This book brings together two seminal works by George Santayana, one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century: _Character and Opinion in the United States,_ which stands with Tocqueville’s _Democracy in America_ as one the most insightful works of American cultural criticism ever written, and “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” a landmark text of both philosophical analysis and cultural criticism. An introduction by James Seaton situates Santayana in the intellectual and cultural context of his own time. Four (...) additional essays include John Lachs on the ways Santayana’s understanding of “the soul of America” help explain the relative peace among nationalities and ethnic groups in the United States; Wilfred M. McClay on Santayana’s life of the mind as it relates to dominant trends in American culture; Roger Kimball on Santayana’s “most uncommon benefice, common sense”; and James Seaton on Santayana’s distinction between “English liberty” and “fierce liberty.” All the essays serve to highlight the relevance of Santayana’s ideas to current issues in American culture, including education, immigration, and civil rights. (shrink)

This book brings together two seminal works by George Santayana, one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century: Character and Opinion in the United States, which stands with Tocqueville's Democracy in America as one the most insightful works of American cultural criticism ever written, and The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy, a landmark text of both philosophical analysis and cultural criticism. An introduction by James Seaton situates Santayana in the intellectual and cultural context of his own time. Four (...) additional essays include John Lachs on the ways Santayana's understanding of the soul of America help explain the relative peace among nationalities and ethnic groups in the United States; Wilfred M. McClay on Santayana's life of the mind as it relates to dominant trends in American culture; Roger Kimball on Santayana's most uncommon benefice, common sense; and James Seaton on Santayana's distinction between English liberty and fierce liberty. All the essays serve to highlight the relevance of Santayana's ideas to current issues in American culture, including education, immigration, and civil rights. (shrink)

Originally published in 1996 and newly revised, _Conspicuous Criticism_ is a ringing defense of the need for religion and tradition in contemporary society. Writing with moral passion and critical verve, Christopher Shannon offers a convincing indictment of the forces that isolate the individual in modern capitalist society and counters more than a century of efforts by modern intellectuals­ to displace tradition in favor of a humanism that actually diminishes humanity in the name of freeing its potential. Featuring in-depth analyses of (...) the works of John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, C. Wright Mills, and others, _Conspicuous Criticism_ is a call to reinstate traditional relations to God, nature, and the common good. Scholars in fields from American studies to intellectual history will be forced to grapple with Shannon’s trenchant critique, which is well on its way to becoming a classic of Christian thought. “_Conspicuous Criticism_ inspired a concern about the modern world that in the years since I’ve not been able to brush aside.”—Eric Miller, _First Things _. (shrink)

Much existing economic theory overlooks ethics. Rather than situating the market and values at separate extremes of a continuum, Ethics and the Market contends that the two are necessarily and intimately related. This volume brings together some of the best work in the social economics tradition, with contributions on the social economy, social capital, identity, ethnicity and development, the household, externalities, international finance, capability, and pedagogy. Proceeding from an examination of the moral implications of markets, the book goes on to (...) explore such themes as the institutional arrangements of social economies, individual and household decision-making, and economic development in a global context. Ethics and the Market illuminates the diverse and dynamic theoretical approaches that are employed in social economics, reflecting on their continuously evolving relationship with neoclassical economics. This book will prove vital reading for students and academics in the fields of Economics, Sociology, Gender Studies, and Public Policy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:OBJECTIVITY AND RELlGIOUS TRUTH: A COMPARISON OF WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH AND BERNARD LONERGAN DENNIS M. DOYLE University of Dayton Dayton, Ohio WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH •and Bernard Lonergan both propose a new agenda for theology n response to ;the same basic cultura.I developments.1 Both Smith and Lonergan pinpoint the crux of the current siturution!aJS the convergence of various cultures in a world where Western culture had.been heM by (...) its pwrticiipants to be univers•al.and normrutive. The majo'l" problem concerning religious truth :that 1 arises out of this situation concerns universality. Formulrutions tha:t were once taken for granted are now seen to he relative to their context. Concepts that it.T1anscend particular formulations are themselves recognized irus indigenous to 1a culture. T·ruth itself is questioned as to whether it too is not!l'elative to eaich oontert. The responses of Smith and Lonergan to this situa:tion are remarkably ·similar in structure. In the midst of these similarities, 1 however, arise some differences with important implications concerning oibjectivity, itruth, and theology in a global context. Objec:tivity, Method, and Human Knowledge Smith and Lonergan both 'address rthe issue of human knowing before establishing their programs for theo1 logy.2 For botih, 1 Smith's proposal is put forth in Towards a World Theology (Phila.: Westminster Press, 1981 )• Lonergan's proposal can be found in Method in Theology (N.Y.: Herder and Herder, 1972). 2 Smith's reflections on human knowing are in "Objectivity and the Humane Sciences,'' in Towards a World Theology, pp. 56·80'. Lonergan's 461 462 DENNIS M. DOYLE a major problem in wayis of conceiving human knowing in recent centuries has heen an ohjectivism according to which knowledge was iheld to he absolute without regard to human SUJbjectivity and without an openness to other cultures. Both find a £acile cultural remtivism to he.an unsatisfactory reaction to this problem. In response, :both Smith and Lonergan try to re-root human knowing in a human conte:rl. Lonergan does ·this hy establishing the ground of knowing in an analysis of human intentionality. Smith does this by estaiblishing the ground of knowing in a mutual interchange between persons who participate in some traditions and who are observers of other traditions. Smith la.bels such knowing ·a" 001·iporaite critica1 self-iconsciousness." What emerges from such consciousness is "humane knowledge." Although some major di:ffevences arise at this point, the context of istructul'lal similarities must he noted.3 For hoth Smith and Lonergan, hruman knowing is intrinsically connected with :the quality of living both individually and oommullla1ly. Eiach in his own way stresses that knowing is vitally linked to the consciousness of individuals. Each in his own way stresses that knowing takes place within ·community, and that the breadth and quality of the community affects the breadth and quality of the knowing. Smith •and Lonergan both, furthermore, envision the taisk of theology as the conceptualization and articulation in a new context of wihat was once known in a strictly objective, theoretical f:vame;work. Both, finailily, 'lay ouit the major work on human knowing is Insight: A Study of Human Understo;nding (N.Y.: Philosophical Library, 1957). For a summary view, see chapter one of Method in Theology. For Lonergan's position on objectivity, see "The Origins of Christian Realism" in A Second Collection (Phila.: Westminster Press, 1974), ·pp. 239-61. a For an earlier comparison of the methods of Smith and Lonergan, see Walter E. Conn, "'Faith' and 'Cumulative Tradition' in Functional Specialization : A Study in the Methodologies of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Bernard Lonergan," Studies in ReligiOn/Soiences Religieuses 5 (1975/76) : 221-46•.Although this article was published before several of Smith's major works in the area, the methodological similarities unearthed by Conn still hold true. WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH & BERNARD LONERGAN 463 problem specifically in terms of tmnscending false subject/object :dichotomies. At this point, however, differences between Smith and Lonwgian begin to emerge, foir each attempts to transcend false.suibjoot/oibject dichotomies in a different way. Lonergan holds that objectivity is the fruit of authentic ;subjectivity.4 1t is intended hy the self-transcending subject who loves... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:564 BOOK REVIEWS illuminating re-examination of the category of inwardness in Kierkegaard 's writings. The majority of the essays in the hook are similarly suggestive and will prove rewarding and interesting reading-they echo the aim and gift, share by Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, of "making their readers thinkers" (xvi). University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia M. JAMIE FERREIRA Let the Future Come. By WILFRED DESAN. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, (...) 1987. Pp. 152. $9.95 (paper). Toward a lust Social Order. By DEREK L. PHILLIPS. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Pp. 434. $12.50. After several decades of doldrum thinking, social ethics, i.e., personal and political ethics done on the same canvas, is undergoing a welcome renewal. Perhaps spurred by the growing awareness of the massive problems of our tiny planet, thinkers from diverse areas are beginning to offer what the social sciences call "grand theory." Both Desan and Phillips make valuable contributions to this project and represent the best levels of refleotion from the teleological and deontological perspectives respectively. Desan's essay is the final volume of three, hut may be read independently of the earlier studies, discussed by this reviewer in 1973 in The Thomist (Vol. 37, pp. 249-255). If Desan has a core concept for his thinking it is planetary peace and the human individual as gardener and guardian of this admittedly future state of affairs. Phillips, critically inheriting the Anglo-American rights tradition, focuses on the person, not the planet, on the distinctiveness of the part, not on Desan's projeotion of a whole humanum composed of parts (each a member of the human community yet only a member). The metaphysical background here, then, is the whole-of-parts versus parts·of-awhole dialectic. Read together the two works would truly stimulate a graduate ethics seminar, for we see the renewal of ethical,thinking against some classical ontological themes. For Desan, the person is homo custos, self-aware becoming otheraware ; for Phillips, the person is the source and enactor of rights. He offers heavy criticism of the virtue/community school's orientation towards the common good of society, with subsidiary private rights located within that context. This is the weakest part of his massive survey of recent ethics. Phillips simply cannot see the reality of human community, which is exactly what Desan is determined to project as BOOK REVIEWS 565 our only possible future. Desan's combination of Thomism and Hegel stands to the far side of Phillips's Lockean stress on private rights as the base criterion for any future just public order. We will look first at Desan's final effort to summarize a notion of " planetary " existence that will be valid both individually and communally and then turn to Phillips's detailed, Rawls-like approach. Desan's argument against the primacy of the individual over the world community was carefully nuanced in his two earlier volumes; he has no intention of denigrating the person in order to celebrate the planet, and he is no partisan of the " deep ecology " effort to elevate nature above the sub-category human nature. His planet is social and political, a cosmic existent dependent upon specifically human activitynot individual activity at either the personal or national levels but activity at the level of the total earth population. He is not so much detailing yet another agenda for a New World Order as he is striving to raise modern individualized consciousness to a height where the reality of interdependency is rationally undeniable. Desan's appreciative critique of Husserl's individualized consciousness in his first volume, A Noetic Prelude to a United World, displayed the plight of personalized consciousness as against planetary awareness. In this final panel of his triptych, he synthesizes that critique: "Where the individual Observer is the magister, there are as many worlds as there are magistri." This privatized existence is not to be denied but rather seen for what it is: a limit instead of a secure startpoint for either ethical or epistemological theory. His second volume stressed that our very awareness of this limitation gives rise, perhaps in a Hegelian dialectic, to potential for participation in global existence. To resist this cooperative... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:'Bibliographies/LArchivallnventories/Indexes THE EDITH RUSSELL PAPERS SHEILA TUReON Russell Archives I McMaster University Library Hamilton, Ont., Canada L8s 4M6 INTRODUCTION E dith, Countess Russell, was born Edith Finch, the daughter of Edward Bronson Finch, a physician, and his wife, Delia, on 5 November 1900 in New York City. She was educated at Bryn Mawr College (AB, 1922) and St. Hilda's College, Oxford (HON BA, 1925; MA, 1926). Returning to Bryn (...) Mawr, she was employed from time to time as an instructor of English literature, but she never became a permanent member of the faculty. A frequent traveller to Europe during these years of teaching and writing, Edith published biographies of Wilfred Scawen Blunt in 1938 and Carey Thomas, a President of Bryn Mawr, in 1947. She sometimes lectured at various schools and clubs off campus on biography in general and Blunt in particular. Edith and Lucy Martin Donnelly, a friend of both Russell and his first wife AIys, became close; together they built a home, New Place, in nearby Rosemont, Pennsylvania, where they lived after Lucy's retirement in 1936 as head of the English Department. Following Lucy's death in 1948 Edith worked as a freelance editor in New York City and in 1950 applied, unsuccessfully, for a position as an Intelli~ gence Research Specialist/Foreign Affairs Officer in the us Foreign Serv:ice. At the same time, she moved to England: she and Russell were married two years, to the month, later. They had been introduced by Lucy Donnelly and met on occasion during the 1930S and 1940S when Russell was visiting Lucy. When Russell was in New York to deliver the Matchette Foundation lectures in 1950 they met again, and their relationship developed quickly. It russell: the Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives McMaster University Libraty l'ress n.s. 12 (summer 1992): 61-78 ISSN 0036-01631 62 SHEILA TURCON The Edith Russell Papers 63 Foundation who were in possession of the papers for several years and who packed them for shipment here. Within many of the categories, however, the papers were in disorder upon arrival. This is especially true of the domestic correspondence and records. They have been arranged in order to facilitate access by researchers. Six-digit archival numbers have been assigned to all documents. The papers measure 3.3 m. (II lin. ft.) and comprise 28 boxes.. All correspondence listed in this Recent Acquisition (no. 967) was entered in BRACERS, where it is accessible and searchable. Only the correspondents' names were extracted for this article. The BRACERS records, numbering 1,039, contain complete information on the letters; the topics of important letters are also extracted or summarized and included in the records. A selection of entries from the Topic_Text field are interspersed throughout the inventory. "Document(s)" is abbreviated "doc(s).", and "photocopy(ies)" is abbreviated "P(s)." was to bring great happiness to both. Russell's Autobiography is dedicated to her. She became a British subject in 1960 and, after Russell's death in 1970, remained in Wales where they had settled in the mid1950S. Eight years later, Edith died on I January 1978. An agreement by McMaster Universiry Library to purchase her papers from the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation was made on 24 June 1985. The papers themselves did not arrive at the Russell Archives until nearly a year later, on II June 1986. Upon arrival, it was noted that many photographs that were listed with the agreement were missing, as well as some printed materials and books belonging to Lucy Donnelly, a typescript by Logan Pearsall Smith and sdme general correspondence. The Foundation has not been able to locate these missing items. More importantly, Russell's original letters to Edith (copies of which were included in Archives II) were not even listed as part of the agreement, and their location remains unknown as well. The majority of the papers concern Edith's life after Russell's death. There is very little from her life before her marriage. This is surprising because of the amount of material she preserved and organized during her life with Russell which is now held in Archives I and II. In a letter of... (shrink)

Tarekat teaches its followers not to glorify conglomerates, to keep their distance from leader, and to live in a way of zuhud, including in the matters of politics. But the Tarekat Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah in Cukir Jombang was actually involved in practical politics as a supporter of Partai Persatuan Pembangunan. This paper, which was written in the form of ethnographic design according to the concept of the power relations of Foucault to find new perspectives about the actions of Tarekat communities (...) in politics, in this case explaining the pattern of relations that occurred between the Tarekat Cukir and PPP and discovering the factors causing Tarekat Cukir to support PPP. This paper concludes that between Tarekat Cukir and PPP, there is a mutually beneficial pattern of relations in terms of proximity, but in terms of economic politics, the Tarekat Cukir feels disadvantaged. The dominant reason the Tarekat Cukir supports PPP is because of the dependence of Santri on their Mursyid who is a PPP politician. This is reinforced by the history between the two parties and the spiritual ties that connect the teachers who are both PPP politicians and Santris. (shrink)

Sensible people advise one not to expend one's strength on polemics. And sensible people are right, of course. But look at the history of social thought: there is no peace beneath the olives, and without the flames of social thought, even the pure light of science begins to flicker.

The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 2003, Volume 24, Number 1, Pages 91–118, ISSN 0271–0137 This paper focuses on a logical systems flow-down of a set of consciousness requirements, which together with biological quantification of human brain anatomy sets limits on the neurological network in the cerebrum in order to produce the mind. It employs data to validate inferences, or when data do not exist, proposes methods for acquiring valid evidence. Many of these systems requirements will be imposed after (...) some fundamental assumptions are made. These assumptions are not new to theories on consciousness. However, their application as fundamentals may actually represent a new approach. Concurrent with these fundamentals, explicit periods of awareness while conscious are employed. Justification for their use is found in a theoretical process described as cerebral fusion. Additionally, storage of memory elements is postulated within local glia sites, proximal to synaptic nodes, and conductive transport through the astrocytes responsible for recall of data. The model permits variations in neural–glial interface physics and allows forecasts of mind/brain dysfunctions to be inferred. One key result from the model is hypothesized and expanded upon, and may have impact in certain types of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease. (shrink)