Resumo: Este artigo pretende discutir a representação da velhice na modernidade, tendo como objeto de análise uma cena da primeira temporada da série estadunidense The Crown. Nela o então primeiro-ministro Winston Churchill, ao completar 80 anos, se incomoda com um quadro em sua homenagem, no qual aparece retratado sem suavizar seus traços envelhecidos. Ao renegar sua imagem na tela, e nas discussões com o pintor ao longo da elaboração do quadro, Churchill percebe a sua fragilidade. Partindo da (...) descrição dessa cena fictícia, mas baseada em fatos reais, serão analisadas as representações da velhice masculina na modernidade, com o intuito de discutir o quanto a experiência etária se torna complexa no mundo capitalista, alterando o campo simbólico e dando novos significados para o papel do idoso na sociedade contemporânea. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between Churchill’s view of Britain as the home of freedom and his broader conception of Western/European civilization. It considers: first, his attitude to Classical learning and culture; second, his experiences of European travel; and third, his attitude to the Bolsheviks (as much as the Nazis) as the barbaric antithesis of civilization. It is argued that his vision of the European future was linked both to his own experiences of free and civilized travel in the (...) Nineteenth Century and a growing scepticism about the speedier and more globalized locomotion of the Twentieth. Moreover, Churchill’s late-life commitment to the virtues of Classical learning, about which he had previously been sceptical, was connected to his post-WWII enthusiasm for European unity. He believed that a united Europe could act as a vehicle for spiritual and cultural values passed down from the ancient world which themselves had become a part of the continent’s Christian heritage. Although it has rightly been pointed out that Churchill was not a conventional religious believer, he still conceived ‘Christendom’ as a significant geopolitical space (with flexible boundaries) and he saw it as the spiritual inheritor of Greece and Rome. (shrink)

Winston Churchill once asserted . In this conception, democracy is , something that is not good but is less bad than its alternatives. This study offers a rigorous test of this concept in the context of East Asia. Analysis of the East Asia Barometer surveys conducted in five new democracies in the region reveals that small minorities of these countries actually perceive the current democratic regime as a lesser evil. A large majority of these , moreover, refuse to (...) support democracy fully. On the basis of these findings, we argue that the Churchillian lesser-evil notion of democracy has limited utility as an alternative paradigm for the study of democratization among ordinary citizens. (shrink)

Winston Churchill said of democracy that it was ‘the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ The same could be said of liberalism. While liberalism displays an unfailing optimism with regard to the capacity of human beings to make themselves ‘masters and possessors of nature’, it displays a profound pessimism when it comes to appreciating their moral capacity to build a decent world for themselves. As Michea shows, (...) the roots of this pessimism lie in the idea – an eminently modern one – that the desire to establish the reign of the Good lies at the origin of all the ills besetting the human race. Liberalism’s critique of the ‘tyranny of the Good’ naturally had its costs. It created a view of modern politics as a purely negative art – that of defining the least bad society possible. It is in this sense that liberalism has to be understood, and understands itself, as the ‘politics of lesser evil’. By unravelling the logic that lies at the heart of the liberal project, Michea is able to shed fresh light on one of the key ideas that have shaped the civilization of the West. (shrink)

In 1947, Winston Churchill looked out on the ruin in which Europe lay after the experience of totalitarian rule the continent had just survived and famously remarked: "Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time (...) to time" (1). This commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of SubStance's founding offers an opportunity to reflect on the perils of our contemporary world where we are seeing actual and aspiring autocrats assailing democratic rule with a vigor not seen in the Western... Read More. (shrink)

America is a wonderful and magnificent country that affords its citizens the broadest freedoms and the greatest prosperity in the world. But it also has its share of warts. It is embroiled in a war that many of its citizens consider unjust and even illegal. It continues to ravage the natural environment and ignore poverty both at home and abroad, and its culture is increasingly driven by materialism and consumerism. But America, for better or for worse, is still a nation (...) that we have built. So why then, asks Albert Borgmann in this most timely and urgent work, are we failing to take responsibility for it? In Real American Ethics , Borgmann asks us to reevaluate our role in the making of American values. Taking his cue from Winston Churchill—who once observed that we shape our buildings, and then our buildings shape us—Borgmann considers the power of our most enduring institutions and the condition of our present moral makeup to propose inspired new ways in which we, as ordinary citizens, can act to improve our country. This, he shows, includes everything from where we choose to live and what we spend our money on to daunting tasks like the reshaping of our cities—habits and actions that can guide us to more accomplished and virtuous lives. Using prose that is easy and direct throughout, Borgmann’s position is grounded neither by conservative nor liberal ideology, but in his understanding that he is a devoted citizen among many. In an age in which the blame game is the only game in town, this patriotic book is an eloquent reminder of the political strength we all wield when we work together. (shrink)

After experiments with various economic systems, we appear to have conceded, to misquote Winston Churchill that "free enterprise is the worst economic system, except all the others that have been tried." Affirming that conclusion, I shall argue that in today's expanding global economy, we need to revisit our mind-sets about corporate governance and leadership to fit what will be new kinds of free enterprise. The aim is to develop a values-based model for corporate governance in this age of (...) globalization that will be appropriate in a variety of challenging cultural and economic settings. I shall present an analysis of mental models from a social constructivist perspective. I shall then develop the notion of moral imagination as one way to revisit traditional mind-sets about values-based corporate governance and outline what I mean by systems thinking. I shall conclude with examples for modeling corporate governance in multi-cultural settings and draw tentative conclusions about globalization. (shrink)

The author traces the thought of George Santayana, Brad S. Gregory, Pierre Manent, and Rémi Brague, who addressed the transformation of the West into its modern present. They all show that by being cut off from its cultural and political inheritance in modern times, Western Civilization presently finds itself in a burning need of recovering its identity. To save its identity, the West is to challenge the errors of modernity. We used to have the example of Winston Churchill (...) and Charles de Gaulle in the darkest hours of World War II, and the remarkable example of John Paul II who through his leadership of the Solidarity movement inspired hope not only in his own people but also for others in the Soviet bloc at the time. “The cultural task awaiting Europe,” to use a phrase of Rémi Brague, challenging though it may be, may in time find its voice in another Churchill or John Paul II. At present, with no remedy in sight, all we can do is to hope. (shrink)

This remarkable collection contains Isaiah Berlin's appreciations of seventeen people of unusual distinction in the intellectual or political world, sometimes both. The names of many of them are familiar: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, and others. With the exception of Roosevelt, he met them all and knew many of them well. For this expanded edition, four new portraits have been added, including those of Virginia Woolf and Edmund Wilson. This volume also contains a vivid (...) and moving account of Berlin's meetings in Russia with Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova in 1945 and 1956. Perhaps the most fascinating of these "personal impressions" is found in the epilogue, where Berlin describes the three strands in his own personality: Russian, English, and Jewish. (shrink)

We can characterise modern democracies of the Western type as Hobbesian democracies.1 In a modern democracy the State is a political Sovereign of the Hobbesian kind, enjoying a constitutional authority that for all practical purposes is absolute, having the potential of reaching every nook and cranny of its subjects’ life and work. Its authority is restrained only by the requirement of respect for certain formalities and procedures, and the lingering memory of something called the rule of law.2 Hobbesian democracy’s peculiar (...) characteristic, of course, is that at least some of the people to whom the sovereign power of the State is entrusted are elected by secret ballot under a rule of universal suffrage. Winston Churchill said that ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others’.3 He had a point: democracy is the worst form of totalitarian government except for all the others. However, why should we put up with any government that not only has virtually unlimited or absolute constitutional powers (as in an absolutist regime) but also uses them to regulate and tax everything and everybody within the territory under its control (as in a totalitarian regime4)? As we shall see, there are good reasons for saying that Hobbesian democracy is among the worst forms of government.. (shrink)

In this original new study, Grant Havers critically interprets Leo Strauss’s political philosophy from a conservative perspective. Most mainstream readers of Strauss have either condemned him from the Left as an extreme right-wing opponent of liberal democracy or celebrated him from the Right as a traditional defender of Western civilization. Rejecting both of these portrayals, Havers shifts the debate beyond the conventional parameters of our age. He persuasively shows that Strauss was neither a man of the Far Right nor a (...) conservative. He was in fact a secular Cold War liberal who taught his followers to uphold Anglo-American democracy as the one true universal regime that does not need a specifically Christian foundation. Strauss firmly rejects the traditional conservative view held by Edmund Burke that Anglo-American democracy needs the leavening influence of Christian morality. Havers maintains that Strauss’s refusal to recognize the role of Christianity in shaping Western civilization, though historically unjustified, is crucial to Strauss and the Straussian portrayal of Anglo-American democracy. In the Straussian view, the Anglo-American ideals of liberty, equality, and constitutional government owe more to the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle than to the Christian tradition. In the process, Havers argues, Straussians end up rewriting history by falsely idealizing the ancient Greeks as the forerunners of modern liberal democracy, despite the Greek toleration of practices such as slavery and infanticide. Straussians also misrepresent statesmen of the Anglo-American political tradition such as Abraham Lincoln and Sir Winston Churchill as heirs to the ancient Greek tradition of statecraft, despite their indebtedness to Christianity. Havers contends that the most troubling implication of Straussianism is that it provides an ideological rationale for the aggressive spread of democratic values on a global basis while ignoring the preconditions that make these values possible. Concepts such as the rule of law, constitutional government, Christian morality, and the separation of church and state are not easily transplanted beyond the historic confines of Anglo-American civilization, as recent wars to spread democracy in the Middle East and Central Asia have demonstrated. This excellent study will be of interest not only to longtime readers of Strauss but also philosophers, political scientists, historians, religious studies scholars, and theologians. (shrink)

Philosophers’ intuitions about what constitutes autonomy are largely driven by the exemplars or paradigms that we recognize. There are indefinitely many exemplars, inasmuch as there are relatively private personae that serve as autonomy exemplars such as our parents, third grade teacher, or, for the megalomaniac, oneself. But among Western philosophers there are doubtless some exemplars that are widely shared and broadly influential. Philosophical exemplars include Socrates, Aristotle’s magnanimous man, Kant’s noumenal self that is perfectly attuned to the moral law, Mill’s (...) anti-authoritarian non-conformist, Marx’s manin-society, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and Sartre’s authentic youth who must decide whether to join the French resistance or stay at home for the sake of his mother. Exemplars from outside of philosophy include Antigone, Christ, Faust, Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, Winston Churchill, and even figures from popular culture such as the baseball player Ted Williams, the free spirited flower children of the 1960s, and practically any character that John Wayne ever played. (shrink)

Lasnik’s review of the Minimalist program in syntax [1] offers cognitive scientists help in navigating some of the arcana of the current theoretical thinking in transformational generative grammar. One may observe, however, that this journey is more like a taxi ride gone bad than a free tour: it is the driver who decides on the itinerary, and questioning his choice may get you kicked out. Meanwhile, the meter in the cab of the generative theory of grammar is running, and has (...) been since the publication of Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957. The fare that it ran up is none the less daunting for the detours made in his Aspects of Theory of Syntax in 1965, Government and Binding in 1981, and now The Minimalist Program, in 1995. Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, it seems like never in the field of cognitive science was so much owed by so many of us to so few. For most of us in the cognitive sciences this situation will appear quite benign, if we realize that it is the generative linguists who should by rights be paying this bill. The reason for that is simple and is well known in the philosophy of science: putting forward a theory is like taking out a loan, to be repayed by gleaning an empirical basis for it; theories that fail to do so are declared bankrupt. In the sciences of the mind, this maxim translates into the need to demonstrate the psychological, and, eventually, the neurobiological, reality of the theoretical constructs. Many examples of this process can be found in the study of human vision, where, as in language, direct observation of the underlying mechanisms is difficult; for instance, the concept of multiple parallel spatial frequency channels, introduced in the late 1960s, was completely vindicated by purely behavioral means over the following decade; see, e.g., [2]. In linguistics, the nature of the requisite evidence is well described by Townsend and Bever: “What do we test today if we want to explore the behavioral implications of syntax?. (shrink)

Today, the concept of democracy seems inextricably linked with that of universal suffrage. But is it true? To let that anyone with a given age has the right to vote is a very good democratic practice, or would prefer to question the criteria for access to this right, perhaps to develop new systems? The current crisis of democracy in the Western world is symptomatic of a detriment of the political consciousness of the people? And yet it is very likely to (...) be admissible and that only from the mass, the large numbers, rises the better choices? In this paper I try to answer these questions, drawing from personal opinions and thoughts, which I hope will inspire questions and curiosity in those who, like me, believes that any system is always perfectible, and that its aim should be to that perfection, without fear of asking uncomfortable questions. Personally, in fact, I can accept democracy as “the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”, to quote a famous statement by Winston Churchill. But not for that I give up, and I try other ways. Ways that are more satisfying, more fair and keep us away from the horrors that only an angry mob can do. (shrink)

Edmund Burke : apologist for Judaism? -- George Eliot : the wisdom of Dorothea -- Jane Austen : the education of Emma -- Charles Dickens : "a low writer" -- Benjamin Disraeli : the Tory imagination -- John Stuart Mill : the other Mill -- Walter Bagehot : "a divided nature" -- John Buchan : an untimely appreciation -- The Knoxes : a God-haunted family -- Michael Oakeshott : the conservative disposition -- Winston Churchill : "quite simply, a (...) great man" -- Lionel Trilling : the moral imagination. (shrink)

Collections demand great care. In any attempt to select, sift, and/or package the literary efforts of a major literary figure, whatever is included will be debated and found wanting. For example, what short stories of Ernest Hemingway or sonnets of William Shakespeare or pithy comments of Winston Churchill would make up a selected collection? The choices and possibilities are numerous, and the possible repercussions mind bending. Arguments are sure to ensue, and even like-minded advocates will fiercely debate the (...) inclusion or exclusion of a specific work.Renowned French mathematician Jules Henri Poincare mused to colleague Lord Bertrand Russell that “Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a... (shrink)

Dr Ward of Knox College obviously considers himself a sophisticated fellow. You can tell by the humorous yet statesmanlike tone of his article 'Psst … wanna hear a conspiracy theory?' (ODT 29/6/06). 'It is important', he thinks 'in dialoguing with conspiracy thinking, not just to refute it … but to ask why is it that people are believing this theory?' This apparently 'would create a much healthier dialogue than the shouting past each other that often seems to take place.' In (...) other words, in addition to refuting conspiracy theories (which he takes for granted can usually be done) we should offer diagnoses of the ideological obsessions underlying the conspiracy theorists' errors. I'm not so sure that this procedure would really promote the healthy dialogue that he desires (since conspiracy theorists might find it a little patronizing). But what is really wrong with his article is not his patronizing proposal but the bland assumption on which his article is based that of course conspiracy theories are false or foolish simply because they are conspiracy theories. So far from being the sophisticated view this is one of the most dangerous and idiotic ideas to disgrace our political culture. Strong words, these, so I had better back them up. Let's start with 'idiotic'. A conspiracy is a secret plan to influence events by partly covert action. Conspiracies are not necessarily wrong - there can be conspiracies in the public interest as when Stauffenberg and his associates conspired to murder Hitler or when leading civil servants conspired to leak information to Winston Churchill (then on the back benches) about the looming Nazi threat - but we generally talk of conspiracy when the secret plan in question seems morally questionable, at least to some people. (If nobody disapproved, there would be no need to keep the plan a secret!) A conspiracy theory is a theory which endeavours to explain some set of events by postulating a conspiracy, successful or otherwise.. (shrink)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that great works of literature have an impact on people's lives. Well known literary characters—Oedipus, Hamlet, Faustus, Don Quixote—acquire iconic or mythic status and their stories, in more or less detail, are revered and recalled often in contexts far beyond the strictly literary. At the level of national literatures, familiar characters and plots are assimilated into a wider cultural consciousness and help define national stereotypes and norms of behaviour. In the English speaking world, Shakespeare's (...) plays or the novels of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Dickens, and Trollope, provide imaginative material that reverberates in people's lives every bit as much as do the great historical figures, like Julius Caesar, Elizabeth I, Horatio Nelson, or Winston Churchill. What is striking is how often fictional characters from the literary tradition—like the well-loved Elizabeth Bennett, Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, Pip, Tess of the d'Ubervilles—enter readers' lives at a highly personal level. They become, as Martha Nussbaum puts it, our ‘friends’, and for many readers the lives of these characters become closely entwined with their own. Happy and unhappy incidents in the fictional worlds are held up against similar incidents in the real lives of readers and such readers take inspiration from the courage, ingenuity, or good fortune of their fictional heroines and heroes. Nowhere is it more true that life imitates art. (shrink)

‘History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it,’ Winston Churchill is famously said to have quipped. That he never seems to have actually made this comment is beside the point, since the message is important: past events never speak for themselves. Facts do not settle like rocks in a dry river, but are moved, displaced, and replaced by waters that continue to gush. The currents and their temperates are sensetative to mores, signs of their (...) times. And the keepers of the waters, more often than not, are historians. This special issue is devoted to new directions in the historiography of genetics, a field that has seen particularly lively drift, swirl, and surge in recent decades. (shrink)

Harry V. Jaffa (1918-2015), professor at Claremont McKenna College and Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute, was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. His hundreds of students have reached positions of power and prestige throughout the intellectual and political world, including the Supreme Court and the Trump White House. Jaffa authored Barry Goldwater's famous 1964 Republican Convention speech which declared, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is (...) no virtue." William F. Buckley, Jaffa's close friend and a key figure in shaping the modern conservative movement, wrote, "If you think it is hard arguing with Harry Jaffa, try agreeing with him." His widely acclaimed book Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1959), was the first scholarly work to treat Abraham Lincoln as a serious philosophic thinker. As the earliest protégé of the controversial scholar Leo Strauss, Jaffa turned his theoretical insights to understanding the United States as the "best regime" in principle. He saw the American Revolution and the Civil War as world-historical events that revealed the true nature of politics. Statesmanship, constitutional government, and the virtues of republican citizenship are keys to unlocking the most important truths of political philosophy. Jaffa's student, Glenn Ellmers, was given complete access to Jaffa's private papers at Hillsdale College to produce the first comprehensive examination of his teacher's vast body of work. In addition to Lincoln and the founding fathers, the book shares Jaffa's profound insights into Aristotle, Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, and more. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:February 19, 2011 (11:48 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3002\russell 30,2 040 red.wpd Reviews 179 THE EARLY “IRON CURTAIN” Michael D. Stevenson Schulich School of Business, York U. / Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. Toronto, on m3j 1p3 / Hamilton, on l8s 4l6, Canada [email protected] Patrick Wright. Iron Curtain: from Stage to Cold War. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2007. Pp. xvii, 488. isbn 978-0-19-923150-8. £18.99 (hb); £12.99 (pb). In his famous Westminster College (...) address on 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill Wred one of the opening salvos of the Cold War by proclaiming that from “Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain” had been lowered across Europe. Patrick Wright’s intriguing and provocative book does not examine the phrase “iron curtain” in its popular Cold War context. Instead, he maintains that many characteristics of this metaphor, “including the pronounced sense of theatricality it would bring to international politics, were inherited from the period before the Second World War” (p. 18). Wright divides Iron Curtain into two primary chronological sections, the Wrst covering the period from 1914 to 1920. An iron curtain originally referred to the steel safety screen that descended in English theatres, beginning in the lateeighteenth century, to separate the audience from the often catastrophic Wres that broke out on the stage. The phrase entered the lexicon of international relations in January 1915 when British author and paciWst Violet Page (writing under the pseudonym Vernon Lee) published an article lamenting that “War’s cruelties and recriminations, War’s monstrous iron curtain” (p. 80) had alienated European nations such as England and Germany sharing a common cultural heritage. But the barrier quickly moved east in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution and “took the form not just of exaggerated political rhetoric, but of an economic blockade enforced by naval power” (p. 171), as the Allies sought to contain the infection of Bolshevism. Wright devotes most attention in this section to documenting the 1920 visit to Russia by the British delegation jointly sponsored by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, which sought to penetrate the dense fog of Allied anti-Bolshevik propaganda and validate the delegation members’ own preconceived views about the nascent socialist utopia in Russia. British delegates witnessed images both of progress carefully stagemanaged by their hosts and of terrible economic dislocation and poverty caused by the Allied blockade and the civil war, which allowed the majority of them to return home to lavish praise on the Soviet experiment that would, in their minds, inevitably fulWl its potential once the Bolshevik government became stable. February 19, 2011 (11:48 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3002\russell 30,2 040 red.wpd 180 Reviews 1 “The Future of Europe”, European AVairsz 1, no. 1 (April 1949): 3. The second section of Wright’s book examines Western reports of life behind the iron curtain between 1920 and 1939. Here, the author focuses heavily on the theatrical nature of Soviet attempts to create modern-day Potemkin villages that werez—zwith a limited number of exceptionsz—zaccepted as reality by an endless parade of left-wing visitors. A second British Trades Union Congress delegation in 1924, for example, received a dramatically embellished picture of Soviet economic progress that included a train journey past a long-abandoned factory belching smoke created by burning wet straw frantically provided by Russian peasants; the resulting report of the delegation “repeatedly collapsed into the most abject conformity with the Soviet view of reality” (p. 245). The most tragic examples of Western visitors’ blindness to the truth occurred during the 1930s famine deliberately induced by Stalin, and Wright exposes a wide cast of characters who adopted a blinkered view of conditions in the ussr. Among intellectuals, Wright documents the 1931 visit of George Bernard Shaw, who cavalierly dismissed reports of widespread food shortages while dining sumptuously in Moscow’s Hotel Metropole. Among journalists, Wright develops the case of Walter Duranty, the New York Timesz correspondent who knuckled under to demands of Soviet censors to produce sanitized accounts denying or ignoring the famine in order to protect his privileged place in that... (shrink)

The variety of languages in the world is considered a curse by some, who view the phenomenon as a Tower of Babel. Others consider it the most characteristic quality of human language as opposed to animal languages, which are supposedly species specific. The variety is viewed as a symptom of human caprice, arbitrariness, or dependence on mere historical accident by some; and as a symptom of human freedom and of the creative aspect of language by others. And, of course, the (...) human limitation caused by the variety of languages and the peculiarities of traditions within languages, as instanced by Sir Winston Churchill's The History of the English Speaking People, are again viewed by different thinkers from different philosophical viewpoints. (shrink)

Si pretendemos interpretar el significado de “Bu” con el pensamiento y las ideas actuales, dicha letra representaría el concepto de violencia, de la magnitud de una masacre. Esto es algo similar a la ficción que supone la tecnología que Winston-Churchill, narra en su obra sobre la Crisis Mundial, donde una sola llamada de teléfono podía hacer que miles de soldados mujeres y niños murieran, empujando de este modo a la humanidad al borde de la extinción. La Constitución de (...) Japón, que proclama la amenaza permanente de “La intimidación o el uso de la fuerza”, ilustra claramente este razonamiento. Nuestra guerra moderna en realidad implica poco más que derrotar la tecnología enemiga pero, el concepto que encierra la letra “Bu” no es tan mecánico ni superficial. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CHARITY LOST: TBE SECtJLA'.RIZATfON OF THE PRINCIPLE OF DOUBLE EFFECT IN THE JUST-WAR TRADITION TIMOTHY M. RENICK Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia 0 N AUGUST 12, 1945, the city of Hiroshima still smoldered, and President Harry Truman addressed the American people : We have used [the atomic bomb] against those who have attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American (...) prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war.1 Truman and his military advisers had made a calculation. Japan was preparing for a last-ditch defense of the Japanese Islands. The prospect was ominous, to say the least. The United States had suffered eighty thousand casualties in the taking of the smaller and less protected Okinawa just two months earlier; 120,000 Japanese soldiers had been killed (and only ten-thousand taken prisoner). Strategists estimated that losses, both military and civilian, from a full scale battle for Japan itself would exceed one million. Surely the tens of thousands killed by exploding a bomb over Hiroshima was the lesser evil. Surely this was a proportionate act : fifty thousand lives traded for a million. As Winston Churchill wrote in support of Truman's decision: "To avert a vast, indefinite butchery... at the cost of a few explosions seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance." 2 1 Michael Walzer, lust and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p.164. 2 Ibid., pp. 266-267. 441 442 TIMOTHY M. RENICK From an ethical perspective, however, the act was anything but a deliverance. I am not alone in this assessment. Advocates of the just-war tradition including Elizabeth Anscombe, Paul Ramsey, George Kennan, John Langan, and Michael Walzer have condemned the bombing of Hiroshima by means of a shared just-war argument.8 The argument goes as follows, and it is a good one. In times of war, many actions are likely to have both good and evil effects. One destroys an enemy's munitions factory (good effect) but kills an innocent child in the process (evil effect). The jus in bello of the just-war tradition, however, stipulates that an action which has a " double effect " is permissible if and only if: ( 1) it is discriminate (i.e., the actor aims only at the good effect and does not intend the evil effect, nor is the evil effect a means to the end, however good); and (2) it is proportionate (i.e., the good created by the act outweighs the bad).4 Now, the argument continues, Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima failed the first criterion. It was not a discriminate act because the evil effect (the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians) was not unintended. In fact, the evil was the very means to the good end. Although Truman himself claimed to have selected Hiroshima as a target because it was "a war s See, for example, G. E. M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Decision," in Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1981); M. Walzer "Supreme Emergency," in Just and Unjust Wars; and John Langan, "The American Hierarchy and Nuclear Weapons," Theological Studies 43 (1982) : 447-467. ' I utilize here a helpful shorthand version of the principle of double effect introduced by Paul Ramsey in War and the Christian Conscience (Durham, North Carolina: Duke, 1961). More frequently, the principle is rendered by means of four criteria: It is permissible to perform an act likely to have evil consequences if and only if (I) the act is good in itself or at least indifferent; (2) the direct effect is morally justified; (3) the actor aims only at the acceptable effect and does not intend the evil effect, nor is the evil effect a means to the end, however good ; and (4) there is in the good effect a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect. The shortened version of the theory captures all components essential to my discussion and enhances clarity. I thus will make use of it throughout this essay. CHARITY AND... (shrink)

The main aim of this political philosophy study is to analyze the two fundamental ideas developed by Jean Monnet, namely, the idea of a federally united Europe and its sovereignty. This analysis is combined with an attempt to capture at least some of the essential assumptions of his philosophical ideas and their evolution. The source materials on which the article is based are primarily Monnet’s Memories, his notes and official memoranda, the correspondence from the war and postwar period and the (...) speeches he gave as the President of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952-1955. They were supplemented with Memorandum of Aristide Briand, the speech of Winston Churchill in Zurich, Convention for European Economic Cooperation and Erinnerungen 1945-1953 by Konrad Adenauer. When it comes to literature, the author referred to the extensive bibliography on the subject contained in Suwerenność by Jacek Czaputowicz. The study uses the method of multidisciplinary analysis of sources and their historical, political and philosophical interpretation. The research conducted allows us to speak of certain philosophical assumptions in Monnet’s thinking about a united Europe and its future. Among the main components of his understanding we can enumerate: necessity, change, specific strength, development in stages and incompleteness which is essentially characteristic to nature. The carried out analysis also allows us to formulate the hypothesis about Monnet’s philosophy of life and action, which can be understood as a certain phenomenology of the community in its becoming, and to situate it, at least partially, within the framework of the phenomenology of Europe as formulated by Erich Przywara in this treatise Idee Europe. (shrink)

Voltaire called fanaticism the "monster that pretends to be the child of religion". Philosophers, politicians, and cultural critics have decried fanaticism and attempted to define the distinctive qualities of the fanatic, whom Winston Churchill described as "someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject". Yet despite fanaticism's role in the long history of social discord, human conflict, and political violence, it remains a relatively neglected topic in the history of philosophy. In this outstanding inquiry into (...) the philosophical history of fanaticism a team of international contributors examine the topic from antiquity to the present day. Organised into four sections, topics covered include: Fanaticism in ancient Greek, Indian and Chinese philosophy; Fanaticism and superstition from Hobbes to Hume, including chapters on Locke and Montesquieu, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson; Kant, Germaine de Stael, Hegel, Nietzsche, William James, and Jorge Portilla on fanaticism; Fanaticism and terrorism; and extremism and gender, including the philosophy and morality of the 'manosphere'; Closed-mindedness and political and epistemological fanaticism. Spanning themes from superstition, enthusiasm and misanthropy to the emotions, purity and the need for certainty, Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy is a landmark volume for anyone researching and teaching the history of philosophy, particularly ethics and moral philosophy. It is also a valuable resource for those studying fanaticism in related fields such as religion, the history of political thought, sociology, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Considers a cognate issue, which is whether what is immoral can nevertheless be admirable. It is argued that admirable immorality, like dirty hands, does not pose special problems for ethical theories. At the heart of admirable immorality lies a conflict of moral virtues, which is unavoidable and necessitates conflict. Looks at two case studies, the painter Paul Gauguin and Winston Churchill.

Past and Present brings together almost two dozen newly collected essays by the distinguished American historian and cultural critic, Gertrude Himmelfarb. Their common theme is the intriguing, often unexpected ways in which the past illuminates the present. The novelist William Faulkner wrote that "The past is never dead. It's not even past." In these essays, Himmelfarb shows the truth of this statement. She helps us find a new perspective on contemporary issues by bringing to bear a trenchant analysis of debates (...) and thinkers of the past. She allows the past to inform the present without distorting either past or present. The essays, unified by the common theme of present and past, are varied. The topics range from the disorders of modern democracy to the challenges of postmodernism, from the Victorian ethos to the Jewish question. The thinkers range from Edmund Burke to Leo Strauss, from Cardinal Newman to Lionel Trilling. The political figures range from Benjamin Disraeli to Winston Churchill, from the American founders to Queen Elizabeth II. The underlying premise and principle of the essays is the conviction that the pursuit of knowledge and truth, however difficult or discomforting, eminently matters, in the "practical life,"as Trilling put it,as in the "moral life."Past and Presentis a notable contribution to this endeavor-to understanding where we have been, where we are now, and where we may be-or should be-going. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Political Emotions: Aristotle and the Symphony of Reason and EmotionJason IngramPolitical Emotions: Aristotle and the Symphony of Reason and Emotion by Marlene K. Sokolon. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006. Pp. ix + 217. $38.00, cloth.In this book Marlene Sokolon develops Aristotle's theme that virtue, both individual and social, consists of a harmonious interplay of reason and emotion. The nine chapters of Political Emotions: Aristotle and the (...) Symphony of Reason and Emotion argue for the continued relevance of Aristotle's work. The first chapter uses the metaphor of a symphony to outline Aristotle's view of emotions as necessary to the proper exercise of reason in a good society. Reason should not master emotion, Sokolon explains, but, rather, should function like a parent to train good emotional responses. Emotions are inherently political and can enrich or endanger a political order depending on how they are modulated. The second chapter assesses Aristotle's fit with current research into emotion by discussing areas where his conclusions are consistent with contemporary findings. Emotions are not reducible either to thought or to physiological reactions, they have a social component, and they involve judgments as well as perceptions. Chapters 3 through 9 consider particular emotions, following Aristotle's Rhetoric to illustrate their political and rhetorical components. Emotions have a Janus face, in that they can present a beneficial or a baneful aspect. The final chapter and conclusion connect Aristotle's account to recent work in political science, suggesting lines of future research. Aristotle's narrative provides [End Page 92] topics for understanding how reason can transform emotions, as well as how emotions can distort or improve deliberation.The book is not about rhetoric, though Sokolon weaves rhetoric's capacity to shape judgment and perception, thereby altering emotions and their intensity, into her discussion of each emotion. She explains that persuasive speech can "turn" emotional judgments and draws a parallel between rhetoric's capacity to induce audiences to adopt emotions and reason's ability to persuade individual emotional response (20). Emotions such as anger, love, fear, and even shame have roles to play in a good society. For example, anger against tyranny can provide a valuable spur to change, while well-grounded fear can motivate effective self-defense. Sokolon begins her account by discussing anger's possible merit in political decision making and ends by considering how emotions such as anger can motivate attempts to overthrow tyranny. Aristotle thus redeems seemingly negative emotions in the process of explaining their political value. Because they are potentially so powerful and because they shape perception and judgment, emotions pose threats. Love in the form of civic friendship provides an essential foundation for community stability, but excessive love can corrupt judgment by fostering improper partiality. Therefore Aristotle considers emotions such as love and hate to be limited goods. The idea that a moderate amount of hate can be good for a just society seems to strike a jarring note today, given hatred's propensity to breed bigotry, but Aristotle has in mind hatred of flatterers and the unjust.Emotions are "Janus-like" in that they can be helpful or harmful depending on how they are activated and habituated. Sokolon reiterates the idea that a good society will cultivate habits to modulate emotional response based on reason to explain each emotion's dangerous and productive potential. For example, excessive fear can corrupt deliberation, and excessive confidence can lead to disaster. A "middle" between extremes can habituate individuals to desire justice and motivate appropriate action: without appropriate confidence soldiers will not fight, and without appropriate fear citizens will not provide sufficient means of defense. However, the formal notion that we should search out a virtuous mean for each emotion based on our character and context typically lacks substantive content; the extent to which Aristotle's work might help contemporary audiences to sustain such virtue remains mostly implicit. What counts as proper emotional habituation will be radically contingent, and the book's aim is not to describe contemporary political regimes or to offer interventions. Nonetheless Sokolon sprinkles brief discussion of keystone speeches by [End Page 93] leaders such as Susan B. Anthony, Winston Churchill, Frederick Douglass... (shrink)

Dr Ward of Knox College obviously considers himself a sophisticated fellow. You can tell by the humorous yet statesmanlike tone of his article 'Psst … wanna hear a conspiracy theory?' (ODT 29/6/06). 'It is important', he thinks 'in dialoguing with conspiracy thinking, not just to refute it … but to ask why is it that people are believing this theory?' This apparently 'would create a much healthier dialogue than the shouting past each other that often seems to take place.' In (...) other words, in addition to refuting conspiracy theories (which he takes for granted can usually be done) we should offer diagnoses of the ideological obsessions underlying the conspiracy theorists' errors. I'm not so sure that this procedure would really promote the healthy dialogue that he desires (since conspiracy theorists might find it a little patronizing). But what is really wrong with his article is not his patronizing proposal but the bland assumption on which his article is based that of course conspiracy theories are false or foolish simply because they are conspiracy theories. So far from being the sophisticated view this is one of the most dangerous and idiotic ideas to disgrace our political culture. Strong words, these, so I had better back them up. Let's start with 'idiotic'. A conspiracy is a secret plan to influence events by partly covert action. Conspiracies are not necessarily wrong - there can be conspiracies in the public interest as when Stauffenberg and his associates conspired to murder Hitler or when leading civil servants conspired to leak information to Winston Churchill (then on the back benches) about the looming Nazi threat - but we generally talk of conspiracy when the secret plan in question seems morally questionable, at least to some people. (If nobody disapproved, there would be no need to keep the plan a secret!) A conspiracy theory is a theory which endeavours to explain some set of events by postulating a conspiracy, successful or otherwise.. (shrink)

Karl R. Popper: The open society and its enemies -- Ralf Dahrendorf: Liberty and civil society -- Raymond Plant: Social welfare without class warfare -- Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving Kristol: The moral imagination -- Raymond Aron: The opium of the intellectuals -- Friedrich A. Hayek: The constitution of liberty -- Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and pluralism -- Michael J. Oakeshott: The conservative disposition -- Leo Strauss: Relativism and the crisis of modernity -- Edmund Burke: Liberty and duty -- James Madison vs. (...) Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Two views of self-government -- Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America -- Winston S. Churchill: The English-Speaking Peoples and the Free World -- Limited and accountable Government -- Two kinds of rationalism -- Liberty as conversation. (shrink)

Being a patient and living a life -- Clinical space and traits of healing -- False starts and frequent failures -- Three journeys : A.'Ibuprofen and love', B. 'Staying tuned up', C. 'We all want the same things' -- Being a patient : the moral field -- Rethinking healthcare ethics : the patient's moral authority.

Background Diversity in Institutional Review Board (IRB) membership is important for both intrinsic and instrumental reasons, including fairness, promoting trust, improving decision quality, and responding to systemic racism. Yet U.S. IRBs remain racially and ethnically homogeneous, even as gender diversity has improved. Little is known about IRB chairpersons’ perspectives on membership diversity and barriers to increasing it, as well as current institutional efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within IRB membership.Methods We surveyed IRB chairpersons leading U.S. boards registered (...) with the Office for Human Research Protections. Here, we focus exclusively on responses from a subset of 388 chairpersons of IRBs at universities and academic medical centers (AMCs).Results Board chairs were predominantly white and evenly split between men and women. Only about half reported that their boards had at least one member who is Black or African American (51%), Asian (56%), or Hispanic (48%), with 85% of university/AMC boards comprised entirely (15%) or mostly (70%) of white members. Most IRB chairpersons (64%) reported satisfaction with the current diversity of their membership. Participants largely agreed that considering diversity in the selection of IRB members is important (91%), including to improve the quality of IRB deliberation (80%), with an emphasis on racial/ethnic (85%) and gender diversity (74%). Most participants (80%) reported some type of active DEI effort regarding board membership at their university/AMC and just over half (57%) expressed satisfaction with these efforts.Conclusions Our national survey found that although university/AMC IRB chairpersons report valuing diversity in board membership, it may be lacking in key areas. Going forward, it will be important to specify clear reasons for diversity in the IRB context, as well to establish targets for acceptable levels of board diversity and to match DEI efforts to those targets. (shrink)

The equipoise requirement in clinical research demands that, if patients are to be randomly assigned to one of two interventions in a clinical trial, there must be genuine doubt about which is better. This reflects the traditional view that physicians must never knowingly compromise the care of their patients, even for the sake of future patients. Equipoise has proven to be deeply problematic, especially in the Third World. Some recent critics have argued against equipoise on the grounds that clinical research (...) is fundamentally distinct from clinical care, and thus should be governed by different norms. I argue against this "difference position," and instead take issue with the traditional, exclusively patient-centered account of physicians' obligations that equipoise presupposes. In place of this traditional view, I propose a Kantian test for the reasonable partiality that physicians should show their patients, focusing on its application in clinical research and medical education. (shrink)

Abstract:How might identity and identity politics inform music teachers' practices and assumptions about disability? In this article, we engage in a critical discussion about how music educators might respond to disability. This article is presented in three parts as a collaborative dialogue between the two authors, using the landscape of identity politics to frame the discussion. In the first part, Warren Churchill discusses Tobin Siebers' theorizing of "the ideology of ability" as it relates to music education's dominant response to (...) disability. Building on his idea of "complex embodiment," Siebers lays out a justification for disabled individuals to actively engage in identity politics for self-advocacy. Churchill connects Siebers' ideology to Joseph Abramo's epistemology of sound. In the second part, Cara Faith Bernard makes a counter-argument against deploying identity politics in the music classroom, drawing upon Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's notion of strategic essentialism to examine its potential risks with regards to music education curricula, in which essentialism may lead to establishing detrimental "best practices" for students. Thereafter, in Part Three, the authors join together to make sense of these seemingly contradictory philosophical outlooks on identity politics, in the hope of furthering conversation about music education's ongoing response to disability. (shrink)

In his response to "The Politics of Rescue," Winston argues that the real dilemma facing the international system is not a question of what form intervention will take, but rather a question of the existence of political will to act on the humanitarian impulse.