Did Herbert Spencer Have Reading Epilepsy?

Herbert Spencer, the nineteenth-century philosopher, has frequently been dismissed as a “fantastical hypochondriac” (as his most recent biographer, Mark Francis, terms him). Yet he left a record in his Autobiography of symptoms that suggest a very different diagnosis. Abruptly at age 35, he found that the activity of reading, previously indulged in without difficulty, triggered paroxysmal episodes of disturbing “head-sensations” including “giddiness” (so Spencer described them); these severely curtailed his ability to carry out his philosophical studies. Of all possible explanations for such episodes, none seems as likely as reading epilepsy. Enduring preconceptions about Spencer's presumed neurosesmay have kept modern historians from appreciating that Spencer suffered from a legitimate, if esoteric, neurological malady.     

进化之调律:斯宾塞与清末的种群竞争论述

斯宾塞学说构成清末种群进化和竞争论述的主要外在资源。斯宾塞以进化的哲学思维来缀合威廉·卡彭特、查尔斯·赖尔所代表的动物生理学和生物历史知识,回应马尔萨斯的人口论。19世纪50年代以来在中国译介和流行的正是卡彭特所代表的生理学著述片段或与其相似的种群差别认知。知识界对斯宾塞的翻译,意味着中国在戊戌时期发生了类似的理论缀合过程。清末知识人以种分贵贱、黄白同为贵种调整了斯宾塞的种群进化位阶表述,抵制欧洲人歧视东亚黄种之心。同时,他们却强化了贵贱种之间的等级关系,营造退化灭种的焦虑意识和压迫感,警告需积极参与生存竞争来提升种群的心智和自律性,从而为政治变革酝酿社会气氛。     

Liberation Theology and "Democratic Futures" (By way of Karl Barth and Friedrich Schleiermacher)

Abstract

To engage the question of democratic futures, this essay considers Christian liberation theologies. It pursues an interpretative, constructive, and political agenda. Interpretatively, it identifies parallels between the methods and claims of liberation theologians and two classical theologians: Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth. Constructively, it suggests ways in which liberationist thought might improve theology in its Schleiermacherian and Barthian modes. Politically, it proposes that liberation theology— a mode of reflection both continuous with and constructively critical of classical theological outlooks— be viewed as a vanguard discourse that could dynamize the project of radical democracy     

A Critique in Search of a Corpus: Re-visiting Governance and Re-interpreting Urban Politics

One of the most profound changes of the last two decades has been in the form and the function of local government. Its role as part of the local state has been challenged through the re-scaling and re-configuration of many of its aims. This paper examines the growth of business sector involvement and the ascendancy of the partnership model in urban development, as part of an analysis of the changes and the continuities that stretch across the local government – local governance conceptualization of political relations. I start the paper with a discussion of the main issues in the local governance literature as a precursor to a commentary onImrie and Raco's (1999) recent paper, 'How New is the New Local Governance? Lessons from the United Kingdom'. The wider literature is drawn upon to discuss some of the theoretical approaches used to analyse this much-vaunted transformation and three key themes are used to structure the remainder of the paper. I argue that Imrie and Raco caricature the work of other academics in order to make their claims over omissions from the literature. In doing so, they ignore or under-play how state restructuring and the logic of capital has often been the object of analysis, rather that the voluntarist incorporation of business élites into the local governing apparatus. Using empirical examples from three English cities I argue that while, on the one hand, their examples are revealing and serve to sensitize current debates around governance, the state and regulation, on the other hand, there is still a need to interpret these 'local' politics within a broader and more scale-sensitive framework and in more abstract terms. This demands a clear distinction between local governance as a concept, and its investigation in an empirical way.