Thirty years of science studies: knowledge,society and the political

This article explores the last 30 years of science studies. It presents what the author takes to be some of the main questions raised in this field, the solutions most of its practitioners advocated, and what informed their intellectual and political attitudes. It tries to place the social studies of knowledge in a broader perspective, linking it to parallel changes in anthropology, sociology and history, and it questions its relations to social change on the one hand, and to the political on the other. It closes with a critique of some, often dominant, attitudes in the STS field.     

The man within the breast,the supreme impartial spectator,and other impartial spectators in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Adam Smith infused the expression ‘impartial spectator’ with a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God. As for any genuine, identified, human spectator, he can be deemed impartial only presumptively. Such presumptive impartiality as regards the incident does not of itself carry extensive implications about his intelligence, nor about his being aligned with benevolence towards any larger whole. We may posit, however, a being who is impartial and who holds higher levels of intelligence and of benevolence, and then converse over what her sentiments would be about the matter under discussion. It is natural to conceive of a being who is unsurpassable in such qualities, who is morally supreme, and who naturally takes the definite article the without having been definitized by the writer (because unnecessary, just as we speak of ‘the world’). Signal passages, new to edition 6, suggest that Smith formulates the man within the breast as a representative of the always present and everywhere morally supreme impartial spectator. When Smith speaks of the man within the breast as ‘the supposed impartial spectator’ (all new to edition 6), we interpret ‘supposed’ as sup-pos-ed (purported), not sup-pos’d (posited).     

Dying for the fatherland: Thomas Abbt's theory of aesthetic patriotism

This article aims to dissect Thomas Abbt's (1738–1766) theory of aesthetic patriotism as laid out in his On Dying for the Fatherland (1761) and his prize-essay On Mathematical, Metaphysical and Moral Certainty (1763). Aesthetic idioms, such as the emphasis on the intrinsic pleasure from the order and beauty of virtue, had been invoked throughout the eighteenth century to vindicate the morally optimistic view of humanity against the sceptical vision of an exclusively utility-centred mankind. In the post-Montesquieu debates on the moral foundations of modern politics, German-speaking authors in particular, from both republics (Switzerland) and monarchies (Prussia), appropriated the aesthetic idioms in order to reject those theories which grounded patriotism in some sort of self-interest or proclaimed it redundant in modern society. Thomas Abbt was one of the most prominent representatives of this intellectual position. Combining the general emphasis of Shaftesbury on the role of aesthetic appreciation in moral and political agency with the more specific German Baumgartenian analysis of ‘beauty’ as a central principle in human ‘empirical psychology’, Abbt argued that patriotism in modern monarchies could be grounded in an aesthetic passion of enthusiasm generated through sensuous examples of great virtue. The example of a king fighting for his country on the battlefield could inspire monarchical subjects to follow his example as well as regenerate patriotism among them. Abbt was adamant that patriotism based on aesthetic foundations had to be supported and stabilised by a pervasive patriotic culture of remembrance and emulation of dead heroes through the fine arts, as well as by a system of meritocratic honour in the army.     

论话本小说对清官的反思

自从《老残游记》自评提出“有揭清官之恶者,自《老残游记》始”的观点后,学人们纷纷探讨到底是哪本小说始“揭清官之恶”。实际上,“揭清官之恶”、对清官的反思从来不是哪本小说突然产生的,它是一个前有萌芽后有繁衍的发展过程。在此过程中,话本小说扮演了非常重要的角色,提出了两个命题:一是为民作主的官员不一定是清官;二是清官不一定为民作主。前者从侧面反思了清官思维的狭隘性,后者从正面反思了清官思维的荒谬性,共同使反思走向深化。当其它文学热情地塑造清官神话时,话本小说对清官的反思具有重要的意义。     

Diderot: Les Dernières Années, 1770–84

This article provides an account of the Enlightenment dispute over hermeneutical skepticism with particular reference to the idea of hermeneutical probability in the philosophical work of Christian August Crusius. The essay sheds new light on the hermeneutical issues addressed in the philosophical school of the so-called Thomasians based mainly in Leipzig in the first half of the eighteenth century (inter alia Rüdiger, Hoffmann, and Crusius). The paper deals with Crusius’ wide-ranging efforts to cope with the uncertain character of most parts of human knowledge and his attempts to construct a workable theory of hermeneutical probability. This raises points of central interest relating to probabilism in the methodology of textual interpretation and connects Crusius to contemporary discussions of hermeneutical skepticism.     

论道德教育在社会主义政治文明建设中的基础作用

道德教育在社会主义政治文明建设中具有基础作用。在政治文明的有机整体中,制度文明是标志和形式。而人的文明则是根本,在政治文明中居于灵魂地位。因此,政治意识、政治制度和政治实践行为的共同主体——人的素质的提高是一个民族政治成熟的最基本的条件,也是政治文明的根本所在。     

毛泽东德育思想的内涵和特征——兼论与时俱进地内化毛泽东德育思想为中华民族道德

毛泽东德育思想是毛泽东思想的重要组成部分,毛泽东的德育地位思想凝聚着毛泽东德育思想的实践特征,毛泽东的德育属性思想反映了毛泽东德育思想的本质特征,毛泽东的德育内容思想充满中华民族特色和时代实践特征。与时俱进地内化毛泽东德育思想为中华民族道德,是适应中国特色社会主义建设事业的需要,深化和发扬毛泽东德育思想内涵和特征的客观要求。     

新课改下中学德育工作的开展

在新的历史、新的课程改革下,中学的德育工作也面临着全面、深刻的变革趋势。德育作为中学教育的重要组成部分之一,对于中学生的健康成长和中学教育的发展都具有重要意义。而在近几年随着教育改革进程的加快、力度的加大,德育工作却显得相对滞后,未能有效的做到与时俱进,与教学工作相辅相成、相得益彰。要加强中学德育建设,就必须对中学德育存在的问题有深入的了解和把握。因此,对目前中学德育存在的闯题进行分析十分必要,在分析问题的基础上提出解决问题的可行性措施。本文就新课程下德育工作的开展进行讨论,提出问题,分析问题,解决问题。     

Abject life and disaster: Opportunity and invasive species governance following the 2019–2020 Australian bushfires

The 2019–2020 Australian bushfire disaster witnessed extraordinary wildlife death. A key component of the response was killing invasive life that might opportunistically colonise freshly burnt landscapes or prey on what survived. This paper considers the notion of disaster as opportunity in order to examine the ontological politics of governing invasive life. Our focus is twofold: the re-articulation of power over invasive life during disaster reproducing its abjection, and the colonial context in which invasive species management and disaster responses occur. We first consider how invasive life is rendered abject in governance through the application of the ‘invasion curve’ which preconditions opposition to invasive life, and through a moral politics of neglect, maintains it as unworthy of care. Presenting new empirical analysis of media discourse and responses to invasive life during and after the Australian 2019-2020 bushfires, we then consider the moral geographies of opportunity, including the moral status of different species, and Indigenous responses to the disaster. Responses to invasive species during the fires tended to reproduce existing approaches but responses from Indigenous people suggest that the opportunity of this disaster might be otherwise imagined. In this case, questioning the terms of engagement with invasive life provides possibilities for decolonising invasive species governance, ushering in new obligations and responsibilities.     

‘The development of higher urban life’ and the geographic imagination: beauty, art, and moral environmentalism in Toronto, 1900–1920

The existence of school art leagues in Toronto, which sought to use beauty and art in the public schools as a means of sensitizing children to aesthetics, can be explained through their ideational affiliation with the city beautification impulse. In Toronto, a chief proponent of city beautification and the link between city beauty and school art was the painter, city planner, and art educator, George Agnew Reid, who regarded city beauty as more than an exercise in urban cosmetics; city beautification relied on extant beliefs in the morality of beauty and its putative efficacy as a shaper of human behaviour in the city, especially the ennoblement of the working and immigrant classes. The resulting ‘moral environmentalism’ of beautification changes the way we should think about early city planning, ultimately revealing the geographical imaginations of those contributing to the moral environmentalist milieu.