Proposal in Brief : I have been invited by Michael Ruse, editor of the Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology series for Cambridge University Press, to submit a book proposal on the Philosophy of Developmental Biology. This is both a great honor and a magnificent opportunity for a relatively junior professor, especially since the field is new - done well, this book could help set the basic parameters of an emerging discipline.

It is common for young Christians to go off to college assured in their beliefs but, in the course of their first year or two, they meet what appears to them to be powerful defenses of scientific naturalism and crushing critiques of the basic Christian story (BCS), and many are thrown into doubt. They think to themselves something like this: "To be honest, I am troubled about the BCS. While the problem of evil, the apparent cultural basis for the diversity (...) of religions, the explanatory breadth of contemporary science, naturalistic explanations of religious experience and miracle reports, and textual and historical criticism of the Bible, among other things, don’t make me believe the BCS is false , I am in serious doubt about it, so much so that I lack belief of it. In that case, how can I have Christian faith? And if I don’t have faith, how can I keep on praying, attending church, affirming the creed, confessing my sins, taking the sacraments, singing the hymns and songs, and so on? I can’t, unless I’m a hypocrite. So integrity requires me to drop the whole thing and get out." Of course, our student is not alone. Many Christians find themselves for some portion of their lives somewhere on the trajectory from doubt to getting out. Indeed, Christians in the West struggle with intellectual doubt more than they used to, especially university-educated Christians. What should we say to them? Some will say “Get out!,” welcoming the development as a path to liberation. We explore a different response in this essay. (shrink)

IntroductionDespite the need for trained physician ethicists, fellowships in clinical ethics are limited and primarily offered to thosewho have completed a graduate degree. The standardization of credentialing for clinical ethics consultants (CECs) and the restructuring of undergraduate medical education allow innovative models to train CECs that can provide an expanded opportunity for formal ethics training at an earlier stage.MethodsAt the University of Michigan Medical School we developed, implemented, and evaluated a pre-doctoral clinical ethics fellowship program from 2017 to 2019 (...) for senior medical students, designed to meet established competencies for CECs. Consultation notes from the beginning and end of the fellowship program were randomly selected for each fellow and independently rated by two faculty ethicists who used the validated Ethics Consultation Quality Assessment Tool (ECQAT).1 Inter rater reliability and trends in scores over time were calculated.ResultsThree students successfully completed the fellowship at the University of Michigan Medical School, conducted at least 50 formal ethics consultations, and spent approximately 40 hours a week on service for a minimum of six months. All students finished the fellowship with teaching and policy development experience, first-authored peer-reviewed manuscripts, and national presentations. The fellows demonstrated improvement in their ECQAT overall holistic rating score; all ended their fellowship with a holistic score of adequate or above. There was 92 percent agreement between raters withrespect to the acceptability of the fellows’ ethics consult notes. Two fellows have taken and passed the Healthcare Ethics Consultant-Certification (HEC-C) exam offered by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH).ConclusionsIntegration of a pre-doctoral fellowship model that meets professional certification standards for clinical ethics consultation creates an opportunity for medical students to become trained CECs early in their career. (shrink)

This concluding essay offers reflections on core components of the faculty fellowship program, its outcomes and results, and program design and administration. Amid the current calls for reform in legal and other professional education, the lessons we learned and perspectives we gained during this fellowship program may be relevant to any faculty members and university administrations that are seeking to create more effective and engaged professional and graduate school programs, whatever may be their subject-matter discipline.

Acharya Sushil Muniji Maharaj gave spiritual guidance to the humanity at large and inspired them to realize peace through non-violence. He propagated religion for peace, fully conscious of the fact that peace and harmony were essential for the survival of mankind and its abode - the planet earth. The assiduous Saint Sushil Muni founded World Fellowship of Religions in order to project the humanitarian aspect of religion to meet multifarious challenges faced by the suffering humanity. He emphasized the need (...) to save religion from distortions and misuse. As harbinger of world peace, he defined non-violence as the absence of hatred, tension, anger and discontentment. He enjoined upon all human beings to protect environment, help maintain ecological balance which is essential for the survival of humanity as well as plant and animal life. He was a strong votary of pollution-free mind and surroundings. His cherished dream for a peaceful and non-violent world can be realized by the pursuit of religion for universal peace in conformity with the noble ideals of Lord Rsabhanatha to Lord Mahavira. The humanitarian aspects of religion and the theory of non-violence with the perspective of "world religion" of Muni Sushilji have been extensively described in this book - a biographical sketch of Muniji, the leader of humanity. (shrink)

The American Association of University Women (AAUW) is one of the nation's oldest and most influential voices for equality in education, the professions, and public life. Tracing the history of the AAUW, Susan Levine provides a new perspective on the meaning of feminism for women in mainstream liberal organizations. In so doing, she explores the problems that women confront and the strategies they have developed to achieve equal rights. Established in 1921 with the merging of two regional groups of women (...) college graduates, the AAUW has grown to become a vital resource center for educational policy and women's concerns. While not always favoring the label "feminist," AAUW has sought to end discrimination against women, providing fellowships for women to pursue higher education, lobbying for changes in public policy, and conducting groundbreaking research. From the beginning, however, both achievement and controversy have marked the organizations' efforts. The AAUW, self-identified as the voice of moderation and mainstream women, has also been bound by social convention of class and race. One result, a bitter conflict in the late 1940s over racial integration, forced AAUW to change its national policies. Yet the organization emerged stronger than ever and at present boasts over 135,000 members. By examining the experience of groups like AAUW, Levine suggests that feminism was not so much "reborn" in the 1970s as it was adopted by a rapidly growing constituency of college educated women demanding the realization of their goals. Author note: Susan Levine is Assistant Professor of History at East Carolina University and the author of Labor's True Woman: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization, and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age (Temple). (shrink)

I’d like to begin, if I may, by repeating myself. When I spoke at the Institute’s official launch last June, I quoted W.V. Quine’s remark that logic is an old subject, and since 1879 it has been a great one; and I commented that whatever the truth of this, it is undeniably true that philosophy is an old subject and has been a great one since the 5th century BC. The foundation of an institute of philosophy in the University of (...) London has been, in my opinion, a great thing for philosophy and for the University. Our mission is to promote and support philosophy of the highest quality in all its forms, inside and outside the university. With our programmes of events, fellowships and research facilitation, I think we have been carrying out this mission pretty well since our foundation in 2005. But I have already said enough in public about the Institute. Given the occasion, it is appropriate for me to say something instead about philosophy itself. (shrink)

Dan Falk, the author of this engaging if informal book, is a science journalist, broadcaster, and freelance writer, whose achievements merited him a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2011–2012. Full disclosure imperatives require me to acknowledge having met him on an eclipse expedition to Easter Island in 2010, where I recall learning about his interests in astrophotography. I am sure, however, that should we meet again, we are unlikely to recognize one another. Thus, as an unbiased reader (...) , I can report that The Science of Shakespeare is a testament to the thoroughness with which Falk has carried out his research, both in libraries and in the offices of everyone, it would appear, who has so much as dabbled in the question of whether Shakespeare knew anything about the scientific developments of his day and how, if he did, this .. (shrink)

The Pāli word mettā is a multi-significant term meaning loving kindness, friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, fellowship, amity, concord, inoffensiveness and non-violence. The Pāli commentators define mettā as the strong wish for the welfare and happiness of others (parahita-parasukha-karana). Essentially mettā is an altruistic attitude of love and friendliness as distinguished from mere amiability based on self-interest. Through mettā one refuses to be offensive and renounces bitterness, resentment and animosity of every kind, developing instead a mind of friendliness, accommodativeness and benevolence (...) which seeks the well-being and happiness of others. True mettā is devoid of self-interest. It evokes within a warm-hearted feeling of fellowship, sympathy and love, which grows boundless with practice and overcomes all social, religious, racial, political and economic barriers. Mettā is indeed a universal, unselfish and all-embracing love. Mettā makes one a pure font of well-being and safety for others. Just as a mother gives her own life to protect her child, so mettā only gives and never wants anything in return. To promote one's own interest is a primordial motivation of human nature. When this urge is transformed into the desire to promote the interest and happiness of others, not only is the basic urge of self-happiness of others, not only is the basic urge of self-seeking overcome, but the mind becomes universal by identifying its own interest with the interest of all. By making this change one also promotes one's own well-being in the best possible manner. Mettā is the protective and immensely patient attitude of a mother who forbears all difficulties for the sake of her child and ever protects it despite its misbehaviour. Metta is also the attitude of a friend who wants to give one the best to further one's well-being. If these qualities of mettā are sufficiently cultivated through mettā-bhāvanā-the meditation on universal love-the result is the acquisition of a tremendous inner power which preserves, protects and heals both oneself and others.Apart from its higher implications, today mettā is a pragmatic necessity. In a world menaced by all kinds of destructiveness, mettā in deed, word and thought is the only constructive means to bring concord, peace and mutual understanding. Indeed, mettā is the supreme means, for it forms the fundamental tenet of all the higher religions as well as the basis for all benevolent activities intended to promote human well-being.The present booklet aims at exploring various facets of mettā both in theory and in practice. The examination of the doctrinal and ethical side of mettā will proceed through a study of the popular Karanīya Mettā Sutta, the Buddha's "Hymn of Universal Love". In connection with this theme we will also look at several other short texts dealing with mettā. The explanation of mettā-bhāvanā, the meditation on universal love, will give the practical directions for developing this type of contemplation as set forth in the main meditation texts of the Theravāda Buddhist tradition, the Visuddhimagga, the Vimuttimagga and the Patisambhidamagga. (shrink)

Unusual among Western philosophers, Schopenhauer explicitly drew on Hindu and especially Buddhist traditions inhis moral philosophy. He saw plurality, especially the plurality of human persons, as a kind of illusion; in reality all is one, and compassionate acts express an implicit recognition of this oneness. Max Scheler retains the transcendence of self aspect of compassion but emphasizes that the subject must have a clear, lived sense of herself as a distinct individual in order for that transcendence to take place properly. (...) This feature is absent in the Buddhist tradition. Feminist philosophers of the early second wave built on this insight (only occasionally drawing it from Scheler) to recognize ways women are often not socialized to develop this distinctive sense of self, therefore harming their ability to engage in compassion and other forms of care for others. Iris Murdoch adds a Freudian-inspired (though Freud influenced Scheler also) pessimism about the ability of humans to keep their identities sufficiently distinct from the other to allow a clear view of the other, and thus real care and help to the other to take place. But in her later work, Murdoch explicitly recognizes and draws on the Buddhist tradition of oneness and transcendence of the self. Group solidarities can partake of aspects of Buddhist oneness and self-transcendence, for example the sense of fellowship in a social justice movement in which Blacks draw on a shared identity to experience connection, compassion, empathy, and solidarity with one another. But social justice movements also allow for a solidarity across racial lines, grounded in the shared commitment to justice, including justice for one of the groups in the solidarity community. (All these issues are powerfully portrayed in the 2014 film, Selma.) None of these solidarities, however, express the universalistic dimension of Buddhist oneness. (shrink)

A series of four lectures given in Athens during the author's tenure of a Fulbright Fellowship. The intention is to introduce Athenian public to three classical American philosophers, as well as to contemporary trends. The author sees interesting parallels between Emerson and the Byzantine Mystics and predicts that the interest of Americans in Ancient Greek philosophy will lead to closer studies of Byzantine philosophy. The chief defect of the book is its willingness to sacrifice content for coverage. Presentation is (...) cursory and often by terms which are misleading in themselves and particularly unfortunate when rendered into modern Greek.--. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was a reclusive and enigmatic philosopher, writing his most significant work off campus in remote locations. He also held a chair in the Philosophy Department at Cambridge, and is one of the university’s most recognized even if, as Ray Monk says, ‘reluctant professors’ of philosophy. Paradoxically, although Wittgenstein often showed contempt for the atmosphere at Cambridge and for academic philosophy in particular, it is hard to conceive of him making his significant contributions without considerable support from his academic (...) colleagues, his research fellowship and later teaching career at Cambridge. It is this conflicted relationship we explore, between the revolutionary thinker and his base within an educational institution. Starting from a brief biographical sketch of Wittgenstein’s academic life at Cambridge, including his involvement as a student and faculty member in the Moral Sciences Club, we look at how he reconceived the role of philosophy throughout this... (shrink)

Georgia State University College of Law, through the Center for Law, Health & Society, developed a pair of online libraries for faculty teaching public health law in schools of law or public health. Development of these libraries was funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of The Future of Public Health Law Education: Faculty Fellowship Program. This article describes the goals of the program addressed by the libraries, the development process, the resources included, and (...) how faculty may benefit from the materials and provide materials benefitting other faculty across the country. (shrink)

Henry S. Richardson is Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. From 2008-18, he was the editor of Ethics. His previous books include Practical Reasoning about Final Ends, Democratic Autonomy, and Moral Entanglements. He has held fellowships sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

As the field of clinical bioethics has moved from its pioneers, who turned their attention to ethics problems in clinical medicine and clinical and animal research, to today’s ubiquity of university degrees and fellowships in bioethics, there has been a steady drumbeat to professionalize the field. The problem has been that the necessary next steps—to specify the skills, knowledge, and personal and professional attributes of a clinical bioethicist, and to have a method to train and evaluate mastery of these standards—are (...) lacking.Ordinarily, the path to professionalism in medicine starts with the intellectual pioneers. Then come those who develop early experience in clinical settings. Then comes the specification of the skills, knowledge, and personal and professional attributes needed to perform the activities of the new specialty or subspecialty. And only then, after a method to train and evaluate levels of mastery from novice to advanced practitioner has been developed, comes credible credentialing and certification/licensing.Unfortunately, the field of clinical bioethics has skipped these steps. Rather, a credential, that is, the Healthcare Ethics Consultant (HEC) certification, was created by a small group within the bioethics professional association, the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), without community agreement or necessary input. Further, the testing of processes to train HECs and to evaluate their levels of mastery of competencies was prematurely forwarded as sufficient evidence of competence in clinical ethics. That is, the credential, offered by the ASBH for a fee, upon passing an exam based on how many hours one has been involved in clinical consultation, about which there is no field agreement on how such consultations ought to be conducted and for which only controversial standards have been set, is being touted as evidence of competence in clinical bioethics. In their article, “Competencies and Milestones for Bioethics Trainees,” Sawyer and colleagues identify the central weakness of these claims to professionalization and provide the field the first substantive assessment tool and method to train and evaluate competencies. The tool these authors present is the real next step forward for true professionalization of the field of clinical bioethics. (shrink)

In this article, the author explores a model of alternative medical education being pioneered at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. The five-year Global Health Fieldwork Fellowship track allows two students per year to complete an extra year of medical education while living and working in a free rural clinic in the jungle lowlands of Bolivia. This alternative curricular track is unique among other existing models in that it is longitudinally immersive for at least one full additional year (...) of medical education, grounded in clinical and service learning, and heavily focused upon global health and the social components of medicine. Studies have shown that both longitudinal alternative medical curricular tracks and short-term global health electives have long-term benefits upon the professional development of participants, suggesting that the GHFF is likely to do the same. The author also argues that the GHFF is an advantageous model of global health education compared to standard offerings and provides a unique curricular model by which to foster the development of social values—such as professionalism, advocacy, and social justice—that are widely considered lacking in today’s medical education. (shrink)

I argue that despite the various ways in which Fichte separates right from morality in his 1796/97 Foundations of Natural Right, he nevertheless suggests in the writings from the period of his professorship at the University of Jena that there is a reciprocal relation between them. This requires, however, reading the Foundations of Natural Right in the light of The System of Ethics, which was published in 1798, especially the account of the ethical duties deriving from a person's membership of (...) a profession that Fichte gives in this work. Although this approach allows us to attribute to Fichte a different conception of the state to the amoral one found in the Foundations of Natural Right, I argue that the separation of right from morality developed in this work remains valid and amounts to one of Fichte's main achievements, namely, his identification of the different dispositions that may characterize an individual's relation to the society in which he or she lives. This point is developed by comparing Fichte's amoral conception of the state to Hegel's account of civil society as the ‘state of necessity’. This does not involve an attempt to turn Fichte into Hegel but to show how the insights contained in Fichte's distinction between right and morality can be illuminated with reference to Hegel's theory of civil society and can be retained in the face of a powerful criticism that Hegel makes of the kind of contract theory of the state offered by Fichte. ☆ This article was written during a post-doctoral fellowship supported by the South African National Research Foundation. I would like to thank Lawrence Hamilton for his comments on an earlier version of the article. (shrink)

What are the ethical concerns among the growing populations of business people in Central & Eastern Europe, and how might they be dealt with practically in the course of business life? David Murray has been a management consultant since 1979 working primarily with the Hay Group in the area of strategic organisational change. Since founding Maine Consulting Services in 1991 he spends most of his time in the field of business and professional ethics, also holding a Visiting Fellowship at (...) the University of Central Lancashire. He is chairman of the Professional & Technical Board at the (British) Institute of Quality Assurance and a coordinating editor of the quarterly Organisations & People. Marek Kucia is a social researcher operating his own research agency (which organised the Polish part of this exercise) and an academic teaching sociology, and conducting and co‐ordinating Central European Studies at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. He studied political science, sociology and philosophy at Krakow and studied for his PhD at Oxford. He has also worked for Gallup, London, in opinion and market research. This survey report is based on presentations made in April 1994 to the EBEN Research Centres Conference in Prague, and in June 1994 to the conference on “Ethics in Transition” organised in Gödöllö, Hungary, by the Democracy after Communism Foundation, Budapest. The authors wish to acknowledge the major contribution to this work of Mr Juraj Kusnierik of the Central European Foundation, SEN, Bratislava, who co‐ordinated the survey exercise. The project was sponsored by The Ethics Development Initiative, CARE, London; the Central European Foundation, SEN, Bratislava, Slovakia; SIS Ltd., Bratislava, Slovakia; and Maine Consulting Services, 16 Acrefield, Blackburn, Lancashire, England BB2 7BJ, to which all correspondence connected with this report should be addressed. (shrink)

This study on the reception of Cartesianism is the result of a four-year fellowship as assistant-in-training at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen. Zie: Preface.

In a career extending over almost six decades, Nicholas Rescher has conducted researches in almost every principal area of philosophy, historical and systematic alike. In this extraordinary volume, two dozen scholars join in offering penetrating discussions of various facets of Rescher s investigations. The result is an instructively critical panorama of the many-faceted contributions of this important American philosopher. Born in Germany in 1928, Nicholas Rescher came to the U.S. at the age of nine. He is University Professor of Philosophy (...) at the University of Pittsburgh where he has also served as Chairman of the Philosophy Department and as director (and currently chairman) of the Center for Philosophy of Science. In a productive research career extending over six decades, he has established himself as a systematic philosopher of the old style. His work represents a many-sided approach to fundamental philosophical issues that weaves together threads of thought from continental idealism and American pragmatism. And apart from this larger program Rescher has made various specific contributions to logic (the conception autodescriptive systems of many-sided logic), the history of logic (the medieval Arabic theory of modal syllogistic), to the theory of knowledge (epistemetrics as a quantitative approach in theoretical epistemology), and to the philosophy of science (the theory of a logarithmic retardation of scientific progress). Rescher has also worked in the area of futuristics, and along with Olaf Helmer and Norman Dalkey is co-inaugurator of the so-called Delphi method of forecasting. Ten books about Rescher s philosophy have been published in four languages. Rescher earned his doctorate at Princeton in 1951 while still at the age of twenty-two a record for Princeton s Department of Philosophy. He has served as a President of the American Philosophical Association, of the American Catholic Philosophy Association, of the American G. W. Leibniz Society, of the C. S. Peirce Society, and of the American Metaphysical Society. He was the founder of the American Philosophical Quarterly. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Royal Society of Canada, the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, he has been awarded fellowships by the Ford, Guggenheim, and National Science Foundations. Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated from English into other languages, he is the recipient of eight honorary degrees from universities on three continents. He was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984, the Belgian Prix Mercier in 2005, and the Aquinas Medal of the American Catholic Philosophical Association in 2007.". (shrink)

Martin Buber was close to sociology and sociologists from his university years on and in 1938 was head of the new Department of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although influenced by Ferdinand Toennies, and George Simmel, he went beyond them in his philosophy of the “interhuman” from which standpoint he also criticized Max Scheler. Focal social concepts of Buber's are “the interhuman”_the dialogical relationship between persons that entails “inclusion,” or “imagining the real,” making present, and confirmation ; the (...) “essential We” or common cosmos that each helps to build by speech-with-meaning from his or her unique stance; the distinction between the “political principle” of government and the “social principle” of fellowship and social spontaneity; and the philosophy of community that led Buber to a federalistic socialism and the vision of restructuring society into a “community of communities”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative Formulation RevisitedOn Seeing the Person in Mental Health RecoveryAnna Bergqvist (bio)The use of narrative in mental health contexts models consciousness as something necessarily embodied, as already part of the world, in an inherently value-laden and perspectival way. As such narrative presents a powerful tool for critical reassessment and reevaluation of preconceived ideas in relating to difficult concepts in clinical interactions.Narrative structures can reveal psychological differences between persons in (...) a way that matters for the provision of effective treatment and management. As emphasized by Solomon (2015), narrative reasoning is also motivated by distinctly first-personal concerns that are operative in the practitioner–client relationship. I maintain that the dynamics of that interpersonal relationship are part and parcel of what it means to address the patient's needs to be seen as a person in humanistic empathetic care—without thereby reducing truth to an individual person's perspective to encourage positive transformation.1The notion of empowering narratives to encourage positive change is a core concept behind the emphasis on the critical role of empathy in explaining human development and psychoanalytic change within the self-psychology tradition but is also key to recovery-based models of the significance of person-centered quality of life in medicine more generally. This is defined in mental health as recovering a good quality of life as determined by the values of (by what matters or is important to) the individual concerned (Allott, Loganathan, & Fulford, 2002; Fulford, 1989, 2004; Fulford, Peile, & Carroll, 2012). The importance of strengths in this regard was reflected for example in the UK government program on values-based mental health assessment. The 3 Keys program, as it was called (National Institute for Mental Health in England, NIMHE, and the Care Services Improvement Partnership, 20082) identified three shared 'keys' to good practice in mental health assessment: three things that were identified in a wide-ranging consultation as being important alike by health professionals of all kinds and by 'service users' thus understood as patients and carers (Fulford, Duhig, Hankin, Hicks, & Keeble, 2015a; Fulford, Dewey, & King, 2015b). The third of these keys was defined in [End Page 7] the subsequently published Good Practice Guidance, as "a person-centred focus that builds on the strengths, resiliencies and aspirations of the individual service user as well as identifying his or her needs and challenges" (NIMHE, 2008: 6); and the guidance included a number of real-life case examples of best recovery practice reflecting this aspect of mental health care (Slade et al., 2014).What my (Bergqvist, 2018, 2020, 2022, forthcoming) account adds to this claim is that while such choices are revelatory or expressive of a distinctly first-personal stance, they do not constitute or determine selfhood and self-interpretation in a fixed way. Moreover, the reason is that one can also adopt a second-personal stance on one's own experience and address oneself, where the relationship between the first- and the second-personal narrative perspective on experience and self-understanding is itself a dynamic and open-ended evaluative process.Anna Bergqvist Anna Bergqvist is Reader in Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University since 2021, and has been Postgraduate Research Coordinator and AHRC North West Doctoral Pathway Consortium Lead for Philosophy since 2020. I was elected to a Visiting Fellowship at St Catherine's College University of Oxford for Michaelmas Term 2021. Her service to the profession out with the University includes acting as Secretary of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Section for Philosophy & Humanities in Psychiatry (October 2020 – present), Executive Committee Member of the Royal College of Psychiatry (RCPsych) SIG in Philosophy (February 2020 – present) and External Examiner, University of Liverpool (November 2019 – present, 4-year tenure). She is also Director of the Values-based Theory Network at St Catherine's Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice at the University of Oxford, and Member of its Whiteness and Race Equality Network. Her approach to philosophy bridges the disciplines of moral philosophy, moral psychology and philosophy of psychiatry to improve lives through her reputable expertise in moral perception and co-production as a mechanism for change.Notes1. Here I side with Goldie (2012) and Solomon (2015), who... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination by Donald Wayne Viney and George W. ShieldsLeon NiemoczynskiThe Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination. Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields. Anoka, MN: Process Century Press, 2020. 584 pp. $40.00 cloth.Over the past decade process philosophy has undergone a significant renaissance most notably due to the towering presence of the thought of Alfred North Whitehead in that tradition. (...) Charles Hartshorne by manner of contrast has not had such a towering presence. Part of the reason this is the case is due to a paucity of introductory literature on the thought of Charles Hartshorne—literature that might contribute to a “starter kit” so to speak in mastering Hartshorne’s massive oeuvre. The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination by Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields, both former students of Hartshorne and experts in process philosophy themselves, have authored a welcome contribution to an introductory literature that will most certainly elevate awareness of Hartshorne’s importance to its rightful place alongside that of Whitehead. The book is successful in its aims of “giving a reasonably comprehensive account of Hartshorne’s philosophy with an eye of presenting his best arguments...” (the “correcting what we see as misunderstandings of his views appearing in the critical literature” part may have been best left out) and “updating Hartshorne scholarship” (viii). There are ten chapters in total, appendix essays, the aforementioned bibliography, endnotes, and name and subject indexes.The Preface situates the mind of Charles Hartshorne as spanning the twentieth century and engaging metaphysics even when it was unfashionable to do so. Hartshorne thought about a wide-ranging and diverse range of subjects in both philosophy and science, aesthetics, metaphysics, applied philosophy, and theology. He never questioned modern science or evolution and believed that while metaphysics and empirical science have different methods each ensures its own way to objectivity. One learns that Hartshorne’s process metaphysics is also called “neo-classical” philosophy or speculative philosophy. His thought “gave full weight to the dynamic, relational, processive temporal and creative, affective dimensions of the universe” (vi). Hartshorne was known as much for his “panentheism,” or view that God transcends nature but also may be found immanently within it, as he was for his critique of traditional or scholastic classical theology—especially in his logic of theism where he recreates a modal version of the ontological argument. [End Page 94]Chapter 1, “The Career and Personality of Charles Hartshorne,” discusses just that. What seemed most important to me was the discussion of Hartshorne’s formative background of reading novels and poetry by Emerson, Melville, or Camus as a way of intensely living, his studying under William Ernest Hocking, and his Sheldon Traveling Fellowship where he studied for a time with Husserl and read and reviewed Heidegger. Probably the most important biographical details are that Hartshorne was given the assignment of editing the Peirce papers along with Paul Weiss as a Research Fellow while at Harvard University and he also met and graded for Whitehead, who along with C.S. Peirce, would become the twin pillars of all his thinking as a “Peircean and Whiteheadian” (11). From Peirce, we learn that Hartshorne took “possibility is best conceived of as a continuum with no least member” and from Whitehead, “actuality is discrete and discontinuous (atomistic), composed of momentary flashes of experiences” (11). For Hartshorne process and relativity are metaphysically basic.Chapter 2 begins with Hartshorne’s idea that, “Nature comes to us as constituted by feelings, not as constituted by lifeless, insentient matter” (28). Reality has an affective tone in which there is a layered complexity of feeling and social relation. In other words, contra Locke or Hume, feeling is objectively part of an objective affective continuum and is not nominalistically “painted on bare sense impressions” (46). Such might be described as a doctrine of “panexperientialism”— “the view that the basic constituents of reality are flashes of experience” (46). Experience and feeling stretch in their continuity to meet the bounds of nature. Chapter two continues with a wonderful discussion of Hartshorne’s aesthetics: “beauty is the mean between extremes” (48).Chapter 3 provides a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 21-32 [Access article in PDF] Re-Creating Christian Community:A Response to Rita M. Gross Donald W. Mitchell Purdue University In Rita M. Gross's well-written, insightful, and provocative paper entitled "Some Reflections about Community and Survival," Rita says: "I am challenging my Christian colleagues to consider what role Western religious concepts about the individual may have played in getting us into the current hyper-individualism. I also am (...) asking whether the Buddhist concept of interdependence might be very useful in providing tools with which to think about why this hyper-individualism cannot survive."In terms of Rita's challenge, one could make the generalization that the notion of the individual soul being saved or on a journey to union with God has certainly played an important role in Christianity. At the extreme in this regard, Thomas à Kempis even advised solitude and the actual avoidance of other people, seen by him to be distractions to the spiritual life. However, most Christians would see this advice as an unhealthy extreme, agreeing with Rita that solitude has a "valued role...in the context of social life, not a substitute for it" (11). It is much more common for Christians to see themselves as parts of the mystical body of Christ, and to believe that their authentic selfhood and discipleship are found in the context of fellowship and community life in the church.In what follows here, I will try to show how the notions of selfhood and discipleship are being defined in a particular re-creation of Christian community, which includes persons of other faiths. I have been asked to make my response from the perspective of my own Christian community, the Focolare, which focuses on the kinds of social, economic, and environmental issues that we have been discussing for the past three years. In so doing, I will also try to show how the Focolare's trinitarian vision of God, community, and the cosmos is a possible answer to the above-quoted question Rita asks about how interdependence might be an antidote to hyper-individualism. Along the way, I will raise issues that relate to other points Rita makes in her paper, and then address her conclusions at the end of my paper. Seeds of a New Christian Community The Focolare began duringWorld War II with a small group of young women, whose ages ranged from fifteen to twenty-five, living in the city of Trent, Italy. 1 At the center [End Page 21] of the group was Chiara Lubich, who was only twenty-three at the time. In May of 1944 Lubich's home was destroyed by bombs, and her family decided to leave the city. Lubich made the difficult decision to remain with her companions in Trent, where they would meet in the bomb shelters as often as eleven times each day. They would take with them to the shelters only the Bible, which they searched for guidance in that difficult situation. What they came to understand in those hours together and then put into practice became the basis for re-creating a Christian community, one that is sensitive to the social, political, and economic conditions that had produced the war in which they were caught.A foundational discovery for these young women was a collective and yet very personal experience, in the midst of the death and destruction of the war, that "God is Love" (I John 4:8). Their contemplation of the First Letter of John, as well as other parts of the Scripture, strengthened not only their belief in the existence of God, when many were doubting God's existence, but also their faith in the love of God for each one of them.Wanting to respond to this experience of God's love, they again found in Scripture that God does not seek just a response of individual prayerful sentiment or personal piety, but a response that includes doing God's will: "It is not those who say to me, 'Lord, Lord,' who will enter the kingdom of heaven... (shrink)

Morton Arnsdorf, the book review editor of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, was tragically killed in an automobile accident on June 9, 2010. Mort grew up in Chicago, went to college at Harvard, and then to medical school at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. In college, Mort majored in History of Science, and he retained strong interests in history throughout his medical career. Mort did a residency in medicine at the University of Chicago, went back to Columbia (...) for fellowship training, and then joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1973. During his tenure in Chicago, he became Professor of Medicine and served both as Chief of the Section of Cardiology and as .. (shrink)

William Abraham studied Philosophy at the University of Ghana, and even more Philosophy at Oxford University. Thereafter, he gained permission to take part in the competitive examination and interview for a fellowship at All Souls' College. The examination was once described, with some exaggeration, as 'the hardest exam in the world!' It included a three-hour essay. Following his success in becoming the first African fellow of All Souls, his interest in African politics quickly developed into a Pan-African perspective. The (...) Mind of Africa, written while he was still at All Souls, was a fruit of that enlarged perspective. After several years as a Fellow, he had occasion to visit Ghana in 1962. There Kwame Nkrumah, then President of Ghana, successfully persuaded him to return to Ghana to teach at the University of Ghana, Legon and he subsequently resigned from All Souls. In 1968, he went to the United States as a visiting professor. This was followed by invitations to teach at various academic institutions there, including Berkeley and Stanford. He subsequently settled in California, where he continued to teach and research philosophy in the University of California at Santa Cruz until his retirement. The Mind of Africa appeared at a time when a number of African countries were obtaining, or fighting for, their political freedom from their colonial rulers and becoming independent nations and expecting to build new societies in accordance with their own visions and conceptions, though not necessarily jettisoning all the features of their colonial heritage. Building new societies requires appropriate ideologies and philosophies fashioned within the crucible of their cultural and historical experiences. Thus, the relation between ideology and society is taken up at the very outset of the book... The Mind of Africa is important for Africa's future and identity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Power of PersuasionG. Bennett HumphreyA long white coat, the title of doctor, a practiced professional persona and an appointment to the staff of a prestigious university medical center allows the physician to be a persuader of clinical decisions affecting patient management. When this power of persuasion is used to encourage patient compliance with a therapeutic regimen that might be curative for a fatal disease, there is justification for (...) trying to influence the patient to make choices resulting in a positive outcome. But when a physician is asking permission to enter the patient into a research protocol where the primary goal of the study is the hope of advancing knowledge, then much thought needs to be given to the potential abuse of this power of persuasion.In the 1960s, I found myself having to think about recruiting children into research protocols. I had just finished two years of residency in internal medicine and wanted to pursue a career in academic medicine. My primary interest was in laboratory research. To strengthen my training in research, I had competed for a position as clinical fellow in a western university. The fellowship program was designed to expose young physicians to both clinical and laboratory research. The first year was spent on one of the clinical research wards and the second year in a research laboratory. The program was open to residents from surgery, medicine and pediatrics but because there was a shortage of pediatricians in the program, I was required to work on the children’s leukemia ward for one year.The learning curve was steep during the first few months. Naturally, the faculty in pediatrics and the medical literature gave me a technical education in the use of protocols for therapeutic treatment of leukemia. For example, the first protocol used was designated as Phase III, and the goal was to try to cure the patient. A remission could be achieved in over 90 percent of children but the disease recurred. The median duration of these remissions in the mid–1960s was one year. A relapse was followed by progressive disease and death in a matter of weeks, but a new drug of unknown efficacy could be administered. This was a Phase II protocol, and while there was a chance of prolonging life for a month or so, the primary goal was the identification of drugs anti–leukemic activity.The pediatric leukemia ward experience for me as a fellow was unusual. There was more to learn than the treatment of leukemia. To my surprise, the children and their mothers gave me insight into the care of pediatric patients. Each month, the patients were admitted for five days of intravenous chemotherapy. The first day was traumatic with venipunctures, bone marrow aspirations and the establishment of an IV for the daily infusion of drugs. The remaining four days were for social rounds: listening to the children who liked to talk; talking with the ones who liked to listen; putting puzzles together with some toddlers; responding to a request to listen to the heart of a much loved teddy bear; exchanging jokes and riddles; stories about school, the family dog, or a favorite friend; enjoying the banter of the adolescents; and not invading the privacy of a few who didn’t like me, the ward or the therapy. These children were sharing their childhood with me and it took couple of months for me to recognize I was bonding with these little patients. I observed and listened to the mothers caring for their children and stood in awe of the resources that they brought to bear on having children with a fatal disease. A feeling of mutual respect and trust developed between these mothers and me. For an internist, these experiences were profound and very different from my experience treating adults.A professor, an internationally known researcher in the field of leukemia, was in charge of the ward. Formal rounds were conducted on Tuesday mornings when the result of the bone marrow aspirates and the toxicity of the chemotherapy were reviewed. The day–to–day responsibility for [End Page 101] treatment and informing the mothers on the remission status on Mondays was my responsibility... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Images >> Good HopeCarla Liesching Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 111]Carla Liesching is an interdisciplinary artist working across photography, writing, collage, sculpture, bookmaking, and design. Grounded in experiences growing up in apartheid South Africa, she considers the intersections of representation, knowledge, and power, with a focus on colonial histories and enduring constructions of race and geography. Carla's ongoing project, Good Hope, was published by MACK in (...) 2021, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Aperture Paris Photo First Book Award, and the Arles 2022 Prix du Livre in the Photo-Text Category. An excerpt from Good Hope is also featured in On Whiteness, by SPBH Editions. Carla was a 2021 winner of the Open Walls Arles competition presented by The British Journal of Photography and exhibited work during Rencontres d'Arles Festival in 2021 and 2022. She is a 2021 Light Work Grant recipient and the 2022 recipient of the Silver Eye Fellowship, culminating in a photo-sculptural installation at Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh. Carla was recently named a Foam Talent, with exhibitions at Foam Museum in Amsterdam, the Deutsche Börse Foundation in Frankfurt, along with a solo exhibition of Good Hope through PhMuseum in Bologna. Carla lives between South Africa and Ithaca. In Ithaca, she works as Visiting Critic in Cornell University's Art Architecture and Planning Department; as Lecturer in the Art, Art History and Architecture Department at Ithaca College; as faculty at the International Center of Photography; and as coordinator of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell. As part of her socially engaged practice, Carla is also a youth educator focused on image-making, visual literacy, and self-publishing as vehicles for expression and empowerment. [End Page 112] Click for larger view View full resolution'As soon as you are in a proper stage of defence you shall search for the best place for gardens, the best and fattest ground in which everything planted or sown will thrive.' Click for larger view View full resolution—Instructions from the Dutch East India Company inscribed on a yellowing sheet of parchment, 1651.1[End Page 113] Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 114]iYes, there are facts and figures to account for, timelines to trace, but have I told you of today's newspapers? Headlines like: 'Land Justice', 'Expropriation without Compensation', 'Revolution or Reform?' Have I told you of the monuments removed in the 'riots'? Or the groundsmen in green overalls scrubbing graffiti, repairing broken fountains, collecting debris? Black men White bosses still call 'boys'? Have I told you of the doves cooing gently, perched atop the sleeping bodies of migrant families on the lawns? Have I told you of the White children from the Cape of Good Hope Seminary dressed in their afternoon 'civilian clothes'? Or of the more racially integrated group from Mseki High in their grey-and-turquoise uniforms surrounding me on the main steps leading to the garden? The cacophony of lunch-time chatter, chip packets crinkling, the flap-flap of wings as seagulls scavenge for tasty morsels? Have I told you of the signs pointing to the Scientific Pleasure Garden? Or of the gift store filled with locally sourced flower oils, handmade candles, Delft-blue china tea-sets and postcards depicting the early colony? And what of Cecil John Rhodes cast in greening bronze, flanked by a Madagascar Cycad and a Queen Palm, announcing: Your Hinterland is There? Have I told you of the small rock in the corner of the vegetable garden with a label hidden beneath weeds? The arrival of the Dutch to establish a refreshment station, providing fresh produce for the ships plying the spice route, marked the end of a free and independent existence for the native Gorinhaiqua Khoikhoi. And what of the large label at the stone-walled entrance? A story of how a garden in 1654 brought together continents and affected the course of history. A story of how plants in the form of pepper, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon changed the world economy. Have I told you the garden is the cause of it all? [End... (shrink)

T. H. Green was born April 7, 1836, and died in his forty-seventh year on March 26, 1882. He was appointed to lecture in ancient and modern history at Balliol College on April 11, 1860, and was awarded a fellowship at Balliol on November 30th of that year. For the last four years of his life, he was Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford University. Apart from one short interruption as an assistant commissioner of schools and several as a (...) result of illness, Green was philosophically active until his death. Yet, for a philosopher who during his lifetime attained his degree of eminence and influence in moral and political thought, Green published remarkably little. With the exception of an essay on Aristotle, a lengthy critical introduction to an edition of Hume, and several minor essays and reviews, all Green’s writings were issued posthumously. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:KARL ASCHENBRENNER, 19x 1-1988 Karl Aschenbrenner was born in Bison, Kansas, on November 20, 1911. He received the A. B. degree from Reed College in 1934 and his graduate degrees at Berkeley (M. A., 1938; Ph.D., 194o). After two years as an instructor at Reed College, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve (Lieutenant in Meteorology ) from 1943 to 1946. From 1946 to 1948, he taught in the (...) Department of Speech at Berkeley and thereafter in the Department of Philosophy until his retirement in 1978. His teaching was devoted mainly to aesthetics and to the history of philosophy, most notably his course on Kant. For many years he was active as a trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics, and from 1961 as a member of the Journal's founding executive committee and, after incorporation, of the Board of Directors. Karl's first two years of attachment to theJournal coincided with service as chairman of the Department of Philosophy. This conjunction enabled him to be extraordinarily helpful in dealing with problems of bringing the Journal to birth--problems of funding, editorial appointments, publication policies, and business arrangements with the University of California Press. He welcomed the opportunity offered the Philosophy Department of collaborating in the publishing venture recommended by a special committee of the American Philosophical Association in 1958. The recognition early won by the Journal for its articles and reviews answered to his hope and work for success. At the annual meeting of the Board of Directors in San Francisco in 1987, the twenty-fifth birthday of the Journal was celebrated as was his twenty-seven years of diligent care for theJournafs excellence. Karl was a regular contributor to the philosophy series published by the University of California prior to three books issued by D. Reidel: The Concepts ofValue(1971), The ConceptsofCriticism(1974) and AnalysisofAppraisiveCharacterization (1983). He received Guggenheim, Fulbright, and NEH fellowships. Despite a physically disabling stroke in 1979, he continued his trips to Budapest which he began in 1972. He was concerned to study a non-IndoEuropean language spoken by people of European culture and had selected the Magyar tongue spoken in Hungary. He learned the language to test theories he advanced about appraisive concepts. He discovered in the structure of Magyar a mode of valuing embodied in verb usage differing significantly [333] 334 from the special appraisive vocabularies of English and German. Besides his lectures in Hungary, he responded to invitations to lecture received from universities in England, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania. Shortly after his return to Budapest on his eleventh trip, he died of a massive stroke on July 4, 1988. He is buried there in a city he loved, especially for its music. He is survived by Marie, his wife of fifty-one years, and three children: Lisabeth, an attorney in Los Angeles; Peter, a judge in Fairbanks; and John, a composer in New York. E. W. STRONG... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:408 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The Fellowship of Being. By John B. O'Malley. (The Hague: Martinus Niihoff, 1966. Pp. xii + 140. $5.60) This book is a study of the concept of person in the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. It is the revision of a doctoral thesis, completed at the University of London, under the direction of A. J. Ayer. This fact, in addition to the intrinsic interest of (...) the subject, gives the volume special interest, for it is one of an increasing number of essays establishing dialogue between British analytic interests and continental phenomenology. John B. O'Malley is well aware of current analytic concerns and frequently notes the relevance of Marcel's analysis to these issues. It is even argued that Marcel anticipated numerous concerns which became central in analytic philosophy includingproblems of language. O'Malley proposes that the person is the central and guiding concept in Marcel's philosophy and that his analysis of this phenomenon allows him to escape Idealism and ghost theories, and to reconcile the moral and the metaphysical viewpoints. It is to the person that bodily or mental predicates are applied. Consequently this concept is fundamental to the analysis of body-mind problems. It is this reality which offers the nonlinguisticreferent to which such predication may apply. An adequate analysis of person must not abstract from its subject matter but rather must include the person in "an act of reflective withdrawal." This is central in Marcers methodology, and thus the epistemology of the person is neither "acquaintance with" nor "knowledge about." The neglect of such involvement results in either extreme objectivism or extreme subjectivism, either of which misses the person. Objectivism replaces the personal with successive states and qualities. Subjectivism results in either solipsism or in a division between an absolute and a particular ego, and thus both lose the concrete and incarnate person. The embodied person is the center of my relationships and thus even ontological analysis must be directed toward it. The analysis cannot be merely problematic but needs to be meta-problematic. The person offers such meta-problematic analysis a meeting point of Being, Truth, and Value, thus overcoming the dichotomy between the moral and the metaphysical and between the normative and the descriptive. Unfortunately the essay could have used a further proof reading for it is marred by numerous printing errors. Although it is somewhat ponderous in style, it is a very carefully argued analysis of what is central to Marcel. To have such a discussion sympathetic to Marcel's perspective and yet written by one quite conscious of British philosophical concerns affords significant insight for the reader into a new stage of contemporary philosophy which is undoubtedly to center upon such conversation across the English channel. HAROLDA. D ~ American University Menschliche Existenz und moderne Welt. Ein internationales Symposion zum Selbstverst~indnis des heutigen Menschen. Hrsg. Richard Schwarz. (Berlin, 1967. Two vols., S. 810 and 885) In der "Einfiihrung" umreisst der tterauageber den Titel des Werkes. Es soil nach dem Selbstverst~indnis des Menschen gefragt werden, das heiflt, worin sieht der heutige Mensch die besondere Eigenheit seines Menschseins, sein "Epochalbewul~tsoin" (Litt). Gibt es gewisse Grundbefindliehkeiten,die MienMensehen gemeinsamsind? Kann noch yon einer gemeinsamen Wertwelt gesproehen werden? Sind dieses nicht infolge einer inneren Bedrohung nur fiberholte Gedanken? Das Werk soll die Antwort geben. Es ist nicht mSglich, alle in dem Buch aufgenommene Aufs~tze zu behandeln, mSgen sic auch gewinnreiche Beitr~ige sein. Datum muff eine gewisse Auswabl getroffen werden. Zu Beginn des Werkes spricht der leider verstorbene Eduard Spranger fiber den "Humanit ~tsgedanken", den er unter dem dreifachen Aspekt der Humanit~t als Bildung, als ethischpolitischen Begriff und als religiSs-ethischen Begriff wiedergibt. Bildung ist nicht blofl Tradi- BOOK REVIEWS 409 tion, sondern immer neue lebendige Durehdringung, Gelstesformung, nicht nur Grammatik. Humanitat fordert ethisch-politische Freiheit als Voranssetzung der Personentfaltung, ist darum mehr als blofie Nfitzlichkeit und verlangt Anerkennung des Lebensreehts anderer V61ker. Nach Spranger gibt es einen religiSs-ehristlichen Humanismus im Gegensatz zur "Theologie der Krisis". Er steht in Verbindung mit dem Weltsein, verleiht ihm den letzten transzendenten Bezug und fordert "echte Toleranz". Alfred yon Martin-M~nehen erSrtert dann in "Humanitgt als Problem tier Gegenwart" angesichts... (shrink)

Over the last few years there has been a resurgent interest in various scientific disciplines in Popper’s arguments. To gain a greater appreciation of Popper’s scientific arguments, they need to be viewed in relation to his broader philosophy and where this stands within the history of ideas. This book aims to take seriously those aspects of Popper’s writings that have received less attention and wherein he advanced metaphysical, speculative, mystical-poetic, aesthetic and Platonic arguments. Such arguments are crucial for an appreciation (...) of his scientific and political writings. I argue that Popper, much like Wittgenstein previously has been misconstrued as an Anglo-analytic philosopher. This book provides an interpretation of Popper’s mature philosophy within his Central-European intellectual context. The aim of which is to open up a fruitful line of investigation into Popper’s thought that I hope would continue over the coming years. Alexander Naraniecki has spent time at the Popper Archives at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria whilst researching for this book. He has also been a visiting scholar at Duke University and has completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Deakin University in Melbourne. Dr Naraniecki also publishes on issues relating to multiculturalism, globalization, cosmopolitanism as well as inter-cultural relations and dialogue. He has published on Popper in various leading journals such as Philosophy, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, and The European Legacy. He is currently building his research on Popper in a broader direction by exploring issues related to creativity and problem solving for critical thinking. (shrink)

In this essay Loren Lomasky wryly proposes that the views of Rawls and Nozick might not be as radically divergent as is conventionally supposed. To demonstrate this proposition, Lomasky invents “Twin Harvard” counterparts of Rawls and Nozick. The twist is that Twin Rawls turns out to be a leading libertarian theorist while Twin Nozick endorses a regime of sweeping redistribution. In each case the position follows from familiar elements in the theories of their respective, real-world counterparts. Lomasky concludes that Twin (...) Rawls actually makes better use of familiar Rawlsian themes-such as the veil of ignorance, strains of commitment, and the priority of liberty-than does Rawls himself. Moreover, Rawls's own attempts at combating libertarianism are seen to be weak, sometimes embarrassingly so. Libertarianism is a specter that he devoutly wishes to exorcize, but cannot. Conversely, the rejection of libertarianism by Twin Nozick (and Nozick?) is striking but shallow. Footnotesa A draft of this essay was prepared while I was enjoying a residential fellowship from the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, in Canberra, Australia. I have benefited from discussions following talks at the Social and Political Theory program seminar at the Australian National University and the Harvard College Department of Government. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Laying Medicine Open: Innovative Interaction Between Medicine and the HumanitiesLaurence B. McCullough and Warren Thomas ReichThe past three decades have witnessed the emergence and remarkable success of the fields of bioethics and medical humanities. The intellectual landscape of medicine and that of the humanities have been remarkably altered in the process. Twenty-five to 30 years ago in the United States there existed but a few courses in what came (...) to be called “bioethics” in departments of philosophy, religious studies, and theology in colleges and universities, a handful of programs of teaching in medical schools such as the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Pennsylvania State University School of Medicine at Hershey, and but one independent research center (the Hastings Center) and one university-based research center (the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University). Articles on bioethics began to appear in the peer-reviewed medical, nursing, and humanities literature and some books were published. There was only one journal in bioethics, The Hastings Center Report (which consolidated two previously separate journals from the Hastings Center). Graduate programs in bioethics and medical humanities in colleges and universities and fellowship training in bioethics and medical humanities in medical schools did not exist. Very little existed in colleges, universities, and medical schools in other countries. Now, of course, everything is different.Teachers, scholars, and students of bioethics and medical humanities should not take these remarkable changes for granted, for they represent a sustained and innovative interaction between medicine and the humanities. We have chosen the metaphor of “laying medicine open” to characterize the history of bioethics and medical humanities of the past three decades. This surgical metaphor was used in eighteenth-century Britain by a number of writers who wanted to make medical science and practice more accessible to the sick and to the lay public more generally (Lawrence 1975). We use the metaphor to characterize the efforts of teachers and [End Page 1] scholars over the past three decades and more to make the value-laden dimensions of biomedical science and practice and of health care policy more accessible to patients and to the lay public more generally. The result of this laying open of medicine has gone a long way toward bringing closer together the two cultures of science and the humanities that had, as C. P. Snow famously described, become significantly isolated from each otherAlbert Jonsen (1998) has recently contributed the first book-length history of what he calls the “birth” of bioethics, adding to the work of other scholars such as Warren Reich (1994; 1995) and Robert Baker (1993) and, before them, Corrado Viafora (1990) and David Rothman (1991). The articles in this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal make additional contributions to the developing understanding of the history of the past thirty years of interaction between medicine and the humanities.Laurence McCullough provides an historical context for the three accounts of the recent laying open of medicine that follow. McCullough examines two times in the history of medicine when it has been laid open to accountability (in addition to its being laid open to and by bioethics and medical humanities). The first laying open occurred in the work of the eighteenth-century Scottish physician and philosopher John Gregory, who set out to create a profession of medicine in a true moral sense of a fiduciary profession by making medicine accountable for its scientific and moral quality. The second occurred in the late twentieth century in which the managed practice of medicine in general, and managed care in particular, have begun to lay medicine open to accountability for its scientific and moral quality, as well as its cost and, at least in the public sector, its accessibility. McCullough argues that, just as Gregory responded to the ethical challenges of medicine laid open more than two centuries ago, bioethics should respond to the ethical challenges in the current laying open of medicine.Warren Reich provides an account of André Hellegers, whose premature death left an enormous gap in the field that will never be filled. Reich claims that Hellegers was engaged substantially in much more than the laying open of medicine: he... (shrink)

Marjorie Glicksman Grene (1910–2009) wrote on existentialism as a philosophy with a specific focus on the work of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. Her work played an important role in introducing continental philosophy to North American and British thought as she lived and worked on both sides of the Atlantic. While she gained her PhD from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, she also studied as an exchange student in Germany from 1931 to 1933, had a postdoctoral fellowship in Copenhagen in (...) 1936, lived and worked on farms in Illinois and Ireland, and taught at universities in the United Kingdom and the United States, including, for the longest period, at the University of California, Davis (1965–78). Her interpretations are based on a thorough knowledge of the history of philosophy and a wide range of philosophical areas, including European philosophy; Grene attended lectures by Heidegger and Karl Jaspers while on exchange in Europe. While her interest was first piqued by Heidegger’s thought, further research led her to investigate Jaspers’s willingness to combine existential philosophy with the life sciences. I split her often integrated discussions into a focus on five primary thinkers: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty, with the most detailed analysis of Sartre as Grene engages with his work in the most depth. (shrink)

The possible Stoic origins of the natural rights and natural law theories of the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius has been a subject of scholarly debate in recent years. Yet discussions about Grotian sociability tend to focus exclusively on the meaning of appetitus societatis in De Jure Praedae and De Jure Belli ac Pacis , with little reference to the historical context. Insufficient consideration has been given to the intended audience of these works, Grotius’ purpose in writing them, and the possible (...) correlation between his overarching argument and his working methods. This article examines Grotius’ use and abuse of Seneca's philosophical works in De Jure Praedae, commissioned by the directors of the Dutch East India Company in autumn 1604.The brutal murder of Sebald de Weert on the island of Ceylon in June 1603 is analyzed from a Stoic perspective in Chapter 15 of De Jure Praedae. Following his refusal to hand over Portuguese prisoners, De Weert and his crew were butchered on the beach of Batticaloa by Wilama Dharma Suriya, the ruler of the island's interior. Grotius blamed the victim. VOC commanders in monsoon Asia should suppress any residual loyalty which they might feel towards Christendom. It was imperative to conclude alliances with native rulers against the Iberian colonial powers, regardless of the rulers’ faith or their horrific treatment of prisoners. As Grotius noted in Chapter 8 of De Jure Praedae, Seneca distinguished between “two kinds of commonwealth, the world state and the city state.” Spanish and Portuguese violations of the natural law – freedom of trade and navigation in particular – deserved condign punishment for the sake of both the fellowship of mankind and, naturally, the VOC and Dutch Republic.In assessing the uses of Stoicism in De Jure Praedae, much can be learned from the physical characteristics of Ms. BPL 917 in Leiden University Library, its sole surviving manuscript copy. Seneca's philosophical works are not cited at all in the original text of Ms. BPL 917, which Grotius copied out in 1604–1605. Instead, quotations from De Ira, De Clementia and De Beneficiis appear in the top and bottom margins of folio-pages or on inserted sheets of paper, which can be dated to 1607–1608. These quotations serve to flesh out an existing argument about the VOC's just war in the East Indies. A case in point is the heavily rewritten Chapter 2. Grotius added quotations from De Clementia at the same time as he reformulated two natural laws on f. 8–9, a folio sheet inserted in or after January 1607. This was no coincidence. Revenging the past misdeeds of the Portuguese, which Grotius had described in great detail in Chapter 11, could no longer be considered the main or only priority of the VOC. Instead, Grotius contended on f. 8–9 that “evil deeds must be corrected” so as to achieve, in Seneca's words, “universal security.” Acting as a kind of global police force, the VOC should punish transgressors of the natural law on account of “that world community” envisioned by the Stoics. The practical consequences were felt during the Twelve Years Truce . Despite a cessation of arms in Europe, the VOC continued to engage in hostilities in the East Indies. The author of De Jure Praedae supported the Company on this. Like Cicero before him, he had successfully harnessed the Stoa to the cause of empire. (shrink)

“Looking for Asian America shows real people engaged in the full range of human activity. This is no small accomplishment for the photographer or his subjects. For Asian Americans it is extraordinary to be merely ordinary. To others, even if not to themselves, Asian Americans appear to be contradictions of identity—a Chinese-Yankee is a knockoff.” —Frank H. Wu, from the Foreword In search of contemporary Asian America, celebrated photographer Wing Young Huie—the only member of his family not born in China—traveled (...) with his wife Tara through nearly forty states to explore and document the funny, touching, and sometimes strange intersection of Asian American and American cultures. Looking for Asian America illustrates their rich and surprising journey across the United States. Through Huie’s eyes, keenly aware of his own Midwestern roots and perspective, we witness such images as a Vietnamese Elvis, Miss Congeniality on her cell phone in San Francisco’s Chinatown, a Hmong street sign in rural North Carolina, a meditating Falun Gong protestor in Washington, D.C., a bubble tea Valley Girl, and a Chinese theme park in Orlando. Huie’s camera captures ABCs, FOAs, and a self-described “redneck” Chinese restaurant owner near the Okefenokee Swamp. Taken together the photographs reveal a complex portrait of the U.S. cultural landscape, and their dignified elegance invites a closer, deeper look. Accompanied by the personal reflections of both Wing and Tara Huie, the nearly one hundred spectacular photos tell a story that both mirrors and contradicts stereotypes of Asian Americans, ultimately questioning what it means to be ethnic and American in the twenty-first century. Wing Young Huie has received widespread acclaim for his works, including Lake Street USA, documenting the cultural landscape of his native Minnesota. He is a recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship and two-time recipient of the McKnight Photography Fellowship. He lives in Minneapolis. Frank H. Wu is dean of Wayne State University Law School and the author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. Anita Gonzalez teaches in the Master of Liberal Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. (shrink)

The possible Stoic origins of the natural rights and natural law theories of the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) has been a subject of scholarly debate in recent years. Yet discussions about Grotian sociability tend to focus exclusively on the meaning of appetitus societatis in De Jure Praedae (written in 1604–1608) and De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625), with little reference to the historical context. Insufficient consideration has been given to the intended audience(s) of these works, Grotius’ purpose in writing (...) them, and the possible correlation between his overarching argument and his working methods. This article examines Grotius’ use and abuse of Seneca's philosophical works in De Jure Praedae, commissioned by the directors of the Dutch East India Company (or VOC) in autumn 1604. The brutal murder of Sebald de Weert on the island of Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) in June 1603 is analyzed from a Stoic perspective in Chapter 15 of De Jure Praedae. Following his refusal to hand over Portuguese prisoners, De Weert and his crew were butchered on the beach of Batticaloa by Wilama Dharma Suriya, the ruler of the island's interior. Grotius blamed the victim. VOC commanders in monsoon Asia should suppress any residual loyalty which they might feel towards Christendom. It was imperative to conclude alliances with native rulers against the Iberian colonial powers, regardless of the rulers’ (lack of) faith or their horrific treatment of prisoners. As Grotius noted in Chapter 8 of De Jure Praedae, Seneca distinguished between “two kinds of commonwealth, the world state and the city state.” Spanish and Portuguese violations of the natural law – freedom of trade and navigation in particular – deserved condign punishment for the sake of both the fellowship of mankind and, naturally, the VOC and Dutch Republic. In assessing the uses of Stoicism in De Jure Praedae, much can be learned from the physical characteristics of Ms. BPL 917 in Leiden University Library, its sole surviving manuscript copy. Seneca's philosophical works are not cited at all in the original text of Ms. BPL 917, which Grotius copied out in 1604–1605. Instead, quotations from De Ira, De Clementia and De Beneficiis appear in the top and bottom margins of folio-pages or on inserted sheets of paper, which can be dated to 1607–1608. These quotations serve to flesh out an existing argument about the VOC's just war(s) in the East Indies. A case in point is the heavily rewritten Chapter 2. Grotius added quotations from De Clementia at the same time as he reformulated two natural laws on f. 8–9, a folio sheet inserted in or after January 1607. This was no coincidence. Revenging the past misdeeds of the Portuguese, which Grotius had described in great detail in Chapter 11, could no longer be considered the main or only priority of the VOC. Instead, Grotius contended on f. 8–9 that “evil deeds must be corrected” so as to achieve, in Seneca's words, “universal security.” Acting as a kind of global police force, the VOC should punish transgressors of the natural law on account of “that world community” envisioned by the Stoics. The practical consequences were felt during the Twelve Years Truce (1609–1621). Despite a cessation of arms in Europe, the VOC continued to engage in hostilities in the East Indies. The author of De Jure Praedae supported the Company on this. Like Cicero before him, he had successfully harnessed the Stoa to the cause of empire. (shrink)

Anthony David Nuttall, a Fellow of the British Academy, was born on April 25, 1937, and grew up in Hereford. He attended Hereford Grammar School and then Watford Grammar School, where he received a thorough, old-fashioned classical education. Nuttall then went to Merton College in the University of Oxford, where he met his lifelong friend Stephen Medcalf. In 1962, he was appointed lecturer in English at the new University of Sussex, rising to professor ten years later, and in 1978 he (...) became Pro-Vice-Chancellor. After twenty-two years teaching at Sussex, Nuttall applied for a fellowship at New College, Oxford. Common Sky was the book in which he emerged as a critic with a distinctive and compelling way of looking at literature. Another book, Overheard by God is about George Herbert's poetry, but its first, riveting sentence displays the brilliance of its immodesty. In New Mimesis, Nuttall discusses the present state of literary theory. He also wrote Essay on Man, The Alternative Trinity, and The Stoic in Love. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Paul Oskar Kristeller 1905–1999Edward P. MahoneyPaul Oskar Kristeller was without doubt one of the most productive and accomplished scholars of this century. He received an excellent education in the classics at the Mommsen-Gymnasium in his native Berlin before going to the University of Heidelberg in 1923. There he pursued studies in a wide range of subjects, including medieval history, German literature, physics, and art history. The philosophy professors who (...) much influenced him both at Heidelberg and at Freiburg and Marburg were Ernst Hoffman, Karl Jaspers, Richard Kroner, and Martin Heidegger. In 1929 he received his doctorate from Heidelberg for his dissertation Der Begriff der Seele in der Ethik des Plotin, which was directed by Hoffman and published at Tübingen the same year. He then went to Berlin, where he engaged in formal studies in classical philology before going to Freiburg to do postgraduate work in philosophy with Heidegger during the years 1931 to 1933. Heidegger approved a study of Marsilio Ficino as Kristeller’s Habili-tationschrift and helped him to secure a fellowship enabling him to do research on Ficino and to begin writing. After visiting Italy during this period and taking into account the changed political scene in Germany, Kristeller decided in 1934 to move to Italy permanently. He taught in Florence in a high school for German Jewish students until he secured in 1935, with the help of Giovanni Gentile, a lectureship in German at the Scuola Superiore and the University of Pisa. He maintained throughout his academic career a personal and warm attachment to the Scuola Superiore. Moreover, he enjoyed throughout his subsequent career a warm and personal friendship with various Italian scholars that was first developed during his Italian stay in the thirties.While still in Italy, Kristeller completed his book on Ficino in 1937; he prepared an Italian version the next year. However, both the German and Italian versions would be published only years later. During this period he also engaged in manuscript studies in the major Italian cities, searching in particular for Ficino manuscripts. The result of these labors was his two-volume work, Supplementum Ficinianum: Marsilii Ficini Philosophi Platonici Opuscula Inedita et Dispersa, which was published by the Scuola Normale in 1937. He considered his “teachers” in manuscript studies to be Giovanni Cardinal Mercati, Monsignor Auguste Pelzer, and Ludwig Bertalot. Giovanni Gentile aided the publication of Kristeller’s Supplementum Ficinianum and subsequently helped him to emigrate to the United States. Kristeller always maintained a loyalty to Gentile and felt gratitude to him for extending him such help.In 1938 Kristeller lost his position at Pisa because of the Fascist anti-Semitic laws, but he was permitted to go to Rome where he assisted Bertalot in manuscript research at the Vatican library. Through the intervention of Roland H. Bainton, Dean P. Lockwood, Dom Anselm Strittmater, O.S.B., and other American [End Page 758] friends Kristeller was able to leave for the United States. He arrived at New York in February 1939 and spent the Spring term at Yale University. He was given an adjunct position at Columbia University for the fall term, holding the rank of Associate until 1948, when he was made an Associate Professor of Philosophy. By that time he had established himself as a major force in the development of Renaissance studies in the United States. His book on Ficino was translated into English as The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino and published in 1943 by the Columbia University Press. The Italian version was published at Florence in 1953; a revised edition, containing a new bibliography that had been brought up to date, appeared in 1988.Kristeller published a large number of articles on a wide range of topics, establishing himself as a major interpreter of the significance of Renaissance humanism as well as a leading authority not only on Ficino and Renaissance Platonism but also on Pietro Pomponazzi and Renaissance Aristotelianism. He developed at Columbia bonds of friendship with Ernest A. Moody and John Herman Randall, Jr., both of whom had strong interests in late-medieval Aristotelianism. With Randall and Ernst Cassirer he prepared what would become a bestseller, the Renaissance Philosophy of Man: Selections... (shrink)

This collection brings together a selection of writings on art by the internationally acclaimed novelist, historian and critic Marina Warner. For 30 years Warner has published widely on a range of art-world subjects and objects, from contemporary installation and film works to paintings by Flemish and Italian Renaissance masters, through Victorian photography and twentieth-century political drawings and prints. Warner's extraordinary curiosity in art and culture is conveyed in writing that is at once poetic and playful, elegant and rigorous, training our (...) eyes on the smallest of details while painting a broad-brushstroke landscape of art past and present. Themes familiar to Warner's readers--myth and fantasy, psychic and sexual experience, the vast and marvelous expanse of the human imagination--are treated in the lectures and articles, stories, interviews and essays contained here, some of which are published for the first time or republished from out-of-print sources. For the first of two volumes, editor Vivian Sky Rehberg has assembled themed sections titled "Playing in the Dark," "Telling Tales" and "Phantom Technologies." Texts include interviews with Tacita Dean and Paula Rego; catalogue essays on Leonora Carrington, Henry Fuseli, Zarina Bhimji, Tony Oursler and Fischli/Weiss; articles on Tracy Emin, Marlene Dumas, Louise Bourgeois; stories for artist's books by Kiki Smith and Helen Douglas; and lectures on Francis Bacon, Hieronymous Bosch and William Kentridge. "The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought" invites us to explore new ways of seeing and engaging with the traces of our artistic heritage. Marina Warner is a writer of fiction, criticism and history. Holder of 12 honorary degrees and two honorary fellowships, Warner is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature. She has judged the The Jerwood Drawing Prize and the Turner Prize; she is a regular broadcaster on the BBC, and has taught and given lectures worldwide, including the National Gallery and ICA, London and the Prado in Madrid; she has delivered the Presidential Lecture at Stanford University and the Carpenter Lecture at Harvard. She has been awarded a CBE, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France and Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella di Solidareità, Italy. Warner is a winner of the Aby Warburg Prize and a Getty Scholar. Vivian Sky Rehberg is an art historian and critic based in Paris and Rotterdam. A founding editor of "Journal of Visual Culture," she is a contributing editor of "Frieze," and has written for numerous contemporary art publications. Previously Chair of the department of Critical Studies at Parsons Paris School of Art + Design, where she taught modern and contemporary art, Rehberg is currently Course Director for the Masters in Fine Art at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.. (shrink)

This paper brings needed clarity to the influential view that species are cohesive entities held together by gene flow, and then develops an empirical argument against that view: Neglected data suggest gene flow is neither necessary nor sufficient for species cohesion. Implications are discussed. ‡I'm grateful to Rob Wilson, Alex Rueger and Lindley Darden for important comments on earlier drafts, and to Joseph Nagel, Heather Proctor, Ken Bond, members of the DC History and Philosophy of Biology reading group, and audience (...) members at the November 2006 meeting of the PSA, for helpful comments or discussion. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada fellowship 752-2005-1208 supported research. †To contact the author, please write to: Philosophy Department, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 5185 Helen C. White Hall, 600 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53706; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Basic rights are often of great instrumental value in securing protection for important human needs and interests. The first two sections of this paper defend the thesis that basic rights are also valuable independently of their instrumental role. Taking my cue from Frances Kamm's suggestion that basic rights reflect or express human worth, in the third, fourth and fifth sections I develop the proposal that the non-instrumental value of basic rights derives from their constitutive role in a universal form (...) of community or fellowship. The importance of basic rights' instrumental role is reaffi rmed in the final section of the paper, which builds on the earlier sections to offer a 'mixed' theory according to which basic rights have both instrumental and non-instrumental value. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge the usual interpretations of Newton's and Leibniz's views on the nature of space and the relativity of motion. Newton's ‘relative space’ is not a reference frame; and Leibniz did not regard space as defined with respect to actual enduring bodies. Newton did not subscribe to the relativity of intertial motions; whereas Leibniz believed no body to be at rest, and Newton's absolute motion to be a useful fiction. A more accurate rendering of the opposition between (...) them, I argue, leads to a wholly different understanding of Leibniz's theory of space, one which is not susceptible to the objections Newton had raised against Descartes regarding the representation of motion. This in turn suggests a new approach for contemporary theory of space, one which neither hypostatizes space nor tries to reduce it to relations among actual things. * This work was generously supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, with a Fellowship for College Teachers and Independent Scholars (FB-26897-89), and also by a sabbatical leave from my institution, Middlebury College. Iam very grateful to various members of faculty of York University for their appreciative reception of an earlier one-week-old version of this paper. ‘Relative Space in Newton and Leibniz’, read to the Department of Philosophy there in January 1990, and to Robert Rynasiewicz for criticisms of an extract read at the 1991 History of Science meeting. (shrink)

Après des études de droit et de philosophie à l'Université de Bucarest, Alexandru Dragomir part à Fribourg-en-Brisgau comme doctorant de Martin Heidegger. Il y reste deux ans; en 1943 il est rappelé en Roumanie et envoyé au front. Après la guerre, sous le nouveau régime, il ne peut pas poursuivre une carrière universitaire. Il meurt en 2002 à Bucarest sans avoir rien publié. Ce n'est qu'après sa mort que ses cahiers sont découverts et publiés. L'œuvre de Dragomir comprend cinq volumes, (...) parus à Bucarest, aux Éditions Humanitas. Deux sont parus en traduction française chez Vrin : Banalités métaphysiques et Cahiers du temps. Cet article présente sa personnalité et son œuvre, notamment les Cahiers du temps, qui renferment la recherche de toute sa vie. Dragomir y développe sa propre théorie sur la nature du temps, tout en faisant des commentaires des textes classiques de la philosophie qui portent sur ce sujet. Des traductions en allemand et en anglais des Cahiers du temps paraîtront bientôt. Between 1933 and 1939 Alexandru Dragomir studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest. In 1941 he was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship, which allowed him to enroll as a doctoral student at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, under the supervision of Martin Heidegger. In 1943 he was drafted into the Romanian armed forces and left Freiburg without a degree. In Romania, under the communist regime, he could not pursue an academic career. He died in 2002 without publishing anything. His work has been published posthumously in five volumes by Humanitas Press. Two of the volumes have been published in French translation by Jean Vrin Press : Banalités métaphysiques [Metaphysical Banalities] and Cahiers du temps [Notebooks on Time]. This article offers an overview of Dragomir's personality and work, with an emphasis on his Notebooks on Time — his lifelong research on the nature of time. In these notebooks he develops his own views on time and comments on the classical philosophical texts that deal with the subject. (shrink)

Book synopsis: The latest volume of the critically acclaimed Library of Living Philosophers series is devoted to the work of analytic philosopher Donald Davidson. Following the standard LLP format, Davidson discusses his life and philosophical development in an intellectual autobiography. This is followed by 31 critical essays by distinguished scholars; Davidson replies to each of these essays. Although Donald Davidson is considered an analytic philosopher, his thought straddles many areas of philosophy. One of his greatest contributions is the development of (...) a philosophical system based on his theory of mind and language, but he has also worked on theory of action, philosophy of language, decision theory, psychology, epistemology, ethics, the concept of truth, and the concept of objectivity. Davidson is a former Carus Lecturer who has held more than twenty distinguished lectureships and research fellowships at universities in this country and abroad, including Queens College, Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Peru. He is currently professor emeritus at UC-Berkeley. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt, who was Hans Jonas’s lifelong friend, always stressed the importance and rarity of the independent thinker. The independent thinker is the thinker who has the imagination to break new ground, who does not follow current fashions, and has the courage to pursue thought trains wherever they may lead. Her model was Lessing, but she might have considered Hans Jonas to be an outstanding twentieth century exemplar of the independent thinker. Although Hans Jonas was a student of both Heidegger (...) and Bultmann in the 1920’s, he did not become a disciple of anyone. Both of these teachers encouraged him to pursue his research into the history of Gnosticism. Jonas’s path-breaking achievement can be compared with what Gershom Scholem did for the study of the Kabbalah. For Jonas literally created a new field of research in the history of religions. His study of Gnosticism became one of those rare twentieth century landmarks that opened up our understanding of Gnosticism and revealed its powerful subterranean influence throughout the history of the West. The first volume of Jonas’s study, Gnosis und spätantiker Geist was published in Germany in 1934 only after he fled from Nazi Germany and decided to emigrate to Palestine. If Jonas had never published anything else he would be known today as the major twentieth-century scholar of Gnosticism.. But Jonas was much more than an original scholar. He was a creative thinker—and he remained one until his death in 1993, shortly before his ninetieth birthday. During the Second World War, he fought in the famous Jewish Brigade of the British army. It was during this period, when he faced death all around him on the battlefield, that the phenomenon of life in all its ramifications became his central philosophical preoccupation. Jonas had been compelled to suspend his scholarly research during the war years, but he never suspended his independent thinking. He felt it was his obligation to fight the Nazis, but his dream was to return to his true vocation—philosophical speculation. After fighting in the Israeli War of Independence, he accepted a fellowship at McGill University in Canada in 1949, and eventually accepted a position at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in 1955. The line of inquiry that he began when he was able to return to philosophical study resulted in the publication of The Phenomenon of Life. Jonas’s project was to understand what is distinctive about living organisms, and the emergence and consequences of life in the cosmos. But in order to do this, Jonas had to engage in a systematic radical critique of the dualisms of matter and mind, body and soul, which have dominated and shaped so much of modern thought. From Jonas’s perspective, even those philosophers who had rejected dualism were still tainted by the misguided ontology of dualism. The variety of monisms that arose in reaction to dualism tended to move to the extremes of materialism or idealism. Neither of these extremes is adequate for illuminating what is distinctive about bios. In German idealism there was a failure to do justice to the needs and character of the lived body. And in the varieties of “reductive materialism” that have been—and continue to be—so fashionable in twentieth century there is also a failure to appreciate what is distinctive about dynamic metabolic processes. To engage in a critique of dualism and its legacy, it was also necessary to rethink what can be learned from the biological sciences, and especially, the theory of evolution. Here we also witness the philosophical daring of Jonas. A dominant prejudice of the twentieth century has been that philosophy as a discipline has nothing significant to contribute to our understanding of biological processes. All that philosophy can do is to reflect on the methodological and epistemological status of the sciences because, presumably, the only legitimate source of knowledge about living organisms is what we learn from the natural sciences. Jonas argues that this prevailing prejudice has led to disastrous intellectual consequences. Of course, philosophers qua philosophers cannot and should not engage in “armchair” scientific speculation. Furthermore, they must be fully informed about the hypotheses and claims of the best biological research. But at the same time it is a philosophical endeavor to understand critically the meaning of what we learn from the sciences, and to develop an adequate philosophical account of the meaning of nature. Philosophers cannot and should not abandon this task. There is an important distinction to be drawn between the scientific achievements and the philosophical reflection on their meaning—a distinction that too frequently is forgotten or neglected. (shrink)