Simone Weil is one of the most profound thinkers of the twentieth century. Her writings encompass an extraordinary breadth of subjects, including philosophy, religion, sociology, and politics. A political activist and resistance fighter, her accomplishments are even more astonishing in light of her death in 1943 at the age of thirty-four. Whilst Weil was concerned with deep philosophical questions - the nature of human thought and human faculties, the limits of language, and thought's contact with reality through mediation, science and (...) beauty - the full significance of her work has frequently been obscured by her categorization as a purely religious writer or Christian mystic. Simone Weil: Basic Writings is an expertly edited anthology of her most important writings, presenting Weil's philosophy as it relates to politics, the nature of work, human nature in its duality, necessity, beauty and goodness. D. K. Levy and Marina Barabas have translated all the extracts anew, including translations of important notes and references missing from existing English language editions of Weil's work. Following an extensive introduction by D. K. Levy which places Weil's life and thought in context, each section opens with a short introduction situating the chosen passages within Weil's oeuvre. Simone Weil: Basic Writings is an outstanding starting point for anyone seeking an introduction to Weil's philosophy, and also essential reading for students and scholars of Weil's thought in related disciplines. (shrink)

Into wrestling with that question, Simone Weil put the very substance of her mind and temperament.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a defining figure of the twentieth century; a philosopher, Christian, resistance fighter, anarchist, feminist, labor activist and teacher. She was described by T. S. Eliot as "a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints," and by Albert Camus as "the only great spirit of our time." Originally published posthumously in two volumes, these newly reissued notebooks, are among the very few unedited personal writings of Weil's that still survive today. (...) Containing her thoughts on art, love, science, God and the meaning of life, they give context and meaning to Weil's famous works, revealing a unique philosophy in development and offering a rare private glimpse of her singular personality. (shrink)

"What is required if men and women are to feel at home in society and are to recover their vitality? Into wrestling with that question, Simone Weil put the very substance of her mind and temperament. The apparently solid edifices of our prepossessions fall down before her onslaught like ninepins, and she is as fertile and forthright in her positive suggestions . . . she can be relied upon to toss aside the superficial and to come to grips with the (...) essential and the profound." -- Time Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the priest to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals.

Simone Weil's Leçons de Philosophie are derived from a course she taught at the lyce;e for girls at Roanne in 1933-4. Anne Reynaud-Gue;rithault was a pupil in the class; her notes are not a verbatim record but are a very full and, as far as one can judge, faithful rendering, often catching the unmistakable tone of Simone Weil's voice as well as the force and the directness of her thought. The lectures form a good general introduction to philosophy, ranging widely (...) over problems about perception, mind, language, reasoning and problems in moral and political philosophy too. Her method of presentation is a characteristic combination of abstract argument, personal experience and literary or historical reference. Peter Winch points out in his introduction to the book some of the more systematic connections in her philosophical work (and between this philosophical work and her other concerns), and makes a number of suggestive comparisons between Simone Weil and Wittgenstein. The translation is by Hugh Price from the Plon edition of 1959. Dr Price has added some notes to explain references in the text that might be unfamiliar to English speaking students beginning philosophy. (shrink)

自史蒂芬·霍金(Stephen Hawking) 的暢銷科普著作《時間簡史》(以下簡稱《簡史》) 在上世紀八十年代末問世以來，至今天二十一世紀，華人基督教界就他宇宙無起點的論述仍有相當之評論，但可惜對評論未有綜合分析。評論者因寫作目的，也甚少交代霍金宇宙學的來龍去脈。故本文嘗試略述霍金宇宙學的歷史 背景及發展經過，繼而舉出華人基督教界的評論，帶出其獨特性，並提出商確的地方，以反省未來可行路向。.

Intentional action is often accompanied by knowledge of what one is doing—knowledge which appears non-observational and non-inferential. G.E.M. Anscombe defends the stronger claim that intentional action always comes with such knowledge. Among those who follow Anscombe, some have altered the features, content, or species of the knowledge claimed to necessarily accompany intentional action. In this paper, I argue that there is no knowledge condition on intentional action, no matter the assumed features, content, or species of the knowledge. Further, rather than (...) follow the usual methodology in this debate of arguing by counterexample, I present an argument that explains why we continue to find counterexamples: intentional action and knowledge are regulated by thresholds under distinct pressures; in particular, the threshold of control regulating intentional action is disparately influenced by the role of intentional action in practical normativity. (shrink)

This thesis defends egalitarianism about knowledge and belief, on which neither is understood in terms of the other, from what I call the abductive argument. This argument is meant to favour views opposed to egalitarianism: doxasticism, on which knowledge is understood in terms of belief, and epistemicism, on which belief is understood in terms of knowledge. The abductive argument turns on the idea that doxasticism and epistemicism, by contrast with egalitarianism, explain certain data about knowledge and belief. I argue, however, (...) that no versions of doxasticism and epistemicism currently on offer are preferable to egalitarianism on abductive grounds. As part of my argument, I also defend the claim that knowledge, by contrast with belief, is an attitude to a fact and explore the implications of this claim for doxasticism and epistemicism. (shrink)

In Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks , Simone Weil discusses precursors to Christian religious ideas which can be found in ancient Greek mythology, literature and philosophy. She looks at evidence of "Christian" feelings in Greek literature, notably in Electra, Orestes, and Antigone , and in the Iliad , going on to examine God in Plato, and divine love in creation, as seen by the ancient Greeks.

Judgment subjectivism is the view that x is good for S if and only if, because, and to the extent that S believes, under the proper conditions, that x is good for S. In this paper, I offer three related arguments against the theory. The arguments are about what judgment subjectivism implies about the well-being of welfare nihilists, people who believe there are no welfare properties, or at least that none are instantiated. I maintain that welfare nihilists can be benefited (...) and harmed. Judgment subjectivism is implausible because it implies otherwise. (shrink)

Encountering Derrida explores the points of engagement between Jacques Derrida and a host of other European thinkers, past and present, in order to counter recent claims that the era of deconstruction is finally drawing to a close. The book rereads Derrida in order to renew deconstruction's various conceptions of language, poetry, philosophy, institutions, difference and the future. This impressive collection of essays from the world's leading Derrida scholars re-evaluates Derrida's legacy and looks forward to the possible futures of deconstruction by (...) confronting various challenges to Derrida's thought. Collectively, the essays argue that Derrida must be read alongside others , an approach that produces some surprising new accounts of this challenging critical thinker. _ _. (shrink)

Jones's (1991) issue-contingent model of ethical decision making posits that six dimensions of moral intensity influence decision markers' recognition of an issue as a moral problem and subsequent behavior. He notes that "organizational settings present special challenges to moral agents" (1991, p. 390) and that organizational factors affect "moral decision making and behavior at two points: establishing moral intent and engaging in moral behavior" (1991, p. 391). This model, however, minimizes both the impact of organizational setting and organizational factors on (...) these experiences of ethical issues. In this theory, context is modeled as affecting the moral intent and behavior of the actor rather than directly affecting the issue's moral intensity. Here we look specifically at the effect of context on the moral intensity of ethical issues through a phenomenological study. Our results indicate that in certain environments, context may be critical in affecting the moral intensity of ethical issues. Thus, researchers should consider it more fully when assessing these issues' moral intensity. (shrink)

In 2009, health authorities from Taiwan formally attended the 62nd World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization as observers, marking the country’s participation for the first time since 1972. The long process of negotiating this breakthrough has been cited as an example of successful global health diplomacy. This paper analyses this negotiation process, drawing on government documents, formal representations from both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and key informant interviews. The actors and their motivations, along with the forums, practices (...) and outcomes of the negotiation process, are detailed. While it is argued that non-traditional diplomatic action was important in establishing the case for Taiwan’s inclusion at the WHA, traditional concerns regarding Taiwanese sovereignty and diplomatic representation ultimately played a decisive role. The persistent influence of these traditional diplomatic questions illustrates the limits of global health diplomacy. (shrink)

Philosophe politique et intellectuel engage dans la vie des idées aux Etats-Unis comme dans le monde, Michael Walzer est l'un des penseurs de la société parmi les plus stimulants a l'époque contemporaine. Son oeuvre défriche des pistes nouvelles de réflexion dans les domaines du politique, de la justice sociale, de la morale ou de l'identité culturelle. En même temps, Walzer, dont la pensée s'est forgée lors des luttes pour l'égalité des droits civiques aux USA et contre la guerre du Vietnam (...) dans les années 1960, poursuit une activité féconde d'animation du débat public à travers sa revue Dissent. Dans cet essai, Simon Wuhl a souhaité éclairer une autre dimension de la pensée de Michael Walzer : la relation étroite avec la pensée juive, dont les potentialités d'universalisation sont une référence majeure dans la plupart de ses écrits. Qu'elle s'exprime ouvertement comme dans son article emblématique sur " Les deux universalismes ", ou en arrière-fond comme dans son livre plus théorique sur les Sphères de justice, l'empreinte du judaïsme est toujours présente dans son oeuvre pour éclairer les grandes questions de société. Faisant par ailleurs retour, dans certains de ses travaux, sur les textes de base du judaïsme, Walzer mobilise les ressources méthodologiques des sciences humaines pour les soumettre à une relecture critique. (shrink)

The history of ideas is an interdisciplinary field that began as an offshoot of the history of philosophy and was transformed by notions of perspective and cultural context drawn from the tradition of historical studies. The result is the practice of intellectual history, which has been carried out between the poles of inquiry commonly known as internalist and externalist, corresponding to mental phenomena and collective behavior in cultural surroundings. These are not opposed but rather complementary methods, and intellectual history may (...) be seen as the inside of cultural history and cultural history as the outside of intellectual history, the intellectual historian's task being to bring the two into alliance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.4 (2001) 577-592 [Access article in PDF] Eclecticism and the History of Ideas Donald R. Kelley "What we call the history of ideas," Joseph Mazzeo wrote in in 1972, "itself has a history." 1 In this country the history of ideas in the past century has been associated with the American philosopher and founder of this journal, Arthur O. Lovejoy, and his (...) epigones and critics. However, this field has an earlier history sub literam, going back almost two centuries, and a still deeper prehistory before the coinage of the phrase, traceable at least indirectly back to antiquity. The purpose of this essay is to trace some aspects of one intellectual tradition out of which the history of ideas has, knowingly or not, emerged.In 1829 Victor Cousin gave a diagnosis of and his prescription for philosophy in the wake of one revolution and on the threshold of another. He saw just three possibilities: either it could renounce its independence and submit again to authority, it could keep on retracing the circle of obsolescent systems, or--and this was his solution--it could "disengage what is true in each of these systems, and thus construct a philosophy superior to all systems [and] shall be neither this or that philosophy in its essence and in its unity." This procedure, "to select in all what appears to be true and good, and consequently everlasting,--this, in a single word, is ECLECTICISM." Moreover, Cousin added, "[i]f this philosophy is to be Eclectic, it must also be sustained by the history of philosophy."How had Cousin come upon this program? In December 1815, in the first year of both the Restoration Monarchy and his teaching at the École Normale Supérieure, he was lecturing on the history of philosophy. In post-revolutionary France this was a field in great disarray, and Cousin looked back to the great schools of the earlier generation, noting three in particular--the French, the [End Page 577] Scottish, and the German traditions, represented respectively by Condillac, Reid, and Kant. "It would be an interesting and instructive study," he told his enthusiastic young students, "to examine the weaknesses of these schools by engaging one with another and by selecting their various merits in the context of a great eclecticism which would contain and surpass all three." 2Over the next three decades this doctrine was publicized and extended by Cousin's many scholarly publications, by the still more famous lectures he gave after returning to his chair of philosophy in 1828, by his many international contacts and disciples, and by his later public career as minister of education. 3 For half a century before his death in 1867 Cousin had an unparalleled intellectual influence as virtually the "official philosopher" in France, with Eclecticism being widely regarded as a "state philosophy," 4 and translations of his works extending his renown into other parts of Europe and this country. In defending his achievements and hegemonic position Cousin claimed an absolute originality and a unique truth-value for his ideas. Eclecticism had not been drawn from German sources, he protested in 1855. "It was born spontaneously in our own spirit [notre esprit] from the spectacle of the resounding conflicts and the hidden harmonies of the three great philosophical schools of the eighteenth century," he declared. "Thus," he concluded, "eclecticism is a French doctrine and peculiar to us." 5Historically speaking, however, nothing could be further from the truth--or indeed further from the premises of the earlier eclectic tradition on which Cousin knowingly drew. The defining characteristic of his philosophy was its dependence not only on the three schools he recognized in his early years of teaching but on the whole history of philosophy from its Greek and especially Platonic beginnings, to which Cousin himself devoted much of his historical and philological [End Page 578] scholarship. That Eclecticism was a sort of higher plagiarism was admitted by Cousin himself: "What I recommend," Cousin said in 1817, "is an enlightened eclecticism which, judging with equity, and even with benevolence... (shrink)

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) was passed in 2006 and came into force in 2008. It sets out a number of core values, including dignity, individual autonomy, non-discrimination, participation and community inclusion. Although the CRPD has been recognised as an important step forward by many disabled people and their supporters and provides the foundation for building a good life, the author argues that it does not necessarily equate with it. The underpinning Western values of (...) choice, independence and control are important, but leave out groups of marginalised people for whom these goals may not be achievable. They also present challenges and dilemmas for those involved in supporting/caring roles. In this paper, the author reflects on the implications of the CRPD for the lives of people with learning disabilities, in particular those with profound needs and explores whether it provides a genuinely coherent framework for an inclusive society. (shrink)

Is it tautological to call an action "wrongful discrimination?" Some philosophers and political theorists answer this question in the affirmative and claim that the term "discrimination" is intrinsically evaluative. Others agree that "discrimination" usually conveys the action’s moral wrongness but claim that the term can be used in a purely descriptive way. In this paper, we present two corpus studies and two experiments designed to test whether the folk concept of discrimination is evaluative. We demonstrate that the term has undergone (...) a historical development and is nowadays no longer used purely descriptively. Further, we show that this evaluation cannot be cancelled without yielding a contradiction. We conclude that the descriptive use of "discriminatory" is a thing of the past. (shrink)

How do adolescent girls envision the world of work and their potential place in it? This article considers teen magazines as a possible source for girls’ perceptions about the work world, including their own career futures. The author explores the occupational landscape embedded with in Seventeen magazinein 1992 in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The labor market in Seventeen-land is heavily skewed toward professional occupations, particularly in the entertainment industry. A close reading of the text reveals four primary messages about (...) the world of work: Entertainment careers are a viable and prestigious option, men are the norm as workers, men hold the power, and fashion modeling is the pinnacle of “women’s work. ” The author argues that Seventeen may be promulgating a distinct set of what Collins called “controlling images” directed at predominantly white girls. The findings suggest gender researchers should attend to the connection between the mass media and girl culture. They also underscore the importance of teaching media literacy. (shrink)

Long before Luc Besson shot Fifth Element (1997) in English, and long before the squabble over whether Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement [2004]) was really a French film or a Warner Brothers’ film, the “national” in French national cinema was complicated. And yet a quick glance at the course offerings of most film departments will tell us that the discipline of Film Studies persists in employing a national cinema model when conceptualizing non-Hollywood cinema. In (...) fact, French cinema has been global from its inception, if we think of globalization as the “increasing speed, ease, and extent with which capital, goods, services, technologies, people, cultures, information .. (shrink)

There is an extensive literature in social choice theory studying the consequences of weakening the assumptions of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Much of this literature suggests that there is no escape from Arrow-style impossibility theorems unless one drastically violates the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA). In this paper, we present a more positive outlook. We propose a model of comparing candidates in elections, which we call the Advantage-Standard (AS) model. The requirement that a collective choice rule (CCR) be rationalizable by the (...) AS model is in the spirit of but weaker than IIA; yet it is stronger than what is known in the literature as weak IIA (two profiles alike on x, y cannot have opposite strict social preferences on x and y). In addition to motivating violations of IIA, the AS model makes intelligible violations of another Arrovian assumption: the negative transitivity of the strict social preference relation P. While previous literature shows that only weakening IIA to weak IIA or only weakening negative transitivity of P to acyclicity still leads to impossibility theorems, we show that jointly weakening IIA to AS rationalizability and weakening negative transitivity of P leads to no such impossibility theorems. Indeed, we show that several appealing CCRs are AS rationalizable, including even transitive CCRs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We explore the impact on employee attitudes of their perceptions of how others outside the organization are treated above and beyond the impact of how employees are directly treated by the organization. Results of a study of 827 employees in eighteen organizations show that employee perceptions of corporate social responsibility are positively related to organizational commitment with the relationship being partially mediated by work meaningfulness and perceived organizational support and job satisfaction with work meaningfulness partially mediating the relationship but not (...) POS. Moreover, in order to address limited micro-level research in CSR, we develop a measure of employee perceptions of CSR through four pilot studies. Employing a bifactor model, we find that social responsibility has an additional effect on employee attitudes beyond environmental responsibility, which we posit is due to the relational component of social responsibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 153-156 [Access article in PDF] JHI 2000 Donald R. Kelley It was just sixty years ago that this Journal first made its appearance. Two hundred thirty-nine issues later it continues in a world transformed by war, overpopulation, cultural shocks, scientific and technological transformations, globalization, the avalanche of information produced by electronic exchange, and "the acceleration of just about everything." Yet (...) despite these factors and the strains of postmodernism and cultural alterity, 1 it has not entirely lost touch with its intellectual innocence, faith in humanistic learning, and reliance on enlightened reason. This continuity itself may seem something of a novelty in an age of distrust of history and "rage against reason," but for some of us it reflects the critical spirit and intellectual context out of which such ostensibly subversive attitudes emerge, and reemerge. To some extent, moreover, the diversity of opinions about intellectual traditions is the result of specializations, and special interests, which have changed the climate of opinion since the time of Arthur O. Lovejoy, principal founder of the JHI. Lovejoy's vision was super- as well as inter-disciplinary; that is, he intended to include in the agenda of "history of ideas" particular areas of history of philosophy, literature, art, science, social science, etc., as well as the larger intellectual and cultural areas into which these disciplinary histories extend. 2 These days, however, all these disciplinary traditions have their own more specialized journals and do not need to seek a vehicle in publications of more general interest. What remains then, for the most part, is the interdisciplinary arena in which larger questions of human experience should be posed--and for Lovejoy, as for so many epigones and critics, the main "larger question" is not only one of value but also of specifically historical inquiry. 3 [End Page 153]The first issue of the JHI appeared under the editorship of Lovejoy (with Philip Wiener, who did most of the editorial work, as "managing editor"), assisted by a committee that included two historians, three philosophers, four literary scholars, and one political theorist; namely, Crane Brinton, Gilbert Chinard, Morris Cohen, Francis Coker, Richard McKeon, Perry Miller, Marjory Nicolson, J. H. Randall, J. Salwyn Schapiro, and Louis Wright. The first volume featured contributions from each of these, including Wiener, except for Miller (vol. 2), Shapiro (vol. 3), McKeon (vol. 8), and Coker. 4 During the first five years there were also reviews of books by Dilthey (by Horace L. Friess), Croce (Schapiro), Mannheim (Randall), Perry Miller (Herbert W. Schneider), Van Wyck Brooks (Miller) and Alfred Kazin (F. O. Matthiessen). In this period the disciplinary distribution of articles was not markedly different from that of the past five years, nor was the ranking of fields by number of submissions. 5 Most important, the original interdisciplinary thrust of Lovejoy's agenda, if not his attachment to the spiritualist currency of "unit-ideas," has survived growing specialization.At first the history of ideas was pursued largely in the shadow of the history of philosophy; for in this field, according to Lovejoy, "is to be found the common seed-plot, the locus of initial manifestation in writing, of the greater number of the more fundamental and pervasive ideas, and especially of the ruling preconceptions, which manifest themselves in other regions of intellectual history." 6 Lovejoy's concern was always with concepts, especially "-isms," and yet in some ways he anticipated the "linguistic turn" of the later years of this century, pointing out in particular "the role of semantic shifts, ambiguities, and confusions, in the history of thought and taste," for "nearly all of the great catchwords have been equivocal--or rather, multivocal." 7 If ideas could be given stable definitions, they were nonetheless often, in the context of language, in conflict, even in the mind of a single thinker; for such was the "anomaly of knowledge." 8 So Lovejoy was at pains to distinguish the various meanings of [End Page 154] catch-words like "nature," "perfectibility," "romanticism," "progress," and "pragmatism," not to mention more inflammatory terms of wartime ideological debate.But... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From the Executive EditorDonald R. KelleyTwenty years ago the Journal of the History of Ideas moved from Temple University to the University of Rochester (through the efforts especially of J. Paul Hunter, then dean of the college of arts and sciences, and Lewis White Beck, professor of philosophy), and I replaced Philip Wiener, who had been editor for forty-five years, the first issue under my supervision being that of (...) July 1985. A year later Robin Ladrach joined me as assistant and then as associate editor, and in 1991 we both moved along with the JHI to Rutgers University (through the efforts especially of Richard McCormick, then dean of the faculty of arts and sciences and now president of the university). Now the Journal has moved to the University of Pennsylvania, and I pass on the editorship to a committee composed of Warren Breckman, Martin J. Burke, Anthony Grafton, and Ann E. Moyer, with Robin Ladrach continuing as managing editor.We changed our face in 1990, but otherwise we have maintained a remarkably steady course since the days of Arthur O. Lovejoy, original founder of the JHI in 1940, with articles submitted and articles published continuing in mostly the same quantity and intellectual range and following the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural vision established by Lovejoy in the 1930s (history of philosophy, science, political thought, historiography, religion, literature, art, and music) but also modified by intervening intellectual and cultural changes (and so enhanced by studies in the human sciences, gender, women's history, globalism, animals, etc.). Such change has for the most part not been from conscious editorial policy, except indirectly, but rather "from below," and the role of the editor has been that not of cultural critic but of observer, whose reflections have appeared in "Horizons of Intellectual History," JHI, 48 (1987), 143–69; "What is Happening to the History of Ideas?" JHI, 51 (1990), 3–25; "JHI 2000," JHI, 61 (2000), 153–56; and The History of Ideas: Canon and Variations (Rochester, N.Y., 1990), which contains also the reflections of Lovejoy and other earlier authors. The new regime may well introduce new departures, but I [End Page 475] believe that it will continue to rely and perhaps draw on the old Lovejovian tradition which has made this journal a successful and enduring international enterprise.Donald R. KelleyExecutive Editor Emeritus Rutgers UniversityCopyright © 2005 The Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:J. H. Hexter 1910–1996Donald R. KelleyJ. H. Hexter, one of the leading intellectual historians of this century and a close associate of this Journal, died on 8 December 1996. Jack Hexter was a great scholar, talented writer and polemicist, devoted baseball fan, and authentic American humorist, who made wit and facetiousness part of his historiographical tool-kit. He was also an American character, as he made insistently clear in his (...) writings, especially his autobiographical account, “By Any Other Name,” which explained (among other things) why he came to be called “Jack,” why he resisted advice to change it, and other onomastic adventures.Jack taught at Queens College (N.Y., not, he pointed out, the one in South Carolina), 1939–57; Washington University (St. Louis, not Seattle or George Washington U.), 1957–64 and again 1978–86; and Yale University (one did not have to add, “New Haven”) 1965–85, where he was Director of the Center for Parliamentary History. At Washington University he was founding Director of the Center for the History of Freedom, which was devoted to a collaborative, multi-volume study of the history of liberty in the West that would realize the dream that Lord Acton called his “madonna of the future”—the difference being that Jack’s vision is already on the way to fulfillment, with the publication of the volume edited by him on Parliament and Liberty from the Reign of Elizabeth to the English Civil War (1992), followed by seven more volumes up to 1996, with more to come.Hexter published books and articles in a variety of fields, finding notoriety especially in his essay of 1958, “Storm over the Gentry,” and later in public jousts with Christopher Hill and others and more retrospective censures of (among others) A. W. Pollard and R. H. Tawney; and he was a master of the Macaulayan art of the review-essay (collected in On Historians, 1979). His article on “Braudel and le monde braudelien” was a mischievous masterpiece of satire which, according to a private communication to Jack, Braudel himself enjoyed in his Olympian way, including the good-natured charge of excessive appetite for facts—“Je vais me dire: ne joue pas trop au Rabelais, sois sage, ne mange pas tout, n’aie les yeux plus gros que le ventre!” (personal letter, 8 February 1973). Several generations of graduate students learned what was involved in doing history from his “The Historian and his Day” (1954), which (like “Storm”), he enjoyed recalling, was rejected by the AHR. He was amused, too, at learning that his article on “The Rhetoric of History” (written for the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences) was a harbinger of the rhetorical turn taken a few years later signalled by the historiographical work of Hayden White and others. He was a pioneer, too, in the intensive study of political languages (Visions of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation, 1973), though he lamented the fact that his work on Machiavelli’s and Seyssel’s political vocabulary had to be carried out before the age of computer technology.My first contact with Jack came through my mentor Garrett Mattingly, who was the contemporary historian Jack “most admired” (as he made plain in his contribution to Mattingly’s festschrift). In 1962 Mattingly told me that the plan to publish Hexter’s translation of Seyssel’s Monarchy of France for the Columbia Records Series had to be abandoned because of the first (I think) of Jack’s several heart attacks. I was able to use the mimeographed version for some years before Jack asked me to take over this project, originally visited on him by C. H. McIlwain. It was his suggestion that [End Page 349] we dedicate the collaborative volume, with nice ambiguity, to both McIlwain and Mattingly (who had also been a student of McIlwain) from “two of their deeply devoted students.”In this brief and perhaps overpersonal note (though nothing could be “too personal” for Jack) I will not add further to the store of Hexterian anecdotes, which I began collecting at Queens College, where Jack had already left the makings of a legend in the 1950s. I would just add... (shrink)

Obituary for Joseph M. Levine, Distinguished Professor of History at Syracuse University.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Romanian Cultural and Political IdentityDonald R. KelleyThe Journal of the History of Ideas, in collaboration with other institutions, including the Universities of Bucharest and Budapest and the Soros Foundation, recently sponsored the second in a series of international conferences being planned on topics in current intellectual history. (The first, “Interrogating Tradition,” was held at Rutgers University, 13–16 November 1997.) The Romanian conference, which was held in the Elisabeta Palace (...) in Bucharest (27–31 May 1998), was devoted to “Culture and the Politics of National Identity in Modern Romania.” Over forty scholars, mainly from Romania but some also from the U.S., France, Germany, and Hungary, gathered to discuss a variety of questions about Romanian society, past, present, and speculative future; and they were joined by at least as many visitors, especially students, from the local area and beyond.Topics discussed included politics, language, economics, historiography, religion, education, philosophy, ideologies, intelligentsia, particular intellectuals, minorities, and women (though not Gypsies or gays). Under this riot of rubrics a wide range of questions were posed in interdisciplinary fashion, with frequent, sometimes impassioned interventions. What is—was, might have been, can be—Romania? Who is a Romanian (and who not)? What is Romania’s relation to the West and the East? (And what are the “West” and the “East”?) To modernity, to modernism, to modernization? What is—has been, should be—the function of intellectuals, of political and cultural elites, in understanding the Romanian past and in setting a course for the future? What, more generally, is the role of history in answering such questions? Or is history perhaps (as Karl Krause remarked of psychoanalysis) the disease for which it claims to be the cure?Keith Hitchens’s keynote address suggested that rehashing old essentialist debates might not be productive at millennium’s end, but the conference itself could not avoid some excursions down the paths of memory and myth. For historians, Western historians anyway, Romania seems to have too many pasts. Located at the juncture of four previous empires, Romania is a mosaic, or perhaps a pandemonium, of ethnic, religious, economic, and ideological groups that can only imagine, or invent, a nationality. Geographically (and in many ways culturally) remote from the West, Romania for a long time (as Sorin Antohi remarked) lacked both a public sphere and a civil society; and suffering “a Counter-Reformation without a Reformation” (Alexandru Dutu’s phrase), it has not enjoyed a tradition of religious or ethnic toleration. Nor have either the Germans or the Jews (as Glass said) found their own unity within the changing borders of the modern Romanian state. Not until the nineteenth century did Romania develop, out of its Boyar background (as Siupiur argued), an intellectual elite that could create a modern national history and help turn “peasants into Romanians” (Antohi’s phrase); and even then this elite seemed more attracted to conservative [End Page 735] (Herder, Savigny, Burke) than to liberal views of autochthonism. Many features of Western modernity, such as Newtonian science, reached Romania late, and indeed there was a retrograde movement against liberalism under the aegis by orthodox religion. In any case this intelligentsia has been as fragmented and multiform as the Romanian past itself. True, some Romanian scholars like to posit a mainstream tradition, “excesses aside,” as one speaker put it—but how, asked another, can historians put “excesses” aside from the devastating perspective of this century?Political and cultural self-examination was the dominant theme of this conference. Nationality, said Pippidi, depends on three factors, viz., name, language, religion, and territory. The Romanian name dates from the tenth century, indicating a separation of the Roman from the Greek tradition in Wallachia; and from the seventeenth century the idea of a mainly Roman provenance was given privilege. As a language, “Romanian” was spoken in the late Middle Ages, but the first written document is dated 1521. The principal religion in Romania was and is Greek orthodox, although there are also Roman Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, and German Protestant communities, as well as the Uniate church created in the eighteenth century. As for the territory, this has been a matter of change, conflict, and confusion throughout the tragic course... (shrink)

Although it is argued that social justice is a core concern for the discipline, nursing has not generally played a leadership role in the responses to many of the greatest social problems of our time. These include the accelerated rate of climate change, pandemic threats, systemic racism, growing health and social inequities, and the regulation of new technologies to ensure an equitable future ‘for all.’ In nursing codes of ethics, administration, education, policies, and practice, social justice is often claimed to (...) be a core value, yet it is rarely contextualized by philosophical or theoretical underpinnings. It appears that nurses’ commitment to social justice may stem more from a penchant for ‘doing good’ than an attempt to explore, understand, and enact what is meant by social justice from an ontological, epistemological, and methodological perspective. We contend that the dominance of a human science perspective in nursing contributes to a narrow definition of health and relegates many issues central to social justice to the margins of nurses’ care. In this article, we explore how the focus on ‘the human’ in the human science perspective may not only be limiting the capacity of nurses to develop strategies to adequately address social injustice, but in some instances, direct nurses to contribute to their very reproduction. We suggest that a critical interrogation of this human‐centric hegemony can identify avenues of rupture and introduce posthumanism as an additional philosophical perspective for consideration to help bridge the human‐social divide. (shrink)

How do we know what an amoeba looks like? How can doctors see the details of our skeletons and internal organs? All of these things are made possible through the innovations of photography. The author provides a primer on the applications of photography to science as she explores the multiple facets of this complex relationship.

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are still best selling introductions to the ideas of personal freedom and of the free market. As literature they may have drawbacks, but they are compelling "reads," which is certainly what Rand would have wanted. Rand's passionate and moralistic tone, while off-putting to many, is nevertheless probably a real part of her appeal and is no less than an equal and opposite reaction to the self-righteousness that is still characteristic of leftist rhetoric. Few writers convey (...) an irresistible ferocity of convictions as Rand does. To many, including the present writer, raised and indoctrinated with the standard disparagements of capitalism, a novel like Atlas Shrugged can produce something very much like a Conversion Experience. At the same time, the harsh certainty of an autodidact and self-made person, and the high handed authoritarian manner of Rand's personality, worked against her case, her cause, and her life. (shrink)

Certainly one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th century, Schopenhauer seems to have had more impact on literature (e.g. Thomas Mann) and on people in general than on academic philosophy. Perhaps that is because, first, he wrote very well, simply and intelligibly (unusual, we might say, for a German philosopher, and unusual now for any philosopher), second, he was the first Western philosopher to have access to translations of philosophical material from India, both Vedic and Buddhist, by which he (...) was profoundly affected, to the great interest of many, and, third, his concerns were with the dilemmas and tragedies, in a religious or existential sense, of real life, not just with abstract philosophical problems. As.. (shrink)

The title of The Rediscovery of the Mind suggests the question "When was the mind lost?" Since most people may not be aware that it ever was lost, we must also then ask "Who lost it?" It was lost, of course, only by philosophers, by certain philosophers. This passed unnoticed by society at large. The "rediscovery" is also likely to pass unnoticed. But has the mind been rediscovered by the same philosophers who "lost" it? Probably not. John Searle is an (...) analytic philosopher, with some of the same notions as the positivists and behaviorists who rejected consciousness and "lost" the mind in the first place, but he also does not sound like the kind of reductionist who would have joined that crowd. His views, indeed, are sensible enough, and some of his insights so important, that it is a shame to find his thought profoundly limited by some of the same mistakes and prejudices that ruined philosophy, and not just philosophy of mind, under the influence of those positivists and behaviorists. There is enough of genuine value in his treatment, that it can easily be taken up and, with relatively slight modification, added to what is of permanent value in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Amid all the talk about the "Collective Unconscious" and other sexy issues, most readers are likely to miss the fact that C.G. Jung was a good Kantian. His famous theory of Synchronicity, "an acausal connecting principle," is based on Kant 's distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves and on Kant 's theory that causality will not operate among thing-in-themselves the way it does in phenomena. Thus, Kant could allow for free will among things-in-themselves, as Jung allows for synchronicity. Next to Kant, (...) Jung is close to. (shrink)