What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one (...) of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one (...) of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline , Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was (...) one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

Is bioethics a discipline? This question has accompanied the field since its emergence, revealing persistent tensions about what defines a discipline and what bioethics is expected to achieve. This article revisits the debate through the lens of conceptual analysis. While engaging critically with Bjørn Hofmann’s argument—representative of a narrow, method-focused view of disciplinarity—we propose a broader and more dynamic account. In the pars destruens, we show that Hofmann’s criteria rely on an overly restrictive conception of disciplines, one that (...) is inconsistent with current practices. In the pars construens, we adopt Krishnan’s comprehensive framework to demonstrate how bioethics meets six core elements of disciplinarity: a particular object of research, a body of specialized knowledge, structuring theories and concepts, shared terminology and technical language, specific research methods, and institutional manifestations. We argue that bioethics’ pluralism and normative orientation are not signs of epistemic immaturity, but appropriate responses to the complexity of its subject matter. Rather than undermining its status, these features affirm bioethics as a discipline in its own right—one that bridges philosophical reflection and practical engagement in contemporary medicine and healthcare. (shrink)

This essay offers a conception of logic by which logic may be considered to be exceptional among the sciences on the backdrop of a naturalistic outlook. The conception of logic focused on emphasises the traditional role of logic as a methodology for the sciences, which distinguishes it from other sciences that are not methodological. On the proposed conception, the methodological aims of logic drive its definitions and principles, rather than the description of scientific phenomena. The notion of a methodological (...) class='Hi'>discipline is explained as a relation between disciplines or practices. Logic serves as a methodological discipline with respect to any theoretical practice, and this generality, as well as logic’s reflexive nature, distinguish it from other methodological disciplines. Finally, the evolution of model theory is taken as a case study, with a focus on its methodological role. Following recent work by John Baldwin and Juliette Kennedy, we look at model theory from its inception in the mid-twentieth century as a foundational endeavour until developments at the end of the century, where the classification of theories has taken centre-stage. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison or Discipline and Punish was his first work since his election to the Chair in the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. Soon after his inaugural address, he announced the formation of the organization Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons (GIP). Due to Foucault's visibility as a social activist for prison reform, Discipline and Punish was received not just as a socio‐historical or philosophical analysis but as (...) a work of radical social criticism. This chapter reviews (1) the context in which Foucault wrote this work; (2) its structure and central themes; (3) its initial reception; and (4) its general place in Foucault's oeuvre and its influence. The English publication of Discipline and Punish and the first History of Sexuality gave rise to an entirely new field of inquiry – queer theory. (shrink)

Allied operating theaters between 1870 and 1945 were sites of surgical innovation and military urgency. This study argues that they functioned as infrastructures of power. It reconceptualizes the operating theater as an ideological formation where authority is spatially choreographed, emotional discipline institutionalized, and professional legitimacy unevenly distributed. Advancing three central claims, this inquiry argues that architecture and photographic composition functioned as epistemic practices that produced and reflected hierarchy. Second, it shows that emotional labor operated as institutional governance, regulating comportment, (...) reinforcing hierarchy, and shaping professional recognition. Third, it contends that archival absence constitutes evidence of epistemic exclusion. Hiring policies privileging British birth and Christian affiliation structured access to care roles, while ward placements, military recruitment criteria, and publication networks shaped whose care entered the historical record. Methodologically, this inquiry adopts an intensive, relational narrative approach, triangulating personal narratives, administrative records, and institutional photographs across Canadian, British, American, and Scottish contexts. Treating storytelling as epistemic production, it reads tonal rupture, irony, compression, devotional framing, and strategic silence as evidence of nurses' negotiation of constraint. Foregrounding nurses' testimonies, this study reframes allied surgical history as terrain where space, affect, and archive converge to discipline and differentially recognize care, offering a critical re‐reading of surgical modernity and calling for historiographies attentive to the infrastructures that produce visibility, authority, and memory. (shrink)

This paper takes up the critique of armchair philosophy drawn by some experimental philosophers from survey results. It also takes up a more recent development with increased methodological sophistication. The argument based on disagreement among respondents suggests a much more serious problem for armchair philosophy and puts in question the standing of our would-be discipline.

Discipline and Punish analyzes the role of collecting, managing, and operationalizing data in disciplinary institutions. Foucault’s discussion is compared to contemporary forms of surveillance and security practices using algorithmic data processing. The article highlights important similarities and differences regarding the way data processing plays a part in subjectivation. This is also compared to Deleuzian accounts and Foucault’s later discussion in Security, Territory, Population. Using these results, the article argues that the prevailing focus on transparency and accountability in the discussion (...) of algorithmic applications needs to be amended with a perspective on different forms of subjectivity and ensuing power relations. (shrink)

This paper critiques the modern conception of the human being that has treated emotion as an obstacle to maturity or as the opposite of reason, and analyzes how emotion has historically been hierarchized, disciplined, and reconstructed into manageable forms. Modern society has not simply eliminated emotion. Rather, it has positioned emotion below reason and interpreted it as a sign of immaturity, irrationality, impulsiveness, and unprofessionalism, while actively demanding emotions useful to institutions and productivity—such as kindness, empathy, devotion, and positivity—through occupational (...) roles and emotional labor. In this sense, emotional suppression in modern society is not a demand for the absence of emotion, but a structure of emotional discipline that permits individuals to feel and express emotion only in socially acceptable ways. This paper argues that such emotional discipline is deeply connected to the modern image of the human being. Industrialization, bureaucracy, capitalist labor systems, and discourses of self-management have presented the ideal person as one who remains stable, predictable, and continuously functional. Within this structure, emotion is treated not as a core way in which human beings relate to the world, but as an internal variable that may interfere with functional performance. Sadness is repositioned as a decline in function that must be recovered from, anger as a risk that must be regulated, anxiety as a psychological state that must be managed, and vulnerability as a weakness that should be privately contained. As a result, human beings are constructed less as beings who understand their own emotions than as beings who must adjust their emotions to institutional demands. This paper also examines how emotional suppression has operated in conjunction with gendered power. Women have long been evaluated as irrational and less professional on the grounds of being “emotional,” while at the same time being disproportionately assigned the labor of noticing, regulating, and caring for the emotions of others. Men, by contrast, have been idealized as rational beings free from emotion; yet what has actually been prohibited is not emotion as such, but emotions such as sadness, fear, dependence, and vulnerability. Power-oriented emotions such as anger, dominance, and aggression have been relatively permitted as part of masculinity. The gendering of emotion therefore damages women and men in different ways and distorts human relationships into functional and self-protective structures. At the same time, this paper does not absolutize emotion as a pure truth that should simply be liberated. Emotion is important information, but it is not immediately truth. Some emotions accurately detect present danger, violation, loss, or love, while others may interpret the present inaccurately through their entanglement with past experiences, learned prejudice, self-defense, or distorted structures of meaning. What is needed, therefore, is neither the removal of emotion nor unconditional obedience to it, but a metacognitive capacity to feel emotion while reinterpreting where it arose, what it indicates, whether it is appropriate to the present situation, and what form of action it should or should not become. This paper redefines emotion not as a simple impulse, but as the first detection of meaning. Fear reveals the significance of danger; anger reveals violation and injustice; sadness reveals the depth of loss; and love reveals that another person has acquired a special position of meaning within one’s world. Emotion is the first signal that human beings are not indifferent to the world. Reason does not exist to replace or silence emotion, but to interpret and reconstruct the meaning and significance disclosed by emotion. Emotion and reason, therefore, should not be understood as opposites, but as a relation between prior detection and reflective interpretation. In conclusion, this paper moves beyond the emotionally restrained human being that modern society has presented as an ideal and proposes the metacognitive human being as an alternative model of maturity: a human being capable of enduring, interpreting, and responsibly expressing emotion. A society that suppresses emotion does not produce peaceful human beings, but may instead produce individuals who cannot read themselves and cannot understand the emotions of others. True maturity does not lie in eliminating emotion, but in receiving it as information while distinguishing it from action and interpreting its meaning. Human beings do not become complete by removing emotion; they come closer to themselves by understanding it. Emotion is not merely a weakness of humanity; it is evidence of the way human beings relate to the world. Human beings are shaken by emotion, and through interpreting that disturbance, they learn themselves. Human beings do not become whole by silencing emotion; they become more fully themselves when they learn to understand what emotion reveals. (shrink)

This paper presents data on the representation of women at 98 philosophy departments in the United States, which were ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) in 2015 as well as all of those schools on which data from 2004 exist. The paper makes four points in providing an overview of the state of the field. First, all programs reveal a statistically significant increase in the percentage of women tenured/tenure-track faculty, since 2004. Second, out of the 98 US philosophy departments (...) selected for evaluation by Julie Van Camp in 2004, none in 2015 has 50% women philosophy faculty overall, while one has 50% women who are tenured/tenure track. Third, as of 2015, there is a clear pyramidal shape to the discipline: Women are better represented as Assistant than Associate and as Associate than Full professors. Fourth, women philosophy faculty, especially those who are tenured/tenure track, are better represented at Non-PGR ranked programs than at PGR ranked and PGR Top-20 programs in 2015. (shrink)

It is argued that current school disciplinary policies are ineffective instruments for delivering moral messages: they are poorly justified; fail to distinguish moral violations (violence, vandalism, deception) from conventional school‐limited violations (attendance, dress codes, eating venues), leaving the impression that dress code violations and forgery are equivalent; conflate sanctions, including presumed punishments (detentions and suspensions), with other forms of corrections (parent‐conferences, positive and negative reinforcement) and apply them without distinction to moral and non‐moral wrongdoing. To be morally instructive school disciplinary (...) codes should separate three types of infractions – moral, derivatively moral and conventional. The derivatively moral include rules that while not moral in isolation (eating outside the cafeteria) become imbued with moral attributes under particular interpretations; conventional wrongs have no moral valence but are rules designed for orderly school management. Sanctions, too, should be applied differentially according to category of infraction. Punishment, if used, is appropriate only for intentional moral wrongdoing, connected to acknowledgement of culpability, and conditional upon a clear articulation of the school's moral objectives that is persuasive to children and the community. (shrink)

This article attempts to show how Hirst’s earlier work on forms of knowledge, and his later work on education as an inculcation into practices, have close connections, closer than those made explicit in his own writings. In fact, it can be argued that, in some sense, the idea of a practice is fundamental to understanding the ways in which knowledge is organized, and thus to the epistemic claim that knowledge is organized differently according to the various ways in which it (...) is acquired and evaluated. This approach allows us to make a distinction between disciplines and subjects that in turn allow us to distinguish knowledge-seeking from knowledge-transmitting activities, particularly in the context of school subjects and thus to bring out more clearly the relationship between the practical side of knowledge acquisition and evaluation, on the one hand, and the structure of the knowledge thus acquired, on the other. By doing this, we can see an underlying unity in Hirst’s concerns that is not so obvious at first sight. (shrink)

The everyday expressions of nursing practices are driven by their entanglement in complex flows of social, cultural, political and economic interests. Early expressions of trained nursing practice in the United States and Europe reflect claims of moral, spiritual and clinical exceptionalism. They were both imposed upon—and internalized by—nursing pioneers. These claims were associated with an endogenous narrative of discipline and its physical manifestation in early nursing schools and hospitals, which functioned as “total institutions.” By contrast, the external forces—diffuse yet (...) pervasive—impacting upon contemporary nursing more closely align with the power dynamics explored in Gilles Deleuze's concept of the Society of Control. The example of sensor technology and telemetric monitoring of nurses’ locations in the clinical setting exemplifies the intense presence of surveillance, performance metrics and the “rationalization” of nursing practice. It falls upon nurses to recognize, accept or challenge these dynamics in order to shape the future of nursing practice into a discipline which embodies our values and priorities. (shrink)

Schools have changed in many ways, largely for the better, since the first edition of this book appeared: the young people in them are generally treated with far more respect than was the case a quarter of a century ago.

Lange herrschte in der Medizinethik ein Konzept von Bereichsethiken vor, das pflegerische, therapeutische und ärztliche Perspektiven als eigene, sich ergänzende Sichtweisen betrachtete. Die ethische Aus‑, Fort- und Weiterbildung fokussierte daher oftmals auf professionelle Berufsrollen, die dann z. B. als „pflegeethische“ oder „ärztlich ethisch begründete“ Perspektiven aufeinanderstießen. Das sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten entwickelnde Verständnis von Medizin als genuin kollaborativer Praxis stellt neu spezifische Anforderungen an die ethische Bildung von Gesundheitsfachpersonen, die nebst inter- auch transprofessionelle Kompetenzen umfassen. Auf der Basis aktueller (...) Literatur und einem Austausch der Erfahrungen der Autor:innen in der Lehre und Weiterbildung zu Ethik in den Gesundheitsberufen und zur Ethikberatung wird die Entwicklung bereichsethischer Perspektiven nachgezeichnet und in ein konzeptionelles Modell überführt, das inter- und transprofessionelle Inhalte und Formate entfaltet. Für die interprofessionelle Ethiklehre bedeutsam ist ein Verständnis von Medizin als kollaborativer Praxis, für welches sich der „quintuple aim of health care“ eignet. Dieses erfordert eine „team based moral agency“, welche nur realisierbar ist, wenn der Unterricht in allen Stufen der Aus‑, Fort- und Weiterbildung gefördert und von Beginn an interprofessionell gestaltet wird. Dies verlangt neue Methoden, Formate und didaktische Konzepte, etwa interprofessionelle Simulationen von Teamprozessen, Gesprächen mit Patient:innen und auch einfache interprofessionelle ethische Fallberatungen bereits in der Aus- und Weiterbildung. Diese werden mit Beispielen aus der Literatur und Praxis illustriert. Berufsrollen und fachspezifische Expertisen bleiben in der klinischen Versorgung essenziell, ebenso wie der regelmäßige Austausch „zwischen“ den Professionen. Gleichzeitig erfordert die ethische Komplexität und Interdependenz von Versorgungsstrukturen, individuellen Lebenslagen und konkreten Rahmenbedingungen eine transprofessionelle Sichtweise im Sinne einer „team based moral agency“. In einem normativen Sinne resultiert daraus das Verständnis eines „interprofessional professionalism“, das über die tradierten Bereichsethiken hinausgeht und auch für die Didaktik der Fortbildung zur Klinischen Ethikberatung Konsequenzen hat. (shrink)

Teaching competency in bioethics has been a concern of the field since its start. In 1976, The Hastings Center published the first report on the teaching of contemporary bioethics. Graduate programs culminating in an MA or PhD were not needed at the time, concluded the report. “In the future, however,” the report speculated, “the development and/or changing social priorities may at some point allow, or even require, the creation of new academic structures for graduate education in bioethics.” Although that future (...) might be upon us, the creation of a terminal degree in bioethics has its detractors. Scholars have debated whether bioethics is a discipline with its own methods and theoretical grounding, a multidisciplinary field bringing various professional perspectives to bear on particular types of problems, a set of problem-solving skills to resolve moral disagreements, or something else entirely. Whether or not efforts to develop the methods and theory of bioethics have matured to the point that it is now a discipline in the strictest sense, new bioethics training programs have appeared at all postsecondary levels. In this essay, we examine the number and types of U.S. programs and degrees in this growing field. (shrink)

Most students of politics are familiar with Carl Schmitt’s definition of politics as a friend–enemy distinction. Yet, only few know of alternative conceptions of politics in interwar Germany that emphasize cooperation and legality over confrontation and decisionism. To unlock such views, this article examines the work of Hermann Heller, a social-democratic constitutional theorist, and takes a close look at his conceptualization of politics as a sphere, activity and discipline. For Heller, ‘the political’ consists in turning human conflict into social (...) cooperation. For him, the political may be conflictual, but is also conditioned by shared norms and agreed rules. By consequence, to act politically means to order the antagonistic social relations that are typical of every human society. In this sense, politics is a purposeful activity, but one which leaves the content of every decision unconfined and the potentialities that follow endless. Like politicians, politics scholars must reflect on ethical and legal principles, while remaining focused on context-specific political problems. The study of politics cannot be disconnected from the study of law, ethics and social reality. Heller’s work showed that the way we conceive of politics is directly related to the way we study politics and vice-versa. (shrink)

The perspectivist critique makes it clear that the example theories and statements from implicit and explicit metaphilosophy do not satisfy the generality of the concept of philosophy and metaphilosophy. Conclusions must therefore be drawn for the understanding of metaphilosophy. First, the main problem of metaphilosophy is recapitulated, namely the philosophical bias of metaphilosophical views—the metaphilosophy qua post-philosophy. Subsequently, it is shown that metaphilosophy is a discipline in the making, which, despite this problem, exhibits features of unity. These are the (...) domain of inquiry, about which there is broad consensus, the already established discourse formations, and the classification of metaphilosophy. With this differentiated understanding of metaphilosophy, which sufficiently takes the main problem into account, and by drawing on the idea of a discourse oriented toward interperspectivity from the outset, which proposes an orientation toward both universality and inclusion, both metaphilosophical and philosophical practice can be guided. (shrink)

Examining how, and to what effect, the phrase “truly international” became central to the rhetoric and organization of the American-hosted 1950 International Congress of Mathematicians, this essay traces the negotiation of a “truly international” discipline from mathematicians’ first international congresses around the turn of the century across two world wars and their divisive interlude. Two failed attempts to host international congresses of mathematicians in the United States, for 1924 and 1940, defined the stakes for those who became the principal (...) organizers for 1950. Combining American organizational records with contexts and sources that extend across and beyond traditional mathematical centers in Europe and North America, the essay shows how a small cohort of American mathematicians marshaled an emphatic but ambiguous “international” rhetoric to guide policies and command cooperation and support while responding to persistent challenges. Their adaptations and compromises left a lasting mark on the terms and achievements of international inclusion, cooperation, and hegemony in mathematics. (shrink)

Psychiatry is concerned with “mental disorders” intended as dysfunctions of the mind; however, as a medical discipline, psychiatry follows the organic medical model, which is concerned with the pathology of functions in the body. This problematic and equivocal positioning has led contemporary psychiatry to implicitly operate in an epistemic void and to perpetuate fundamental theoretical and operational issues that present great ethical implications and create more illness than effective treatment and relief. Nevertheless, the discipline continues to operate worldwide, (...) enjoying a high degree of institutional support and social legitimization. This article illustrates the main epistemological and theoretical issues of psychiatry, the “mind” as its object of study, and psychiatric diagnosis, classification, and treatment. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of abandoning psychiatry’s biological framework in mental health care, and the possibility for psychiatry to find its own specific, unique, and legitimate space of knowledge and practice. (shrink)

Contemporary mainstream economics cannot be seen as disconnected from philosophical concerns. On the contrary, it should be understood as a defence for a specific philosophy, namely, crude quantitative hedonism where money would measure pleasure and pain. Disguised among a great mathematical apparatus involving utility functions, supply, and demand, lies a specific hedonist philosophy that every year is lectured to thousands of economic and business students around the world. This hedonist philosophy is much less sophisticated than that in ancient hedonist philosophers (...) as Epicurus or Lucretius. Furthermore, it does not solve any of the systematic difficulties regularly faced by hedonist philosophy. However, the argument that economics is detached from philosophy works as a rhetorical artifice to protect its dominant underlying philosophy: Philosophical disputes would have to be addressed within the biased mathematical apparatus of quantitative hedonism. Economists and business students must learn to identify the underlying philosophy in mainstream economics and alternative philosophical systems. (shrink)

Busseiron (Bussei Butsurigaku, or Bussei) is a term used in Japan to refer to a branch of physics concerning matter. While the lack of corresponding terms in foreign languages has augmented the perception of its uniqueness, Busseiron was, in fact, an evolving concept whose meaning varied across scientists and stages of its development as a discipline. The discipline did not simply grow directly out of early activity with its name; rather, the term’s loose definition yet clear dichotomy against (...) Soryûshiron (the theory of elementary particles) allowed for more directions related to the study of matter to be assembled under its coverage, eventually earning enough recognition to become solidly embedded in Japanese physicists’ nomenclature. The development of Busseiron as a story of its name thus illuminates how deeply the discipline’s formation was intertwined with the changing connotations and eventual perpetuation of the term in the national context. As this Japanese case attests, such an etymological study offers new possibilities for exploring the role of national contexts in the development of disciplines in an age when the globalization of science tends to be taken for granted. (shrink)

This article presents a case study of life and work at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich which reveals tensions between the lived reality of the observatory as a social space, and the attempts to create order, maintain discipline and project an image of authority in order to ensure the observatory's long-term stability. Domestic, social and scientific activities all intermingled within the observatory walls in ways which were occasionally disorderly. But life at Greenwich was carefully managed to stave off such (...) disorder and to maintain an appearance of respectability which was essential to the observatory's reputation and output. The article focuses on three areas of management: the observatory's outer boundaries, demonstrating how Greenwich navigated both human and environmental intrusions from the wider world; the house, examining how Greenwich's domestic spaces provided stability, while also complicating observatory life via the management of domestic servants; and the scientific spaces, with an emphasis on the work and play of the observatory's boy computers. Together, these three parts demonstrate that the stability of the observatory was insecure, despite being perpetuated via powerful physical and social boundaries. It had to be continually maintained, and was regularly challenged by Greenwich's occupants and neighbours. (shrink)

Education, Crisis, and the Discipline of the Conjuncture constructs a history of the present through conjunctural analysis and builds on this inquiry to construct a model for critical educational scholarship and pedagogical practice that can contribute to the urgent political demands of this historical moment.

In this article, the concept of school discipline will be explored in relation to that of educational interest. Initially, Clark’s account of two different kinds of school order (discipline and control) will be explained. The interest-based theory of school discipline advanced by Pat Wilson will thereafter be analysed. It will be argued that both these scholars persuasively explain how school discipline may follow when learning activities are successfully married to pupil interests and experiences. However, it will (...) be maintained that the epistemic position adopted by Wilson is problematic. Although Wilson suggests that Richard Peters placed too great an educational emphasis on initiating pupils into public traditions of knowledge, it is here claimed that Wilson did not value that development enough. With reference to Whitehead, it is concluded that discipline in schools ought to be arranged so as to help pupils foster wisdom for life, as this concept integrates liberal knowledge and educational interest. (shrink)

Can any of us ever really be free? Do we follow the rules our society gives us because we want to, or because we are forced to? Discipline, Freedom, Resistance challenges the received wisdom that discipline and freedom are opposite and mutually exclusive. Though it is typically argued that a well-ordered liberal society must discipline its more unruly citizens to maintain freedom for all, Flathman shows how resistance to rules can mean more than criminals breaking laws. Resistance (...) can also mean political protest and political dialogues about what the rules can be. Discipline, Freedom, Resistance draws on Foucault's theories of the self to describe the inner discipline it takes to resist authority-declaring that individuals must sometimes resist forces that wish to destroy freedom, to ensure freedom. (shrink)

Richard Rorty notoriously maintained that philosophy is not an academic discipline. He thought that the only viable candidate for philosophy to be an academic discipline—where philosophy consists in a collection of permanent, pure topics—depends on a Cartesian conceptual framework. Once we overcome this framework, he maintained, there will be nothing left to be the distinct subject matter of philosophy. This article argues that there is a conception of philosophy that can be an academic discipline, even if we (...) take Rorty's challenge seriously. It remains even if we overcome the Cartesian conceptual framework. In the end the article goes beyond Rorty's challenge and considers two further criteria for philosophy to be an academic discipline: that it have a distinct method, and that it be able to be done for the public good. The article argues that philosophy can fulfill these two criteria, and therefore that it can be an academic discipline. (shrink)

Both Rousseau and Kant wrote their works with the intention of contributing to the well-being of humans. The ways in which Kant followed Rousseau to achieve this aim were many and go beyond those easily recognized. This article presents evidence for Rousseau’s influence in the Discipline of Pure Reason chapter of the Doctrine of Method in the First Critique. Both Rousseau and Kant emphasized discipline as a necessary part of a proper education that leads to a well-ordered life. (...) Kant’s form of discipline is modeled on the education given to Emile. This approach to the Discipline chapter also affords an enlightening view of Kant’s position in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer. (shrink)

This paper offers personal reflections on the fashioning of the history of science in Europe. It presents the history of science as a discipline emerging in the twentieth century from an intellectual and political context of great complexity, and concludes with a plea for tolerance and pluralism in historiographical methods and approaches.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jack W. Meiland INTERPRETATION AS A COGNITIVE DISCIPLINE Interpretation is the fundamental method of the humanities. The humanist is concerned first to understand what a text, a speech, a work of art, means; and interpretation has this understanding as its goal. All of the other activities and aims of the humanist depend on interpretation. One cannot properly appreciate a work of art until one grasps what it means. (...) Nor can one appropriately evaluate it until this condition is met. Moreover, the importance of interpretation reaches far beyond the humanities into everyday life, where we interpret what we hear and read in order to grasp meanings. Its importance reaches into the sciences: the social sciences where one must interpret this individual behavior and that institutional practice, and the natural sciences where one must interpret the results of one's experiments. Because interpretation is of such fundamental and pervasive importance in our lives, it is urgent for us to understand what interpretation is and what it should aim at. In this article, I investigate the activity of interpretation by focusing on the interpretation of literary texts and by beginning with the views of E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Eleven years ago, Hirsch published Validity in Interpretation, a book which delves into the nature of interpretation in great detail.1 Richard Palmer has said that Hirsch's book is "the first full-dress treatise in general hermeneutics written in English," and continues, "In the years to come, it will undoubtedly take its place among the significant American works on the theory of interpretation. In a systematic and carefully argued presentation, the book challenges some of the most cherished assumptions that have guided literary interpretation for some four decades."2 1 think that Palmer's prediction has been fulfilled. Hirsch's book remains a decade later one of the very few systematic American works in this field,3 and it has been widely read, much used in university courses, and has significantly influenced thought on its subject. Validity in Interpretation presents a carefully worked-out position buttressed by philosophically-informed 23 24Philosophy and Literature and systematic argumentation in a way which reveals the fundamental questions at issue. Although there have been scattered criticisms of Hirsch's views,4 in my opinion there has not so far appeared the kind of searching critique which this book deserves in view of its attempt to deal with these issues so seriously and at such a fundamental level and in view of the influence which the book has had. The necessity for a critique is now reinforced by the recent publication of another book by Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation, more than half of which is devoted to a further explication and defense of these same views.5 In undertaking to reply to Hirsch's position, I hope not only to cast doubt on that position but also, and mainly, to provide better foundations for the view which I hold. It is one of the great merits of Hirsch's work that it facilitates that constructive effort by attacking the issues at such a basic level, enabling us to come to grips with them immediately. In what follows, I will describe Hirsch's view, make clear what kind of position he holds, and defend his view against criticisms which I consider misguided. Then we will be in a position to assess his contentions and to defend an alternative theory. Hirsch's view is, briefly, that the interpretation of a literary work should aim at re-creating (or, as he sometimes puts it, "re-cognizing") the meaning which the author of that work intended the work to have. He opposes all views which ignore authorial meaning; views which hold that the meaning of a work may change through the ages, so that the work may have one meaning at one time and another meaning at another time; views which hold that the work may have meaning in virtue of its relation to the interpreter's interests, to the needs and problems of the interpreter's times or the spirit of his age, or in fact to anything except the author's intended meaning.6 The first point that must be... (shrink)

This comment text brings, at the end, a part of Surveiller et Punir (Discipline and Punish), which has not been translated into Portuguese and does not appear in more than 40 editions of the Brazilian translation. It is on the back cover of the original in French, as if it were an afterword, signed by the author himself, Michel Foucault, which more than 40 years ago published by Editions Gallimard, his first copies in February 1975. Two years later, the (...) Brazilian version was published, but without this part which contains the reflection that Foucault invites us to think about at the end of his work:“Can the genealogy of modern morality be drawn from a political history of bodies?”(Foucault, 1975, p. 318, my translation). In addition to this absence, in the text in Portuguese, we have to think about why Foucault chose to put it in the final part of the book? (shrink)

There has been a generalised anxiety concerning the future of continental philosophy of religion as a discipline, with a number of books, articles, conferences, and presentations taking up this theme. This anxiety exists because as a discipline continental philosophy of religion lacks a clear claim to an identity. This article analyses the anxiety concerning the future of continental philosophy of religion as an anxiety of reproduction. By locating the philosopher’s anxiety within a wider anxiety of reproduction we begin (...) to understand this anxiety through the queer anti-social critique of Lee Edelman. This anxiety is traced through three processes of reproduction: intellectual reproduction, disciplinary reproduction, and institutional reproduction. The article goes on to sketch out a position against the reproduction of continental philosophy of religion by taking on and celebrating the discipline’s improper nature. Appealing neither to secular reason nor to established traditions, we draw on the Malleus Maleficarum (as read through queer theory and non-philosophy) to craft various models for thought. Here we find abortion prized over the future of the race, miscegenation over blood purity, and impotence and infertility over the sovereign power of the father. These models are explored both in terms of their historical context and as providing a different image of the work that can be carried out in the discipline of continental philosophy of religion. The article concludes by suggesting other perverse lines of relation that may be opened up when one gives up on the reproduction of the discipline. (shrink)

This article examines disciplinary proceedings about sexual misconduct by lawyers. Sexual misconduct in a professional relationship is harmful and unacceptable and should result in immediate disciplinary action to protect victims, future victims and the public. However, there is no explicit offence of sexual misconduct in Australian disciplinary legislation regarding lawyers. Rather, sexual misconduct must be linked to the statutory offences. While the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules guide the interpretation of the offences, there is only express reference to sexual harassment. We (...) examined tribunal and court legal disciplinary cases from 2000 to 2020 across all Australian jurisdictions in which sexual misconduct had occurred. Decision makers typically only considered sexual misconduct sufficiently egregious to meet the required standard of a disciplinary offence when accompanied by a criminal conviction. The conduct was often portrayed as a result of character flaws, rather than harmful to victims and the public. Thus, decision makers failed to locate the behaviour in the wider incidence of violence against women. The profession’s failure to acknowledge sexual misconduct reflects narrow professional norms which do not robustly protect victims. Explicit acknowledgement of sexual misconduct in disciplinary proceedings is essential. These amendments would signify the importance, frequency and impact of sexual misconduct. (shrink)

This article raises the question of whether bioethics qualifies as a discipline. According to a standard definition of discipline as “a field of study following specific and well-established methodological rules” bioethics is not a specific discipline as there are no explicit “well-established methodological rules.” The article investigates whether the methodological rules can be implicit, and whether bioethics can follow specific methodological rules within subdisciplines or for specific tasks. As this does not appear to be the case, the (...) article examines whether bioethics’ adherence to specific quality criteria (instead of methodological rules) or pursuing of a common goal can make it qualify as a discipline. Unfortunately, the result is negative. Then, the article scrutinizes whether referring to bioethics institutions and professional qualifications can ascertain bioethics as a discipline. However, this makes the definition of bioethics circular. The article ends by admitting that bioethics can qualify as a discipline according to broader definitions of discipline, for example, as an “area of knowledge, research and education.” However, this would reduce bioethics’ potential for demarcation and identity-building. Thus, to consolidate the discipline of bioethics and increase its impact, we should explicate and elaborate on its methodology. (shrink)

Il saggio discute il regime temporale algoritmico a partire da un inquadramento, esito di un con la teoria di Bruno Latour e di alcuni suoi critici, della tecnologia come costrutto non solo operativo, ma anche ideologico. Il saggio ricostruisce la storia concettuale del calcolo algoritmico riconoscendone le radici nella cibernetica e in una più risalente storia della quantificazione sociale che permette di misurare il modo in cui gli algoritmi ridefiniscono la logica e la direzione dell’intervento amministrativo. Attraverso gli algoritmi, l’amministrazione (...) si struttura a partire da un “design retroattivo”, in cui il futuro viene presentificato per automatizzare la ripetizione dei comportamenti passati. La disciplina algoritmica si salda così con i processi di individualizzazione neoliberali disegnando i tratti di una _moral economy_ automatizzata. (shrink)

This study investigated the students’ perception of discipline management and their academic performance in Cross River State. Two null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted a correlational research design while a simple random sampling technique was used in selecting a sample of 180 students. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire tagged: “Students’ Perception of Discipline Management and Academic Performance Questionnaire (SPDMAPQ).” Pearson product moment correlation statistical technique was used to test the (...) null hypotheses at .05 level of significance and 178 degrees of freedom. The findings revealed that students’ perception of suspension and expulsion management is significantly related to their academic performance respectively. Based on these findings, it was recommended among other things that; parents should encourage their children/ward to maintain good attitudes that will not lead to their suspension or withdrawal from school; and that principals should listen properly to offenses of students and mete out the right discipline so that students will not be suspended or expelled in an unjustifiable manner. (shrink)

Can empathy be a tool for obtaining scientific knowledge or is it incompatible with the detached objectivity that is often seen as the ideal in scientific inquiry? This paper examines the views of Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz and American comparative psychologist Daniel Lehrman on the role of intuition and empathy in the study of animal behavior. It situates those views within the larger project of establishing ethology as an objective science. Lehrman challenged Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, the main founders of (...) this field, to clarify their epistemological positions regarding how to deal with the subjectivity of the animals they studied as well as the scientist’s own subjectivity. I argue that there was a tension between their desire to eliminate the subjectivities of ethological researchers (and of their subjects) and the public perception that Lorenz had a remarkable ability to enter into the lives of the animals he studied. I explain why Lorenz rejected empathy as valid in scientific inquiry, showing that his epistemological position was grounded in his ideal of science and his proposed ontology for ethology. Yet, Lehrman insisted that full detachment was neither possible nor desirable. (shrink)

Debate about 'discipline' in schools almost invariably takes the form of empirical enquiry about which methods are most effective in securing it. This is to neglect a substantial part of the problem - the prior moral issue about the proper way to educate children. The main difficulties here are conceptual. Two rival ways of conceptualising 'educational order' are identified and examined. The received, traditional way is found to be disingenuous, incoherent and unwork-able. The alternative - a reconstructed child-centred approach (...) - escapes these problems and is commended. This conclusion is tested by investigating how each maps on to the project of moral education, for which school discipline is a neglected central arena. (shrink)

Gorman proposes to investigate historical practice under the rubric of a philosophy of disciplines. Such philosophy must first “recover historically” the self-constitution of the discipline in order then to appraise its procedures for warranting claims. Gorman's concept of discipline would have profited from consulting the substantial body of empirical research and theory regarding disciplinarity, and his “historical recovery” of the discipline of history leaves a lot to be desired. These insufficiencies vitiate the interesting arguments he has to (...) offer concerning the question of the truth-claims of whole historical accounts. A better reconstruction of disciplinarity might also have provided him with stronger rejoinders to the postmodern challenge to historical practice that he sees himself called to rebut. (shrink)

Buddhist Monastic Discipline. Jotiya Dhirasekera. Ministry of Higher Education Research Publication Series, Colombo 1982, vii + 189pp. Rs 135.