An incisive and sympathetic examination of the case for ending the practice of imprisonment Despite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are treated without dignity, and sentences are extremely harsh. Mass incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have been widely condemned as neoslavery or “the new Jim Crow.” Can the practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to be ended (...) altogether? In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby examines the abolitionist case against prisons and its formidable challenge to would-be prison reformers. Philosophers have long theorized punishment and its justifications, but they haven’t paid enough attention to incarceration or its related problems in societies structured by racial and economic injustice. Taking up this urgent topic, Shelby argues that prisons, once reformed and under the right circumstances, can be legitimate and effective tools of crime control. Yet he draws on insights from black radicals and leading prison abolitionists, especially Angela Davis, to argue that we should dramatically decrease imprisonment and think beyond bars when responding to the problem of crime. While a world without prisons might be utopian, The Idea of Prison Abolition makes the case that we can make meaningful progress toward this ideal by abolishing the structural injustices that too often lead to crime and its harmful consequences. (shrink)

Mismatch is a prominent concept in evolutionary medicine, and a number of philosophers have published analyses of this concept. The word ‘mismatch’ has been used in a diversity of ways across a range of sciences, leading these authors to regard it as a vague concept in need of philosophical clarification. Here, in contrast, we concentrate on the use of mismatch in modelling and experimentation in evolutionary medicine. This reveals a rigorous theory of mismatch within which the term ‘mismatch’ is indeed (...) used in several ways, not because it is ill defined but because different forms of mismatch are distinguished within the theory. Contemporary evolutionary medicine has unified the idea of ‘evolutionary mismatch’, derived from the older idea of ‘adaptive lag’ in evolution, with ideas about mismatch in development and physiology derived from the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) paradigm. A number of publications in evolutionary medicine have tried to make this theoretical framework explicit. We build on these to present the theory in as simple and general a form as possible. We introduce terminology, largely drawn from the existing literature, to distinguish the different forms of mismatch. This integrative theory of mismatch captures how organisms track environments across space and time on multiple scales in order to maintain an adaptive match to the environment, and how failures of adaptive tracking lead to disease. Mismatch is a productive organizing concept within this theory that helps researchers articulate how physiology, development, and evolution interact with one another and with environmental change to explain health outcomes. (shrink)

How has the concept of wild nature changed over the millennia? And what have been the environmental consequences? In this broad-ranging book Max Oelschlaeger argues that the idea of wilderness has reflected the evolving character of human existence from Paleolithic times to the present day. An intellectual history, it draws together evidence from philosophy, anthropology, theology, literature, ecology, cultural geography, and archaeology to provide a new scientifically and philosophically informed understanding of humankind’s relationship to nature. Oelschlaeger begins by examining (...) the culture of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, whose totems symbolized the idea of organic unity between humankind and wild nature, and idea that the author believes is essential to any attempt to define human potential. He next traces how the transformation of these hunter-gatherers into farmers led to a new awareness of distinctions between humankind and nature, and how Hellenism and Judeo-Christianity later introduced the unprecedented concept that nature was valueless until humanized. Oelschlaeger discusses the concept of wilderness in relation to the rise of classical science and modernism, and shows that opposition to “modernism” arose almost immediately from scientific, literary, and philosophical communities. He provides new and, in some cases, revisionist studies of the seminal American figures Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold, and he gives fresh readings of America’s two prodigious wilderness poets Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder. He concludes with a searching look at the relationship of evolutionary thought to our postmodern effort to reconceptualize ourselves as civilized beings who remain, in some ways, natural animals. (shrink)

This revised edition of The Idea of Private Law makes one of the major works of modern legal theory accessible to a new generation of lawyers and students. It includes a new introduction by the author, looking back at the work, its origins, and its aspirations.

This book consists of prose pieces that find a new form of expression for philosophy, an expression showing the inseparability of idea and prose--the very form of truth.

Since its publication almost 150 years ago, _The Idea of a University_ has had an extraordinary influence on the shaping and goals of higher education. The issues that John Henry Newman raised—the place of religion and moral values in the university setting, the competing claims of liberal and professional education, the character of the academic community, the cultural role of literature, the relation of religion and science—have provoked discussion from Newman's time to our own. This edition of _The (...) class='Hi'>Idea of a University_ includes the full text of "University Teaching" and four selections from "University Subjects," together with five essays by leading scholars that explore the background and the present day relevance of Newman's themes. In the essays Martha Garland discusses the character and organization of the early nineteenth-century English universities upon which Newman based much of his vision; Frank M. Turner traces the impact of Newman's influence during the vast expansion of higher education since World War II; George Marsden investigates how the decreasing emphasis on religion has affected higher education; Sara Castro Klaren examines the implications of Newman's views on education and literature for current debates between proponents of a curriculum based on western civilization and one based on multiculturalism; and George Landow considers what the advent of electronic communication will mean to university teaching, research, and community. To aid accessibility, the edition also includes an analytical table of contents, a chronology and biographical sketch of Newman's life, questions for discussion, expanded notes, and a glossary of names, all of which will help make this the standard teaching text for Newman's work. (shrink)

The most arresting aspect of the Scottish Enlightenment is its conception of commercial society as a distinct and distinctive social formation. Christopher Berry explains why Enlightenment thinkers considered commercial society to be wealthier and freer than earlier forms, and charts the contemporary debates and tensions between Enlightenment thinkers that this idea raised. The book analyses the full range of literature on the subject, from key works like Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations', David Hume's 'Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects' (...) and Adam Ferguson's 'Essay on the History of Civil Society' to lesser-known works such as Robert Wallace's 'Dissertation on Numbers of Mankind'. (shrink)

This article aims to justify the positive role in the empirical investigation of nature that Kant attributes to the idea of God in the Critique of Pure Reason. In particular, I propose to read the Transcendental Ideal section and the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic together to see whether they can reciprocally illuminate each other. I argue that it is only by looking at the transcendental deduction of the ideas of reason and the resulting analogical conception of God that (...) a fully legitimate positive use of the idea of God can be vindicated. (shrink)

Originally published in 1967. Ludwig Edelstein characterizes the idea of "progress" in Greek and Roman times. He analyzes the ancients' belief in "a tendency inherent in nature or in man to pass through a regular sequence of stages of development in past, present, and future, the latter stages being—with perhaps occasional retardations or minor regressions—superior to the earlier." Edelstein's contemporaries asserted that the Greeks and Romans were entirely ignorant of a belief in progress in this sense of the term. (...) In arguing against this dominant thesis, Edelstein draws from the conclusions of scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and discusses ideas of Auguste Comte and Wilhelm Dilthey. (shrink)

"... this is a remarkable book. It will occupy a significant place in the critical literature of African Studies." —International Journal of African Historical Studies "To read Mudimbe is to walk through a museum of many exhibits in the company of an erudite companion who explains, with much learned commentary, what you are seeing."—American Anthropologist "Mudimbe’s sympathetic yet rigorous accounts of such diverse Africanist discourses as Herskovits’s cultural relativism and contemporary Afrocentricity bring to the surface the underlying goals and contexts (...) in which these were produced." —Ivan Karp A sequel to his highly acclaimed The Invention of Africa, this is V. Y. Mudimbe’s exploration of how the "idea" of Africa was constructed by the Western world. (shrink)

Although Hegel considered _Science of Logic_ essential to his philosophy, it has received scant commentary compared with the other three books he published in his lifetime. Here philosopher Stanley Rosen rescues the _Science of Logic_ from obscurity, arguing that its neglect is responsible for contemporary philosophy’s fracture into many different and opposed schools of thought. Through deep and careful analysis, Rosen sheds new light on the precise problems that animate Hegel’s overlooked book and their tremendous significance to philosophical conceptions of (...) logic and reason. Rosen’s overarching question is how, if at all, rationalism can overcome the split between monism and dualism. Monism—which claims a singular essence for all things—ultimately leads to nihilism, while dualism, which claims multiple, irreducible essences, leads to what Rosen calls “the endless chatter of the history of philosophy.” The _Science of Logic_, he argues, is the fundamental text to offer a new conception of rationalism that might overcome this philosophical split. Leading readers through Hegel’s book from beginning to end, Rosen’s argument culminates in a masterful chapter on the Idea in Hegel. By fully appreciating the_Science of Logic_ and situating it properly within Hegel’s oeuvre, Rosen in turn provides new tools for wrangling with the conceptual puzzles that have brought so many other philosophers to disaster. (shrink)

A survey of the historical development of the idea of race, this anthology offers pre-twentieth century theories about the concept of race, classic twentieth century sources reiterating and contesting ideas of race as scientific, and several philosophically relevant essays that discuss the issues presented. A general Introduction gives an overview of the readings. Headnotes introduce each selection. Includes suggested further readings.

This timely book by philosopher Peter Dews explores the idea of evil, one of the most problematic terms in the contemporary moral vocabulary. Surveys the intellectual debate on the nature of evil over the past two hundred years Engages with a broad range of discourses and thinkers, from Kant and the German Idealists, via Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to Levinas and Adorno Suggests that the concept of moral evil touches on a neuralgic point in western culture Argues that, despite the (...) widespread abuse and political manipulation of the term ‘evil’, we cannot do without it Concludes that if we use the concept of evil, we must acknowledge its religious dimension. (shrink)

Identifications, diagnoses, and treatments of pseudo-problems form a family of classic methodologies in later nineteenth century philosophy and at least partly, as I shall argue, in the philosophy of science. They were devised, not by academic philosophers, but by three of the greatest of the philosopher-scientists. (Later, the idea was taken up by academic philosophers, of course. But I will not discuss that development). Here I show how Ernst Mach, Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann each deployed methods of this (...) general kind, how they identified different pseudo-problems, how they gave different diagnoses of such problems, and how they suggested quite different treatments for them. I argue that it was Mach who really first developed the idea of a pseudo-problem, that he did so in a relatively focused way on the basis of two kinds of examples. Hertz’s contribution was much more limited, identifying two specific pseudo-problems concerning physics, and suggesting a way in which they might be treated. Boltzmann’s conception of pseudo-problems, though, was far less focused, being applied to a very wide range of problems in philosophy and physics. However, his conception was certainly more influential in philosophy, and perhaps ultimately more fruitful and suggestive. I argue for the originality and continuing interest of such approaches, and I try to dissociate them from any problematic ‘positivism’. (shrink)

In this unique volume, some of today's most eminent political philosophers examine the thought of John Rawls, focusing in particular on his most recent work. These original essays explore diverse issues, including the problem of pluralism, the relationship between constitutive commitment and liberal institutions, just treatment of dissident minorities, the constitutional implications of liberalism, international relations, and the structure of international law. The first comprehensive study of Rawls's recent work, _The Idea of Political Liberalism_ will be indispensable for political (...) philosophers and theorists interested in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

Inspired by a 1988 trip to El Salvador, Michael J. Perry's new book is a personal and scholarly exploration of the idea of human rights. Perry is one of our nation's leading authorities on the relation of morality, including religious morality, to politics and law. He seeks, in this book, to disentangle the complex idea of human rights by way of four probing and interrelated essays. * The initial essay, which is animated by Perry's skepticism about the capacity (...) of any secular morality to offer a coherent account of the idea of human rights, suggests that the first part of the idea of human rights--the premise that every human being is "sacred" or "inviolable"--is inescapably religious. * Responding to recent criticism of "rights talk", Perry explicates, in his second essay, the meaning and value of talk about human rights. * In his third essay, Perry asks a fundamental question about human rights: Are they universal? In addressing this question, he disaggregates and criticizes several different varieties of "moral relativism" and then considers the implications of these different relativist positions for claims about human rights. * Perry turns to another fundamental question about human rights in his final essay: Are they absolute? He concludes that even if no human rights, understood as moral rights, are absolute or unconditional, some human rights, understood as international legal rights, are--and indeed, should be--absolute. In the introduction, Perry writes: "Of all the influential--indeed, formative--moral ideas to take center stage in the twentieth century, like democracy and socialism, the idea of human rights (which, again, in one form or another, is an old idea) is, for many, the most difficult. It is the most difficult in the sense that it is, for many, the hardest of the great moral ideas to integrate, the hardest to square, with the reigning intellectual assumptions of the age, especially what Bernard Williams has called 'Nietzsche's thought': 'There is not only no God, but no metaphysical order of any kind....' For those who accept 'Nietzsche's thought', can the idea of human rights possibly be more than a kind of aesthetic preference? In a culture in which it was widely believed that there is no God or metaphysical order of any kind, on what basis, if any, could the idea of human rights long survive?" The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries will appeal to students of many disciplines, including (but not limited to) law, philosophy, religion, and politics. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the axiological-normative underpinnings of the idea of human rights. These are explained with reference to the history of human rights thought. As regards the equality dimension of human rights, I in particular discuss the question how the “human” in human rights is defined and propose a negative-anthropological and political approach instead of a mere biological definition. The liberty dimension of human rights is explored with special emphasis on criticism according to which human rights presuppose (...) social atomism and attach too little importance to duties. (shrink)

In recent decades, it has often been argued by environmental ethicists that human beings and the natural world ought to be considered as equals in some basic sense. The aim of this paper is to make sense of this view by examining what role, if any, the idea of equality ought to play in environmental ethics. Specifically, we have two aims: the first aim is to identify those environmental claims that are distinctively egalitarian. The second aim is to show (...) these claims do not rest on a principled and convincing justification. Our main contention is therefore that equality has no place in environmental ethics. There are other promising ways to argue that our relationship with the natural environment must be fundamentally revised. By bringing clarity to this debate and dispelling the possibility of equality-based arguments, we hope to contribute to this endeavor. (shrink)

“Ethical life” is Hegel’s term for the actuality of what Kant calls an “ethical community.” As members of the same ethical community, human beings are related to one another as persons in and only in acting from nothing but respect for the same practical law. Kant and Hegel both take ethical life to be a necessary, nay, the highest, end of pure reason. I argue that this is correct. And I identify the idea of ethical life with the (...) class='Hi'>idea of a peculiar form of love. Kant and Hegel disagree—in a curiously reciprocal fashion—about the reach of ethical life and about our capacity to know it to reside within our power: while Kant identifies ethical life with the actuality of the ethical community of all possible human beings, Hegel holds that it is necessarily limited to some particular body politic; and while Hegel thinks that to be a human being is to self-knowingly co-constitute an ethical community, Kant believes that it is to be unable to know oneself to even be apt for this. With Hegel and against Kant, I argue that the only way to have the idea of ethical life is to live it. But with Kant and against a naïve form of Hegelianism, I argue that to be conscious of oneself as a human being, a practically rational animal, is to be conscious of oneself as morally evil, i.e. as actively prone to deeming one’s own particularity the supreme law. I show that this entails Hegelian particularism. And I end by noting that this saddles the Hegelian with the task of demonstrating that ethical particularization belongs to the very idea of pure reason itself, objectively conceived. (shrink)

The articles included in this symposium on my book The Idea of Justice cover a wide variety of issues, which is not surprising since my book too addresses a number of distinct problems, reflecting very different concerns connected with the idea of justice. In my response I have discussed each article individually. While most of the authors have been very kind to my attempt to reshape the theory of justice, there are also important critical issues raised in some (...) articles, and I have discussed how some of these concerns can be – very fruitfully – accommodated. In other cases, I have offered clarificatory discussion, and in a few cases also counter-arguments. I have also responded to suggestions for practical application of my approach to justice. Altogether, I have benefited greatly from the symposium, and would like to record my appreciation. (shrink)

Legal scholars and philosophers have long been engaged in what has been called 'the pursuit of the holy grail of property' - the secret of the internal structure of property in law. Attempts to capture the idea of property have encountered two fundamental problems. First, it has been notoriously difficult to advance beyond the observation that property involves 'ownership' of 'things', with the incidents of ownership and the list of things owned an essentially descriptive task. Second, it is difficult (...) to explain the wildly inconsistent power that property rights - even when identified - seem to enjoy.In this book, Professor Underkuffler advances our understanding of what property is, as an idea, and the power that claimed property rights should have against competing public interests. There is, she argues, a deeper analytical structure of the idea of property that we can uncover, and - as a result of that discovery - deeper reasons that we can find for property's variable power. It is not a random or unprincipled event that property generally protects in cases involving land titles or patent claims, and fails to protect in cases involving environmental regulation or redistributive taxation. She argues that these results are driven - indeed, predetermined - by the nature of property, as an idea, and the conflicts of that idea with competing public interests. The implications of this book are far-reaching. It explains and justifies - on new grounds - why some property claims are traditionally powerful in law, and others not. It suggests how property rights in controversial or emerging areas should be treated, such as those involving the body as property, personal information as property, cultural property, and state redistributive claims. Finally, it establishes why the protection of property is, in fact, necessarily different from freedom of speech, freedom of religion, due process of law, and other rights - necessitating its different treatment, and lesser protection, as a constitutional right. (shrink)

For a half-century or more, political theory has been characterized by a pronounced distrust of metaphysical or ontological speculation. Such a disposition has been sharply at odds with influential currents in post-war philosophy - both analytic and continental - where metaphysical issues have become a central preoccupation. The Idea of the State seeks to reaffirm the importance of systematic philosophical inquiry into the foundations of political life, and to show how such an approach can cast a new and highly (...) instructive light on a variety of controversial, seemingly intractable problems of tolerance, civil disobedience, democracy and consent. The author considers the problem of the state in light of recent developments in philosophy and social thought, and seeks to provide an account of what the state really is. In doing so he pursues a range of fundamental issues pertaining to the office, the authority and the internal organization of political society. (shrink)

Critics and defenders of Rawls' idea of public reason have tended to neglect the relationship between this idea and his conception of democratic legitimacy. I shall argue that Rawls' idea of public reason can be interpreted in two different ways, and that the two interpretations support two different conceptions of legitimacy. What I call the substantive interpretation of Rawls' idea of public reason demands that it applies not just to the process of democratic decision-making, but that (...) it extends to the substantive justification of democratic decisions. I shall argue against this interpretation and suggest a procedural interpretation instead. On this view, public reason is invoked when it comes to the political justification of the principles that should govern the process of democratic decision-making, but not – at least not directly – in relation to the content of public deliberation. (shrink)

This article is a jurisprudential analysis of the idea of a ‘living Constitution’, as a common feature of the constitutional practice in democratic countries. The main argument of the article is that constitutional interpretation encompasses, rather than excludes the judicial power to develop and change the content of constitutional guarantees. The metaphor of the ‘living Constitution’ is appropriate to the nature of constitutional adjudication because it suggests gradual, incremental change on a case-by-case basis. While it is stressed that courts (...) can and should be creative, this judicial creativity is subject to significant legal and practical constraints. (shrink)

Rawls and Schmitt are often discussed in the literature as if their conceptions of the political had nothing in common, or even referred to entirely different phenomena. In this essay, I show how these conceptions share a common space of reasons, traceable back to the idea of public reason and its development since the Middle Ages. By analysing the idea of public reason in Rawls and in Schmitt, as well as its relation to their theories of political representation, (...) I show in what way Schmitt's concept of the political cannot be divorced from an idea of justice, while, conversely, Rawls' conception of justice cannot be divorced from a theory of the political. In that way this paper thematizes the internal relation that each theory establishes between justice and power, deliberation and decision, and consensus and disagreement. (shrink)

Historian Arthur Herman traces the roots of declinism and shows how major thinkers, past and present, have contributed to its development as a coherent ideology of cultural pessimism. From Nazism to the Sixties counterculture, from Britain's Fabian socialists to America's multiculturalists, and from Dracula and Freud to Robert Bly and Madonna, this work examines the idea of decline in Western history and sets out to explain how the conviction of civilization's inevitable end has become a fixed part of the (...) modern Western imagination. Through a series of biographical portraits spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, the author traces the roots of declinism and aims to show how major thinkers of the past and present, including Nietzsche, DuBois, Sartre, and Foucault, have contributed to its development as a coherent ideology of cultural pessimism. (shrink)

In Hegel’s philosophy, both truth and genuine freedom belong to the domain of the Idea. Life, as it is categorized in the Science of Logic, is the first form and stage of the Idea, and is therefore essential for a comprehension of truth and self-determination. In this paper, I explore why and to what extent Life is self-determining and true. Considering what Hegel considers to be the three fundamental features of all life, I explain how life is self-determining (...) with respect to its organic unity, relationship with the other, and reproductive process. I explicate how the living individual develops and sustains the collective unity of its objectivity, distinguishes itself from its other, yet sustains and regenerates itself through it, and how it raises its universal identity beyond its particular existence through reproduction. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to consider Collingwood’s Idea of History in the wider context of his thoughts on historical knowledge, and in the light of criticisms which have often been less than generous in giving a certain latitude to what he meant to convey. The article shows how the main doctrines, that are often taken in isolation and forensically analysed and criticized, may be defended and made more intelligible when considered as an integrated whole. Such an (...) class='Hi'>idea as re-enactment, for example, need not be considered to lend itself to intuitionism in philosophy, nor methodological individualism in interpretation. It is possible to understand Collingwood presenting the theory of re-enactment as at once a method for the attainment of historical knowledge, which doesn’t simply come about fortuitously, while also being an ontological condition of understanding, that is, when historical knowledge is attained, something will have happened to us, that is, we will have thought exactly the same thoughts, broadly speaking, as the historical subjects themselves. (shrink)

The dialectical method used in this work to clarify the issues and to render "an objective, impartial, and neutrally formulated report" is a model for analysis and is valuable in itself. Its application, in Book II, yields a well-documented presentation of almost all the important thinkers on freedom. First modes of possession and then modes of the self are viewed as characterizing this idea. The forty-page bibliography of works referred to or examined adds to the usefulness of the study (...) and indicates its scope.--R. D. G. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to grapple with the idea of philosophy as rigorous science from the point of view of Husserl‟s phenomenology in order to show that this idea may have an important contribution to the way in which the scientific character of sciences in general, and of human and social sciences in particular, is being conceived. As rigorous science, phenomenology emphasizes and investigates the a priori context of other sciences. In this way, it plays a vital (...) role in the development of every particular eidetic upon which any sciences rely. This eidetic (or the eidetic layer of any mature science) embraces the goal and strives to reach the objective of determining the valid sense of the fundamental notions used by the scientist in his research, without, nevertheless, stirring a radical questioning of this sense and of the ultimate validity of these notions. To define them requires passing from the usual level of inquiring of that particular science (the processes of dealing with facts and experiments) to the level (or meta-level) of a radical reflection on the sense or the meaning of the basic notions of the science in question (its own foundations). Philosophy as rigorous science connects the researcher´s assertions not only to the empirical state of affairs envisaged by his work, but, moreover and in a fundamental way, to their noematic content, to their intrinsic intentional meaning. Therefore, the idea of rigorous science elaborated in Husserl‟s phenomenology is heavy with the potential of clarifying the foundations and stakes of the research undertaken by the other sciences. (shrink)

Rawls and Schmitt are often discussed in the literature as if their conceptions of the political had nothing in common, or even referred to entirely different phenomena. In this essay, I show how these conceptions share a common space of reasons, traceable back to the idea of public reason and its development since the Middle Ages. By analysing the idea of public reason in Rawls and in Schmitt, as well as its relation to their theories of political representation, (...) I show in what way Schmitt's concept of the political cannot be divorced from an idea of justice, while, conversely, Rawls' conception of justice cannot be divorced from a theory of the political. In that way this paper thematizes the internal relation that each theory establishes between justice and power, deliberation and decision, and consensus and disagreement. (shrink)

Developing a simple test to identify swiftly neonates with sepsis who carry the genetic variant which means that one dose of the recommended antibiotic, gentamicin, will cause the child to become profoundly deaf looks like an admirable objective. The baby needs antibiotics and needs them within 1 hour of admission to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Conventional genetic tests take much longer to yield results. The test being trialled produces results in 25 min; a baby who carries the variant (...) can be treated with a different antibiotic. All the test requires is a gentle swab of the baby’s inner cheek. Babies can be treated for potentially fatal sepsis without the risk that the drugs designed to save their lives will cost them their hearing. Parents and healthcare staff are relieved of worry—a great idea? PALOH is not a trial of the safety or efficacy of the test, only to assess how feasible it will be to carry out this test in a busy NICU, without disrupting the care of the baby. A tiny painless ‘scrape’ will take a sample of DNA—what’s the fuss about? Several other invasive and painful procedures will be carried out without a fuss.1 The problem is DNA. Genetic information must be safeguarded from falling into the wrong hands. In section 45 of Human Tissue Act 2004 (HTA), Parliament legislated to prohibit non-consensual DNA testing.1 It fits uncomfortably in a statute designed to regulate retention and uses of human material, after revelations that organs and tissue from the …. (shrink)

The ‘Wu xing’ belongs to Guodian bamboo slips texts, which were buried around 300 BCE and excavated in 1993. Its relation with Mengzi is widely investigated. Yet how it is philosophically related to Xunzi receives little attention. In this article, I illustrate a neglected relation between ‘Wu xing’ and Xunzi, by elucidating how shan 善 (goodness) is first raised in ‘Wu xing’ and developed by Xunzi into a concrete idea. Both ‘Wu xing’ and Xunzi propose that shan exists in (...) action, which boils down to the harmonious unity of the mind and body, and to secure the ideal relation between the mind and body requires constant learning and practicing, particularly, of rituals. Learning and practicing not only lead one to realize shan, but eventually to become a consummate practitioner of rituals, to use Xunzi’s words, to become a sage. (shrink)

One of the recurrent motifs in political thought is the idea of the social contract, according to which a society, a government, or moral principles depend for their existence on agreements...

This article presents a long overdue analysis of the idea of an ethically committed social science, which, after the demise of positivism and the deeming of moral neutrality as impossible, has come to dominate the self-understanding of many contemporary sociological approaches. Once adequately specified, however, the idea is shown to be ethically questionable in that it works against the moral commitments constitutive of academic life. The argument is conducted with resources from the work of Peter Winch, thus establishing (...) its continuing relevance and critical importance for the social sciences, sociology in particular. Special reference is made to heretofore unappreciated aspects of Winch’s work, including within the groundbreaking The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, but focusing specifically on his later contributions to ethics. (shrink)

The introduction of laws of nature is often seen as one of the hallmarks of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. The new sciences are thought to have introduced the revolutionary idea that explanations of natural phenomena have to be grounded in exceptionless regularities of universal scope, i. e. laws of nature. The use of legal terminology to talk about natural regularities has a longer history, though. This article traces these earlier uses.

The essay operates an itemisation of the three main streams in the history of emotions: the history of individual emotions, the study of the role that emotions have in historical processes, and the reflection on the influence of emotions on history writing. The second part of the article is devoted to the methodological and theoretical status of the study of past emotions. It highlights how many studies in the history of emotions remain heavily conditioned by an idea of culture (...) typical of Western philosophy of history. (shrink)

The image of the “mirror” (鏡kagami) appears frequently in the philosophical texts of Nishida Kitaro (西田幾多郎1870-1945), where it assumes various functions. Mirror references first occur in meditations on the philosophies of Josiah Royce (1855-1916) and Henri Bergson (1859-1941). The most fascinating evocation here corresponds to the idea of a “self-enlightening mirror”, used to probe the philosophical ground for self-illumination. This idea seems to point back to Buddhist meaning that intervenes in Japanese intellectual history. We take this as our (...) warrant for establishing here, firstly, how Nishidean philosophical speculation can be critically related to the thought of Dogen (道元1200-1253); and, secondly, in what sense it has stimulated some contemporary approaches in Japanese philosophy (for example, those of Nitta, Ohashi, and Sakabe). (shrink)

This pioneering anthology of Middle English prologues and other excerpts from texts written between 1280 and 1520 is one of the largest collections of vernacular literary theory from the Middle Ages yet published and the first to focus attention on English literary theory before the sixteenth century. It edits, introduces, and glosses some sixty excerpts, all of which reflect on the problems and opportunities associated with writing in the "mother tongue" during a period of revolutionary change for the English language. (...) The excerpts fall into three groups, illustrating the strategies used by medieval writers to establish their cultural authority, the ways they constructed audiences and readerships, and the models they offered for the process of reading. Taken together, the excerpts show how vernacular texts reflected and contributed to the formation of class, gender, professional, and national identity. They open windows onto late medieval debates on women's and popular literacy, on the use of the vernacular for religious instruction or Bible translation, on the complex metaphorical associations contained within the idea of the vernacular, and on the cultural and political role of the "courtly" writing associated with Chaucer and his successors. Besides the excerpts, the book contains five essays that propose new definitions of medieval literary theory, discuss the politics of Middle English writing, the relation of medieval book production to notions of authorship, and the status of the prologue as a genre, and compare the role of the medieval vernacular to that of postcolonial literatures. The book includes a substantial glossary that constitutes the first mapping of the language and terms of Middle English literary theory. _The Idea of the Vernacular_ will be an invaluable asset not only to Middle English survey courses but to courses in English literary and cultural history and courses on the history of literary theory. (shrink)

This collection presents the first sustained examination of the nature and status of the idea of principles in early modern thought. Principles are almost ubiquitous in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the term appears in famous book titles, such as Newton’s _Principia_; the notion plays a central role in the thought of many leading philosophers, such as Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason; and many of the great discoveries of the period, such as the Law of Gravitational Attraction, were described (...) as principles. Ranging from mathematics and law to chemistry, from natural and moral philosophy to natural theology, and covering some of the leading thinkers of the period, this volume presents ten compelling new essays that illustrate the centrality and importance of the idea of principles in early modern thought. It contains chapters by leading scholars in the field, including the Leibniz scholar Daniel Garber and the historian of chemistry William R. Newman, as well as exciting, emerging scholars, such as the Newton scholar Kirsten Walsh and a leading expert on experimental philosophy, Alberto Vanzo. _The Idea of Principles in Early Modern Thought_ charts the terrain of one of the period’s central concepts for the first time, and opens up new lines for further research. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall apply the idea of ‘moral relativism’ in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The concept of ‘moral relativism’ has been closely related to postmodernism, and in particular proponents of Aristotlian reject Nietzsche’s kind of relativism, yet the issues remained part of Nietzsche’s philosophy and prominently situated in his philosophical works. Nietzsche talks about morality as antinature, he thinks that how morality is repressive ‘relative’ to what we might concern as the unbridled manifestation of wants and (...) needs and appetites. In his famous publications of Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche argues intensively and effectively about morality, his thought undoubtedly has a pronounced relativistic tendencies. Moral values are not universal and absolute, but are therefore conditional constructions of particular group at particular times with particular goals. Nietzsche speaks in the “interpretation” or “perspective” regarding morality or values in particular. According to Nietzsche, no one kind of morality is correct and neither is incorrect nor unacceptable for everyone; it should be noted that Nietzsche considers that each is correct for one type of person and incorrect for others. This makes it possible for Nietzsche to take a more important level on moral relativism. (shrink)

The subject of this study is the idea of «eternal life» in the worldview of V.I. Vernadsky, which is associated with the doctrine of «living matter». The purpose of the study is to show that the ideas of V.I. Vernadsky has deep historical, philosophical and historical-scientific roots, which can be understood as an integral consequence of the general process of cultural evolution of mankind, within the framework of which the initiative to give a historically defined and integral characteristic of (...) worldview can proceed from one form or another spiritual culture (religion, morality, art, philosophy, science, etc.). The tasks of the study include: consideration of the most significant ideas and concepts (primarily from the point of view of V.I. Vernadsky) in the history of philosophy and science, which played an important role in the formation of the doctrine of «eternal life». In this study, a comprehensive cultural approach was applied, combining comparative, phenomenological and psychoanalytic research methods. The scientific novelty of this study is determined by the author's approach to the analysis of the selected object, the involvement of new sources in the scientific research. The author pays attention to the analysis of the connection between the «logic of natural science» and the doctrine of «living matter», the characterization of the concepts of «living matter», «eternity of life» and «noosphere» as the most characteristic expressions of the naturalistic worldview of V.I. Vernadsky. The main conclusion of this study was that the idea of «eternal life» was the main idea in the worldview of V.I. Vernadsky. Vernadsky raised an important question about the «logic of natural science» in connection with the doctrine of the «eternity of life». (shrink)

Talk about social or distributive justice, at least among legal and political philosophers, tends to focus heavily on institutions. This way of thinking about justice owes a great deal to John Rawls. Rawls’s theory of justice was famously criticised by Robert Nozick, who in turn attracted an influential critique from G. A. Cohen. The story of these critiques is well known, but this article tells it in an unfamiliar way. The common theme in Nozick’s and Cohen’s arguments, I contend, is (...) that there is a way of thinking about social justice that focuses not primarily on institutions, but rather on interpersonal relationships. I call this idea small justice. Justice, on this view, is identified with whatever institutions would arise through a process of social evolution from ethical interpersonal dealings repeated consistently over time. (shrink)

Each of the following might be considered both necessary and sufficient for an organism to count as a psychological organism: (a) being able to do something that requires a psychological theory to explain; (b) being capable of having experiences; (c) being motivated; (d) behaving in ways that are the joint outcome of the organism's beliefs and desires; (e) being capable of instrumental learning, or operant conditioning; (f) being susceptible to classical conditioning. This paper takes up each of these candidates in (...) turn in an effort to clarify what the idea of a psychological organism really is. An argument is sketched for saying that (f) yields the weakest version of the idea of a psycholgical organism, that (e) yields a stronger version, and that (d) yields an even stronger one. What these versions have in common makes them all versions of a single idea. (shrink)

The subject of the considerations is the ambivalent attitude to metaphysics present in the writings of Gustaw Herling-Grudziński. The author presents the idea of anti-metaphysical self-emancipation from the Soviet totalitarian system of enslavement, formulated in Inny Świat, based on Herling- Grudziński’s prison experiences, and analyzes its connections with the writings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The aim of the text is to show the inconsistency of Herling-Grudziński’s position and to indicate the connections between traditional anti-Russian stereotypes shaping the Polish interpretative horizon (...) and the metaphysical foundations of Polish resistance to the system of Russian and Soviet imperial oppression. (shrink)

Plato gradually reaches the concept of the “Good itself” in the most extensive dialogue (apart from The Laws). The dramaturgy of Republic was included in the pedagogical idea. Plato’s own brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, representatives of the aristoia, want to hear from Socrates logically based instruction on what is really good and why, regardless of the prevailing public opinion in Athenian society. They both know that the most valued asset is the wealth and political influence that the use of (...) force provides. Thanks to this, you can effectively appear to be the fairest among citizens, despite the fact that you are extremely unjust. Appearances are highly valued in social life. Only minds exceptionally open to dialectics seek the truth, not content with appearances. Socrates introduces listeners to the knowledge of “the Good itself”, the “form of the Good”, as the most perfect object of knowledge and at the same time the highest principle. The Good, identical with the “One”, “is” above substance (509b). (shrink)

This essay assesses the degree to which the deaf were regarded as a disabled population in medical, religious, and legal thought during the Renaissance, chronologically identified with the period between approximately 1500 and 1650. The primary geographic focus rests on the German-speaking lands of central Europe. Analysis shows that the idea of deafness as a disability here was composite one, making connections between inability to hear and intellectual impairment, moral deficiency, and disease. This contrasts with recent findings elsewhere in (...) Europe, where intellectuals were more focused on sign languages as a means of integrating the deaf into hearing society. (shrink)