mystique and the reality of empowerment through cosmetic surgery. Her brilliant discussion of sexual harassment reflects on the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy as well as the film _Disclosure_. She suggests that sexuality, although one of the mediums of harassment, is not its essence, and she calls for the recasting of harassers as bullies rather than sex fiends. Bordo also challenges the continuing marginalization of feminist thought, in particular the failure to read feminist work as cultural criticism. Finally, in a powerful and moving essay called "Missing Kitchens"—written in collaboration with her two sisters—Bordo explores notions of bodies, place, and space through a recreation of the topographies of her childhood. Throughout these essays, Bordo avoids dogma and easy caricature. Consistently, and on many levels, she demonstrates the profound relationship between our lives and our theories, our feelings and our thoughts. (shrink)

We recognize a paradox of power and promise in the context of legislative and organizational changes in nurse regulation which poses constraints on nursing's capacity to bring voice and influence to pressing matters of healthcare and public policy. The profession is at an important crossroads wherein leaders must be well informed in political, economic and legislative trends to harness the profession's power while also navigating forces that may put at risk its central mission to serve society. We present a critical (...) policy analysis of the impact of recent regulatory trends on what the International Council of Nurses considers nursing's three ‘pillars’ – the profession of nursing, socioeconomic welfare of nurses and nurse regulation. Themes surfacing from this analysis include regulatory discontinuity, a tightening of regulatory control, and an increasingly managerial governance culture. These themes illuminate insights and strategies required to renew and revitalize the social mandate of our profession amidst a climate of urgency in the questioning of nurse scholars with respect to the future of the profession. At this historic juncture, nurses must clearly understand the implications of legislative and organizational regulatory changes to ensure the profession contributes to full capacity in achieving health and health equity globally. (shrink)

This book features the full scope of Susan Petrilli's important work on signs, language, communication, and of meaning, interpretation, and understanding. Although readers are likely familiar with otherness, interpretation, identity, embodiment, ecological crisis, and ethical responsibility for the biosphere—Petrilli forges new paths where other theorists have not tread. This work of remarkable depth takes up intensely debated topics, exhibiting in their treatment of them what Petrilli admires—creativity and imagination. Petrilli presents a careful integration of divergent thinkers and diverse perspectives. (...) While she abandons hope of attaining a final synthesis or an unqualifiedly comprehensive outlook, there remains a drive for coherence and detailed integration. The theory of identity being advocated in this book will provide the reader with an aid to appreciating the identity of the theorizing undertaken by Petrilli in her confrontation with an array of topics. Her theory differentiates itself from other offerings and, at the same time, is envisioned as a process of self-differentiation. Petrilli's contribution is at once historical and theoretical. It is historical in its recovery of major figures of language; it is theoretical in its articulation of a comprehensive framework. She expertly combines analytic precision and moral passion, theoretical imagination and political commitment. (shrink)

I offer a novel interdisciplinary approach to understanding the communicative task of listening, which is under-theorised compared to its more conspicuous counterpart, speech. By correlating a Rylean view of mental actions with a virtue ethical framework, I show listeners’ internal activity as a morally relevant feature of how they treat people. The listener employs a policy of responsiveness in managing the extent to which they allow a speaker's voice to be centred within their more effortful, engaged attention. A just listener's (...) policy of responsiveness avoids unwarrantedly dismissing speakers’ messages on the basis of peripheral attention alone. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss an external whistleblowing event that occurred after all internal whistleblowing through the hierarchy of the organization had failed. It is argued that an organization that does not support those that whistle blow because of violation of professional standards is indicative of a failure of organizational ethics. Several ways to build an ethics infrastructure that could reduce the need to resort to external whistleblowing are discussed. A relational ethics approach is presented as a (...) way to eliminate the negative consequences of whistleblowing by fostering an interdependent moral community to address ethical concerns. (shrink)

To reassure those concerned about wholesale discontinuity between human existence and posthumanity, transhumanists assert shared ground with antiquity on vital challenges and aspirations. Because their claims reflect key misconceptions, there is no shared vision for transhumanists to invoke. Having exposed their misuses of Prometheus, Plato, and Aristotle, I show that not only do transhumanists and antiquity crucially diverge on our relation to ideals, contrast-dependent aspiration, and worthy endeavors but that illumining this divide exposes central weaknesses in transhumanist argumentation. What is (...) more, antiquity’s handling of these topics suggests a way through the impasse in current enhancement debates about human “nature” and helps to resolve a tension within transhumanists’ accounts of what our best moments signify about the ontological requirements for real flourishing. (shrink)

Advocates of cognitive enhancement maintain that technological advances would augment autonomy indirectly by expanding the range of options available to individuals, while, in a recent article in this journal, Schaefer, Kahane, and Savulescu propose that cognitive enhancement would improve it more directly. Here, autonomy, construed in broad procedural terms, is at the fore. In contrast, when lauding the goodness of enhancement expressly, supporters’ line of argument is utilitarian, of an ideal variety. An inherent conflict results, for, within their utilitarian frame, (...) the content of rational, hence autonomous, choices is quite restricted. Further, advocates do not clearly indicate their relative emphasis between the often conflicting goals of maximizing benefit and avoiding harm. In practice, their construction of harms is highly expansive, for disabilities include any constraints that “rational” people would decline if it were technically possible to do so. For advocates, this means that where enhancement measures are available, those constraints become avoidable limitations, and not to remove them is to harm. The centrality of harm-avoidance and their ideal utilitarian frame entail sociopolitical requirements that enhancement defenders disallow when trumpeting autonomy in the vein of individual choice. Advocates have thus not done enough to support the claim that their views are wholly separate from earlier eugenics. (shrink)

This research paper explores the implications of emotional intelligence and the Big Five personality model on virtual team effectiveness. It illustrates how emotional intelligence and Big Five personality traits help team members better understand interpersonal relationships and develop constructive virtual teams. The widespread use of virtual team meetings for collaborative work over in-person interaction with diverse personalities creates discord and trust among team members, limiting overall productivity. A quantitative analysis approach is used, with hypotheses tested and a series of multiple (...) linear regression analyses performed on data collected from relevant industries using convenient sampling. The findings show that the Big Five personality affects the virtual team's trust and collaboration parameters. However, the relationship between personality traits and team effectiveness is mediated by emotional intelligence. Also, it is explored that having control over emotional intelligence or developing emotional intelligence would improve team performance while managing and working with a diverse group of people. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recent writings in feminist ethics have urged that the activity of caring is more central to women's lives than are considerations of justice and equality. This paper argues that an ethics of care, so understood, is difficult to extend beyond the local and familiar, and is therefore of limited use in addressing the political problems of the modern world. However, the ethics of care does contain an important insight: if references to care are understood not as claims about women's (...) nature, but as reflections on the extent to which moral obligations are both unchosen and conflicting, then an ethics of care can supplement an ethics of justice, and can also provide a more realistic account of both men's and women's moral life. (shrink)

In this book, Abraham argues that a theological imagination can expand the contours of postcolonial theory through a reexamination of notions of subjectivity, gender, and violence in a dialogical model with Karl Rahner. She raises the question of whether postcolonial theory, with its disavowal of religious agency, can provide an invigorating occasion for Catholic theology.

In an age when "we are all multiculturalists now," as Nathan Glazer has said, the politics of identity has come to pose new challenges to our liberal polity and the presuppositions on which it is founded. Just what identity means, and what its role in the public sphere is, are questions that are being hotly debated. In this book Susan Hekman aims to bring greater theoretical clarity to the debate by exposing some basic misconceptions—about the constitution of the self (...) that defines personal identity, about the way liberalism conceals the importance of identity under the veil of the "abstract citizen," and about the difference and interrelationship between personal and public identity. Hekman’s use of object relations theory allows her to argue, against the postmodernist resort to a "fictive" subject, for a core self that is socially constructed in the early years of childhood but nevertheless provides a secure base for the adult subject. Such a self is social, particular, embedded, and connected—a stark contrast to the neutral and disembodied subject posited in liberal theory. This way of construing the self also opens up the possibility for distinguishing how personal identity functions in relation to public identity. Against those advocates of identity politics who seek reform through the institutionalization of group participation, Hekman espouses a vision of the politics of difference that eschews assigning individuals to fixed groups and emphasizes instead the fluidity of choice arising from the complex interaction between the individual’s private identity and the multiple opportunities for associating with different groups and the public identities they define. Inspired by Foucault’s argument that "power is everywhere," Hekman maps out a dual strategy of both political and social/cultural resistance for this new politics of identity, which recognizes that with significant advances already won in the political/legal arena, attitudinal change in civil society presents the greatest challenge for achieving more progress today in the struggle against racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1995, given by Susan Hurley (1954-2007), an American philosopher.

In "Monkeys, Men, and Moral Responsibility: A Neo-Aristotelian Case for a Qualitative Distinction," Paul Carron (2017) uses the tragic case of Travis the chimpanzee to test Frans de Waal's gradualism. If Travis is not to blame for anything simply because he's a chimp, then gradualism cannot be total: There must be a qualitative difference between chimps and humans that makes humans morally responsible and chimps not. As I understand it, Carron's neo-Aristotelian thesis is that chimps cannot emotionally regulate: The emotional (...) states from which primates act are given to them and "lack rational content," whereas the emotional states from which humans act can be self-consciously developed in the cultivation of character. Carron takes this thesis to be a friendly amendment because it arises "from within the sentimentalist tradition itself broadly construed." In this comment I question just how friendly Carron's amendment turns out to be. (shrink)

Charitable foundations are being called upon to operate in more pen and democratic ways and to involve a more diverse constituency. This unprecedented study details the inner workings of a democratically organized philanthropy, where funding decisions are made by community activists. Susan A. Ostrander spent two years doing intensive field research at the Haymarket People's Fund -- a small, Boston-based foundation. Based on a philosophy of raising and giving away money called "Change, Not Charity," the Fund makes grants to (...) local grassroots social change organizations. The world of social movement funding comes alive with Ostrander's descriptions of grantmaking and policy meetings, donor events, and the day-to-day work of the Fund staff. Within this fascinating behind-the-scenes account, Ostrander argues that the "social relations of philanthropy" are more important and more varied than previously understood. Written at a time when Haymarket was dealing with crisis, this book tells a story of organizational change as the Fund moved from an informal collective to a more formal structure; it is also the story of a struggle to build a multi-race, multi-class, gender-equal organization. Ostrander details these ongoing struggles and addresses the larger issue of how fundraising can itself be a kind of social movement organizing among the progressive people with wealth who continue to be Haymarket's main donors. (shrink)

Suddenly unable to walk, I found resources for facing disability in the works of Aristotle and Nietzsche, even though their respective ethical schemes are incommensurable. Implementing Amélie Rorty's notion of crop rotation, I show how each scheme offers the patient something quite indispensable, having to do with how each has its own judgmentally-motivated psychological underpinnings. Aristotle's notion of empathy, wherein the moral move occurs whenever we take up someone else's good as our own, is empowering, especially to those who face (...) an imperiled embodiment. However, Nietzsche teaches us that pity is demeaning both to the pitier and to the pitied, because it falsely assumes that life should be easy so that we are filled with ressentiment when it isn't. Those facing disability need empathy, not pity. The richness of this distinction is vividly conveyed in narratives that show how empathy and pity play out in lived situations, thereby avoiding the dissociation that too often characterizes ethical theorizing. By honoring narrative accounts of how these relational moves are either snagged or successfully made, the attuned moral agency of medical practitioners can be fostered. (shrink)

This essay explores notions of maternal desire within feminist psychoanalysis with an interest in challenging heteronormative frameworks of analysis. Providing close critical readings of texts by Jessica Benjamin, Julia Kristeva, Kaja Silverman and Hortense Spillers, I trace conceptual openings through which to interpret maternal sexuality as a mobile process of intersubjectivity that is grounded in changing historical relations of experience. I argue that Spillers’ approach transforms a critical process of reading desire away from the insularities and exclusions of conventional psychoanalytic (...) knowledges towards a democratic and reflexive process of representation and analysis. (shrink)

Misrepresentations can be innocuous or even useful, but Kant’s corollary to the formula of universal law appears to involve a pernicious one: “act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature”. Humans obviously cannot make their maxims into laws of nature, and it seems preposterous to claim that we are morally required to pretend that we can. Given that Kant was careful to eradicate pernicious misrepresentations from theoretical metaphysics, the imperative (...) to act as if I have this supernatural power has typically been treated as an embarrassment meriting apology. The wording of the corollary may be vindicated, however, by recognizing that “as if” (als ob) is a technical term both in the Critique of Pure Reason and here. It signals a modal shift from the assertoric to the problematic mode of cognition, one that is necessitated by the attempt to incorporate the natural effects of a free will into a universal moral imperative that is philosophically practical. In this paper I sketch how the modal shift makes sense of the corollary as a subjectively necessary, philosophically practical idealization of the extension of human freedom into nature, one that accurately represents a necessary parameter of moral conduct: moral ambition. (shrink)

In der gesamten Neuzeit war Freiheit ein Schlüsselbegriff für das Selbstverständnis Europas und Deutschlands. Doch was galt hierzulande zu welchen Zeiten als "Freiheit"? Wie und von wem wurden in Deutschland seit der Frühaufklärung Freiheitsvorstellungen formuliert, diskutiert oder auch machtpolitisch vereinnahmt? Anhand ausgewählter Texte aus vier Jahrhunderten verdeutlicht dieses Buch, dass sich Freiheitsvorstellungen in Deutschland wandelten. Der Begriff blieb jedoch stets eine zentrale politische Kategorie, um das Verhältnis des Einzelnen zur Gesellschaft zu verhandeln. Immer bewegte er sich dabei im Spannungsfeld von (...) Selbstbestimmung und Kontrolle, Freizügigkeit und Sicherheit, Alterität und Konformität, Emanzipation und Diskriminierung, Gleichheit und Ungleichheit - also von Themen, die auch heute noch ins Mark der politischen und gesellschaftlichen Debatten treffen. (shrink)

Denton and Hockx present thirteen essays treating a variety of literary organizations from China's Republican era . Interdisciplinary in approach, the essays are primarily concerned with describing and analyzing the social and cultural complexity of literary groupings and the role of these social formations in literary production of the period.

Three acclaimed literary critics ask: Do women construct and write fiction differently from men? They explore theoretical aspects of the feminist agenda as well as analyze their own creative procedures. Sue Roe, Susan Sellers, Nicole Ward Jouve.