In debate over the ethics of deceptive experiments in American psy chology, commentators often provide an inaccurate history of these experiments. This happens especially where writers portray experi mental deception as a necessary accompaniment to human experiments, rather than a conscious choice based on values attached to persons and scientific inquiry. Compounding the error, commentators typically give a misleading portrayal of psychologists' attitudes and procedures. Commentators frequently cite Stanley Milgram's work in the 1960s as a harbinger of changed attitudes towards (...) deception, and suggest that today's psychologists abide by more enlightened ethical practices. It is difficult to find evidence to support this portrayal. (shrink)

The article analyzes arguments, made by John J. Mearsheimer and others, that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was largely caused by Western policy. It finds that these arguments rely on a partially false and incomplete reading of history. To do so, the article identifies a range of premises that are both foundational to Mearsheimer’s claims and based on implied or explicit historical interpretations. This includes the varying policies of Ukraine toward NATO and the EU as well as (...) the changing Russian perceptions thereof; the political upheavals in Ukraine in early 2014 that were immediately succeeded by the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass; and the supposed absence of Russian ‘imperialism’ toward Ukraine prior to 2014. Finding that these interpretations do not hold up in light of relevant and available data, the article qualifies and contextualizes the validity of Mearsheimer’s arguments, points to superior ones, and highlights the need for case-specific expertise when using explanatory theory to make sense of politically salient ongoing events. (shrink)

Historiographic debates keep returning to issues of authorial intention in the interpretation of texts. This paper offers a response to these debates by differentiating between two versions of intentionalism, termed 'substantive intentionalism' and 'formal intentionalism', according to two different senses of 'identity' in the thesis that assigned meaning is identified with authorial intention, such that these two versions of intentionalism imply different ontological commitments to what are construed as the relevant authorial intentions. These distinctions and arguments are then related (...) to the 'historical intentionalism' of Quentin Skinner and Mark Bevir. The paper argues that in practice historical intentionalism ends up reproducing the arguments of formal intentionalism, and it concludes by raising questions about the value of intentionalism for historians. (shrink)

The politics of interpretation should not be confused with interpretive practices such as political theory, political commentary, or histories of political institutions, parties, and conflicts that have politics itself as a specific object of interest. In these other interpretive practices, the politics that informs or motivates them—“politics” in the sense of political values or ideology—is relatively easily perceived and no particular meta-interpretive analysis is required. The politics of interpretation, on the other hand, arises in those interpretive practices which (...) are ostensibly most remote from overtly political concerns, practices which are carried out under the aegis of a purely disinterested search for the truth or inquiry into the natures of things which appear to have no political relevance at all. This “politics” has to do with the kind of authority the interpreter claims vis-à-vis the established political authorities of his society, on the one side, and vis-à-vis other interpreters in his own field of study or investigation, on the other, as the basis of whatever rights he conceives himself to possess and whatever duties he feels obligated to discharge as a professional seeker of truth. This politics which presides over interpretive conflicts is difficult to identity because traditionally, in our culture at least, interpretation is thought to operate properly only as long as the interpreter does not have recourse to the one instrument which the politician per vocationem utilizes as a matter of course in his practice—the appeal to force as a means of resolving disputes and conflicts.11. I have followed the lead of Max Weber in defining the phrase “politics of interpretation.” In “Politics as Vocation,” Weber wrote that “ ‘politics’ means for us striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state” . Rather than discuss the age-old problem of the professional interpreter’s political responsibilities, I will consider that politics which is endemic to the pursuit of truth—the striving to share power amongst interpreters themselves. The activity of interpreting becomes political at the point where a given interpreter claims authority over rival interpreters. As long as this claim is not reinforced by appeal to the power of the state to compel conformity of belief or conviction, it is “political” only in a metaphorical sense. Of course, interpretation becomes political when a given point of view or finding is taken as orthodoxy of belief by those holding political power, as in the Soviet Union, Germany under Hitler, or any number of religiously puritanical regimes. But these are the easy cases. It is much more difficult to determine the political nature of interpretive practices which, as in literary criticism or antiquarian scholarship, appear to have no bearing upon political policies or practices.Hayden White is a professor and director of the program in the history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is coeditor of Representing Kenneth Burke and is currently working on a book on the rhetoric of realism. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality" and "The Narrativization of Real Events". (shrink)

This essay focuses on the relationship within western humanism between attitudes toward textual interpretation and views of the human self in an attempt to unsettle the dichotomy between humanist and antihumanist approaches to the past. It has three main parts. First, it uses Umberto Eco's recent reflections on the limits of interpretation to explore current debates about the aims of interpretation. In particular, it asks what it means to frame the problem of interpretation specifically as a (...) problem of establishing limits. Given the many possible vocabularies to compare and evaluate competing hermeneutic approaches, what are the implications of adopting one that speaks in terms of limits, of an "in bounds" and an "out of bounds?" Second, the essay draws on the work of Donna Haraway and Stephanie Jed to argue that a discourse about interpretation that seeks to establish the limits of interpretation excludes as out of bounds precisely those methodological strategies that most effectively analyze the mutually sustaining relationship between assumptions about texts and assumptions about selves. Third, the essay explores the relationship between interpretation and subjectivity at one key historical moment to show how to move beyond the strict dichotomy between humanist and antihumanist assumptions. (shrink)

Recent attempts at preventing the social exclusion of vulnerable children in England have been driven by notions of resilience which centre primarily on changing children so that they may be better able to cope with adversity. Drawing on the concepts of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), we suggest that the idea of resilience should be expanded to include developing a capacity to act on and reshape the social conditions of one’s development. We use evidence from two studies of practices (...) in recent re-configurations of children’s services in England to examine whether practitioners are seeing resilience in these terms. We present examples of work which embody these views but suggest that they are not easily incorporated into practices where expertise is centred on care and clear communication. The care and communication model of practice reflects the emphases given to evolutionary notions of child development while a CHAT view of resilience reflects Vygotsky’s concerns with a dialectic between individuals and the social situations of their development. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 19 This article revisits Edmund Husserl’s philosophy of time in light of the modern standardisation of time. After assessing Husserl’s innovative analysis of the experience of time and raising key issues pertaining to his derivation of objective time from an originary ‘absolute flux of consciousness’, the article addresses potential relationships between this conception of time and the historically unique experience of time based in the rise of modern clock-time. Drawing on insights from the literature within the (...) sociology of time, the article concludes that Husserl’s conception of time both reproduces and rejects certain features of modern time relations. (shrink)

本书循着时间概念的线索对马克思的重要文本进行了解读.作者认为,马克思在不同时期对时间概念的理解水平显示出其哲学思想发展的不同阶段.在对资本主义社会的出色分析中,他既揭示出时间之主体性的存在,也揭示出时 间之客体维度的存在.通过辩证的分析,马克思揭示了资本对劳动时间的剥夺以及它吊诡的文明与野蛮的特征,指明了产生时间异化的基础是资本主义生产方式.

Collaborative work with Robert S. Brumbaugh, first published in 1950. This work, intended as a textbook for undergraduates and also as a reader for the literate layperson, is a survey of Western philosophy from its beginnings until the mid-point of the t20th century. The chapters are divided according to traditional historical markers with Stallknecht and Brumbaugh also providing chapters on the major movements in philosophy from 1850 to 1950, and discussions of moral philosophy as well as symbolic logic.

This book re-theorizes the relationship between pedagogy and play. The authors suggest that pedagogical play is characterized by conceptual reciprocity (a pedagogical approach for supporting children's academic learning through joint play) and agentic imagination (a concept that when present in play, affords the child's motives and imagination a critical role in learning and development). These new concepts are brought to life using a cultural-historical approach to the analysis of play, supported in each chapter by visual narratives used as a (...) research method for re-theorising play as a pedagogical activity. Whenever a cultural-historical approach is applied to understanding pedagogical play, the whole context of the playful event is always included. Further, the child's cultural environment is taken into account in order to better understand their play. Children from different countries play differently for many reasons, which may include their resources, local cultural beliefs about play and specific pedagogical practices. The inclusion and acknowledgement of social, cultural and historical contexts gives credence and value to understanding play from both child and adult perspectives, which the authors believe is important for the child's learning and development. As such, the relationships that children and adults have with human and non-human others, as well as any connections with artefacts and the material environment, are included in all considerations of pedagogical play. (shrink)

Psalms 16, 22, and 110. Historically Interpreted as Referring to Jesus Three Christological Psalms, 16, 22, and 110 are troublesome to modern interpreters as they are used by New Testament writers. Scholars in earlier centuries had little difficulty following the ways these psalms seemed to be counted in the New Testament as predictions of Jesus. This interpretation was continued in the Reformation but is strongly questioned by conservative and critical scholars today. The argument reviews the contextual commentary for important (...) quotations of these psalms in the New Testament, and examines the special content of the psalms to conclude that the earlier interpreters are more trustworthy guides. The unusual New Testament usage and strange content of the psalms warrants the application of exceptional hermeneutical principles to read them properly in the biblical canon. The implications for a Christological reading of these psalms are explored for theological and practical value. (shrink)

Plato's Cretan City is a thorough investigation into the roots of Plato's Laws and a compelling explication of his ideas on legislation and social institutions. A dialogue among three travelers, the Laws proposes a detailed plan for administering a new colony on the island of Crete. In examining this dialogue, Glenn Morrow describes the contemporary Greek institutions in Athens, Crete, and Sparta on which Plato based his model city, and explores the philosopher's proposed regulations concerning property, the family, government, and (...) the administration of justice, education, and religion. He approaches the Laws as both a living document of reform and a philosophical inquiry into humankind's highest earthly duty. (shrink)

The entry of time and history into biological systems of classification is perhaps the single most significant development in the history of biological systematics in the modern era. Darwin's claiming that descent is ‘… the hidden bond of connexion which naturalists have been seeking under the term of the natural system’, rather than seeing the answer in the multitude of previous attempts to resolve the problem in terms of morphological affinities, analogies, and complex relations of resemblance, marked the turning point (...) in a long search into the meaning of biological taxonomy, and allowed the development of Darwin's insights by Haeckel, Plate and others into modern phylogenetic systematics. (shrink)

This dissertation argues for a particular interpretation of John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, namely that Mill is best read as a sanction utilitarian. In general, scholars commonly interpret Mill as some type of act or rule utilitarian. In making their case for these interpretations, it is also common for scholars to use large portions of Mill’s Utilitarianism as the chief source of insight into his moral theory. By contrast, I argue that Utilitarianism is best read as an ecumenical text where (...) Mill explains and defends the general tenets of utilitarianism rather than setting out his own preferred theory. The exception to this ecumenical approach to the text comes in the fifth chapter on justice which, I argue on textual and historical grounds, outlines the central features of Mill’s utilitarianism. -/- With this understanding of Utilitarianism in place, many of the passages commonly cited in favor of the previous interpretations are rendered less plausible, and interpretations emphasizing Mill’s other writings are strengthened. Using this methodology, I critique four of the most prominent act or rule utilitarian interpretations of Mill’s moral theory. I then provide an interpretation of Mill’s theory of moral obligation and utilitarianism. On Mill’s account of moral obligation (which purportedly holds for moral theories generally, not just utilitarianism) there is a tight relation between an action being wrong and it being subject to punishment by an agent’s conscience. The utilitarian aspect of Mill’s theory concerns the role of rules in an agent’s conscience. According to Mill’s sanction utilitarian view, the actions that are punished are those actions that violate the moral rules which, if widely internalized across society, would promote general utility. On this account, an action is wrong when an agent violates a justified moral rule and is properly punished, at least by one’s conscience. An action is right when conditions are such that if the action were not performed, then the action would be properly punished by at least the agent’s conscience. I apply this interpretation to other notable components of Mill’s approach such as his account of practical action (the Art of Life) and his theory of liberty. (shrink)

Analysis of the state and possible options for the development of modern humanities gives the grounds to assert the growing importance of the idea of historicity in culture and philosophy during the 20th and early 21st centuries. In this regard, both the disclosure of the concept of historicity and the substantiation of the significance of the principle of historicity, both for the methodology of historical and philosophical knowledge and for humanitarian knowledge in general become relevant. The author of this (...) article carries out historical and philosophical reconstruction of historical issues in the philosophy of M. Heidegger and reveals the process of converting the idea of historicity into the principle of German existentialism. It is concluded that with the help of historicity M. Heidegger was able to present his own version of phenomenology on an existential basis. Seeing an existential achievement in historicity, M. Heidegger understood by it the direction of existence to the source, tradition, on the basis of this, the intentionality of consciousness was revealed as an essential property of existence: the direction of man as a finite being to its source, which allowed the German philosopher to interpret historicity as a tradition, the existential source of man, and how the temporality of human existence. The author of this article concludes that in the philosophy of M. Heidegger historicity was transformed from an idea into a principle on the basis of which the German philosopher revealed not only the historicity of Dasein, building a fundamental ontology and hermeneutics of factuality, but also tried to solve the problem of the history of being, going beyond the existential philosophy. (shrink)