bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sakya
Authors: Gold Jonathan C.
Published: June 2013

Along with the Nyingma, the Kagyu, and the Geluk, the Sakya (Tib. sa-skya) school is one of the four main Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Sakya is both a religious and political project—an eminent monastic community affiliated with, and controlled by, the royalty of the noble Khön clan. Sakya means “gray earth,” for the appearance of the land around the main monastery, Sakya, which was founded by Khön Konchog Gyalpo in 1073. In the mid-13th century Sakya Paṇḍita (called “Sa-paṇ”), the tradition’s greatest scholar, was summoned to the Mongol court; he died shortly thereafter, but his nephew Phakpa became state preceptor under Kubilai Khan and viceroy over Tibet, a position the Sakyapa kept for nearly a century. After the monastery’s founder, the tradition often honors eleven famous and influential Sakyapas: the “Five Great Throne-holders” and the “Six Ornaments.” The first five throne-holders established (1) a unique heritage of practices based upon the Hevajra Tantra called the Lamdré, “The Result as the Path”; (2) a reputation for comprehensive, scholastic precision and expertise, especially in the epistemological (tshad ma) and literary sciences; and (3) a distinctive combination of religious and temporal power. The first three (Sachen Kunga Nyingpo, Sönam Tsemo, and Drakpa Gyaltsen) may be primarily associated with the first concern, Sakya Paṇḍita with the second, and Chögyal Phakpa with the third. Of the Six Ornaments, the first pair (Yakdön Sangye Pal and Rongtön Shecha Kunrig) are known for their expertise in “Sūtra” (the second concern), and the second pair (Ngorchen Konchog Lhundrup and Dzongpa Kunga Namgyel) for “Tantra” (the first concern). In addition, Rongtön is famous as founder of Phanpo Nalendra monastery and Ngorchen as founder of Ngor Ewan Choden. The final pair of “ornaments,” Gorampa Sonam Senge and Śākya Chogden, are said to have been experts in both sūtra and tantra, but we may add that they were, in addition, focused on a new, fourth concern. After the great founder of the Gelukpa, Tsongkhapa (who was a Sakyapa), developed a following for his innovative approach to Madhyamaka philosophy, these were his two great challengers from Sakya. Śākya Chogden’s “other-emptiness” (gzhan stong) view was in conflict with Sakya Paṇḍita’s and, consequently, was never adopted by the Sakya mainstream. Gorampa, however, who charges that Tsongkhapa affirms a conceptually constructed ultimate, came to challenge Geluk philosophical and doctrinal hegemony. Both thinkers were suppressed by the Geluk and have seen a revival in recent decades.
Compassion (karuṇā)
Authors: Grosz Elizabeth M. , Unno Mark Ty
Published: June 2013

Compassion is a major theme throughout much of Buddhist history. In Early Buddhism, mettā/maitrī (Pāḷi/Sanskrit), often translated as “loving kindness,” is more prominent, and in Mahayana Buddhism, karuṇā, usually translated as “compassion,” becomes more widespread; these two virtues are most closely associated with the English sense of compassion, or sympathetic or empathetic care, in Buddhism specifically for sentient beings, with reference to liberating them from the suffering of samsara, the cycle of birth and death. Particularly in Mahayana Buddhism, wisdom (Skt. prajñā) and compassion are the two primary virtues, and, as such, so much of Mahayana can be characterized as having to do with compassion that any bibliography on the topic is by necessity somewhat arbitrary and highly limited in its selections. Regardless, it can be argued that certain figures carry a special emphasis on compassion: bodhisattvas, who vow to bring all sentient beings to awakening, and among them especially Avalokiteśvara (Tib. Chenrezig; Ch. Guanyin; Jpn. Kannon), and cosmic buddhas, especially Amitābha and Amitāyus (Ch. Amitofo; Jpn. Amida). The concept of upāya, skillful means for liberation, expresses the multifarious application of compassion and is particularly associated with bodhisattvas (upāya, however, deserves a separate bibliographical entry of its own). Other figures include Tārā, most prevalent in Tibetan Buddhism, said to be an emanation of Chenrezig, and Bodhisattva Jizō (Skt. Kṣitigarbha) in Japanese Buddhism, protector of children and travelers and more recently associated with mizuko kuyō, offerings to aborted fetuses and deceased infants. In Early Buddhism, the bodhisatta (Pāḷi) of the Jātaka tales refers specifically to the past lives of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni in which he compassionately sacrificed his own life over many lifetimes until he accrued the merit to become the Buddha. The Jātaka tales are a subset of the Avadāna, which generally refers to past life sacrifices. Scriptures, schools, and sects, and major teachers related to these figures, are also often associated with compassion. The approach taken here is intensive rather than extensive. Primary texts in translation, commentarial traditions arising out of them, and sometimes contemporary interpretations are grouped together to provide a multifaceted view. Formal treatises of prominent Buddhist thinkers are often paired with collections of letters, where the former provide the doctrinal basis of compassion and the latter personalized, concrete, intimate expressions. Owing to space limitations, this necessarily means that some traditions are sampled and others are not.
Perfection of Wisdom
Authors: Zacchetti Stefano
Published: June 2013

The Sanskrit compound Prajñāpāramitā (“Perfection of Wisdom” or “Insight”) may refer to both a set of (primarily cognitive) practices, and a class of scriptures devoted to their exposition. There is a broad albeit not unanimous consensus in modern Buddhist studies that the Perfection of Wisdom was one of the earliest scriptural traditions related to the Mahāyāna (“Great Vehicle”) movement. Prajñāpāramitā texts outline a method that a bodhisattva should follow in order to reach the ultimate goal of perfect awakening. The central idea of this method is that a practitioner should achieve a state of complete detachment from all things and factors (and particularly from his or her own spiritual achievements), through the understanding of their “emptiness” (śūnyatā). These ideas have found expression in a diverse and rich textual corpus, grown over a long period of time, and consisting of both base texts (i.e., scriptures presented as sermons preached by the Buddha, or sūtras), and their commentaries. A substantial part of this huge literature survives in Sanskrit (albeit mostly in rather late manuscripts), and most of it has been translated over the centuries into Chinese and Tibetan. The Perfection of Wisdom was arguably influential, to varying degrees, on any form of Mahayana Buddhism. It remained a central tradition even in later Indian and in Tibetan Buddhism and had a tremendous impact in China: after having been introduced in China during the 2nd century ce, the Perfection of Wisdom came to dominate the philosophical debate during the 4th–5th centuries.
Buddhism in the Iranian World
Authors: Pinault Georges-Jean
Published: June 2013

The territories of present-day Pakistan, Afghanistan, and further countries of Transoxiana, belonging to the Iranian world, have seen the expansion of Buddhism from India into Central Asia, Chinese Turkestan (21st-century Xinjiang), and finally China. This movement started in the last centuries bce. Peoples speaking various Iranian languages have been converted to Buddhism. Moreover, Buddhists of different Iranian countries (Sogdiana, Parthia, Bactria) have played a significant role in the transmission of Buddhist concepts and in the translation of Buddhist literature. Many Buddhist texts are found in different northeastern Iranian languages: Bactrian, Sogdian, Khotanese Saka, Tumshuqese Saka. The Gandhāra has played a decisive role as an intermediate region between northwestern India and the countries of Iranian language and culture. The success of Buddhism and its spread to neighboring countries along international trade roads has been enhanced in a cosmopolitan context, whereas the Buddhist cult was sponsored over the centuries in eclectic and pragmatic fashion by rulers and donors of Iranian descent or culture.
Vasubandhu
Authors: Tzohar Roy
Published: June 2013

Vasubandhu (typically dated to around the late 4th- to early 5th-century ce), is one of the most influential Buddhist philosophical thinkers, having left an enduring mark both on subsequent generations of Indian Buddhist philosophers and on the traditions of the Mahayana outside India. According to the traditional biographies, Vasubandhu’s life, during the Gupta reign in India, was marked by two acts of conversion: first from the Sarvāstivāda to the Sautrāntika school of Abhidharma, and then to the Mahayana and the Yogācāra school, of which he is considered the founder, along with his brother (or half-brother), Asaṅga. In all these schools of thought, Vasubandhu is ascribed authorship of influential textual works in a variety of genres. His seminal Abhidharma-kośa-bhāṣya (Commentary on the Treasury of Abhidharma) is an encyclopedic source of information on the various Buddhist and non-Buddhist doctrines of his time, and continues to be an important source for the study of Abhidharma thought for all Mahayana schools. His short and poignant philosophical treatises, such as the Viṃśatikā (Twenty Verses) and the Triṃśika (Thirty Verses), succeed in encapsulating the entire Yogācāra philosophical worldview, and are at the same time notable for their sophistication and polemical style. Vasubandhu is also traditionally ascribed authorship of several important commentaries on the Maitreya-Asaṅga texts, as well as on some Mahayana sutras. He is also said to have written a short piece on logic, and his famous manual of commentarial writing, the Vyākhyāyukti (The Principles of Exegesis) lay bare his unique skill as a commentator.
Virtue Ethics
Authors: Driver Julia
Published: June 2013

Virtue ethics is a type of normative ethical theory that regards virtue evaluation as the primary form of evaluation, in contrast to theories that focus on “right” action. Some writers fold theories about virtue into virtue ethics, though the two are distinct. A Utilitarian, for example, can provide an account of virtue that is based on or compatible with her theory, without being committed to virtue ethics. Again, virtue ethics treats virtue evaluation as primary. There has been much recent interest generated in virtue ethics. Often writers have been inspired by Aristotle’s ethics, though some have developed broadly Humean accounts of virtue ethics, and others, pluralistic accounts that borrow from a variety of traditions. At the beginning of this new wave of interest in virtue, the project was primarily negative, focusing on problems with other theories, particularly Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. The following resources are resources that include articles on virtue itself, as well as articles that explicitly develop, defend, or criticize virtue ethics.
Truthmaking
Authors: Griffith Aaron M.
Published: June 2013

The notions of “truthmaking” and “truthmakers” are central to many attempts in contemporary metaphysics to come to grips with the connection between truth and reality. The intuitive motivation for theories of truthmaking is the idea that truth depends on reality: that truth is not primitive or fundamental, but rather derivative and dependent. The idea, more precisely stated, is that true propositions (or whatever are the primary truth-bearers, e.g., statements, sentences, or beliefs) are not true in and of themselves but must be made true by reality. Truthmaker theorists think that for a proposition to be made true is for it to be true in virtue of the existence of some entity, which is called its “truthmaker.” While many find the thought that truths are “true in virtue of,” or “grounded in,” or “determined by” reality compelling, not everyone finds the truthmaker theorist’s way of articulating this idea adequate. This article focuses on recent truthmaker theories, their challenges, and alternative approaches to truthmaking. One major point of contention surveyed here is the scope of truthmaking: i.e., whether every truth has a truthmaker, or only some. Another important issue is the nature of truthmakers. Some contend that states of affairs are truthmakers, while others hold that particular property instances (“tropes”) are better qualified to ground truths. Truthmaker theorists also disagree about how to characterize the “truthmaking relation” that holds between truths and their truthmakers. The various principles of truthmaking (principles setting out necessary and sufficient conditions under which an entity is a truthmaker for some proposition) offered in the literature are also surveyed in this entry. Perhaps the most contentious matter in truthmaker theory is how to deal with “problem cases”: i.e., truths for which there are no obvious truthmakers, such as negative existential truths, necessary truths, and subjunctive conditional truths. Some deny that these truths have truthmakers, but others have come up with ingenious and therefore controversial accounts of the truthmakers for these truths. Works on the relation between theories of truth and theories of truthmaking are also surveyed. Because it brings together foundational issues in ontology and truth, the nature of truthmaking and truthmakers has and will continue to be a source of interest and excitement for philosophers.
Art and Morality
Authors: Sauchelli Andrea
Published: June 2013

A great number of works of art, it is commonly claimed, are aesthetically valuable. Some philosophers have even argued that providing an aesthetically pleasing experience is their only proper function. However, some of these artworks display or invite us to adopt an immoral point of view. Even worse, they even seem to make immoral situations delightful and appealing. The following questions thus arise: Does the alleged immorality of these works count as an aesthetic or artistic defect? Can an immoral movie or novel ever be a great example of its kind? In addition to these concerns related to art evaluation, the connection between various forms of art and morality has been investigated by discussing the capacity of works of art to move us emotionally. More specifically, thinkers from different traditions and ages have remarked that works of art are clearly able, first, to stir our emotions in a particularly effective way, and, second, to invite us to act following certain ideas that have been made appealing by their beauty or other aesthetic qualities. Plato was the first in the Western tradition to evaluate in a systematic way whether, as a consequence of the previous considerations, we should supervise the storytellers who are supposed to educate our youth. Other philosophers, from Aristotle to more recent advocates of the value of the humanities, have argued in favor of the positive role that truly great works of art may have in our moral education. Contemporary philosophers are also interested in the role of imagination in fictional immoral contexts (can we engage with immoral works of art and be justified in so doing?). They are also interested in the role played by art in contributing to our well-being and flourishing as human beings. The great majority of recent works on the topic, however, are focused on an assessment of the arguments in favor or against ethical criticism, with a particular emphasis on the criticism of representational works of art. Other issues at the intersection of art and morality are the concept of the obscene, the value of pornography, and censorship.
Thought Experiments
Authors: Brown James Robert , Stuart Michael T.
Published: June 2013

Thought experiments are performed in the imagination. We set up some situation, we observe what happens, then we try to draw appropriate conclusions. In this way, thought experiments resemble real experiments, except that they are experiments in the mind. The terms “thought experiment,” “imaginary experiment,” and “Gedankenexperiment” are used interchangeably. There is no consensus on a definition, but there is widespread agreement on which are standard examples. It is also widely agreed that they play a central role in a number of fields, especially physics and philosophy. There are several important questions about thought experiments that naturally arise, including what kinds of thought experiments there are, what roles they play, and how, if at all, they work. This last question has been the focus of much of the literature: How can we learn something new about the world just by thinking? Answers range from “We don’t really learn anything new” to “We have some sort of a priori insight into how nature works.” In between there are a great variety of rival alternative accounts. There is still no consensus; debate is wide open on almost every question pertaining to thought experiments.
Bertrand Russell
Authors: Griffin Nicholas
Published: June 2013

Bertrand Russell (b. 1872–d. 1970) was arguably the most important philosopher of the 20th century. He was one of the main founders of what came to be known as analytic philosophy, which was preeminent in the English-speaking world throughout most of the 20th century. His most important contributions, especially in the first part of his career, were in logic and the philosophy of mathematics, but he made important contributions to almost all branches of philosophy, especially to epistemology and metaphysics. His philosophy went through a series of fairly rapid changes, which has made it natural to study his work developmentally. He wrote prolifically, much of his early work was extremely technical, and a surprising amount of material was left unpublished by him and has appeared only posthumously in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (Russell 1983–, cited under Primary Sources). As a result, there is no detailed survey of his entire philosophical output by a single author; full-career surveys tend to be either brief or collections of papers, and more substantial commentaries tend to focus on particular periods or topics. Our understanding of Russell’s philosophy has been transformed since his death by the availability of so much new material in his archives. As a result, earlier studies of his work need to be treated with caution. In addition to his philosophical work, Russell wrote even more extensively on matters of social and political concern. He was politically engaged throughout his life, especially in matters relating to war and peace and freedom of the individual. I am grateful to Kenneth Blackwell, Andrew Bone, William Bruneau, Jolen Galaugher, Dustin Olson, Graham Stevens, and the referees for OBO for several useful suggestions.
Propositions
Authors: King Jeffrey C.
Published: June 2013

Though there is significant disagreement among philosophers as to the nature of propositions, there is significant agreement as to what philosophical roles propositions are supposed to play. Hence, it is best to explain what propositions are by saying what they are supposed to do. It seems clear that sentences in some sense encode information and that two sentences of the same or different languages may encode the same piece of information. Perhaps “Snow is white” and “Schnee ist weiss” is an example of the latter. If we posit the existence of propositions, they can be identified with pieces of information encoded by sentences; and we can say that the above two sentences express the same proposition. Sentences are true or false in virtue of encoding the information, and hence expressing the propositions, that they do. Hence, propositions are sometimes called the primary bearers of truth and falsity, since sentences are derivatively true or false in virtue of expressing the proposition that they do. Propositions are also thought to be the bearers of modal properties, like being necessary or possible. Further, thinking agents are thought to bear various cognitive relations to propositions: they are the things we believe, doubt, assume, and deny. Related to this latter point, and turning now more to philosophy of language, sentences like “Frege believes that arithmetic reduces to logic” assert that there is a relation, believing, between Frege and the proposition that arithmetic reduces to logic, which is designated by “that arithmetic reduces to logic.” Propositions are also thought to be designated by other expressions, such as “Goldbach’s conjecture” and “what John just said.” Hence, sentences like “What John said entails Goldbach’s conjecture” and others suggest that propositions can stand in relation to each other (entailment) and possess a variety of properties. In addition, many believe that perceptual experiences have accuracy conditions: they can represent the way the world is around us accurately or inaccurately. Many think that the reason this is so is that perceptual experiences have as their contents propositions. However, even among those who agree on this, there is significant disagreement about the nature of the propositions that are the contents of perceptual experience and whether they can be expressed by sentences of natural languages. Finally, current thinking about propositions was very much influenced by the views of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Philosophy of Literature
Authors: Gilmore Jonathan
Published: June 2013

The philosophy of literature addresses the most fundamental questions about the nature of literature as an art. Some of these questions address the metaphysics and ontology of literary works: What, if anything, essentially distinguishes literary works of art (such as epics, novels, drama, and poetry) from other kinds of writings, such as scientific reports, historical treatises, religious texts, guides, and manuals, which may happen to be written in a literary manner? Also, what kinds of things are literary works of art that seem to exist over time in some way independently of any of their particular printed editions? Other questions address our ways of engaging with literature, such as: What norms govern our interpretation and understanding of such works? Is the meaning of a work fixed, or does it change with the changes in the contexts in which it is read? Can we have a genuine emotional response to the characters, events, and states of affairs represented in such works even when we believe that they are not real? Finally, some questions address the value of works of literature: Do they offer any distinctive form of knowledge or insight? Can their cognitive and moral merits and defects count as artistic merits and defects? Philosophy of literature is not alone in pursuing these questions, for literary history, criticism, and other modes of scholarship address these concerns, as do readers when they reflect on their own and others’ practices of attending to works of art. However, the philosophical approach to literature, while often productively drawing on the empirical study and first-order analysis of literary works, tends to adopt a more systematic, theoretical, ahistorical, and foundational approach than commonly found in other fields. Also, while the philosophy of literature tends to address the nature of literature as an art, it has been profoundly shaped by work in other areas of philosophy far from aesthetics such as analytic metaphysics and philosophy of language, which since their inception have addressed such topics as the metaphysics of fictional characters. More recently, there has been an exciting cross-fertilization between philosophical approaches to literature and developments in cognitive science, particularly in areas devoted to the study of emotions and imagination.
Experiments in Physics
Authors: Perović Slobodan
Published: June 2013

Experiments were at the heart of the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, so it is not surprising that their epistemological ramifications have been discussed by philosophers and scientists over the centuries, at times with exceptional passion. By and large, the debates on the nature, role, and aims of experimentation have been concerned with experiments in physics. Only very recently have experiments in biology and special sciences become a topic of major interest. With the advent of logical positivism in the 20th century, philosophical interest in science focused on the conceptual analysis of the logical structure of scientific theories and justification. Meanwhile, inspired by Newton’s view of the scientific method, inductivists argued that theories were straightforwardly induced from experimental results. In both cases, experiments were neglected as philosophically uninteresting tools that simply deliver data in order to confirm or induce theories. In the early 1980s, the New Experimentalism reacted to such oversimplified views of experimentation by carefully examining the complex relationship between theory and experiment. A multifaceted and lively debate was initiated, on the key question of whether—and in what sense—experimental evidence should be deemed theory-laden. A number of insightful epistemologically and methodologically motivated case studies of experimental instruments, techniques, and statistical methods have appeared, often in symbiosis with relevant historical studies. They have demonstrated that theories are often shaped by the experimental work, rather than the other way around, while theoretical changes and novel concepts emerge in the experiments that precede them. Various and often opposed philosophical perspectives on experimentation, ranging from empiricism to social constructivism, have emerged from such studies. The long-standing philosophical problem of realism has been reexamined in light of these new insights, while recent interest in simulation and modeling in science is currently merging with various strands of philosophy of experimentation. Although philosophy of experimentation has already thoroughly addressed the major areas of experimental physics and its history (a shining example being high-energy physics), condensed matter physics and current optics are two notable exceptions.
Feast of Fools
Authors: Harris Max
Published: June 2013

The Feast of Fools developed in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as an elaborate and orderly liturgy for the day of the Circumcision (1 January). Celebrating the biblical principle that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27), the feast allowed low-ranking subdeacons to assume leadership roles in worship, usually reserved for the bishop or the cantor. Similar privileges were granted to the choirboys and their “boy bishop” on the day of the Innocents (28 December), but the two feasts are best considered in separate articles. The first surviving notices of the Feast of Fools—from Paris, Beauvais, and Châlons, between 1160 and 1172—testify to a joyous, expansive, but not yet fully settled liturgy for the feast of the Circumcision. In 1198, in response to complaints from Pope Innocent III, a prescribed Office of the Circumcision was prepared for use in the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. Even more-elaborate offices were drawn up in Sens and Beauvais between 1200 and 1234. Surviving manuscripts of the Sens and Beauvais offices contain dignified and often-beautiful scores for corporate worship, deeply indebted to biblical texts and rich in musical variation. Over the next two centuries, the Feast of Fools expanded to some twenty further cathedrals and collegiate churches in northern France, flourishing in some cities for more than three centuries before gradually succumbing to pressures of reform. The first half of the fifteenth century saw a series of sustained attacks on the Feast of Fools, culminating in its condemnation by the ecumenical council of Basel (1435), the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII of France (1438), and a letter issued by the faculty of theology at the University of Paris (1445). While the liturgical Feast of Fools struggled for survival inside the churches, unrelated festivities of bourgeois confraternities of fools outside the churches burgeoned. Dressed in motley costumes with ass’s ears, secular fools had their own distinct traditions of parades, comic performances, and mimicry. Subsequent scholarship largely confused the two traditions, prompting considerable misreading of the older ecclesiastical records and contributing to the mistaken but widespread view that the Feast of Fools was little more than a disorderly clerical revel.
Regular Canons
Authors: Heale Martin
Published: June 2013

The regular canons—clerics living in common and following a monastic rule—are not easy to categorize. In theory, the vocation of the regular canon was more outward-looking than that of the monk, but historians have often found it difficult to discern clear differences in practice between monasteries of canons and monks. There was also a great deal of diversity among houses of regular canons, for example in their origins, locations, buildings, and observances, and relatively weak connections between monasteries (in sharp contrast to centralized orders like the Cistercians). However, it was this very versatility that made the regular canons attractive to lay and clerical founders. Part of the high medieval movement to rediscover the “apostolic life,” monasteries of regular canons were established in large numbers in the later 11th and 12th centuries. They soon outnumbered houses for monks in many parts of Europe: there were more monasteries of Augustinian canons in medieval England than of any other single order. Although most houses of regular canons were autonomous, a number of orders and congregations also grew up, including the Premonstratensians, Gilbertines, Victorines, Arrouaisians and (in the later Middle Ages) the Windesheim congregation, with varying degrees of centralized organization. Once heavily overshadowed by the monks in the historiography of the religious orders, the study of the regular canons has quickened in recent years—for example with the publication of several volumes of collected essays and the appearance of new series, such as the Bibliotheca Victorina and Victorine Texts in Translation series from Brepols. The sheer variety of the canonical order is reflected in this scholarship (and also this bibliography), and few have to date attempted the difficult challenge of writing synthetic histories of the regular canons. The works listed in this article refer only to regular canons and not the canonesses, who are covered in a separate article.
Benedictines After 1100
Authors: Heale Martin
Published: June 2013

Although many of the greatest monasteries in Europe during the High Middle Ages and late medieval period were Benedictine, historians have often presented the black monks as in crisis or decline for much of the post-1100 period. New Benedictine foundations were relatively rare after this date, and much lay patronage was redirected to new expressions of the monastic life, such as the Cistercians or regular canons. The rhetoric of new monastic orders, which presented themselves as “reformed” versions of or necessary departures from traditional Benedictine monasticism, has also influenced historians’ interpretations of the black monks. Thus general surveys of medieval monasticism, such as Lawrence 2001 and Melville 2016 (both cited under General Europe-Wide Surveys), focus almost entirely on new monastic and mendicant orders after c. 1100. But as much recent historiography has shown, the Benedictines remained highly influential throughout the entire medieval period. In many parts of Europe, they retained the support of kings and aristocratic patrons into the 16th century. Collectively, they possessed very substantial estates and urban properties. They served the social and spiritual needs of their lay neighbors through (for example) their hospitality, almsgiving, and pilgrimage sites. And although no longer preeminent in intellectual and artistic life, they remained committed to intellectual studies and continued to be major patrons of art, architecture, and music. The later Middle Ages also saw projects for Benedictine renewal, particularly in the form of reformed congregations in continental Europe. This bibliography contains work on all these areas of research. It does not include the Cluniac branch of the black monks or Benedictine nuns, which are covered in separate Oxford Bibliographies articles.
Richard Knapwell
Authors: Dougherty M.V.
Published: June 2013

The English Dominican friar and theologian Richard Knapwell (Clapwell) (fl. 1284–1286) is best known as an early defender of Thomas Aquinas. He was the first to respond to William de la Mare’s Correctorium fratris Thomae (Correction of Brother Thomas), a Franciscan attack consisting of 117 articles identifying purported errors drawn from several of Aquinas’s major writings. Knapwell’s detailed riposte, composed in the early 1280s, was the earliest and most extensive of a series of polemical Correctoria corruptorii fratris Thomae (Corrections of the Corruptor of Brother Thomas) that would appear, and Knapwell’s contribution is known as the Correctorium “Quare.” Knapwell’s commitment to Aquinas’s writings, however, was not fully evident in his earlier work, as Knapwell had lectured on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard at Oxford sometime between 1269 and 1277, and his surviving notes or Notabilia exhibit an admixture of views taken from Aquinas and Augustine. After writing the Correctorium “Quare,” Knapwell incepted as a master in theology at Oxford in 1284–1285, and not long afterward he produced the De unitate formae (On the unity of form), a disputed question that brought about his condemnation. In that work, Knapwell asserted the theological neutrality of the Aristotelian metaphysical thesis that there is a single substantial form in human beings. The unity of form thesis was opposed by those who posited a plurality of forms, believing that the unity of form thesis was incompatible with a host of theological issues such as whether Christ’s body in the tomb was numerically identical with the body of the living Christ. In October 1284 the Franciscan archbishop of Canterbury John Pecham had renewed the prohibitions of 1277 concerning the unity of form thesis previously set by his Dominican predecessor, Robert Kilwardby. On the basis of Knapwell’s defense of the unity of form in De unitate formae, Pecham excommunicated Knapwell in April 1286. Knapwell traveled to Rome to argue his case before the pope, but the newly elected Franciscan pontiff Nicholas IV responded by silencing him in 1288. Nothing definite is known about his later activities. The extant works of Knapwell (beyond the abovementioned Notabilia, Correctorium “Quare,” and De unitate formae) include six additional disputed questions that pertain mostly to issues of human and divine cognition, and one short Quodlibet of twenty-nine questions on a variety of topics.
Labeling Theory
Authors: Paternoster Ray , Bachman Ronet
Published: June 2013

Labeling theory is a vibrant area of research and theoretical development within the field of criminology. Originating in the mid- to late-1960s in the United States at a moment of tremendous political and cultural conflict, labeling theorists brought to center stage the role of government agencies, and social processes in general, in the creation of deviance and crime. The theory represented both a theoretical and methodological break from the past, and it could reasonably be argued that it was one of the dominant theoretical perspectives in the study of crime and deviance from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. It was also responsible for spurring countless empirical studies over this time period. Although there were periods when interest in labeling process was in decline, particularly after 1985, labeling theory has had a bit of a resurgence in recent years. Labeling theory has become part of a more general criminological theory of sanctions that includes deterrence theory’s focus on the crime reduction possibilities of sanctions, procedural justice theory’s focus on the importance of the manner in which sanctions are imposed, and defiance/reintegrative theory’s emphasis on individual differences in the social bond and persons’ emotional reaction to the label. Labeling theories of crime are often referred to as social reaction theories, because they focus primarily on the consequences of responses or reactions to crime. These responses or reactions typically focus on three sets of actors: (1) informal social others, such as the friends, parents, or partners of persons committing crimes, and who disapprove of the offender’s behavior; (2) organizations or institutions such as the criminal justice system, whose function it is to “do something about” crime; and (3) those who perceive a threat by some behavior and want to see legislation passed to outlaw it. All of these very diverse actions have one thing in common: they are all reactions to crime. As such, they are said to be “labels” because they have the quality of attaching a name or a signature to someone or some behavior—hence the name “labeling theory.” From this, labeling theory can be understood as involving two main hypotheses. First is the status characteristics hypothesis, which states that labels are imposed in part because of the status of those doing the labeling and those being labeled. The second is the secondary deviance hypothesis, which essentially argues that deviant labels create problems that the one being labeled must adjust to and deal with, and that under certain conditions labels can lead to greater involvement in crime and deviance.
Solitary Confinement
Authors: O'Donnell Ian
Published: June 2013

Solitary confinement has long been part of the practice of imprisonment in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. It has changed over time in terms of the underlying rationale, the enthusiasm with which it is embraced, and the identities of its most ardent advocates. In the early decades of the 19th century, religiously motivated prison reformers were at the forefront. Consensus was widespread about the need for prisoners to live by a rule of silence but disagreement as to whether this required separation at all times from their peers or whether silent association was acceptable (or, indeed, preferable). In the closing decades of the 20th century, there was renewed interest in solitary confinement, but without the concern for prisoner welfare and rehabilitation that had characterized earlier debates. Now the protagonists were prison administrators, and a discourse that had taken place outside the prison gates and featured many voices was replaced by one that was almost entirely internal and one-sided. Typically, there are four kinds of circumstances under which prisoners are isolated. First, there is protective custody, often at the prisoner’s request. A return to the general population can be difficult if a prisoner has been segregated because of vulnerability due to the nature of his or her offense, the accumulation of debts that cannot be discharged, or a perception that he or she has communicated information to staff. Second, there is disciplinary detention for breaking prison rules; generally the duration is relatively short. In some countries a court can impose solitary confinement as part of a sentence and the time period here can be lengthy. Third is administrative segregation. This can be short term (e.g., while an investigation is being carried out or pending transfer) or long term (if a prisoner is thought to present a threat to institutional order). Fourth, there are occasions when prisoners seek the respite of the solitary cell as a way of easing psychological pressures. In such cases the stay tends to be brief and prisoners return to their usual place of abode afterward. Long-term administrative segregation in the United States in facilities that have been described as offering “supermax” custody has generated concern on human rights grounds as well as for reasons of economy and efficacy.
The Criminology of Genocide
Authors: Rymond-Richmond Wenona
Published: June 2013

Genocide, often referred to as the “crime of crimes,” has produced hundreds of millions of murdered, raped, sexually assaulted, forcibly displaced, kidnapped, mutilated, and robbed victims. While criminologists are dedicated to explaining these types of crimes and social group conflict more broadly, they typically apply these crimes to interpersonal and intranational criminal acts of violence. As a result, criminologists have failed to incorporate genocide adequately into their research agendas leaving the “crime of crimes” neglected and undertheorized by the discipline. There are notable exceptions, including critical criminologists who frequent condemn mainstream criminology for not considering the role of the state as a criminal actor. Furthermore, recent publications by criminologists that focus on the genocide in Darfur and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda offer hope that historical neglect is declining. Nonetheless, criminology has been slow moving and nearly silent toward incorporating genocide within its disciplinary boundaries. Criminologists possess the theories and methods necessary to make valuable contributions to documenting, describing, and explaining “the crime of crimes” and to understanding the consequences of genocidal victimization.
Collateral Consequences of Felony Conviction and Imprisonment
Authors: Wakefield Sara
Published: June 2013

The so-called collateral consequences of imprisonment encompass a host of legal restrictions and deleterious outcomes for former inmates, their families, and their communities. These may result from formal legal barriers associated with a felony conviction to extralegal effects resulting from periods of imprisonment. The universe of collateral consequences, a phrase some scholars decline to use because it diminishes their importance, affects all domains of social life and results from a patchwork of legal restrictions, conditions imposed by the criminal justice system upon release, and the indirect effects of imprisonment on inmates’ families, neighborhoods, and employment prospects. These “collateral consequences,” “punishments beyond the offender,” “invisible punishments,” and “extralegal sentences” form the basis for a growing field in criminology, sociology, and law focused on the contemporary prison boom in the United States. Imprisonment has always influenced the lives of former inmates well after they leave the institution behind, but the rise in imprisonment since 1970 in the United States has exacerbated these effects as well as concentrated them among some segments of the population. Thus, while former felons have always been barred from voting in some states, for example, it is only as a result of mass incarceration that these laws have influenced the outcomes of elections. Finally, though some of the work on collateral consequences described here examines imprisonment in other contexts (e.g., in the United Kingdom), most work in the area is centered on the United States because of its exceptionality with respect to high rates of imprisonment.
Ursulines
Authors: Mazzonis Querciolo
Published: June 2013

The Ursulines’ history began in 1535 in Brescia (in northern Italy), when Angela Merici established the Company of St. Ursula, a very innovative secular form of consecration for women without vows and common life, free from male supervision, which offered women spiritual and material independence. After the Council of Trent Merici’s rule was significantly altered and the Company developed in many cities in northern Italy where it took different forms (secular, conventual, and congregated). At that time the Ursulines began to educate poor girls in the schools of Christian doctrine and wealthy young women in their convents or colleges. At the end of the century the Company spread to France, where the members increased in numbers and the institute was gradually transformed into an enclosed teaching religious order. Both in Italy and in France the Ursulines became a pioneering institute for female education, overcoming the limitations imposed on women’s active roles. The Company’s development took place in connection with the Tridentine bishops’ aspirations for the re-Christianization of society and with women’s longing for a devout life that combined active service with contemplative spirituality. From France, the Ursulines began their missions in Europe and in the wider world, where they continued to pursue their educational duty toward women. From the beginning of the nineteenth century the Ursulines reinforced their missionary spirit and increased their presence both in Europe and around the world. Although the conventual form was the most common, the Ursulines were still living in a variety of forms of life at this time (including congregated and secular), and they had never been unified centrally (a partially successful attempt to do so took place with the creation of the Roman Union in 1900). After the Second Vatican Council many groups of conventual Ursulines decided to return to forms of life closer to that of the founder. The history of the Ursulines is thus quite complex because the institute adopted different forms of life, models of organization, and religious rules as well as pursued a variety of spiritual objectives. Many of the historiographical works listed here—often composed by members of the order—include collections of documents and present accurate reconstructions of the evolution of specific convents and groups. Scholarship providing social and cultural perspectives of the Ursuline history focus on Merici and the early Ursulines, the order in early modern France, and the missions in Canada and in New Orleans.
Women and Science
Authors: Cooper Alix
Published: June 2013

Until relatively recently, women were seen as having played little part in the “Scientific Revolution” of the 16th and 17th centuries. Textbook narratives of the transformations in astronomy and physics inaugurated by Nicolaus Copernicus (b. 1473–d. 1543) and brought to completion by Isaac Newton (b. 1642–d. 1727) told a heroic story of the intellectual achievements of exceptional men of genius. Over the past several decades, however, research investigating the actual practice of science during this period—or, to be more accurate, the wide range of activities we nowadays see as comprising natural science—has revealed a multitude of ways in which women were, in fact, involved in the production of natural knowledge. As historians of science have shown, women of the early modern period carried out astronomical observations, conducted experimental procedures in distillation, theorized about the nature of nature, and even traveled vast distances in order to study the flora and fauna of far-off places. Scholars examining early modern social and cultural patterns that excluded women, and there were many, have also discovered numerous factors that enabled women of this period to participate in natural inquiry. Studies of the role of ideas of gender more broadly in early modern ideas of “nature” have further enriched understanding of women and science.