bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Demands, Defenses, and Distinctions
Authors: Smith Jeffery A
Published: November 2023

Eighteenth-century conflicts over freedom of the press were, of course, not confined to broad, philosophical questions. As the larger issues were being debated, lesser, more technical matters of libel law became perennial topics among journalists and lawyers and at times entangled and overshadowed basic libertarian principles. The crude Blackstonian distinction between the liberty and licentiousness of the press–labeled “sophistry” in Madison’s Address–was easy to disdain, but difficult to reject altogether. Madison and other defenders of the press repeated the contention of Cato’s Letters that some degree of abuse was inevitable and was, in fact, inseparable from the exercise of freedom. Nevertheless, few conceived of the press as completely free. Although libertarians slashed away at the law of seditious libel, they also advocated safeguards for private reputation.
Miss Miles or A Tale of Yorkshire Life 60 Years Ago
Authors: Taylor Mary , Murray Janet H
Published: November 2023

In Elizabeth Gaskell’s seminal biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell makes extensive use of Charlotte’s correspondence with her closest friend, known to readers of that work simply as `Dear M.’ ‘M.’ was later identified as Mary Taylor, whom Charlotte met as a teenager at boarding school (the school used as the model for ‘Lowood’ in Jane Eyre) with whom she remained friends for life. It was Mary Taylor who inspired Charlotte to leave her oppressive parsonage home and go off to school in Brussels and, again, who came to her rescue when that adventure went sour and Charlotte was paralysed by her unrequited love for her language teacher. Mary herself led a much less restricted life. She horrified her friends by teaching at a boys’ school in Germany and then by setting off for New Zealand with her younger brother in order to earn her own living. She eventually became a feminist essayist, urging women to work to support themselves as their ‘first duty,’ and she chided her friend Charlotte as a ‘coward and a traitor’ for not being equally clear-headed about the debilitating effects of economic dependancy. In Miss Miles, her only novel, she breaks with tradition by producing a work which depicts women’s friendships as sustaining life and sanity in oppressive situations as well as introducing an innovative narrative form which Janet Murray calls a ‘feminist bildungsroman’: the story of the education of several heroines, emphasizing their friendship and their economic and mental well-being rather than their love-lives.
On Sound Change and Challenges to Regularity
Authors: Campbell Lyle
Published: November 2023

Broadly speaking, this chapter is about reconstruction by the comparative method. More precisely, it concerns the regularity of sound change, that cornerstone which underlies our ability to recover linguistic history by the comparative method. Specifically, I examine the question “Is sound change regular ?,” addressing in particular some of the more sociocultural aspects of the issue. I discuss seven topics which have at times been presented as challenges to the hypothesis that sound change is regular: sound symbolism, onomatopoeia and affective/expressive symbolism, avoidance of homophony, morphologically conditioned phonological changes, areal linguistic borrowing, language death, and questions concerning the nature of change in so-called exotic speech communities. To anticipate the conclusion, I argue that these do not, in fact, present true exceptions to the regularity of sound change, but that it is important to take these issues into account in order to attain a full understanding of sound change in particular and of linguistic change in general.
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers
Authors: Burton-Christie Douglas
Published: November 2023

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers is among the most vital and engaging texts to emerge from the early Christian world. It was immensely popular among the early monks, who began at a relatively early date to collect and preserve the more memorable stories and sayings of their revered elders. The very qualities that guaranteed the preservation of these sayings also stimulated an abundant growth in the number and variety of collections and in the variations of sayings within those collections; because of this, the number and complexity of critical problems related to the Sayings is extraordinarily high.1 While we are still far from being able to resolve all of these problems satisfactorily, a careful exploration of some of the more important critical questions the Sayings presents to us will contribute greatly toward our understanding of the hermeneutic and the spirituality of the early monks.
The License Of Exile
Authors: Nixon Rob
Published: November 2023

The twentieth-century displacement of persons has proved in scale, in frequency, and in the range of origins and destinations quite without equal in human history. Whether fleeing totalitarianism, international conflicts, ethnic feuds, or natural disasters, or simply gravitating toward the seeming promise of proliferating metropolises, more people in this century than any other are intimate with the traumas and possibilities accompanying the species’ expanded mobility. Any map that sought to register no more than the major upheavals would still be dense with crosshatching. Accordingly, Naipaul is far from alone among the century’s writers when he speaks of exile and the absence of community as “one of the great strands” in his work. Yet at least among writers in English, no one has gone to Naipaul’s lengths to cultivate such an emphatic link between the literary theme of exile and his personal history, nor has anyone so consistently played off that connection in the body of his or her work. He stands out, then, as the English-speaking writer who talks most about being afflicted-in John King’s keen phrase-by “an almost genetic sense of rootlessness, shipwreck as an ontological condition.”
Muslim Organizations in the United States
Authors: Ahmed Gutbi Mahdi
Published: November 2023

Much research has already been done on Muslim organizations in America. The changing pattern of organizations in the Muslim community, however, necessitates a fresh look at the subject. I therefore pick up the discussion where other reviewers have left off to offer some insights into the recent changes in the pattern of Muslim organizations in the United States.’
Political Activity of Muslims in America
Authors: Johnson Steve A
Published: November 2023

Islam has become an American religion. Recent estimates of the number of Muslims in America range from 2 million to 8 million, with the most reliable 1986 estimate being approximately 4.7 million. The first major wave of Muslims emigrating from the Middle East to the United States began between 1875 and World War I. This was followed by second and third waves of immigration between the 1920s and World War II, and 1947 and the mid- 1960s, respectively. A recent study reports that “relative to the total number of all immigrants entering the U.S., the number of Muslim immigrants has nearly doubled over the last two decades “3 However, despite the growing number of Muslim immigrants attaining U.S. citizenship, and the fact that nearly 30 percent of all Muslims in the United States are indigenous American citizens, as a group Muslims remain essentially a political nonentity.
Da wa in the West
Authors: Poston Larry A
Published: November 2023

The concept of missions in Islam is essentially subsumed under the Arabic word da’wa. This term comes from the root meaning “to call” or “to invite”; da’wa thus means “a call” or “an invitation” and, in specialized usage, “missionary activity” in the sense that the Muslim invites someone he considers a nonbeliever to submit to Allah.1 In the Qur’an this idea appears in such passages as Sura 16:125: “Call unto the way of thy Lord with wisdom and fair exhortation, and reason with them in the better way.” But the revelation suggests no specific methodological or strategic model, and consequently the actual working out of this command to “call” has taken a number of forms through Islamic history.
American Foreign Policy in the Middle East and Its Impact on the Identity of Arab Muslims in the United States
Authors: Haddad Yvonne Yazbeck
Published: November 2023

Muslim identity in the United States has been influenced by the American environment in general and by individual and corporate experiences of immigrants in various American localities during the last hundred years; it is also conditioned by the distinctive self-perceptions that immigrants bring with them to the United States. This identity is clarified and molded daily by the treatment Muslims receive in their places of residence and employment, in the schools, and by the courts. It is altered and negotiated repeatedly as a result of the discrimination they experience as they deal with the images projected about them by the host society in literature, the movies, and the media.
Ethics and Professionalism in Documentary Film making
Authors: Aibel Robert
Published: November 2023

Social scientists, journalists, photographers, film-makers, and others who study and report on human behavior constantly face numerous moral issues. However, outside of the social scientific community, few set time aside for serious exploration of the ethical dilemmas which confront them, and there is little formal or informal pressure for moral accountability. As professional humanists we are accountable, and we must make time for moral reflection. This essay explores an incident which occurred during the production of a film, A Country Auction,I coproduced and directed with Ben Levin, Chris Musello, and Jay Ruby. This particular incident was chosen because I believe it raises ethical issues that commonly face documentary film-makers.
Ethics and the Perception of Ethics in Autobiographical Film
Authors: Katz John Stuart , Katz Judith Milstein
Published: November 2023

Since the early days of documentary, the ‘objectivity’ of the camera as a recording instrument has come into question with the widening recognition that the camera records differentially. This parallels a growing awareness in the social sciences that perception and interaction are themselves constructive (Berger and Luckman, 1967; Blumer, 1969; Bruner, 1957; Kelly, 1955). As these theorists tell us, we do not perceive an objective reality. Rather, we focus selectively on the virtually infinite aspects of our environment, interpret and evaluate what it is we see, and respond to our theories about what is happening, not events per se. In turn, others respond to our behavior, interpret what we mean by what we do and say, and respond not to us directly but to their own interpretations of our actions.
Zen and the Way of the Sword
Authors: King Winston L
Published: November 2023

Zen and the Way of the Sword goes to the heart of the samurai ethos by examining the traditional cult of the sword and its relationship to the beliefs and practices of Zen Buddhism. The sword, King demonstrates, was seen as the soul of the samurai, and swordmanship was both a fine art and a spiritual discipline, the practice of which could lead to superhuman concentration of mental and physical energy and absolute indifference in the face of death. King here presents a detailed analysis of how Zen meditation techniques helped the samurai achieve iron discipline of mind, body and emotion and how the Zen doctrine of the “Great Death” of the self harmonized with the warrior’s need to be ready for death at every moment. Surveying the origins and history of the warrior class and the ancient traditions of the sword and sword-making, King reveals how the surprising alliance between Zen and the Samurai came about, and how Zen rationalized its disregard of the ancient Buddhist tradition of non-violence. His conclusions raise important questions about the ethical status of Zen and its relation to society and shed new light on the values of Japanese culture.
Strange Power of Speech
Authors: Eilenberg Susan
Published: November 2023

Eilenberg ‘s subject is the relationship between tropes of literary property and signification in the writings and literary politics of Wordsworth and Coleridge. She argues that a complex of ideas about property, propriety, and possession informs the images of literary authority, textual identity, and poetic figuration found in the two writers’ major work. During the period of their closest collaboration as well as at points later in their careers, Wordsworth and Coleridge took as their primary material the images of property and propriety upon which definitions of meaning and figuration have traditionally depended, grounding these images in writings about landed and spiritual property, material and intellectual theft, dispossession by banks and possession by demons. The writings and the politics generated by the literalization of such images can be read as allegorical of the structures and processes of signification. Each such gesture addresses in some way the fundamental question-who owns language, or who controls meaning? Eilenberg’s approach brings to bear a combination of deconstructive, psychoanalytic, and both new and literary historical methods to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between two of the major figures of English Romanticism as well as fresh insight into what is at stake in the analogy between the verbal and the material or the literary and the economic.
“ Michael,” “Christabel,” and the Poetry of Possession
Authors: Eilenberg Susan
Published: November 2023

Literary history suggests a significant intertextual relation between Wordsworth’s “Michael” and Coleridge’s “Christabel,” two poems not ordinarily read together. “Michael” was written during the autumn of 1800 in order to provide a conclusion to the second volume of the 1800 Lyrical Ballads after Coleridge’s “Christabel,” earlier intended for that position of honor, was expelled from the volume.
Removals
Authors: Maddox Lucy
Published: November 2023

Removals addresses the relationship between the national debates on the establishment of a federal Indian policy in the first half of the nineteenth century and the simultaneous debates on the establishment of an unofficial policy governing the production of an American literature. Maddox rereads the work of writers including Herman Melville, Catherine Sedgewick, Lydia Maria Child, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and Francis Parkman within the context of the public debates on `the Indian question' in order to illustrate the ways in which they respond to the political, social, and aesthetic issues raised by these debates.
Religion and the Mental Health of Women
Authors: Bridges Robert A , Spilka Bernard
Published: November 2023

Whether the religious heritage be Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Hindu, or Buddhist, its institutional forms have bound people into coherent social orders. To achieve this end, existing social, political, and economic structures have been sacralized and therefore legitimated. Among the most central of such considerations is the relationship between the sexes. For example, the perspectives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been described as “uncompromisingly male monotheistic” (Gaba, 1987, p. 190). Power and authority are clearly vested in men: the position of women is secondary. This pattern also holds for Buddhism and Hinduism. With religious backing, the sexual stratification of society is pervasive and regarded as the natural state of affairs. The psychosocial ramifications of such systematic patterning have yet to be fully appreciated.
Religion and Sexual Adjustment
Authors: Shea John D
Published: November 2023

Christianity has been unremittingly hostile to sex (Bullough, 1976). Since sexual behavior involves emotions that are sometimes profound, we might expect that such hostility would have harmful consequences for psychological stability. Evaluating the effects of religion on contemporary sexual behaviors is a relatively straightforward task, and it has been addressed by several research studies in this century. For instance, in Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin (1948) proposed that “there is nothing in the English-American social structure which has had more influence upon present day patterns of sexual behaviour than the religious backgrounds of that culture” (p. 465).
Religiosity, Depression, and Suicide
Authors: Stack Steven
Published: November 2023

The literature on the impact of religiosity on suicide and depression has pursued a number of recurrent themes. The social integration/regulation perspective of Durkheim (1966) has been the dominant theoretical link between religion and suicide; the sheer numbers of religious rituals and beliefs are seen as critical to suicide prevention (e.g., Stack, 1980; Kowalski, Faupel, & Starr, 1987). Others have contended that a few key aspects of religion may be enough to lower suicide risk (Stark, Doyle, & Rushing, 1983; Stack, 1983b); this is the religious commitment view. A relatively new “networks” approach explores factors such as the organizational aspects of religious bodies (hierarchical structure, primary group ties, and the like) in order to assess suicide risk (Pescosolido & Georgianna, 1989). This chapter reviews each of these theories and the empirical literature associated with them. It treats the special problem of religion and depression in a shorter section, and a conclusion provides a summary and suggestions for future research.
Religion and Rationality
Authors: Alcock James E
Published: November 2023

The recent conflict in the Persian Gulf exploited many products of modern scientific research and technology-computers, laser beams, ballistic missiles, “night vision” devices and satellites-for the waging of war. At the same time, leaders in Iraq, the United States, Great Britain, and other countries urged their peoples to appeal to a supernatural Being, to pray for victory and for peace. The computer and the chapel, the missile and the mosque: modern science and ancient theology employed together to the same end.
Religiosity, Meaning in Life, and Psychological Well-Being
Authors: Chamberlain Kerry , Zika Sheryl
Published: November 2023

Religion has frequently been considered to have a significant influence on mental health and psychological well-being, although the direction of this influence has often been debated (Bergin, Masters, & Richards, 1987; Bergin, Stinchfield, Gaskin, Masters, & Sullivan, 1988). Most recent research and reviews of the evidence suggest, however, that religiosity has a positive association with well-being and mental health.
Crime, Delinquency, and Religion
Authors: Bainbridge William Sims
Published: November 2023

Scholars debate the origins of the word religion, but it seems to have derived from the Latin religare, to bind or to tie back, from which we also get our word rely. Religion binds the individual to the society, subordinating personal wishes to collective demands. In King John, Shakespeare said, “It is religion that doth make vows kept,” implying we can rely upon the word of a religious person. Sociologists connect religion with regulation, suggesting that a chieffunction of the church is to control the thoughts and actions of its members. Through sermons, parables, and the example of religious leaders, a person is socialized to the norms and values of the society. Therefore, religion should be especially potent in preventing juvenile delinquency and adult crime.
Religious Diagnosis in Evaluations of Mental Health
Authors: Malony H Newton
Published: November 2023

Religious diagnosis has been a part of the evaluation of mental illness for many years. The address of Henry M. Hurd before the Ninth International Medical Congress in 1887 is but one example of this longstanding tradition. Hurd, the superintendent of Eastern Michigan Asylum, spoke to the gathered physicians on “The religious delusions of the insane.” He stated, “The predominant characteristics of religious sentiments being hope and fear-a hope of eternal reward and a fear of lasting punishment-it is evident that when these sentiments are deranged there must be morbid hope and morbid fear” (Hurd, 1888, p. 1).
Religious Ritual and Mental Health
Authors: Jacobs Janet L
Published: November 2023

The cross-cultural study of religious ritual has typically been approached from a sociocultural perspective in which the rites of religious ceremonies are examined through the lens of functionalist theory. An exception to this approach is found in the work of Scheff (1979), who more than a decade ago initiated a debate on the emotional value of ritual from the standpoint of catharsis and the reduction of anxiety. According to Scheff, ritual allows for the recognition of emotional distress in a socially sanctioned milieu that provides secure boundaries in which to relive and experience emotional pain and suffering. This release of feeling reverses a tendency toward repression by facilitating the acknowledgment and expression of that which is painful, fearful, sad, or humiliating.
The Soul Of The American University
Authors: Marsden George M
Published: November 2023

Only a century ago, almost all state universities held compulsory chapel services, and some required Sunday church attendance as well. In fact, state-sponsored chapel services were commonplace until the World War II era, and as late as the 1950s, it was not unusual for leading schools to refer to themselves as "Christian" institutions. Today, the once pervasive influence of religion in the intellectual and cultural life of America's preeminent colleges and universities has all but vanished. In The Soul of the American University, Marsden explores how, and why, these dramatic changes occurred. Far from a lament for a lost golden age when mainline Protestants ruled American education, The Soul of the American University offers a penetrating critique of that era, surveying the role of Protestantism in higher education from the founding of Harvard in the 1630s through the collapse of the WASP establishment in the 1960s. Marsden tells the stories of many of our pace-setting universities at defining moments in their histories, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. He recreates the religious feuds that accompanied Yale's transition from a flagship evangelical college to a university, and the dramatic debate over the place of religion in higher education between Harvard's President Charles Eliot and Princeton's President James McCosh. Marsden's analysis ranges from debates over Darwinism and higher critics of the Bible, to the roles of government and wealthy contributors, the impact of changing student mores, and even the religious functions of college football. He argues persuasively that the values of "liberalism" and "tolerance" that the establishment championed and used to marginalize Christian fundamentalism and Roman Catholicism eventually and perhaps inevitably led to its own disappearance from the educational milieu, as nonsectarian came to mean exclusively secular. While the largely voluntary disestablishment of religion may appear in many respects commendable, Marsden believes that it has nonetheless led to the infringement of the free exercise of religion in most of academic life. In effect, nonbelief has been established as the only valid academic perspective. In a provocative final chapter, Marsden spells out his own prescription for change, arguing that just as the academy has made room for feminist and multicultural perspectives, so should there be room once again for traditional religious viewpoints. A thoughtful blend of historical narrative and searching analysis, The Soul of the American University exemplifies what it advocates: that religious perspectives can provide a legitimate contribution to the highest level of scholarship.
The Obstacles to a Christian Presence
Authors: Marsden George M
Published: November 2023

Protestantism’s New Initiatives Despite their resolve not to sound like fundamentalists, moderate and liberal Protestant church leaders of the 1920s, including some university administrators, were still concerned with the most general question raised by the fundamentalists. Where was the place for Christianity in modern higher education? From their own experience, mainline Protestant church leaders were acutely aware of the massive revolution that had taken place in education over the past forty years. By the mid-1920s, moreover, it was much more difficult to be sanguine about these changes than it had been even fifteen years earlier. Staid liberal Protestants had almost as much reason as fundamentalists to be alarmed about the flappers, the dance craze, jazz, the automobile, bobbed hair, short skirts, women smoking, and both sexes drinking to excess in defiance of the recent Protestant triumph in the enactment of Prohibition. The consumer economy had produced a youth culture with its own rules, language, entertainments, and mores. As high school education expanded, college attendance also took a sudden upswing. Undergraduate enrollments tripled from 1910 to 1930 so that by the latter date the equivalent of one in every eight eighteen to twenty-one years olds was in college.1 The burgeoning college campuses became leading loci for declarations of youthful independence.2 The most perplexing question was how to maintain some countervailing Christian influence at state universities. While all higher education was expanding, state education was growing at a faster rate than was private education and by 1930 was threatening to displace private education as the dominant force on the university scene.
Outsiders
Authors: Marsden George M
Published: November 2023

Despite attempts to define the university in terms of the inclusivist ideal of liberal Protestantism, some significant groups were in fact being left out. For the pre-World War I generation who believed in the advance of both science and a higher Christianity, such exclusion might be represented as only temporary, since education would surely eventually eliminate most parochialism and prejudice. By the interwar era, such a view was increasingly problematic. Groups were underrepresented in the leading institutions of the dominant culture for two major reasons. At one end of the spectrum were those who chose to maintain their own cultural identity, usually supported by strong religious convictions. At the other end were those who, while cultivating cultural identities with religious roots, nonetheless aspired to become part of the mainstream. Most religious groups, however, fell somewhere in between, exhibiting various mixes of both tendencies. Roman Catholics were the largest group whose outsider status had a large voluntary component. They maintained their own parochial school system, an extensive network of colleges, and a few modest universities. So while Catholics’ 5 to 10 percent representation among student bodies and faculties of non-Catholic universities was much less than their representation in the population generally, the difference was attributable more to choice and social class than overt religious discrimination. Even at prestigious schools of the East there was little evidence of overt discrimination against Catholics, Even a 5 to 10 percent representation in the nation’s major universities spoke of Catholic division on the question of separation from the dominant culture.
Constitutionalism in Europe Since 1945: Reconstruction and Reappraisal
Authors: Johnson Nevil
Published: November 2023

Constitutional reconstruction in western Europe in and after 1945, and indeed such imposed reconstruction as then occurred in central and eastern Europe, took place in the aftermath of war, destruction, and defeat. These harsh constraining conditions defined to a large extent the problems and the priorities of those involved. Only in relation to its particular circumstances can we understand the character of the postwar reconstruction.
Constitutions without Constitutionalism: Reflections on an African Political Paradox
Authors: Okoth-Ogendo H W O
Published: November 2023

There are so many reasons for not writing a book on the public law of an African state, not at least that much of the subject-matter of the book tends to be somewhat ephemeral, as several authors (and publishers) have found to their cost, that a book on such a topic might be thought to require some justification.1
Social Movements, Constitutionalism, and Human Rights: Comments from the Malaysian and Indonesian Experiences
Authors: Lev Daniel S
Published: November 2023

Like other complex ideologies, constitutionalism is often obscured by a haze of mythology that makes it difficult to deal with realistically. Believers cannot help but see in it an end to a thousand vices and the source of as many virtues. But uncritical enthusiasm, without pause to examine assumptions, complicates any effort to understand clearly what is at issue. Before turning to constitutionalist claims in Indonesia and Malaysia, therefore, it may be useful to begin with a few premises.
The Theory of the State in the Third World and the Problematics of Constitutionalism
Authors: Ghai Yash
Published: November 2023

The purpose of this chapter is to try to provide some explanation of why it has proven so hard to establish constitutionalism in many developing countries, but particularly in Africa.1 I attempt this principally by examining the nature of these states and their specific international context, and drawing implications for a system of governance from this analysis. I point to the specificity of the contingencies of governance in these countries by discussing the conditions and ideologies that produced and now sustain constitutionalism or the rule of law in the west. There is a danger in this method of drawing unwarrantably sharp contrasts, and of romanticizing the western experience. I hope I can avoid this danger by focusing on those features of the Third World state that both distinguish them from and ally them to the western states. The primary assumption underlying my approach is that to understand the dynamics and function of constitutionalism, one has to uncover its social and economic bases, and thus transcend the formal boundaries of the law. Legal theory needs to be enriched by sociological perspectives and enquiry.
Reconstructing Political Space: Militarism and Constitutionalism in Africa
Authors: Hutchful Eboe
Published: November 2023

It is probably safe to say that most postind ependence constitutional initiatives in Africa have been associated with military regimes. It is estimated that between January 1956 and the end of 1985 there were 60 successful coups,1 many (or probably most) of these resulting in some form of new constitution. This link between militarism and constitutionalism may at first appear paradoxical. Why would military usurpation, the epitome of constitutional illegality, become the predominant avenue to postin dependence constitutionalism in Africa? At one level this “paradox” is more apparent then real, since the objective of most military-sponsored constitutions was to legitimize and civilianize military rulers rather than to restore constitutional life as such [e.g., the Zairean constitutions of 1965 and 1974, the Congo (Brazzaville) constitution of 1973, and the constitutions adopted in Rwanda and Burundi in 1978 and 1981, respectively]. Nevertheless, some constitutions initiated by the military did lead to a real restoration of the rule of law and civilian participatory activity, although such situations have been, as a rule, short lived. The Ghana constitutions of 1969 and 1979, the Nigerian constitution of 1979, and the constitution under which Sudan returned briefly to civil rule between the two coups of April 1985 and June 1989 are examples of this temporary restoration.
Constitutionalism in Africa: Some Conclusions
Authors: Nolutshungu Samuel C
Published: November 2023

Although all African states attach some importance to their constitutions, as to their national flags and anthems, only very few can be said to abide by them with any consistency. None consider themselves much bound by them on matters such as the limitation of government power, the rights of citizens, the division and separation of powers, or, above all, the objective enforceability of the provi sions of the constitutions. Indeed, those elements of the constitutions that place limits on executive power are least respected.
Vital Circuits
Authors: Vogel Steven
Published: November 2023

Most of us think about our circulatory system only when something goes wrong, but the amazing story of how it goes right -- “magnificently right,” as author Steven Vogel puts it -- is equally worthy of our attention. In Vital Circuits, Steven Vogel gives us a fascinating, often witty, and highly original guide to the heart, vessels, and blood. He takes us through the realm of biology and into the neighbouring fields of physics, fluid mechanics, and chemistry. We relive the discoveries of such scientists as William Harvey and Otto Loewi, and we consider the circulatory systems of such fellow earth-dwellers as octopuses, hummingbirds, sea gulls, alligators, snails, snakes, and giraffes. Vogel is a master at using everyday points of reference to illustrate potentially daunting concepts. And we learn not only such practical information as why you might want to wear support hose on a long aeroplane flight, but also the answers to such seemingly unrelated issues as why duck breasts (but not chicken breasts) have dark meat, and why dust accumulates on the blades of a fan. The author reveals himself to be an eloquent advocate for the cause of science as the most interesting of the humanities, Vogel’s story will appeal to everyone who has ever wondered what “120 over 80” means, who exercises regularly for cardiovascular fitness, or who has an interest in how the heart works.
Introductory note to *19330
Authors: Feferman Solomon
Published: November 2023

This rich and, in certain respects, remarkable article is drawn from the handwritten text for an invited lecture which Gödel delivered (un der the same title) to a meeting of the Mathematical Association of America, held jointly with the American Mathematical Society in Cam bridge, Massachusetts, 29-30 December 1933. A report of the meeting is to be found in the American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 41, 1934, pages 123-131. According to that report, Godel’s paper was supposed to appear in a later issue of the Monthly.
Introductory note to *1951
Authors: Boolos George
Published: November 2023

On 26 December 1951, at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society at Brown University, Gödel delivered the twenty-fifth Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture, “Some basic theorems on the foundations of mathematics and their implications”. It is not known when he received the invitation to give this lecture. It is probable, as Wang suggests (1987, pages 117-18), that the lecture was the main project Gödel worked on in the fall of 1951.
Competition Policy in America, 1888–1992
Authors: Peritz Rudolph J R
Published: November 2023

In this book Peritz analyses how free competition has signified both freedom from oppressive government and freedom from private economic power. Peritz shows how these two complex yet distinct and sometimes contradictory images have influenced government policy and continue to inspire public debate over political economy in America.
Structural Birth Defects
Authors: Leck Ian
Published: November 2023

The defects discussed in this chapter are macroscopic abnormalities of structure attributable to faulty development or deformation. With a few exceptions, they are present at birth. The exceptions are patent ductus arteriosus, which only becomes a defect when it persists after birth; “congenital” dislocation of the hip; and infantile hypertrophic pyloric stenosis. The last two conditions have traditionally been regarded as congenital, although in most cases they may not become fully established until after birth.
War in the Hebrew Bible
Authors: Niditch Susan
Published: November 2023

The Hebrew Bible is rich in texts about war, all of which pose challenging questions in biblical ethics. The passages about war that readers often find most disquieting are those in which God demands the total annihilation of the enemy without regard to gender age, or military status. The ideology of the "ban", however, is only one among a diversity of attitudes towards war preserved in the ancient Israelite literary tradition. Applying insights from anthropology, comparative literature, and feminist studies, Susan Niditch considers the full specutrum of war ideologies in the Hebrew bible, seeking in each case to discover why and how these views might have made sense to biblical writers. The study of war thus also might have made sense to biblical writers. The study of war thus also illuminates the social and cultural history of Israel, as war texts are found to map the world views of biblical writers from various periods and settings. Reviewing ways in which modern scholars have interpreted this controversial material, Niditch sheds further light on the normative assumptions that shape our understanding of ancient Israel.
The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity
Authors: Russell James C
Published: November 2023

European Christians think of their religion as the “normal” expression of Christianity, in contrast to such ethnic offshoots as the Maronite, Coptic, or Russian Orthodox faiths. In fact, however, as James Russell here shows, Europeanized Christianity is highly adapted, arising from the early interaction of Mediterranean Christianity with Northern European culture. This book takes a close look at the ways in which Christianity changed in order to win the allegiance of the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples. Russell argues that the Northern peoples were far more resistant to conversion than the disaffected, urban populace of the Roman Empire had been. Unlike their Mediterranean counterparts, the Northerners displayed a high level of social solidarity. As a result, Russell contends, considerable cultural accommodation was necessary for Christianity to take hold in the Germanic context. In the process of exploring the nature of these changes, Russell develops a suggestive new model of the ways in which religious change occurs in any culture.
Perfection and Devotion: Sati Tradition in Rajasthan
Authors: Harlan Lindsey
Published: November 2023

Although English defines the term suttee as an act, the self-immolation of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre, the Sanskrit and Hindi term sati literally means “a good woman,” a woman who has become capable of self-immolation. This distinction reveals a crucial presupposition: whereas suttee as an act is something one commits at a particular moment, sati as a person is something one becomes gradually through good behavior. This chapter examines the personal ideal of sati espoused by certain Rajput women—those belonging to the erstwhile aristocracy of Rajasthan. It then articulates two often interrelated ways in which those Rajput women practice good behavior by keeping in mind (that is to say, by remembering) those who have died as satis.1
Supervenience Revisited
Authors: Blackburn Simon
Published: November 2023

A decade ago, in an article entitled ‘Moral Realism’, I presented an argument intended to show that two properties, which I called supervenience and lack of entailment, provided together an unpleasant mystery for moral realism. This argument originally was suggested to me in a discussion with Casimir Lewy, which in turn was directed at a paper of G. E. Moore entitled ‘The Conception of Intrinsic Value’. The intervening decade has provided a number of reasons for revisiting my argument. First of all, it was couched in an idiom that subsequent work on modal logic—particularly the distinctions of various kinds of necessity and the general use of possible worlds as models—has made a little quaint. It would be desirable to see if the new notions allow the argument to stand. Second, we have seen a great deal of interest in supervenience as a notion of importance beyond moral philosophy. Thus, in conversation and correspondence I have heard it suggested that my argument must be flawed, because exactly the same combination of properties that I found mysterious occurs all over the place: for example, in the philosophy of mind, in the relationship between natural kind terms and others, in the relation between colours and primary properties, and so on. Since anti-realism in these other areas is not attractive, this casts doubt upon my diagnosis of the moral case. Last, moral realism is again an attractive option to some philosophers; although when I wrote I might have seemed to be shadow boxing, the argument is becoming relevant again. In any case, enough puzzles seem to me to surround a proper analysis of supervenience to warrant a fresh look at it. Suppose we have an area of judgements, such as those involving moral commitments or attributions of mental states.
Watching Sex in Si Le Grain Ne Meurt
Authors: Lucey Michael
Published: November 2023

Bersani would have us confront the possibility that sexual acts might instead lead to self-loss. As soon as we assume the stability, or even the reinforcement, of our sense of self through sex, we lose our critical edge. Our analytic insightfulness fails, and we fall back inevitably into the perennial and hackneyed realm of sexual warfare: “As soon as persons are posited, the war begins. It is the self that swells with excitement al the idea of being on top, the self that makes of the inevitable play of thrusts and relinquishments in sex an argument for the natural authority of one sex over the other” (Bersani, 218). Not selves, Bersani recommends: just sex. Gide’s memoirs, Si l,e g;rain ne meurt (If It Die). This is a way of opening one of the central problems of this book. For Gide and Bersani are in one way or another each interested in trying to answer the question, Which comes first, sex or politics? Bersani’s article will be helpful in understanding what Gide is up to in his descriptions of sex between men, in his search for a context in which that sex could be pure, “as if the sexual ... could somehow be conceived of apart from all relations of power, were, so to speak, belatedly contaminated by power from elsewhere” (221), says Bersani in another context. The nature of Gide’s virtuoso squirmings in the face of scorn such as Bersani’s might in turn help us to delineate some of the perhaps equally suspicious longings in Bersani’s essay.
Moral Sensationalism and Voracious Readers: Religious Strategies in the Antebellum Book Market
Authors: Moore R Laurence
Published: November 2023

I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have [either) these hundred years, for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world; and printing has ivulged them, and libels against the best government.
The Content of the Attack on Greek Art
Authors: Finney Paul Corby
Published: November 2023

This is a complicated subject. For clarity’s sake, two preliminary points need to be noted: first, the attack was in word only, and second, the menu was extremely rich and variegated. As to the former, nothing in the record as we have it supports the view that the earliest apologists (or any of their coreligionists) engaged in iconoclastic1 actions directed against pagan religious art. Admittedly, several apologists employed inflammatory language—it requires little imagination to conjure up a picture of Tertullian smashing statues or Tatian torching temples—but the step from inflammatory rhetoric to acts of violence is one of moment, indeed one that is fraught with consequences (notably reprisals), and it seems unlikely that any Christians took this step before the late fourth century. For .several generations after the beginnings in Palestine, the new religionists were politically and economically impotent and their numbers negligible; hence, Christians who carried out acts of violence directed at pagan religious art in the pre-Constantinian period would have been inviting disaster. None did before 300,2 at least not so far as we can tell.
Recent Developments
Authors: Avery Dulles S J
Published: November 2023

The end of Vatican II does not mark a sharp break with the past, even in Catholic theology. Many of the theologians who had prepared the way for the Council, and participated in its work, continued to publish for decades after the Council, maintaining approximately the same positions as before. An example would be Henri de Lubac, whose work has already been examined, although his The Christian Faith was not published in French until 1969 and first translated into English in 1986. No mention has yet been made of the work of Karl Rabner, which belongs predominantly to the post-conciliar period, although he was active for two decades before Vatican II, and strongly influenced the Council documents. The present chapter, therefore, should not be read in isolation from the preceding. We shall here discuss the theology of the generation after the Council, both Catholic and Protestant, as represented by a few leading figures. It will not be possible in a survey of this type to include all the important literature.
Models and Issues
Authors: Avery Dulles S J
Published: November 2023

In our systematic reflection, which begins at this point, we shall be concerned with deciding what faith really is, how faith is grounded, whether it is free, certain, and supernatural, whether it is clear or obscure, how it is born, grows, declines, and dies, whether it is necessary for salvation, sufficient for salvation, and so forth. As previous chapters have shown, theologians disagree about all these questions. In some cases they operate on the basis of fundamentally different concepts of faith.
Faith and Salvation
Authors: Avery Dulles S J
Published: November 2023

Nearly all the mainline churches, including the Catholic Church, have consistently taught that divine faith is necessary for justification in the present life and for salvation in the life to come. Many biblical texts assert this.
The Classical ĀŚrama System
Authors: Olivelle Patrick
Published: November 2023

In contrast to the original system, the classical formulation considers the āśramas not as alternative paths open to an adult male but as obligatory modes oflife suitable for different periods of a man’s life. Choice, which was a central element in the original formulation, is eliminated, and the āśramas are transformed from permanent and lifelong vocations to temporary periods, the only exception being renunciation, which in the new formulation occupies the final days of a man’s life. The strictly ascetical modes of lifethose of the hermit and the renouncer-are recast as institutions of old age. At least ideally, an individual is expected to pass from one āśrama to the next in an orderly manner and at specific periods in his life. We can see here clearly the influence of the sacramentary model discussed in the previous chapter. The āśramas accompany an individual as he grows old and assumes new and different duties and responsibilities. The entry into each āśrama is a rite of passage that signals the closing of one period of life and the beginning of another.