Two Theories of Toleration: Locke versus Mill

Abstract

In her book, Zuckert presents a new interpretation of the Platonic corpus based on the internal dramatic chronology of all the dialogues. According to Zuckert, once the dialogues are ordered in this way, then it is possible to understand Plato's story of the development of Socratic philosophy, especially in relation to the other non-Socratic philosophers: Parmenides, Timaeus, the Eleatic Stranger, and the Athenian Stranger. For Plato, Socratic philosophy is superior to these other types of philosophy because of its acute understanding of both the limitations and the erotic character of human knowledge. It is only with his account of erôs in the Symposium that Socrates was able to account for the ways in which the eternal and intelligible ideas of the noble, the just, and the good could come to be exemplified in the life of mortal human beings, via the cooperative practice of philosophic virtue.     

A Revolution in Plato Scholarship

Abstract

Catherine Zuckert's new book on Plato is a monumental work that should revolutionize Plato scholarship. I argue that its principal claims about ordering Plato's dialogues according to their dramatic chronology and about the development of Socrates in relation to Plato's other philosophers are highly plausible and powerfully presented. The book also makes the case for Socrates as “Plato's hero” whose greatness lies in understanding the human realm of the noble and the good independently of cosmology or metaphysics; and it challenges us to ask if Plato and Catherine Zuckert embrace this model of Socratic philosophy as the highest and happiest way of life.     

Teaching Political Science in China: Observations and Suggestions from a Foreign Visitor

Abstract

In responding to the other participants in the Symposium on Plato's Philosophers I attempt to clarify the reasons for, and the results of, my attempt to bring out the interrelations among the dialogues in order to determine what Plato thought. Recognizing that the indications of the dramatic dates of some the dialogues are controversial, I argue that the dates point to an over-arching narrative–the story of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. Plato uses his other philosophers—the Athenian Stranger, Parmenides, Timaeus, and the Eleatic Stranger—to bring out the problems that gave rise to Socratic philosophy and the limitations of his responses. Plato makes Socrates his “hero,” because Socrates provides the best account of the human beings who engage in the search for wisdom. By contrasting him with the other philosophers, Plato dramatizes the insoluble problems that make philosophy always a search for wisdom.     

Friendship as a Political Challenge

Abstract

Blitz argues for the necessity and possibility of political philosophy by uncovering its origins in the thought of Plato. By tracing its emergence from the political and moral, Blitz explains the nature of philosophy.     

Strauss,Anastaplo, and Crosskey on "One Hard Nut to Crack": The Declaration of Independence

Abstract

What liberal arts and science faculty's regalia must and must not represent, and why liberal education should endure.     

On the Degeneration of Public Philosophy in America: Problems and Prospects

Abstract

Mark Blitz’s Plato’s Political Philosophy is reviewed in this article with special attention to two recurring themes. The first is the relation of parts to wholes and, especially, how the knowledge of parts and wholes in general and of political parts and wholes in particular relate to the philosophic attempt to know the whole itself. The second theme is that of philosophy’s relation to piety and, in particular, how the attempt to know the whole, as understood by Blitz, relates to the fundamental opposition between piety and philosophy. Attention to these themes, the author argues, helps to explain peculiarities of Blitz’s approach, especially his greater emphasis on articulating the entire “realm of political philosophy” than on explicating individual dialogues and his tendency to connect and divide Platonic thoughts, themes, and problems rather than to bore into individual Socratic problems.     

One Landscape, Many Experiences: Differing Perspectives of the Temple Districts of Vijayanagara

Landscapes have multiple meanings depending on the perspectives of those who experience them. Uncovering those perspectives for past landscapes depends on multiple lines of evidence, both archaeological and historical. The landscape of the fourteenth- to sixteenth-century south Indian capital of Vijayanagara was the setting for important mythological events, interplays of power between the elite, ritual and pilgrimage for devotees, and ordinary daily activities for residents. This paper explores these different views of the urban landscape through examination of oral traditions and historical data, assessment of architecture and access and routing, and archaeological analysis of grinding stones and ceramics.     

MYTH IN HISTORY,PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AS MYTH: ON THE AMBIVALENCE OF HANS BLUMENBERG'S INTERPRETATION OF ERNST CASSIRER'S THEORY OF MYTH

This essay explores the different interpretations proposed by Ernst Cassirer and Hans Blumenberg of the relation between Platonic philosophy and myth as a means of bringing to light a fundamental divergence in their respective conceptions of what precisely myth is. It attempts to show that their conceptions of myth are closely related to their respective assumptions concerning the historical significance of myth and regarding the sense of history more generally. Their divergent conceptions of myth and of history, I argue, are at the same time not simply matters of abstract speculation, but spring from fundamental presuppositions concerning myth's political significance. The present elucidation aims not only to set in relief one or another of the ways in which Cassirer or Blumenberg understood myth, nor even to present Blumenberg's critical reception of Cassirer's theories, but above all to contribute to the interpretation of the political implications of myth and of its historical potency in our contemporary epoch.     

Many Voices,One Court: The Origin and Role of Dissent in the Supreme Court

E pluribus unum—out of many, one—is the phrase emblazoned on the Seal of the United States, which refers to the notion that a single American voice emerges from the many diverse groups that constitute the nation. The legislative and executive branches of government often act as one voice through legislative bills and executive acts, aggregating diverse interests that reflect the national will. The notion of e pluribus unum, however, is not often applied to the judiciary, a branch of government the members of which are viewed, not as outlets for the will of the people, but as gatekeepers of the rule of law. But while the Supreme Court may not speak directly for the people, its opinions speak to the people, and the methods used by the Justices to express those opinions have revealed changes in the conception of the Court's voice throughout history.     

Adaptations: History,Gender, and Political Economy in the Work of Dugald Stewart

Summary

This paper notes and explores the attraction of Dugald Stewart's moral philosophy for women readers and a few women writers. Student lecture notes reveal the chronological development of his ideas, as he drew upon the works of Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson, and responded to political events. Particular attention is paid to Stewart's comments relating to women and gender, through discussions of education, the institution of marriage, and population questions. After 1800, he shifted away from a speculative conjectural history towards a philosophy of moral progress rooted in common sense philosophy and a belief in perfectibility. He taught a system of practical morality relevant to the education of children and strongly emphasised the importance of the association of ideas in childhood. For women readers, the message was contradictory in that he united an apparently conservative reinforcement of the relations of the sexes with a belief in the improvement of the condition of women through education in a modern, progressive, and commercial society.     

Tolerated,but not Preferred: Troubling the Unconscious of Televisual Multiculturalism

Canadian televisual exports make up at least 30 percent of the original content on US cable television. And from many angles, Canadian youth-television series look more diverse, more positive, and more attentive to interracial and interethnic issues than do similar US series. This article explores Canadian representations of interracial relationships and situates them within readings of Canada's official multicultural policy. It argues that much of this surface-level positivism about race reveals unconscious anxieties that ultimately manifest in drastic ways of treating “diversity” or “multicultural” subjects.     

BLOOD FOR THE GHOSTS: READING RUIN'S BEING WITH THE DEAD WITH NIETZSCHE

A focus on roots, localizations, usurpations, and obliterations together with commemoration and different fields of scholarly research, along with a thematic focus on Homer's Nykia, permit Hans Ruin to revisit the foundations of history in Being with the Dead. Ruin draws on cultural sociology, including the work of Alfred Schütz, as well as Heideggerian historicity and the dead of the distant past, including archaeology and ethnography, paleography and physical anthropology. Ruin also engages Michel de Certeau's Writing of History and its focus on the other in a necropolitical account tracked through interdisciplinary fields. In my reading I supplement Ruin's critical focus on Homer scholarship beyond the twentieth century with a return to Nietzsche's nineteenth-century emphasis on the “blood” needed to bring the voices of the past to speak in his own reading of Homer. To do this, I note the dead-silenced (“zombie”) scholarship haunting Nietzsche's voice in his field of classical philology in addition to Nietzsche's source scholarship and his hermeneutic methodology of historiographical research for the sake of ethnography, archaeology, and Nietzsche's lectures on pre-Platonic philosophy.     

‘Iustitiam non includo’: Carl Schmitt, Hugo Grotius and the Ius Publicum Europaeum

Through a discussion of Hugo Grotius’ conception of just war, this essay shows that within his critique of liberalism, Schmitt clashed with the very intellectual tradition he claimed to represent. Both historically and philosophically Schmitt's concept of the Ius Publicum Europaeum was a mirage. Indeed, his concept of the political was a rejection of the moral and civil philosophy that sees politics as the world of active citizens and commonwealths arguing with each other about fundamental questions of justice and equity.     

On children's independent mobility: the interplay of demographic,environmental, and psychosocial factors

In the past 50 years, a marked reduction has occurred in European and North American children's freedom of movement and outdoor play. Using a structural equation model, the present study investigates the interaction between personal, environmental, and psychosocial factors that affect children's independent mobility. The study involved 313 mothers of 8–10-year-old Italian children. The results supported the hypothesized model: the age of the child, the maternal perception of social danger, and positive potentiality of outdoor autonomy were the most influential variables on children's independent mobility, measured as an index. Further, the maternal perceptions mediated the influence of the other demographic, psychosocial, and environmental variables on independent mobility.     

PALESTINIAN ANTIQUITIES LOOTERS,THEIR SKILL DEVELOPMENT,METHODOLOGY AND SPECIALISED TERMINOLOGY: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY

Abstract

The state of Palestine’s archaeological heritage resources is one of serious risk, due to the on-going looting of antiquities. Vandalising archaeological resources is a widespread phenomenon throughout the Palestinian National Territories (PNT) and has resulted in either total or partial damage to thousands of these resources, and the extraction of at least hundreds of thousands of archaeological objects. The main aim of this study is to explore the measures that have been used by Palestinian antiquities looters to develop their knowledge, fieldwork skills and experience. To this end, I interviewed 96 antiquities looters residing in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip, which is totally relevant to the issues under discussion, was only excluded from this study due to the current travel restrictions between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.     

Kids,raccoons, and roos: awkward encounters and mixed affects

Within the Western cultural imaginary, child–animal relations are characteristically invoked with fond nostalgia and sentimentality. They are often represented as natural and innocent relations, thick with infantilizing and anthropomorphizing ‘cute’ emotions. Our multispecies ethnographic research – which is conducted in the everyday, lived common worlds of Australian and Canadian children and animals – reveals a very different political and emotional landscape. We find these embodied child–animal relations to be non-innocently entangled, fraught, and messy. In this article, we focus on some awkward encounters of mixed affect when kids and raccoons co-inhabit an urban forest setting in Vancouver, and when kids and kangaroos bodily encounter each other in a bush setting in Canberra. We trace the imbroglio of child–animal curiosities, warinesses, risks, inconveniences, revulsions, attachments, and confrontations at these sites as generative of new ethical logics.     

One image,multiple nationalisms: Face to Face and the Siege at Kanehsatà:ke

Iconic news photographs, particularly those taken during wars and national crises, provide visual synopses of important historical events – events about which stories of triumph and tragedy are superimposed. In this paper, we systematically trace the appearances and discussions of a single, iconic image, given the moniker Face to Face, over time. In the twenty plus years since its initial publication, media discourses around the image referenced Kanien'kehaka /Mohawk, Indigenous, Quebecois and Canadian nationalisms. We conclude that discourses surrounding war and conflict imagery can be read as reflecting plural nationalisms and that while a dominant meaning can be projected onto such imagery, this is neither singular nor fixed.     

‘The One and the Two’: Mainlanders and Saltwater People in Buka,Bougainville

ABSTRACT The paper explores the socially salient contrast between ‘mainlanders' and ‘saltwater people’ in the Buka area in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, as observed during ethnographic fieldwork in 2004–05. Buka people themselves articulate three at first sight disparate points of contrast between mainlanders and saltwater people. These concern settlement patterns, predominant subsistence activities and different degrees of ancestral knowledge. This paper explores these points and aims to specify their interconnection from the perspective provided by a fourth contrast established ethnographically, that between different modes of objectifying relations on the mainland and ‘at sea’. With a detailed investigation of the ethnographic ‘surface’ of the phenomenon, the paper aims to provide a basis for future in‐depth analyses of various aspects of the mainland‐saltwater contrast in the context of Bougainvillean politics and the sustainability of livelihoods in the area.     

Public vices,private remedies in nineteenth-century Italy: Giulia Falletti di Barolo Colbert and Le Forzate

In nineteenth-century Italy notions of femininity and, no less, masculinity influenced the ways in which crime was viewed. The result was that criminality was perceived, judged and explained differently according to the sex of the offender. At every stage in the penal process, cultural understandings of what women were like, and how they ought to behave, operated to define the appropriate response to their misconduct and to structure their punishment. These 'gendered' aspects of criminal justice have influenced the practices of prosecution and sentencing, and, most clearly of all, the special regimes and attitudes adopted in women's prisons: throughout the century male prison regimes emphasized discipline and deterrence, while female prisons developed individualized programmes of 'moral regeneration'. This article deals with the history of the first prison destined exclusively for women - which was opened in Turin in 1821 - with the circumstances which brought about its creation as well as with its organizational structure and its aims. Its promoter - both in money and in spirit - was a woman, named Giulia Falletti di Barolo Colbert. Giving special consideration to the ideals of its foundress, this article examines how nineteenth-century perceptions of the female criminal differentiated the nature and purpose of penal servitude for women.