This paper studies the role of literature and rethorics as a tool of philosophical practice within the classical tradition of «spiritual exercises». The aim of this study is to propose new ways of thinking the relations among philosophy and literature as formative or psicagogic disciplines, as well as for stand up for the role of philosophy and literature in our society.

This paper studies how Europe conceived America, not only as a place inhabited by monsters, but also as a monstrous space in itself, as soon as its mere appearance meant an alteration of the previous ontological order. By way of illustration we analyze how the Europeans imagined projected on America each of the different theratologic currents that dominated during the 16TH and 17TH centuries.

Jacqueline Taylor presents an original reconstruction of Hume's social theory, which examines the passions and imagination in relation to institutions such as government and the economy. She goes on to examine Hume's system of ethics, and argues that the principle of humanity is the central concept of Hume's Enlightenment philosophy.

This anthology offers a comprehensive introduction to Pliny the Younger's Epistulae for intermediate and advanced Latin students, with the grammatical, lexical, and historical support to enable them to read quickly and fluidly. As the only selection of the letters with extensive commentary, it provides instructors with a unique and complete resource for students.ABOUT THE SERIESThe Oxford Greek and Latin College Commentaries is designed for students in intermediate or advanced Greek or Latin. Each volume includes a comprehensive introduction. The placement, on (...) the same page, of the ancient text, a running vocabulary, and succinct notes focusing on grammar, syntax, and distinctive features of style provides students with essential learning aids.Series Editors: Barbara Weiden Boyd, Bowdoin College, Stephen Esposito, Boston University, and Mary Lefkowitz, Wellesley CollegeAlso Available Ovid: Ars Amatoria, Book 3, Christopher M. Brunelle, St. Olaf CollegeForthcoming Latin VolumesSuetonius's Life of AugustusDarryl Phillips, Connecticut CollegeLucan's De Bello Civile, Book 5Jonathan Tracy, Massey University, New Zealand. (shrink)

In this rich and detailed study of early modern women's thought, Jacqueline Broad explores the complexity of women's responses to Cartesian philosophy and its intellectual legacy in England and Europe. She examines the work of thinkers such as Mary Astell, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway and Damaris Masham, who were active participants in the intellectual life of their time and were also the respected colleagues of philosophers such as Descartes, Leibniz and Locke. She also illuminates the continuities (...) between early modern women's thought and the anti-dualism of more recent feminist thinkers. The result is a more gender-balanced account of early modern thought than has hitherto been available. Broad's clear and accessible exploration of this still-unfamiliar area will have a strong appeal to both students and scholars in the history of philosophy, women's studies and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Este trabajo estudia el concepto de “lo sublime” en la cultura barroca, con el objetivo de demostrar que, aunque no fue teorizado sistemáticamente hasta el siglo XVIII, este cobró durante el siglo XVII una centralidad y, sobre todo, un significado filosófico semejantes a los que se impondrían posteriormente y que, según veremos, está estrechamente ligado con el concepto de “nihilismo”.

"El XI Encuentro Internacional de Escritores de Monterrey organizado por el Consejo para la Cultura y las Artes de Nuevo León, tuvo como invitados a autores de México, Ecuador, Cuba, Estados Unidos, Perú, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Argentina y Nueva Zelanda. La sede del encuentro fue el Area Tierra del Museo de Historia Mexicana durante el 5, 6, y 7 de octubre de 2006"--Page 4 of cover.

The Greco-Roman mathematician Claudius Ptolemy is one of the most significant figures in the history of science. He is remembered today for his astronomy, but his philosophy is almost entirely lost to history. This groundbreaking book is the first to reconstruct Ptolemy’s general philosophical system—including his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics—and to explore its relationship to astronomy, harmonics, element theory, astrology, cosmology, psychology, and theology. -/- In this stimulating intellectual history, Jacqueline Feke uncovers references to a complex and sophisticated philosophical (...) agenda scattered among Ptolemy’s technical studies in the physical and mathematical sciences. She shows how he developed a philosophy that was radical and even subversive, appropriating ideas and turning them against the very philosophers from whom he drew influence. Feke reveals how Ptolemy’s unique system is at once a critique of prevailing philosophical trends and a conception of the world in which mathematics reigns supreme. -/- A compelling work of scholarship, Ptolemy’s Philosophy demonstrates how Ptolemy situated mathematics at the very foundation of all philosophy—theoretical and practical—and advanced the mathematical way of life as the true path to human perfection. (shrink)

This paper aims at testing the hypothesis of growing ideological uniformity of political speeches. If political speeches lack ideological differences, it should be difficult to re-classify them only by analyzing the presence or absence of lexical items. We first worked out a method to classify political speeches and then carried a test on two speeches by leading Belgian French-speaking politicians. The method is based on discriminant analysis. It utilizes the words most encountered in one speech and not in the other (...) as discriminant factors. Statistical softwares then assess a discriminant function used to re-classify short parts of each speech called blocks. The most discriminating 10 factors re-classify correctly 89% of the blocks. The percentage increases to 93% with 20 factors and to 98% with 30 factors.However the results should be taken with caution because of the limited sample, the test tends to question the growing uniformity of political speeches. The sampled ones had enough specific features for allowing a rather simpte method to re-classify most parts of them correctly, even if some typically ideological items are not to be found. (shrink)

The Morris water maze has been put forward in the philosophy of neuroscience as an example of an experimental arrangement that may be used to delineate the cognitive faculty of spatial memory (e.g., Craver and Darden, Theory and method in the neurosciences, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 2001; Craver, Explaining the brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007). However, in the experimental and review literature on the water maze throughout the history of its use, (...) we encounter numerous responses to the question of “what” phenomenon it circumscribes ranging from cognitive functions (e.g., “spatial learning”, “spatial navigation”), to representational changes (e.g., “cognitive map formation”) to terms that appear to refer exclusively to observable changes in behavior (e.g., “water maze performance”). To date philosophical analyses of the water maze have not been directed at sorting out what phenomenon the device delineates nor the sources of the different answers to the question of what. I undertake both of these tasks in this paper. I begin with an analysis of Morris’s first published research study using the water maze and demonstrate that he emerged from it with an experimental learning paradigm that at best circumscribed a discrete set of observable changes in behavior. However, it delineated neither a discrete set of representational changes nor a discrete cognitive function. I cite this in combination with a reductionist-oriented research agenda in cellular and molecular neurobiology dating back to the 1980s as two sources of the lack of consistency across the history of the experimental and review literature as to what is under study in the water maze. (shrink)

In this chapter I investigate the kinds of changes that psychiatric kinds undergo when they become explanatory targets of areas of sciences that are not “mature” and are in the early stages of discovering mechanisms. The two areas of science that are the targets of my analysis are cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology.

Warum und wie genau darf zu Hause oder auf einer Theaterbühne anders gehandelt werden, als im Büro; wie verändert sich die Bedeutung von Worten, je nachdem wo, von wem und wie sie gesagt werden? Warum und mit welchen Mitteln versuchen wir, höflich zu sein, und inwiefern sind wir von unangemessenem Verhalten anderer bedroht? Welches Weltwissen benötigen Beobachter, um beurteilen zu können, wann Verhalten als angemessen oder unangemessen einzustufen ist? Im vorliegenden Band untersuchen die Beitragenden das Phänomen sozialer Angemessenheit unter anderem (...) aus philosophischer, sozialpsychologischer, soziologischer, kulturtheoretischer, linguistischer und anthropologischer Perspektive. Dabei werden insbesondere Bedingungen und Auswirkungen, Merkmale sowie Wandlungs- und Entstehungsprozesse sozialer Angemessenheit thematisiert. Die Herausgebenden Jacqueline Bellon M.A. promoviert an der TU Darmstadt und arbeitet als Philosophin, Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaftlerin. Dr. Bruno Gransche ist Philosoph am Institut für Technikzukünfte (ITZ) des Karlsruher Instituts für Technologie (KIT). Sebastian Nähr-Wagener M.A. ist wiss. Mitarbeiter am Institut für Technikzukünfte (ITZ) des Karlsruher Instituts für Technologie (KIT). (shrink)

Jacqueline Rose argues for an expansion of the new boundaries of `English', and for the importance of psychoanalysis to the understanding of our literary and historical lives.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 1, April 1998, pp. 5-30 Justice and the Foundations of Social Morality in Hume's Treatise JACQUELINE TAYLOR Hume famously distinguishes between artificial virtues and natural virtues, or, at one place, between a sense of virtue that is natural and one that is artificial. The most prominent of the artificial virtues are those associated with the practices of justice. Commentators have devoted much attention (...) to Hume's explanation of what motivates us to be just. But his main concern in the Treatise is to explain why we approve morally of just conduct.1 While there surely are complexities surrounding the issue of the motivation to be just, in one sense Hume's explanation is quite straightforward: self-interest motivates us to establish and follow the conventions of justice. The real interest in his account of the establishment of justice lies in his further explanation of how those conventions transform our moral psychology, and lead us to form shareable moral points of view from which we can reach agreement on the value of characters. My reading of Hume's account in the Treatise is as follows. Hume attributes to us a social morality, the central notion of which is a moral sensibility that has its origins in nature, but that must be extended by social artifice in order to accommodate the various virtues important to cooperative living. I will contend that the moral psychology embodied in a cultivated sense of morality depends on the redirection of our evaluative propensities and therefore requires the sorts of convention that Hume associates with justice.2 My thesis helps to make sense of the structure of Book III: Hume has genuine philosophical reasons for introducing the artificial virtues prior to the natural ones.3 Jacqueline Taylor is at the Department of Philosophy, Tufts University, Medford MA 02155-7059 USA. email: [email protected] 6 Jacqueline Taylor The main goal of this paper is to show that Hume's philosophy has the resources to explain our ability to balance our appraisal of the artificial and natural virtues, since we need both sorts of virtue to live well. As a foil for my view, I want to use the argument advanced by Barry Stroud and others that Hume faces a special difficulty in explaining how we sustain our approval of particular just acts that considered in themselves appear harmful to the public good. Stroud argues that Hume fails to explain what recommends justice as a virtue to us in all cases, and thus fails to capture the concern we have for fairness.4 While Stroud finds in the second Enquiry the seeds of a view, based on our sympathetic approval of what tends to the good of mankind, that could provide the materials for developing a naturalistic account of how we come to have a concern for justice and fairness, he argues that Hume's interest lies squarely in the origin of justice and not in how people develop shared social attitudes (Stroud, 216-218). I disagree with Stroud's pronouncement that Hume fails to explain sufficiently our moral approval of justice, but I must leave to one side discussion of the particular social attitudes of justice, such as concern for fairness. My focus will be on how we cultivate a range of shared attitudes of moral appraisal and the relation of these to justice. Stroud misjudges Hume's project, at least in part, because he neglects the historical context in which Hume was writing, and overlooks some important differences between Hume and his contemporary, Francis Hutcheson.5 In Book II of the Treatise, in a discussion of virtue and vice as causes of pride and humility, Hume signals the reader that in the next book he will examine "the controversy...whether these moral distinctions be founded on natural and original principles, or arise from interest and education" (T 295). The controversy to which he refers is that between moral sense theorists, such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, on the one side, and members of the Hobbesian or "selfish" school, which includes Mandeville as well as Hobbes, on the other. As he starts Book III, Hume seems to suggest that his... (shrink)

In 2007, ten world-renowned neuroscientists proposed “A Decade of the Mind Initiative.” The contention was that, despite the successes of the Decade of the Brain, “a fundamental understanding of how the brain gives rise to the mind [was] still lacking” (2007, 1321). The primary aims of the decade of the mind were “to build on the progress of the recent Decade of the Brain (1990-99)” by focusing on “four broad but intertwined areas” of research, including: healing and protecting, understanding, enriching, (...) and modeling the mind. These four aims were to be the result of “transdisciplinary and multiagency” research spanning “across disparate fields, such as cognitive science, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, mathematics, engineering, and computer science.” The proposal for a decade of the mind prompted many questions (See Spitzer 2008). In this chapter, I address three of them: (1) How do proponents of this new decade conceive of the mind? (2) Why should a decade be devoted to understanding it? (3) What should this decade look like? (shrink)

Using narrative descriptions of the author's own lived-experience of her ethnic heritage, Martinez offers a systematic interrogation of the social and cultural norms by which certain aspects of her Mexican-American cultural heritage are both retained and lost over generations of assimilation. Combining semiotic and existential phenomenology with Chicana feminism, the author charts new terrain where anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic work may be pursued.

What role does the concept of representation play in the contexts of experimentation and explanation in cognitive neurobiology? In this article, a distinction is drawn between minimal and substantive roles for representation. It is argued by appeal to a case study that representation currently plays a role in cognitive neurobiology somewhere in between minimal and substantive and that this is problematic given the ultimate explanatory goals of cognitive neurobiological research. It is suggested that what is needed is for representation to (...) instead play a more substantive role. (shrink)

This study analyzes the relationship between CEO values, leadership style and ethical practices in organizations. The ethical practices of formal statement of ethics and diversity training are included in the study, as well as four categories of values based on Rokeach's (1973) typology including personal, social, competency-based and morality-based. Results indicate that all four types of values are positively and significantly related to transformational leadership, with transactional leadership positively related to morality-based and personal values, and laissez-faire leadership negatively related to (...) competency-based values. When size of company and values are controlled, transformational leadership explains a significant amount of change in formal statement of ethics, and transactional leadership explains a significant amount of change in diversity training. (shrink)

This paper provides preliminary insights into the process of sense-making and developing meaning with regard to corporate social responsibility (CSR) within 18 Dutch companies. It is based upon a research project carried out within the framework of the Dutch National Research Programme on CSR. The paper questions how change agents promoting CSR within these companies made sense of the meaning of CSR. How did they use language (and other instruments) to stimulate and underpin the contextual essence of CSR? Why did (...) they do that in this particular way? What were the consequences of this approach for shaping the process of CSR in their company? Did their efforts contribute to a new way of thinking and acting or was it merely putting old wine in new barrels? A preliminary conclusion is that change agents use above all linguistic artefacts (words and notions) and carry out practical projects while constructing meaning. Still, the meaning of meaning itself remains highly intangible, situational and personality related. (shrink)

As citizens, we hold certain truths to be self-evident: that the rights to own land, marry, inherit property, and especially to assume birthright citizenship should be guaranteed by the state. The laws promoting these rights appear not only to preserve our liberty but to guarantee society remains just. Yet considering how much violence and inequality results from these legal mandates, Jacqueline Stevens asks whether we might be making the wrong assumptions. Would a world without such laws be more just? (...) Arguing that the core laws of the nation-state are more about a fear of death than a desire for freedom, Jacqueline Stevens imagines a world in which birthright citizenship, family inheritance, state-sanctioned marriage, and private land ownership are eliminated. Would chaos be the result? Drawing on political theory and history and incorporating contemporary social and economic data, she brilliantly critiques our sentimental attachments to birthright citizenship, inheritance, and marriage and highlights their harmful outcomes, including war, global apartheid, destitution, family misery, and environmental damage. It might be hard to imagine countries without the rules of membership and ownership that have come to define them, but as Stevens shows, conjuring new ways of reconciling our laws with the condition of mortality reveals the flaws of our present institutions and inspires hope for moving beyond them. (shrink)