This paper describes student outcomes from participating in a week-long out-of-school action civics program designed to increase students’ civic and political competence and engagement. Using analysis from four years of survey data, this paper presents findings related to changes in students’ civic competence as a result of participating in the program, including findings related to both first time and repeat campers. Data revealed that participants experienced gains in half of the civic competence construct variables, with first-time campers experiencing significant gains (...) in five of the civic competence construct variables. Data analysis suggests that iEngage, an action civics summer experience, was effective in increasing elements of students’ civic competence, including their ability to get people to care about a problem, organize and run a meeting, write an opinion letter or contact a media outlet to express their views, and contact an elected official or community leader to address an issue. (shrink)

In search of general generative principles I start from the postulate of a reality which comprises both materialistic and psychic aspects. This overall reality, described by others as the world of archetypes, is not directly accessible to sensory perception. Yet, by studying archetypical manifestations, it is possible to distinguish different structures or generative principles in it. Comparison of three models, which depict developmental processes in different disciplines, shows that they have the same basic structure. The effects of the archetypes involved (...) can be described as four general generative principles: 1st the principle of wholeness (connection and integration of conflicting opposites), 2nd the principle of complementation and compensation (periodic change of opposite influences); 3rd the enstructuring principle (relative stability or spatial aspect of a manifest structure), and 4th the principle of gesture (change or temporal aspect of that structure). (shrink)

The species concept is one of the oldest and most fundamental in biology. And yet it is almost universally conceded that no satisfactory definition of what constitutes a species has ever been proposed. The present article is devoted to an attempt to review the status of the problem from a methodological point of view. Since the species is one of the many taxonomic categories, the question of the nature of these categories in general needs to be entered into.

Despite the availability of evidence-based treatment models for adolescent behavior problems, little is known about the effectiveness of these programs for adolescents with callous-unemotional traits. Defined by lack of empathy, lack of guilt, flattened affect and lack of caring, CU traits have been linked to long-term anti-social behavior and unfavorable treatment outcomes and might be negatively related to outcomes in evidence-based programs such as Functional Family Therapy. This study used a single-group pre-post evaluation design with a sample of 407 adolescents (...) receiving FFT to investigate whether outcomes in FFT are predicted by CU traits and to what extent reliable changes in CU traits can be observed. The results showed that although CU traits are related to increased problem severity at baseline, they predicted neither treatment dropout nor post-treatment externalizing behavior and family functioning. CU traits were related to diminished improvement ratings, in particular with respect to parental supervision. Reductions in CU traits were observed across the time of treatment, and these were most profound among adolescents with elevated levels of CU traits at baseline. Further research should investigate whether certain evidence-based treatment components are more suited for adolescents with CU, and if the addition of specific intervention elements for reducing CU-traits could further improve outcomes for this high-risk population. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is on the one hand to remind the Western reader of some aporias of Chinese antiquity, and on the other hand to show that a logic of sorts or of types similar to that which has been proposed to explain the relation between categories (in the mathematical sense of the term) and logic brings much light on these aporias. This should be contrasted with older traditional explanations using conventional syllogistics or feeling satised with too simple (...) explanations such as the confusion between inclusion and identity. The article is based on preceding papers of the Author, but stresses the basic unity of the solutions which were proposed there. (shrink)

In recent years the concept of eros has found its way back into educational literature with the aim of integrating human desires into educational theories and counteracting a devaluation of emotional life. This paper holds the view that this integration is important because desire expresses a fundamental way of relating to the world. However, part of the literature on eros and education also rethematizes the concept of eros as an educational value in support of democracy. The paper argues that the (...) binding together of eros and democracy is based on a one-sided description of eros, which is too hasty when we look at the plurality of lived desires. (shrink)

Carolvs Praechter, uir clarissimus, optime exposuit quo modo rumores et fabulae de Platoni s itineribus gradatim orerentur, augerentur, firmarentur.1 Inter scriptores, qui nobis tales narrationes tradiderunt, est Valerius Maximus, qui her Aegyptiacum et Italicum his uerbis narra.

Alasdair MacIntyre criticises the ethics of modernity as fallacious, and wants it replaced by Aristotelian virtue ethics. He is particularly critical concerning modernity’s non-contextual understanding of reason, and wants to renew the ethical significance of concepts like tradition and context.

This book explores politics as a form of alchemy, understood as the transformation of entities through an alteration of their identities. Identifying this process as a common denominator of many political phenomena, such as communism, EU integration, mediatisation or globalisation, the author demonstrates not only the widespread presence of alchemical techniques in politics, but also the acceleration of their deployment. A study of the steady growth of power as it reaches a continuous and permanent stage, thus avoiding the inherent difficulties (...) connected with birth and death of political organisations and institutions, this volume reveals political alchemy to be a form of self-sustaining growth through sterile multiplication, devoid of meaning. Revealing both the integrative and disintegrative nature of a political process that, while appearing to work in the interests of all, in fact produces apathy, desperate mobilisation and despair by crushing concrete entities such as personality and tradition, Political Alchemy: Technology Unbounded will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in social theory and political thought. (shrink)

Les progrès fulgurants des biotechnologies, combinés à la révolution des technologies de l'information, laissent entrevoir un avenir radicalement différent pour l'humanité. L'homme cybernétique, le "transhumain", peut-il vraiment "sauver l'homme" ou doit-il susciter nos craintes? A travers la critique de l'argumentaire transhumaniste, qui est fondé sur une conception appauvrie de ce qui fait l'humain, Thierry Magnin nous invite à porter un nouveau regard sur notre humble condition. Qu'est-ce que l'homme à l'heure où l'on pourra bientôt remplacer tous ses organes par des (...) machines intelligentes, voire transférer son psychisme? L'anthropologie chrétienne peut-elle nous aider à aborder avec confiance la révolution annoncée afin que celle-ci nous ouvre, non à un abandon de l'humain, mais à son plein accomplissement? (shrink)