bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
New Women, New South
Authors: Cardon Nathan
Published: October 2018

Chapter 3 surveys the role women played at the Atlanta and Nashville fairs. The Cotton States and Tennessee Centennial transformed the gendered nature of public space in the South. Within their controlled and ordered boundaries, southern white women were set free from male chaperones and traditional constraints. At the fairs’ Woman’s Buildings, southern white women embraced the New Woman, while simultaneously celebrating the mythic role played by southern women in the domestic culture of the region. This chapter also explores African American women’s presence at the fairs. Southern black women created a shadow Woman’s Board and invited prominent black female speakers to the expositions. On the other end of the spectrum, black women worked in the fairs’ nurseries and kitchens. The expositions provided an opportunity for black women to speak for themselves, while constraining them in the popular stereotypes of the late nineteenth century.
Women in the Crossfire
Authors: Churchill Robert Paul
Published: October 2018

Every year, thousands of girls and women die, often at the hands of blood relatives. These victims are accused of committing honor violations that bring shame upon their family—such transgressions range from walking with a boy in their neighborhood to seeking to marry a man of their own choosing to being a victim of rape. Women in the Crossfire presents a thorough examination of honor killing, an age-old social practice through which women are trapped and subjected to terror and deadly violence as consequences of the evolution of dysfunctional patriarchal structures and competition among men for domination. To understand the practice of honor killing, its root causes, and possibilities for protection and prevention, this book considers the issues from a variety of perspectives (epistemic, anthropological, sociological, cultural, ethical, historical, psychological, etc.) and makes use of original research—an analysis of a database of honor killing cases, published here for the first time. Specifically, the book addresses the salient traits and trends present in honor killing incidents and examines how honor is understood in sociocultural contexts where these killings occur. It illuminates socialization factors within honor-shame cultures that include gender construction, child-rearing practices, and adverse experiences that prime boys and men to take roles as one-day killers of sisters, daughters, and wives in the name of honor. In addition to this microcausal pathway, the book relies on theories of cultural evolution to explain how honor killing was an adaptation to specific ecological challenges and co-evolved with other patriarchic institutions.
The Social Realities of Honor
Authors: Churchill Robert Paul
Published: October 2018

This chapter examines the cultural and social contexts in which honor killings occur. Honor killing is a social practice in which complex psychological, interpersonal, and social dynamics are unified and replicated over time. The chapter first illuminates the general features of social practices, then analyzes features critical for honor killing as a social practice, beginning with the salience of norms of honor and shame in what are called honor–shame communities. The chapter analyzes sharaf, an important general honor concept, and ‘ird or ‘ard, the conception of honor relating to sex and gender behaviors, and most important when concerns about honor offenses arise. The latter pertain to the chastity and obedience of females and male responsibilities as guardians of females and as enforcers of communal honor norms. The constitutive features of honor–shame communities are identified, and the interrelationship between collective social elements and individual identity and self-esteem are discussed.
The Cultural Evolution of Honor Killing
Authors: Churchill Robert Paul
Published: October 2018

The focus in this chapter is on why honor killing ever came into existence as a social practice. The units for analysis are sociocultural systems and ecological pressures on the demographic groups among whom honor killing evolved. Here a population-level model of cultural evolution is employed to advance an argument for the best explanation for the development of honor killing. Only cultural systems performing adaptive functions continued among early desert nomads and pastoralist of the arid mountain uplands. Historical and anthropological research supports claims that severe ecological challenges led to two major functional systems: consanguine hierarchical patriarchy and the segmentary lineage system. Honor killing likewise evolved, first as a costly signaling system to avert loss of female reproductive assets and to avoid group splintering. It later evolved further as an exaptation and as a means of avoiding blood-related conflicts within segmentary lineage systems.
Moral Transformation
Authors: Churchill Robert Paul
Published: October 2018

While Chapter 8 focused on grand strategy for awareness that honor killing is incompatible with truly honorable ways of life, this chapter emphasizes specific tactics for achieving a sustainable end to honor killing. The bottom-up, grassroots, and participatory programs discussed here will collectively break cycles of deadly violence. Tostan is recommended as a model for the diffusion of innovative ideas and norms and for community buy-in and ownership. School-based programs all serve the objectives of developing gender equality and respect for diversity, managing anger and emotional volatility, and increasing problem-solving competencies. Community-service programs will enable male youth to benefit from engagement with adult male leaders who do not have violence-prone personalities. Emphasis is placed on public health initiatives and self-improvement workshops for women, as well as couples’ training on domestic violence prevention and financial services. All activities will take place at or be coordinated through a collaborative community-school facility.
Singing Heaven Down to Earth
Authors: Ingalls Monique M.
Published: October 2018

Chapter 2 examines how two large, interdenominational multi-day conferences for evangelical college students use contemporary worship music. Interpreting these events through the lenses of pilgrimage and eschatology, it demonstrates that conferences like these serve as sacred centers for powerful spiritual experiences mediated by music. When participants sing contemporary worship songs together, they imagine the conference gathering as an embodiment of the heavenly community and their singing as the “sound of heaven.” As conference attendees collectively perform the heavenly community into being, they also imagine their relationships to others both within and outside the conference. Comparing lyrics, musical performance, and social organization of congregational music-making at the two conferences reveals that the two events encourage participants to conceive the heavenly community very differently, resulting in diverging understandings of their relationship to Christians of other gendered, racial and ethnic, and national backgrounds.
Bringing Worship to the Streets
Authors: Ingalls Monique M.
Published: October 2018

Chapter 4 examines what happens when congregational music “goes public” through the lens of the praise march, a public procession in which evangelical Christians sing contemporary worship songs in the streets of their cities. It examines two consecutive praise marches in Toronto—the March for Jesus and the Jesus in the City Parade—as public congregations whose participants use contemporary worship music to engage in spiritual warfare, to imagine and embody the global evangelical community while creating new intimacies, and to unify area Christians across ethnic, national, and denominational difference. In examination of the sonic practices and values at these praise marches, two models of the public congregation emerge, characterized by differing performance and ethical ideals. Evangelicals use contemporary worship music in public spaces not only to define their public image, but also to delineate the boundaries of their regional community and manage diversity within those boundaries.
Worship on Screen
Authors: Ingalls Monique M.
Published: October 2018

Chapter 5 examines digital audiovisual worship media as nodes that serve both as extensions of congregations into the virtual realm and as sites for the creation of new networked congregations. Drawing from ethnographic field research both on and offline, this chapter argues that new digital audiovisual technologies and the avenues of online communication along which they travel not only give evangelical worshipers new ways to transmit, share, and discover worship songs; rather, they also strongly condition the practices evangelicals consider to be necessary parts of worship. Through audiovisual worship media experienced on small personal screens and large projection screens in church, conference, and concert settings, once-separate aural and visual strands of evangelical devotion are drawn together into a powerful experiential whole. The networked mode of congregating centered around these audiovisual worship experiences challenges the boundaries between public and private worship and has brought about new negotiations between individual, institutional, and industry authority.
Worship Music on National and Global Stages
Authors: Ingalls Monique M. , Ingalls Monique M.
Published: October 2018

The book’s conclusion draws together the book’s themes by returning to a performance of the contemporary worship song discussed in the introduction. It highlights a source of continued conflict within evangelicalism: the tension between the worship music “mainstream” and its alternatives. It shows the mainstream to be an influential matrix that combines a specific understanding of music, worship, and congregating and sets itself forward as a model for the way these three activities should relate across geographical and cultural space. Understanding how evangelical congregations are sung into being matters for understanding how other religious social formations throughout the world constitute and understand themselves. Thus, remodeling and reinvigorating the analytic categories of “congregation” and “congregational music” may enhance their usefulness for scholars working on religious musical practices among religious groups facing similar social changes and pressures.
Breaking Bodies and Biographies
Authors: Joyce Rosemary A.
Published: October 2018

Figurines made in Honduras between 900 and 400 BCE established connections among persons through fragmentation, partibility, and enchainment. These figurines were made in two distinct sizes, both miniaturized. Their miniaturization requires concentrated attention to worked surfaces that reveal, on close examination, fine detail, requiring handling and rotation. Larger figurines are rarely recovered intact, often forming assemblages of heads or bodies that imply the dispersal of a partible body. Smaller figurines pierced for suspension as pendants normally are completely intact. They differ in their range of subjects, including both animals and the human subjects typical of the larger figurines. The small figurine pendants were likely to have been objects worn as part of costume. They thus can also be seen as fragmented, separated from the human bodies of which they once formed prosthetic extensions. Together, the larger and smaller figurines create social relations through their miniaturization, focusing attention, and partibility, creating connections.
Tiny Bodies for Intimate Worlds
Authors: López-Bertran Mireia , Vives-Ferrándiz Jaime
Published: October 2018

This chapter seeks to understand the material and corporeal significance of human figurines through a comparative examination of two ritual contexts from Iron Age Iberia: the cave sanctuaries of Cástulo (Linares, Jaén) and the urban sanctuary of La Serreta (Alcoi, Alicante). The authors specifically focus on the materiality of the figurines—production technologies, patterns of use, and deposition—to address issues of social significance, body construction, and personhood among the communities that produced, handled, and deposited them. They analyze the web of material and social relations between humans, miniatures of humans, and the materials the miniatures were crafted of—bronze and clay. In the final section, the authors consider the corporeal implications of processes of miniaturization of human bodies and the qualities of the bodies that were sought after by the Iberian communities.
Incomplete
Authors: Bailey Doug
Published: October 2018

Holes are paradoxes of visual culture and human behavior. Difficult to define, alive with consequence, holes affect behavior in significant ways. This chapter examines holes as slippery, elusive, material, always absent, and as parasites (to surfaces). Starting with the author’s excavation of 8,000-year-old pit-houses from the Neolithic site at Măgura (Romania), this chapter investigates the complexities of holes and surfaces as philosophic entities, and then examines the cutting work of the late twentieth-century artist Gordon Matta-Clark. The approach taken is to juxtapose otherwise disparate examples and analyses from within archaeology, art, and beyond. Though immaterial objects, holes have relations and properties. They disrupt at subconscious levels, altering understandings of our place(s) in the world, and our relations with other people, objects, and institutions. By unpacking and closely redefining holes, one gains new perspectives and analytic tools for the study of human behavior, and the traces it leaves behind, that are applicable across the humanities and social sciences, from archaeology to art history, from anthropology to design and material culture studies.
A Response
Authors: Root Margaret Cool
Published: October 2018

This chapter is a reflection upon the theoretical explorations of the powers of miniature things and fragmented things that form the core of this volume. In response, the author offers an interpretive analysis of imbricated agencies of scales, spaces, representations, and objects in one particular social landscape of the ancient Near East: Persepolis. This was the heartland capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire in southwest Iran, founded by Darius I “the Great.” In this chapter, the author explores how scale works at the site writ large, placing its majestic official buildings embellished with sculpture in dialogue with the tiny seals worn, held, used, and admired by people operating within these built spaces and out into the imperial environs of the capital’s ex-urbs and beyond. Discursive modes of seal application as revealed by sealing practices on the Persepolis Fortification tablets (PFT) add the complication of (re-) creative fragmentation to the static entity that is a seal image carved into stone.
The History of Food and Public Health
Authors: Contois Emily , Day Anastasia
Published: October 2018

Economic, political, and social changes prompted the evolution of our current food system. Studying the historical context of these changes helps us to better understand and devise nutrition policy and programs today. This chapter begins with the roots of the modern U.S. food system at the dawn of the 20th century, isolating four key aspects that have shaped nutrition and public health: food production, processing, and consumption, along with state nutritional policy. To begin, government subsidies, in tandem with shifts in farming demographics and business models, have significantly determined what food is available to consumers at what prices. Next, an examination of food processing complicates this story, exploring the growing number of intermediaries between farmers and consumers over the 20th century. In addition, federal dietary advice and resources have sought to guide what and how people eat. At the same time, the consumer culture has influenced eaters through cookbooks, home economics, advertising, and a host of food media, from magazines and radio to blogs and social media. The Example in Practice addresses the history of the National School Lunch Program, combining the themes of production, processing, consumption, and policy in a single case study. This chapter provides readers with key landmarks and a basic historical context to understand the origins of and potential futures for today’s food, nutrition, and public health policy problems.
Policy Efforts Supporting Healthy Diets for Adults and Children
Authors: Parks Courtney A. , Calloway Eric E. , Smith Teresa M. , Yaroh Amy L.
Published: October 2018

Policy-level influences are impactful strategies to improve dietary behaviors, with the ability to strengthen food environments and with a broad population-level effect. Policies can alter the “choice architecture,” which may lead individuals to make healthier decisions by means of making the healthier option the default option. Policy levers such as taxation and regulation of businesses that influence the food environment are mechanisms through which positive change can be made. Specific legislation discussed in this chapter includes the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010, the farm bill, and more recent proposals such as sugar-sweetened beverage taxation and labeling of genetically modified organisms. Finally, this chapter outlines ideas for how public health professionals can get involved and influence the political process.
Imagining Sound Film
Authors: Lewis Hannah
Published: October 2018

Chapter 1 focuses on writings in the French press by filmmakers, composers, and critics about sound film and its arrival in France. From sound film’s first successes in Hollywood, French critics paid careful attention to the new technology, and they wrote prolifically and prescriptively about how they believed the French film industry should respond to it. Many filmmakers expressed concern that sound film would upset cinema’s aesthetic development, but many others approached the new technology with excitement, particularly when it came to its musical applications. The debates in the French press surrounding sound film reveal how the new medium, and music’s role within it, was by no means a fixed entity for composers, directors, journalists, or audiences.
Conclusion
Authors: Lewis Hannah
Published: October 2018

The conclusion summarizes the book’s main points and themes, particularly the range of diverse responses to the arrival of synchronized sound film in France, and music’s significant role within those responses. It further suggests that examining the interaction between music and cinema during the critical technological juncture of the early 1930s not only nuances our understanding of 1930s French musical and artistic culture more broadly but also provides a new perspective on the development of poetic realist audiovisual practices, revealing “classic French” cinematic conventions as one among many possible directions that sound cinema might have taken. We can additionally reconsider postwar French cinematic innovations, particularly those of the New Wave, as outgrowths and developments out of these earlier audiovisual experiments. Lastly, it encourages a nonteleological approach to examining moments of technological transition, which can help us better understand artistic responses to contemporary and future media transitions.
Processes, Organisms, Kinds, and the Inevitability of Pluralism
Authors: Dupré John
Published: October 2018

One view of ontology has dominated Western philosophy since the Greeks: the most basic furnishings of the world are things or, in more technical philosophical terms, substances. These are thought of as integrated, persisting through time, not dependent on anything external for their existence, and as the bearers of properties. They are also the subjects of change. This chapter begins with the proposal that we should treat organisms not, as is traditional, as a kind of thing or substance, but as a kind of process. The author begins by explaining this idea a bit further and outlining some of the reasons in its favor. He then considers some of the implications for this position on how we should understand the classification of organisms. Finally the author shows how these considerations provide a deeper ground for the classificatory pluralism that he has advocated for many years.
Individuating Processes
Authors: Pemberton John
Published: October 2018

What are processes? How should we individuate them? The first part of this chapter sets aside metaphysics to distil a characterization of processes from a consideration of their treatment in science: processes involve parts acting together (at each stage) to bring about the next stage—they are commonly characterized by a rich range of criteria including the nature and arrangement of parts at each stage, how the process exhibits change and self-maintains across stages, and perhaps the role of the process within its larger context. The chapter identifies the tension between this rich view of processes and parsimonious accounts of individuals common in metaphysics (e.g., an individual may be wholly characterized by a list of admissible properties, individuals cannot have other individuals as parts). (Processes can have processes as parts.) The author suggests these tensions may underlie many of the problems of individuation that are the topic of this volume.
Emergent Quasiparticles
Authors: Guay Alexandre , Sartenaer Olivier
Published: October 2018

Among the very architects of the recent reemergence of emergentism in the physical sciences, Robert B. Laughlin certainly occupies a prominent place. Through a series of works beginning as early as his Nobel lecture in 1998, he relentlessly advocated a strongly anti-reductionist view of physics. In spite of this, rare are the philosophers who have paid serious attention to Laughlin’s insights, even among those sympathetic to the idea of emergence. The starting point of this chapter is a willingness to remedy this situation by taking seriously Laughlin’s emergentism. More specifically, reflecting on Laughlin’s idea, according to which “one of the things an emergent phenomenon can do is create new particles,” the authors propose an exploration of the way in which emergence can shed light on the ontological status of some quantum entities—more particularly, so-called quasiparticles—that would come into being on the occasion of certain physical transformations.
Can Quantum Objects Be Tracked?
Authors: Bueno Otávio
Published: October 2018

Impressively successful at the empirical level and open to multiple interpretations at the theoretical domain, quantum theory provides a rich source of examples of underdetermination. A more promising line of support for realism about quantum mechanics emerges from experimental physics. Some significant experiments have been conducted that prima facie seem to lead to very natural realist readings. The author first considers the challenge these experiments seem to raise to current forms of empiricism, particularly constructive empiricism. Three arguments are examined: the experiments challenge an important form of underdetermination employed by empiricists; the nature of quantum particles, in particular their identity and individuality, seems unproblematic in the context of these experiments, and the experiments provide an unprecedented form of access to the quantum particles involved. The discussion of an empiricist response to these three arguments is shaped by questions regarding the identity, individuality, and individuation of quantum particles in experimental contexts.
What We’re Looking For
Authors: Batson C. Daniel
Published: October 2018

Whether a search for altruism is worth pursuing depends on what is meant by altruism. In recent years, seven different things have been called altruism. Four refer to specific forms of behavior, not to our motivational concern: (a) helpful behavior, (b) helping behavior, (c) high-cost helping, and (d) moral behavior. Three refer to motivation rather than behavior, but the first two of these view altruism as a special case of egoism: (e) helping in order to gain internal rather than external rewards and (f) helping in order to reduce one’s own distress caused by witnessing another’s distress. The altruism we’re looking for is (g) a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare. Altruism in this sense is juxtaposed to egoism, a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing one’s own welfare. This last definition is the only one that focuses on the human–nature question raised in Chapter 1.
The Pleasure of Empathic Joy
Authors: Batson C. Daniel
Published: October 2018

Kyle Smith, Jack Keating, and Ezra Stotland proposed the empathic–joy hypothesis, which claims that people feeling empathic concern help to get the pleasure of sharing vicariously in the joy that the target of empathy feels when his or her need is removed. They predicted that if those feeling high empathy for a person in need don’t anticipate feeling empathic joy, they will help no more than those feeling low empathy. Smith and colleagues conducted an experiment to test this prediction and claimed support. However, this claim relied on turning away from their experimental manipulation of empathy to a (probably inappropriate) assessment of self-reported empathic concern minus distress. Three additional experiments conducted to test the empathic–joy hypothesis found no support. Results instead consistently patterned as predicted by the empathy–altruism hypothesis. Again, it seemed time to accept the altruism hypothesis, but again acceptance was premature. Others researchers suggested three new possibilities.
Premature Release of the Prime
Authors: Batson C. Daniel
Published: October 2018

The third new possibility returned attention to the first egoistic hypothesis: remove–empathy. Perhaps people feeling high empathy think that even if they escape physical exposure to the need, they will continue to feel empathic concern. If so, psychological escape is still difficult, and the results previously reported (see Chapter 4) are as consistent with remove–empathy as with the empathy–altruism hypothesis. Contrary to this possibility, some research suggested physical escape did provide psychological escape in the experiments in Chapter 4. Further, Eric Stocks conducted two experiments that manipulated psychological escape directly, and results of each supported the empathy–altruism hypothesis, not remove–empathy. Based on these data, it was necessary to reject the last of the three new possibilities. Left with no plausible egoistic account of the empathy–helping relationship—this time, nobody else had one either—there was no alternative but to conclude that empathic concern produces altruistic motivation. Our search was over.
Some Good News
Authors: Batson C. Daniel
Published: October 2018

Empathy-induced altruism provides benefits for (a) the person in need, (b) other similar people, and (c) the person feeling empathic concern. Specifically, there is evidence that it can produce the following: more and better help for those in need; less aggression toward them; less derogation and blaming of victims of injustice; increased cooperation in conflict situations (business negotiations, political conflicts, and tensions between students in school); less negative attitudes toward stigmatized groups; increased willingness to help these groups; more sensitive and responsive care in close relationships; increased happiness and self-esteem; less stress; more meaning in life; and greater longevity. The list of benefits of empathy-induced altruism for which there is at least preliminary evidence is impressive. Although not a panacea, it can be a powerful force for good.
Excusing Perpetrators
Authors: Talbert Matthew , Wolfendale Jessica
Published: October 2018

Chapter 4 turns to the issue of perpetrators’ moral responsibility. We consider various arguments for the conclusion that perpetrators have access to excuses allowing them to avoid moral blame for their actions. For example, some philosophers have argued that, as a result of situational pressures, it is often unreasonable to expect military personnel to accurately assess the moral status of their behavior and so it is often unfair to blame perpetrators for their wrongdoing. Concerns about moral luck might also suggest that perpetrators are not open to moral blame: if it is a matter of bad luck that military personnel are exposed to pressures that lead them to act as they do, then perhaps it is unfair to blame them for their actions.
Introduction
Authors: Arruzza Cinzia
Published: October 2018

In the first essay of his Commentary on Plato’s Republic—the only extant commentary from Greek antiquity on this dialogue—the Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus addresses a number of exegetical issues with the goal of establishing the correct method of interpreting the Republic. According to Proclus, the appropriate exegetical method requires the reader to take into account the reciprocal relations among an array of factors. The thesis, form, doctrines, and dramaturgic and narrative components of the dialogue all converge and contribute to the articulation of the dialogue’s ...
Clever Villains
Authors: Arruzza Cinzia
Published: October 2018

This chapter addresses the role of the tyrannical man’s rational part. Based on the discussion in Book VI of the Republic concerning the danger for the city represented by corrupted philosophical natures and other passages (such as the reference to the role of intelligence in vicious people, at 519a1–b5), this chapter explores the hypothesis that the tyrant may be endowed with strong intellectual capabilities. Seen in this light, the tyrant may be an example of reason’s complete moral perversion and his intellectual capabilities may play an important and negative role. The chapter further explores the nature of the madness attributed to the tyrant and its connection to bad beliefs concerning the good, of which Thrasymachus’ and Glaucon’s defense of injustice and tyranny are exemplary.
For the Love of Metaphysics
Authors: Nisenbaum Karin
Published: October 2018

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argued that human reason is inherently conflicted, because it demands a form of unconditioned knowledge that transcends its capacity; his solution to this conflict of reason relies on the idea that reason’s quest for the unconditioned can only be realized practically. This book proposes to view the conflict of reason, and Kant’s solution to this conflict, as the central problem shaping the contours of post-Kantian German Idealism. I contend that the rise and fall of German Idealism is to be told as a story about the different interpretations, appropriations, and radicalization of Kant’s prioritizing of the practical. The first part of the book explains why Kant’s critics and followers came to understand the aim of Kant’s critical philosophy in light of the conflict of reason. I argue that F. H. Jacobi and Salomon Maimon set the stage for the reception of Kant’s critical philosophy by conceiving its aim in terms of meeting reason’s demand for unconditioned knowledge, and by understanding the conflict of reason as a conflict between thinking and acting, or knowing and willing. The manner in which the post-Kantian German Idealists radicalized Kant’s prioritizing of the practical is the central topic of the second part of the book, which focuses on works by J. G. Fichte and F. W. J. Schelling. The third part of the book clarifies why, in order to solve the conflict of reason, Schelling and Rosenzweig developed the view that human experience is grounded in three irreducible elements—God, the natural world, and human beings—which relate in three temporal dimensions: Creation, Revelation, and Redemption.
Introduction
Authors: Nisenbaum Karin
Published: October 2018

This introduction gives a more exact characterization of the conflict of reason by relating it to Kant’s doctrine of transcendental illusion. As I explain, the conflict of reason arises because we cannot sensibly act on the demands of reason without assuming that their associated conditions for being applied obtain, but on Kant’s view, we can never know that those conditions do obtain. The chapter stresses the importance of Kant’s view that there is a conflict of reason considered in its speculative use, but also a conflict of reason considered in its practical use; as I argue, there is a significant difference between Kant’s diagnosis of and solution to the conflict of reason in each of its two uses, and this has to do with a fundamental distinction between theoretical and practical reason: namely, that while theoretical reason is receptive, practical reason is efficacious. The introduction also provides a chapter outline and draws attention to some of the distinguishing features of the book.
The Legacy of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
Authors: Nisenbaum Karin
Published: October 2018

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, a key figure in the reception of Kant’s critical philosophy, has long been regarded as a critic of the Enlightenment, who argued that philosophical reflection leads to a form of nihilism and advocated the idea that all human knowledge “derives from revelation and faith.” This chapter sheds new light on the reasons why Jacobi uses religious language to criticize the philosophical tradition. Going against a long tradition of interpreters who believe that Jacobi is an irrationalist, Nisenbaum argues that Jacobi’s concern is to restore human reason by unveiling reason’s practical foundation. In doing so, it highlights largely overlooked parallels between Jacobi’s so-called philosophy of faith and Kant’s prioritizing of the practical. Noting these parallels helps clarify both Jacobi’s philosophical contribution and the manner in which the post-Kantian German Idealists understood Kant’s conception of the relationship and conflict between theoretical and practical reason.
The Unconditioned in Human Knowledge
Authors: Nisenbaum Karin
Published: October 2018

This chapter explains the Fichtean view that the act of self-positing is the ground of all constraint or necessitation, both in the theoretical and practical domains. The chapter also shows that Fichte developed the notion of the self-positing subject in order to meet reason’s demand for unconditioned explanation, without falling prey to the nihilistic consequences of philosophical reflection that Jacobi had diagnosed. To this end, the chapter explains Jacobi’s nihilism complaint in a manner that is conversant with current debates in metaphysics. In doing so, it shows that Jacobi and Fichte can still help us understand the place of freedom and the role of commitment within philosophical reflection. To bring the relationship between freedom and reason into focus, the chapter clarifies the idea that criticism and dogmatism represent two distinct, theoretically indemonstrable philosophical systems, and it offers two different interpretations of the idea that the German Idealist system is a “philosophy of practical postulates.”
Introduction
Authors: Dadlez E. M.
Published: October 2018

The introduction has three informal parts. First, it addresses arguments in defense of the claim that literary works can yield philosophical insights. Novels may, some maintain, function as informal thought experiments, such as intuition pumps and variant case arguments. It reflects as well on claims that fictional narratives may be thought to foster interpretive, discriminative, and empathetic dispositions and capacities. Second, it offers descriptions of the eight chapters of the volume, focusing in particular on the contributions made by each to philosophical discourse. Third, it addresses a widespread (and erroneous) stance discounting Austen as a purveyor of philosophical and other insights on the ground of triviality or narrowness of scope. It is the very narrowness of Austen’s scope, her relentless focus on the everyday, that provides a spotlight on all the minutia of motive and decision and self-deception that so often supply material for philosophical speculation.
The Many Faces of Gossip in Emma
Authors: Silcox Heidi , Silcox Mark
Published: October 2018

“News! Oh! Yes, I always like news.” Throughout Emma, Jane Austen’s eponymous heroine repeatedly betrays her intense love of gossip. Other characters (notably, Miss Bates and Mr. Knightley) also indulge and rejoice in this style of conversation, as does the novel’s own narrator. In this chapter, the authors propose to examine the multifaceted and ambiguous role played by gossip in Emma, in light of the diverse opinions expressed by a number of critics and philosophers about the ethical and psychological significance of this form of human discourse. They argue that Austen exhibits a fascinating, consistently ambivalent evaluative attitude toward the information-rich chitchat of her characters. She reveals a sensitivity to the moral dangers of gossip, as well as to what evolutionary psychologists have identified as its fundamental role in the regulation of human societies, and in the development of more indispensable forms of linguistic communication.
The Dilemma of Emma
Authors: Kivy Peter
Published: October 2018

In the Penguin Classics edition of Jane Austen’s Emma, the editor of the volume, Fiona Stafford, writes: “From its first appearance, late in December 1815, Emma has been criticized for its lack of action. . . .” These are harsh words for a novel, suggesting deficiency in story. Is Emma then a failed novel? Yet the novel is published in a series called Penguin Classics. In other words, Emma belongs to the Western literary canon. That hardly spells “failure.” It appears that Emma presents a kind of informal paradox or dilemma for the philosophy of art. Emma, although it is agreed on all hands to belong to the canon, far from telling a whopping good story, is agreed on all hands to be sadly deficient in the storytelling department. It is this dilemma or paradox that is the subject of this chapter.
The World Come of Age
Authors: Barger Lilian Calles
Published: October 2018

The World Come of Age offers a cultural history of ideas that culminated in a radical political theology forwarded by the first generation of liberation theologians. Representing those marginalized by modern politics and religion due to race, class, or sex status, liberationists built a trans-American intellectual movement. Lilian Calles Barger sets the stage in the 1960s and 1970s, as black theologian James Cone, Catholic priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, and feminists Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether led the way in bridging the gulf between the religious values of justice and equality and political pragmatism. Sharing a heightened awareness of oppression with Latin American revolutionaries, Black Power and women’s liberation movements, and a Third World consciousness, liberationists honed their theo-political impulses. They unmasked the ideas that underwrote the white/black, male/female, rich/poor ordering of the world, not only within given societies but between the political and economic center and the periphery of the modern world. Questioning the religious/political divide with its privatized religion, they reconstructed thinking about God’s relationship to the world. Combining strands of radical politics, social theory, theological antecedents, and the history and experience of subordinated groups, they challenged the legitimating role of theology that dominated the mid-twentieth century. Liberationists secularized the meaning of Christian salvation combined with enlightened notions of freedom into an integral liberation and sought to recover a religious vitalism to instigate social action. The World Come of Age demonstrates how, by redefining the theo-political public space, liberation theologians set the stage for the subsequent torrent of religious activism across the ideological spectrum.
The Irony of America
Authors: Barger Lilian Calles
Published: October 2018

This chapter explores the history of revolutionary Americas and the paradox of enormous expectations of freedom and an unfathomable level of human misery. Founding new republics, and with the aid of enlightened reason and orderly religion, nation builders were optimistically hopeful of actualizing new utopian societies of material abundance and freedom. The subordinated multitudes faced the continual reproduction of oppression fueling resistance. The historical contest over the actualization of freedom engaging elites and the subordinated provided liberationists with a usable past for locating an alternative theology of resistance and helped forge a common intellectual project across the Americas.
A Tenuous Consensus
Authors: Barger Lilian Calles
Published: October 2018

This chapter examines the differences within liberationists’ ranks, and how counter-challenges from a consensus theology in its last throes tested the coherency of liberation theology. As the new Latin American theology challenged the U.S. empire, black and feminist theologians within its borders found an institutional space in which to incubate a new orthodoxy and engage in internal debate. Latin America, historically an object of North American missionary and political expansion, drew the bulk of the relevant attention, casting the entire enterprise of liberation theology as a Latin American product and a problem for U.S. regional political and cultural dominance. The fragmented liberal theological establishment of the United States and the weakened Catholic cultural hegemony in Latin America shaped the reception of liberation theology, allowing the establishment of a new orthodoxy.
Epilogue
Authors: Barger Lilian Calles
Published: October 2018

This epilogue outlines some of the long influences and ramifications of liberation theology in multiple social and intellectual movements. It highlights the recasting of the modern relationship between religion and politics and evaluates the political and social significance of liberation theology in its global spread.
Racing to the Top
Authors: Thompson William R. , Zakhirova Leila
Published: October 2018

Over the past two millennia, one state has tended to lead as the foremost producer of energy and new technology. While it has not been fully recognized, these leads have become increasingly reliant on energy transitions that make new technological innovations relatively inexpensive. Since the edge of the incumbent system leader (the United States) appears to be eroding, the question is what might come next. As carbon-based fuels become scarcer and/or more damaging, new sources of energy will be needed. Renewable energy will be one of those sources, but it remains unclear whether a renewable regime can be constructed to replace the carbon regime and how long such a transition might take. In the absence of a new energy foundation, there is less reason to anticipate a change in systemic leadership in this century. One might also anticipate less likelihood of a successful response to global warming in the absence of global leadership. But these expectations assume that the energy–technology nexus is fundamental to the ascent of a new system leader. Rather than assume such a proposition, it is better to demonstrate its historical evolution since the fall of Rome by examining a sequence of state efforts to overcome the constraints of an agrarian political economy operating within the context of a solar energy regime. The story stretches from first-millennium China through the Italian city-states and Portugal to the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States. Once the historical foundation is laid, we then evaluate current U.S. and Chinese efforts to reform their energy foundations as part of a bid for future systemic leadership.
China: The Incomplete Transition
Authors: Thompson William R. , Zakhirova Leila
Published: October 2018

China’s technological precocity in iron manufacturing, transportation, maritime shipping and navigation, weaponry, market commercialization, and agriculture cannot be denied. Nor can it be denied that European industrialization borrowed extensively from Chinese practice. The problem, however, is that there was no energy revolution in China prior to the mid-nineteenth century, at which point Britain had outpaced China. The Chinese use of coal, petroleum, or natural gas, however early, did not constitute an energy revolution. Moreover, China’s expansion of iron production volume per se did not equate to an industrial revolution. What was needed for a breakthrough to sustained industrialization was the marriage of an energy transition and new technology that demanded greater energy inputs and yielded greater productivity as a consequence. China failed to achieve a full break from the constraints of the agrarian economy and this chapter is about why.
Fracking, Warming, and Systemic Leadership
Authors: Thompson William R. , Zakhirova Leila
Published: October 2018

In the past, states with access to cheap and abundant sources of energy were able to develop radical new technology that paired core innovations with new fuels. Given the strong relationship between global warming and fossil fuels, in this chapter we ask whether the emergence of unconventional fuels and extraction methods are likely to make a significant difference for the relative international standing of the United States now and China perhaps later. Should the expansion of less expensive but older sources of energy, thanks to fracking technologies, help states maintain or regain systemic leadership? Our answer is that fracking will be advantageous in the short term but much less so when it comes to longer-term considerations such as global warming and systemic leadership. More likely, this innovation will only protract the transition away from fossil fuels.
Denouement: World Politics, Systemic Leadership, and Climate Change
Authors: Thompson William R. , Zakhirova Leila
Published: October 2018

In this final chapter, we conclude by recapitulating our argument and evidence. One goal of this work has been to improve our understanding of the patterns underlying the evolution of world politics over the past one thousand years. How did we get to where we are now? Where and when did the “modern” world begin? How did we shift from a primarily agrarian economy to a primarily industrial one? How did these changes shape world politics? A related goal was to examine more closely the factors that led to the most serious attempts by states to break free of agrarian constraints. We developed an interactive model of the factors that we thought were most likely to be significant. Finally, a third goal was to examine the linkages between the systemic leadership that emerged from these historical processes and the global warming crisis of the twenty-first century. Climate change means that the traditional energy platforms for system leadership—coal, petroleum, and natural gas—have become counterproductive. The ultimate irony is that we thought that the harnessing of carbon fuels made us invulnerable to climate fluctuations, while the exact opposite turns out to be true. The more carbon fuels are consumed, the greater the damage done to the atmosphere. In many respects, the competition for systemic leadership generated this problem. Yet it is unclear whether systemic leadership will be up to the task of resolving it.
Style Modes
Authors: Whitesell Lloyd
Published: October 2018

This chapter introduces a new index for the analysis of individual musical numbers, specifically in the genre of film musicals: “style mode,” which refers to background orientations of stylistic treatment in both sonic and visual design. It defines the genre’s primary style modes—ordinary, children’s, burlesque, razzle-dazzle, and glamour—by way of well-known examples and illustrates their effectiveness as analytical categories, providing insight into large-scale planning as well as the meanings projected within individual numbers. Because the projection of a style mode takes place independently of the musical “language” being spoken (e.g., jazz, blues, musical theater, rock), style modes are clearly distinguished from musical topics and idioms.