Focusing on the new theories of human motivation that emerged during the transition from feudalism to the modern period, this is the first book of new essays on the relationship between politics and the passions from Machiavelli to Bentham. Contributors address the crisis of moral and philosophical discourse in the early modern period; the necessity of inventing a new way of describing the relation between reflection and action, and private and public selves; the disciplinary regulation of the body; and the (...) ideological constitution of identity. The collection as a whole asks whether a discourse of the passions might provide a critical perspective on the politics of subjectivity. Whatever their specific approach to the question of ideology, all the essays reconsider the legacy of the passions in modern political theory and the importance of the history of politics and the passions for modern political debates. Contributors, in addition to the editors, are Nancy Armstrong, Judith Butler, Riccardo Caporali, Howard Caygill, Patrick Coleman, Frances Ferguson, John Guillory, Timothy Hampton, John P. McCormick, and Leonard Tennenhouse. (shrink)

It is worthy the observing that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death.... Revenge triumphs over death, love slights it, honour aspireth to it, grief flieth to it, fear preoccupateth it. Francis Bacon, “Of Death”This fight being the more cruel, since both Love and Hatred conspired to sharpen their humours, that hard it was to say whether Love with one trumpet, or Hatred with another, gave the louder (...) alarum to their courages. Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. (shrink)

We describe the ongoing citations to biomedical articles affected by scientific misconduct, and characterize the papers that cite these affected articles. The citations to 102 articles named in official findings of scientific misconduct during the period of 1993 and 2001 were identified through the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Science database. Using a stratified random sampling strategy, we performed a content analysis of 603 of the 5,393 citing papers to identify indications of awareness that the cited articles affected by (...) scientific misconduct had validity issues, and to examine how the citing papers referred to the affected articles. Fewer than 5% of citing papers indicated any awareness that the cited article was retracted or named in a finding of misconduct. We also tested the hypothesis that affected articles would have fewer citations than a comparison sample; this was not supported. Most articles affected by misconduct were published in basic science journals, and we found little cause for concern that such articles may have affected clinical equipoise or clinical care. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe published research articles that were named in official findings of scientific misconduct and to investigate compliance with the administrative actions contained in these reports for corrections and retractions, as represented in PubMed. Between 1993 and 2001, 102 articles were named in either the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts (“Findings of Scientific Misconduct”) or the U.S. Office of Research Integrity annual reports as needing retraction or correction. In 2002, 98 of (...) the 102 articles were indexed in PubMed. Eighty-five of these 98 articles had indexed corrections: 47 were retracted; 26 had an erratum; 12 had a correction described in the “comment” field. Thirteen had no correction, but 10 were linked to the NIH Guide “Findings of Scientific Misconduct”, leaving only 3 articles with no indication of any sort of problem. As of May 2005, there were 5,393 citations to the 102 articles, with a median of 26 citations per article (range 0–592). Researchers should be alert to “Comments” linked to the NIH Guide as these are open access, and the “Findings of Scientific Misconduct’ reports are often more informative than the statements about the retraction or correction found in the journals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Focusing on The Experience:Exploring Alternative Paths for ResearchEleanor Stubley, Anneli Arho, Päivi Järviö, and Tuomas MaliWriting and speaking are essential means of understanding, studying, and sharing music in the Western art music tradition. As a group of researchers, our story begins with the gap that seemingly exists between theoretical definitions or accounts of music and our experience of it as music makers—that is to say as composers, performers, conductors, (...) and teachers. Poignantly sensitive to the ways in which our musical experience and knowledge is embodied, we found ourselves one day four years ago sitting around an electrically-charged dinner table where ideas, questions, and the joy of having found someone like-minded seemed to be the main entrée. Since then, we have been working as a group, [End Page 39] experimenting with different ways of collaborating, using writing as a means of exploring and sharing our experiences across long distances. At first, the goal was simply to find a common ground, a platform for developing an extended dialogue that would draw on our unique backgrounds and divergent ways of our thinking. But, in the absence of a common language, both linguistic and theoretical, there were problems. We had, for example, to come to understand what each of us meant by the word experience and the role it could play as the ground of research, not as a series of defining moments or events but as the largely invisible flow of human life. We also had to deal with the inter-wovenness of mind and body, individual, and culture, not to mention our individual musical sensitivity and artistry. Confronted by these larger issues, our differences soon became the means to explore gaps or openings that could be entered to reveal the continuous becoming of music and language, the places where they intersect and diverge, and our own being in relationship to both.The papers presented in this symposium were the outgrowth of our dialogue during the summer of 2004. Each of us worked independently, yet each of us was also aware of the direction, the themes, and the ways of the others. The result is kaleidoscopic, each author starting from a different place, but seemingly working from the same palette of colors.Eleanor Stubley writes as a philosopher and conductor. Her work here is part of a larger on-going study that examines the way in which the body fills both language and our experience of music, with a particular focus on the way in which an interest in the body renews our understanding of music, language, and thought. Through a series of inter-connecting meditations inspired by the letter A, she challenges the practice of grounding research and practice in definitions of music as "organized sound." Her writing makes visible the habitual of a variety of educational practices, asking us to think anew about instructional technologies such as the alphabet, scale, and taxonomies of musical form, and to find in what we have traditionally thought of as practices of the mind, the omnipresence of the body. It also offers a new perspective on the hand, not as a tool or muscle to be trained as a skill, but as the very ground from which to develop an aesthetics of music that combines and recognizes the multiple ways in which we know and encounter music, through sight, sound, movement, and touch.Anneli Arho writes as a composer, educator, and philosopher/researcher. She explores the power of working from within the factical situation of a musician making music, focusing in particular on the embodiedness of music, questions of meaningfulness, and the ways in which phenomenological reflection on her own musical experiences has allowed her to move beyond traditional research discourses. Her writing asks us as educators to re-think curricular definitions of [End Page 40] composition, not simply as a collection of skills to be acquired or languages to be learned, but rather as embodied ways of living in and through sound. Using notation as an example, she argues that composing generates its own practical and existential questions distinct from those of listener, performer, and researcher, and which can never be totally shared with others... (shrink)

The purpose of the study was to assess medical journals’ conflicts of interest in the publication of book reviews. We examined book reviews published in 1999, 2000, and 2001 in five leading medical journals: Annals of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine. The main outcome measure was journal publication of reviews of books that had been published by the journal’s own publisher, that had been edited or authored by (...) a lead editor of the journal, or that posed another conflict of interest. We also surveyed the editors-in-chief of the five journals about their policies on these conflicts of interests. During the study period, four of the five journals published 30 book reviews presenting a conflict of interest: nineteen by the BMJ, five by the Annals, four by JAMA, and two by the Lancet. These reviews represent 5.8%, 2.7%, 0.7%, and 0.7%, respectively, of all book reviews published by the journals. These four journals, respectively, published reviews of 11.9%, 25.0%, 0.9%, and 1.0% of all medical books published by the journals’ publishers. Only one of the 30 book reviews included a disclosure statement addressing the conflict of interest. None of the journals had a written policy pertaining to the conflicts of interest assessed in this study, although four reported having unwritten policies. We recommend that scientific journals and associations representing journal editors develop policies on conflicts of interest pertaining to book reviews. (shrink)

This book is a rich blend of analyses by leading experts from various cultures and disciplines. A compact introduction to a complex field, it illustrates biotechnology's profound impact upon the environment and society. Moreover, it underscores the vital relevance of cultural values. This book empowers readers to more critically assess biotechnology's value and effectiveness within both specific cultural and global contexts.

There has been increasing attention to financial conflicts of interest (COI) in public health research and policy making, with concerns that some decisions are not in the public interest. One notable problematic area is expert advisory committee (EAC). While COI management has focused on disclosure, it could go further and assess experts’ degree of (in)dependence with commercial interests. We analyzed COI disclosures of members of Québec’s immunization EAC (in Canada) using (In)DepScale, a tool we developed for assessing experts’ level of (...) (in)dependence. We found great variability of independence with industry and that companies with the highest vaccine sales were predominantly associated with disclosed COIs. We argue that EACs can use the (In)DepScale to better assess and disclose the COIs that affect their experts. Going forward our scale could help manage risk and select members who are less conflicted to foster a culture of transparency and trust in advisors and policy-makers. (shrink)

This paper describes the results of a multi-country survey of governance approaches for the use of digital contact tracing (DCT) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that the countries in our survey represent two distinct models of DCT governance, both of which are flawed. The “data protection model” emphasizes privacy protections at the expense of public health benefit, while the “emergency response model” sacrifices transparency and accountability, prompting concerns about excessive governance surveillance. The ethical and effective use of (...) DCT in the future requires a new governance approach that is better suited to this novel use of mobile phone data to promote public health.”. (shrink)

Including more than 150 color images—several rarely seen before—drawn from the Royal Collection and the J. Paul Getty Museum, this volume accompanies an exhibition of the same name, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from February 4 to ...

The purpose of the study was to develop an understanding of how nursing students gained perspective on nursing care of diverse populations through watching documentaries in a cultural diversity course. The basis of this paper is our analyses of students’ written responses and reactions to documentaries viewed in class. The guiding theoretical frameworks for the course content and the study included postcolonial feminism, Foucauldian thought, and cultural safety. Krathwohl's Taxonomy of the Affective Domain was used to identify themes and determine (...) how undergraduate nursing students were progressing in achieving learning outcomes. Our findings suggest that while the use of documentaries serves as a tool for deepening students’ understanding of the realities of various populations, this activity, in the absence of critical reflection, may inadvertently promote stereotypes and further marginalize different people groups. Even though nursing students reflected on the importance of cultural safety in nursing, our findings indicate that their actions may not reflect this, especially since these students are in the early stages of the nursing program. Students need to be provided with a space where they can explore implicit biases evoked by exposure to new information about different people groups as a way of enhancing culturally safe care. (shrink)

L’érosion actuelle de la confiance du public envers les campagnes de vaccination et les décisions de politiques publiques qui y sont associées, aggravée par des scandales comme ceux relatifs à la pandémie H1N1 et l’utilisation du Tamiflu™, risque de diminuer de façon significative l’efficacité de ces interventions importantes pour la santé publique. Un manque de confiance de la population envers les acteurs de santé publique peut conduire à une méfiance accrue face aux interventions, pouvant ainsi compromettre l’atteinte des objectifs recherchés (...) par une intervention spécifique et, conséquemment, avoir un impact important sur les bénéfices attendus pour la population visée par cette intervention. Dans la production des avis d’experts, les membres des comités consultatifs d’experts en immunisation (CCEI) peuvent avoir une influence importante sur la prise de décision publique, notamment, sur la sélection par les décideurs de santé publique de vaccins en particulier et la façon dont les campagnes de vaccination seront déployées. En contrepartie de cette influence sur les décisions publiques, une indépendance et une transparence sont attendues de leur part puisque des mécanismes de divulgation et de gestion de conflits d’intérêts (CI) imparfaits peuvent affecter négativement la confiance du public à l’égard de telles décisions. Il apparaît donc important de s’assurer que des mécanismes de gestion des CI, transparents et robustes, existent pour ces comités. Dans cette étude, les avis ou rapports d’évaluation de la pertinence de la vaccination préparés par un CCEI au Québec ont été examinés pour quatre types de maladies évitables par la vaccination (infections invasives à méningocoques et à pneumocoques, coqueluche et virus du papillome humain). Le but était de : 1) identifier les CI divulgués par les membres du CCEI dans leurs rapports comparativement à ceux déclarés dans leurs publications scientifiques pour ces mêmes infections ; 2) analyser la nature des CI (réel, potentiel, apparent, personnel, financier, institutionnel, etc.) et l’impact potentiel (risque) sur la prise de décision impartiale et sur la confiance du public ; et 3) évaluer les mécanismes de gestion de CI actuellement utilisés par ce CCEI. Les résultats de cette étude montrent que très peu de rapports du CCEI contiennent une section sur les CI par rapport à la pléthore divulguée dans les publications scientifiques publiées par les membres du CCEI. De plus, les CI divulgués dans les rapports fréquemment ne correspondent pas à ceux décrits dans les publications scientifiques. Il serait donc important d’introduire des mesures visant à accroître la transparence des experts en immunisation et d’améliorer les mécanismes de divulgation et de gestion des CI afin de veiller à ce que la confiance du public envers les décideurs en santé publique soit maintenue et améliorée. (shrink)

In Victoria, Australia, the law regulating abortion was reformed in 2008, and a clause was introduced requiring doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion to refer women to another provid...

Is privacy the key ethical issue of the internet age? This coauthored essay argues that even if all of a user’s privacy concerns were met through secure communication and computation, there are still ethical problems with personalized information systems. Our objective is to show how computer-mediated life generates what Ernesto Laclou and Chantal Mouffe call an “atypical form of social struggle”. Laclau and Mouffe develop a politics of contingent identity and transient articulation (or social integration) by means of the notions (...) of absent, symbolic, hegemonic power and antagonistic transitions or relations. In this essay, we introduce a critical approach to one twenty-first-century atypical social struggle that, we claim, has a disproportionate effect on those who experience themselves as powerless. Our aim is to render explicit the forms of social mediation and distortion that result from large-scale machine learning as applied to personal preference information. We thus bracket privacy in order to defend some aspects of the EU GDPR that will give individuals more control over their experience of the internet if they want to use it and, thereby, decrease the unwanted epistemic effects of the internet. Our study is thus a micropolitics in in the Deleuzian micropolitical sense and a preliminary analysis of an atypical social struggle. [Added note: the contract law specialist cited twice in this article (Jonathan R. Bruno) is a graduate of Harvard Law and is presently located at University of Michigan Law School (Ann Arbor) (not identical to the 'data scientist' of the same name that populates the first page of links brought up by a Google-search on this proper name.]. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 127.2 (2006) 309-312 [Access article in PDF] Mark Buchan. The Limits of Heroism: Homer and the Ethics of Reading. The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. x + 282 pp. Cloth, $65. Buchan's introduction challenges the critical consensus on the Odyssey as both "too teleological" and "not teleological enough." The epic's partisan perspective on its hero, with (...) an ethical universe designed to exculpate his violence, has been too long taken for granted. Meanwhile, critics do not take seriously enough the epic's insistence that Odysseus' return to his home is not the end he longs for. Buchan thus raises the hope for a genuinely new reading of the Odyssey, and to a great degree, the book lives up to its promise with close textual studies framed by Lacanian theory on human desire. Buchan's opening gambit of defining his ideas against a consensus grows less appealing, however, when it becomes a trope that cites only two or so scholars on any issue. The gesture conforms to Buchan's method of textual analysis, which exploits the provocative detail or juxtaposition, and his approach suggests how fruitfully psychoanalytic readings can expose a text's unconscious universe. But the lure of the big picture—the telos of the epic—irresistibly draws Buchan onto less yielding interpretive ground. Still, his results are illuminating for Homer and instructive about the limits of psychoanalytic interpretation.Buchan studies the "dangers of certain fantasies of the self" exploited by Odysseus in his return home (4). The fantasies that define the Phaeacians and Cyclopes are exposed and ruined through their encounters with Odysseus, in part because these peoples arrive at a correct interpretation of themselves too late. Odysseus has already gotten what he needs and left his victims with rocks hanging over them and a new sense of identity wrought by loss. Buchan's view of Odysseus is unexpected and provocative; it rejects his ethics and reads him purely as the agent of trauma that introduces those he meets to the human condition of desire. This style of analysis yields its best results in the early chapters on the "victims" of the returning hero: the Cyclops, the Phaeacians, and, with Menelaus, the sea-god Proteus.Each of these chapters reveals an artifact of human culture that comes into being at a moment of loss and thus marks an awakening to self-consciousness. These artifacts represent for the newly acculturated their loss as a predication of their humanity. Polyphemus' blinding causes the Cyclops to name him for the [End Page 309] first time, creating social language as a symptom of his loss and a concomitant desire for the Father as authority. Competition with Odysseus is the beginning of a truly human culture for the Phaeacians, who were formerly self-sufficient, never doubting themselves as contestants or fathers. When Odysseus defeats their athletes, they learn that their "games-without-loss" culture is no longer a sustainable system. Buchan's perspective yields arresting insights on both episodes, including a suggestive dialectic among the images of stone imperiling the Phaeacians, from the discus throw that opens an insurmountable gap to a mountain hanging over them when they vanish from our view. But Buchan's insights come at a cost of readerly indulgence, because they depend on a decidedly selective treatment of the text. For instance, he insists on Polyphemus' namelessness before he meets Odysseus and the lack among the Cyclopes of a father as an authority figure. His discussion of the Phaeacians requires the assumption that they have never lost a competition, although they compel every visitor to participate (197 and n. 29).Buchan's final study of a victim of an heroic nostos best illustrates the gains and costs of his method. Menelaus tricks Proteus into human desire by disguising himself and three comrades as seals: the god is compelled to count himself, a deft double entendre (4.453) to make up the counting unit of five by which he keeps track of his seals Proteus thus confounds... (shrink)

Natalia Lozovsky. “The Earth Is Our Book”: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400–1000. (Recentiores: Later Latin Texts and Contexts.) x + 182 pp., illus., tables, bibl., index. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. $44.50, £28.

Civic engagement requires individuals to have both knowledge of democratic principles and the skills for enacting change. Acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary for a productive civic life can be difficult for students if they are not provided conceptual scaffolds and opportunities to practice citizenship. We implemented and studied an activity using Westheimer and Kahne's (2004) citizenship typology during a summer civics institute to help students grapple with their understandings of “good” citizenship. We found (1) students appropriated the language of (...) Westheimer and Kahne's citizenship typology by using it to describe their expanding understandings of citizenship; and (2) students used the citizenship typology to name and make sense of their civic identity. We discuss these findings and reflect on our use of Westheimer and Kahne's citizenship typology as a cognitive scaffold. (shrink)

BackgroundDealing with end of life is challenging for patients and health professionals alike. The situation becomes even more challenging when a patient requests a legally permitted medical service that a health professional is unable to provide due to a conflict of conscience. Such a scenario arises when Victorian health professionals, with a conscientious objection (CO) to voluntary assisted dying (VAD), are presented with patients who request VAD or merely ask about VAD. The Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic) recognizes the (...) inherent conflict of conscience that may arise for some health professionals when asked to provide VAD and responds by affording broad protection to conscientious objectors who wish to refuse to take part in the VAD process.MethodsSeventeen semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with Victorian health professionals with a self-identified CO to VAD in the lead-up to the implementation of VAD in Victoria. Interviews explored how participants anticipated they would manage their CO in practice. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically.ResultsOur results reveal that the way in which health professionals claimed they would approach CO conversations is variable and was dependant on the strength of their opposition to VAD. We categorized conscientious objectors according to their approach as either dissuasive non-referrers, passive non-referrers, facilitators or negotiators. Our study also explores the perceived difficulties of exercising one’s CO as identified by our participants.ConclusionThe broad protection offered by the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic) encourages a range of behaviors from conscientious objectors, due to the minimal obligations imposed. In order to assist conscientious objectors, more policy, institutional guidance, and education needs to be available to conscientious objectors explicitly addressing how to effectively manage one’s CO. Such guidance is imperative to ensuring that their moral integrity is preserved and that they are exercising their CO appropriately. (shrink)

This out-of-print collection in the area of the history, politics, ethics, and theory of privacy includes selections from Peter Gay, Alan Westin, Walter Benjamin, Catharine MacKinnon, Seyla Benhabib, Anita Allen, Ann Jennings, Charles Taylor, Richard Sennett, Mark Wicclair, Martha Nussbaum, and Robert Nozick.

Cosgrove, Mary-Anne Below are 'talking points' based on an article in AH No. 121, 'AI on the Go: Notes on the current development and use of Artificial Intelligence', by Carl Mahoney. Carl is a Humanist Society of Victoria member, and was professor and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Building, University of Technology, Papua New Guinea.

In this highly original and provocative book, Michel Serres reflects on the relation between nature and culture and analyzes the origins of the world's contemporary environmental problems. He does so through the surprising proposition that our cleanliness is our dirt. While all living beings pollute to lay claim to their habitat, humans have multiplied pollution's effects catastrophically since the Industrial Revolution through the economic system's mode of appropriation and its emphasis on mindless growth. He warns that while we can measure (...) what he calls "hard pollution"—the poisoning of the Earth—we ignore at our peril the disastrous impact of the "soft pollution" created by sound and images on our psyches. Sounding the alarm that the planet is heading for disaster, Serres proposes that humanity should stop trying to "own" the world and become "renters." Building on his earlier work, especially that on hominization, he urges us to establish a "natural contract" with nature. Published with the assistance of the Edgar M. Kahn Memorial Fund. (shrink)

ABSTRACT For Victoria Kahn, Hobbes' argument that fear of violent death is “the passion to be reckoned upon” in explaining what inclines men to peace must be interpreted as a mimetic argument. However, Kahn then notes a paradox that makes Hobbes' thinking problematic: whereas love and the desires are appetites that produce an imitative effect, fear is different. Though also a passion, fear lacks that capacity to produce a mimetic effect or, therefore, to generate a contract. My (...) hypothesis is that resolving the dilemma presented in Kahn's interpretation of Hobbes requires a shift in attention from mimesis to rhetoric and, more specifically, to biological rhetoric as defined by Nancy Struever. This approach to Hobbes makes it possible to understand the rhetorical role of fear in generating and maintaining the social contract, and how the problem that Kahn signals—the impotence of fear in relation to mimesis—can be resolved. (shrink)

Once upon a time, civic virtue described an ethic of political involvement for all citizens. As American democracy evolved, however, the public and private spheres separated. The latter became domesticated and disengaged from public life by an ideology based on gender and a "disinterested love" of neighbor. Private passion was to be isolated from public reason, private love from public justice. But it need not be so. Drawing on examples of ordinary heroes, Ann Mongoven argues for a transformed civic virtue (...) that articulates "just love": passionate care for fellow citizens as such. By connecting theory to practice, Mongoven dramatizes the challenges raised through tangible political examples and lets ordinary heroes suggest the path toward civic renewal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Montaignian MomentDan EngsterIn the Machiavellian Moment, J. G. A. Pocock argued that the development of modern republican theory was closely bound up with a paradigmatic shift in the early modern discourse of temporality and politics. 1 Whereas medieval thinkers tended to emphasize the supreme importance of eternal and universal principles in politics, the Italian civic humanists turned their attention to the stream of contingent temporal events ruled by (...) “fortune” and claimed human beings could create a stable political order within time through their own “virtue.” 2 The exemplar of this new paradigm was Machiavelli. In contrast to earlier humanist writers who still appealed to timeless values and static ideals in laying out their political theories, Machiavelli reframed his political discourse entirely in terms of contingency and fortune. “The Machiavellian moment,” Pocock wrote, “is a name for the moment in conceptualized time in which the republic was seen as confronting its own temporal finitude, as attempting to remain morally and politically stable in a stream of irrational events conceived as essentially destructive of all systems of secular stability.” 3 The importance of the Machiavellian moment, according to Pocock, was that it “left an important paradigmatic legacy” to modern political thought. Mach-iavelli’s new understanding of temporality and politics has “continued to pose problems in historical self-awareness, which form part of the journey of Western thought from the medieval Christian to the modern historical mode,” and his political strategies for taming fortune laid the foundation for the development of modern republican theory. 4 [End Page 625]Victoria Kahn has recently suggested several correctives to Pocock’s thesis. 5 Most importantly, she has criticized him for emphasizing the republican dimensions of Machiavelli’s thought while discounting the amoral or “Machiavellian” aspects of it. “For if Machiavellism is a rhetoric for conceptualizing and responding to the realm of contingency,” she has written, “it includes not only republicanism but also tyranny; it involves the use of force and fraud not only to advance one’s self interest but also to serve the commonwealth.” 6 According to Kahn, the “paradigm” which Machiavelli defined was not strictly republican but rather a broadly “activist” ideology amenable to a number of different causes. 7 But in this broader sense, she has continued to endorse Pocock’s assertion that Machiavelli’s approach to the problem of fortune and contingency was widely influential, or “paradigmatic,” in framing early modern political debates.In this article I suggest that Machiavelli’s arguments represented only one important shift in the discourse of temporality and politics in early modern Europe. During the late sixteenth century a second shift occurred; the exemplar of this new paradigm was Michel de Montaigne. 8 In his Essays Montaigne argued that Machiavelli and the civic humanists had grossly underestimated the capriciousness and uncertainty of fortune. He then challenged the effectiveness of traditional humanist strategies for establishing order within time and proposed a new set of principles for taming fortune based upon the concept of “nature” and the values of moderation, restraint, and self-discipline. I argue that no less than Machiavelli, Montaigne left an important paradigmatic legacy to later writers. He was one of the first early modern writers to suggest that human beings ought not to focus so much on trying actively to manipulate fortune. Instead, he felt that the aim should be more on attempting to construct self-sufficient and self-regulating communities that would avoid her blows altogether. In this respect he may be seen as a central transitional figure between the activist humanism of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and the more rationalistic state theories of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or more succinctly, between Machiavelli and Hobbes. The “Montaignian moment” outlined an alternative discourse of temporality and politics that provided a theoretical framework for the development and justification of the new language of the state. [End Page 626]Montaigne is not usually regarded as an important political thinker, let alone as a “paradigmatic” one. There have been two recent studies, however, that have attempted to situate his ideas in the history of early modern political thought. David Schaefer has argued that Montaigne was a proponent of republican ideas... (shrink)