AGRIPPA, THE 16TH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHER, published a well-known and often referenced esoteric classic -- Three Books of Occult Philosophy (Natural Magic, Celestial Magic, and Ceremonial Magic). Until recently these three volumes were hard to find in English, although they had been translated in the 17th century and published in England. Willy Schrodter saw the value in these texts from a contemporary point of view, and compiled copious notes and commentary on many of the subjects mentioned in Agrippa's opus. His research (...) makes Agrippa understandable, providing scientific confirmation for Agrippa's seemingly outlandish claims with carefully documented parallel cases. It is Schrodter's illuminating examples, taken from the most varied fields of research, that constitute the real and lasting value of this compilation. (shrink)

Critics of South Park make claims that are strikingly similar to those that have been leveled against Western philosophy since its beginnings. Philosophy, it's been charged, also mocks religious beliefs, leads younger folks to question accepted authority and values, and corrupts our children and culture. These condemnations formed the basis for Socrates' trial and execution in Athens. This chapter explores the heretical possibility that people perceive South Park as dangerous precisely because it is a form of philosophy. The “danger” South (...) Park poses has to do with its depiction of dialogue and free thought. In the end, one can learned something: like Socrates, the South Park harms no one. Philosophy and South Park actually instruct people and provide them with the intellectual tools they need to become wise, free, and good. (shrink)

From an informal group of a dozen faculty and graduate students at Temple University, the Jean Piaget Society grew in seven years to 500 members who have interests in the application of genetic epistemology to their own disciplines and professions. At the outset Piaget endorsed the concept of a society which bore his name and presented a major address on equilibration at the society's first symposium in May, 1971. Had he not done so the society would no doubt have remained (...) a small parochial group, like so many others throughout the country, interested in Piaget and his theory. With the encouragement of Genevans and the leadership of its first four presidents, Lois Macomber, Barbara Press eisen, Marilyn Appel, and John Mickelson, the society undertook a number of programs to collect and disseminate the results of scholarly work in genetic epistemology. Particular emphasis was placed upon applications of Piaget's theory to developmental psychology, philos ophy, and education. One of these programs was the publication of an annual series on the development of knowing, of which this volume is the first. In 1973, the society asked Hans Furth with the assistance of Willis Overton and Jeanette Gallagher to initiate and plan a series of yearbooks with the result that in addition to this volume, a second volume on education was commissioned, and a third one on the decalage issue was planned. (shrink)

Despite acknowledgment that performance failure among new salespeople is a prevalent issue for organizations, researchers do not fully understand the consequences of repetitive periods of failure on new salespeople’s unethical selling behaviors. Further, little is known about how a sales force’s reward structure and managerial attempts to intervene following failure affect new salespeople’s behavior. Combining an experiment with longitudinal growth models, we show that repetitive periods of failure increase unethical behaviors, and interventions intended to remind the salesperson to behave in (...) the customer’s best interests attenuate this effect under a non-contingent reward structure. However, counter to managerial assumptions, under a contingent reward structure these customer-oriented interventions actually backfire by amplifying the original relationship between repetitive failure and unethical behaviors. The results have potentially important managerial implications for those who manage new salespeople learning how to sell or during other failure-prone periods. (shrink)

The feminine complaint that Alex's passion echoes, raising it to a level rarely attained, is not limited to the pursuit of sexual jouissance . Nor can it be reduced to an aversion on the part of women to a morality of the signifier, as maintained by a certain reading of Freud. Very precisely, the persistent note in feminine restlessness is a certain relationship of the subject to the insufficiency of the signifier, which the quest for love registers. The fact that (...) language lacks the very quality that would make it credible and that would guarantee that discourse corresponds to what desire attests to is what delivers femininity over to the unnameable. In love she requires from the other member of the social bond the signifier that is lacking within the structure of femininity and that causes the call to jouissance in her body that drives her to distraction. Thus, the structure at stake in femininity, to which Alex's hysterical passion bears witness, defines in writing, that is, by a mark left on the body, the limitation of the reality of a jouissance which persists beyond the signifier and the object of the fantasy. When the analyst's desire offers support to this quest for a limit to jouissance on the part of a subject, it is in desire that the reality of sex and the other is linked to the signifier that would testify to the truth of the amorous discourse in the unconscious. Thus from one man to another, from the love of the father to the loss of a son, including the desire of the lover and the law of the husband, a woman finds herself supporting, with the letter of her body, the signifier which in its words testifies to jouissance as a place to lose oneself. (shrink)

Ethics in the anthropocene -- Atmospheric powers: climate change and moral incompetence -- Christian ethics and unprecedented problems -- Global ethics: moral pluralism and planetary problems -- Sustainability science and the ethics of wicked problems -- Toxic wombs and the ecology of justice -- Impoverishment and the economy of desire -- Intergenerational risk and the future of love -- Sustaining grace.

In Descartes; A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967), I published a bibliography of works in English relating to Descartes. This is a Supplement to that bibliography and contains references to works in English that have appeared since 1966 through 1975 or that inadvertently were not included in the original bibliography. The Supplement is in three parts: (A) Translations and Reference Works, (B) Books, and (C) Articles. In (C), I have also included chapters (...) of books that can be read independently and that may be of interest to students of Descartes. There were of course borderline cases in which I had to decide whether an article contained enough material about Descartes to be included in the bibliography. On the whole, I believe I have followed a rather liberal policy in making these decisions. (shrink)

Investigates the moral, political, and environmental problems caused by the careless application of scientific knowledge to work, leisure, and educational activities. Bibliogs.

The first part of the paper is mainly descriptive. Starting from a short historical sketch of the European construction process, from the initial Treaty of Rome to the actual Treaty of the European Union, the changing trade-offs between the environmental and the economic domain will be overviewed. We will focus on a pragmatic examination of the texts, in their dynamic historical evolution.The second part is evaluative. Examining the fifth Environmental Action Programme more in detail, we will try to determine for (...) which environmental ethics the E.U. stands, as confronted with the alternative paradigm defended by environmentalists and the Green Group in the European Parliament. Is the environmental issue a unifying or a dividing factor in the contrasting cultural landscape of the Old Continent? I think probably Cortona is an excellent place to ask such a speculative question, because we are not far away from Assisi, where a successful Interfaith Meeting on the Environment was organised by the W.W.F. in 1986. (shrink)

Argues for the primacy of the phylogenetic system as the general reference system in biology. This book, first published in 1966, generated significant controversy and opened possibilities for evolutionary biology.