bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conflict of Interest in Anthropology
Authors: Salmon Merrilee
Published: November 2023

An anthropologist, Richard Wilk, who works with the Kekchi people of Southern Belize, published research on the history of their occupation of the area (Wilk, 1999). His sources indicated that during the nineteenth century, the Kekchi moved into vacated territory that had once been occupied by Chol Maya speakers. The latter group had been forcibly removed at the time of European contact. Kekchi lived on that land in a government-designated “forest reserve” for about 150 years without interference. Their occupation was threatened in the 1990s, however, when the Belize Government sold logging concessions for the forest reserve. Some logging companies proceeded to clear-cut the land. Legal battles followed between the government on one side and environmentalists and Kekchi on the other. In one court case, the government cited Wilk’s publications as scientific evidence for the claim that the Kekchi had no ancestral claims on the land because they were “recent” immigrants. As an anthropologist whose primary ethical duty was to avoid harm to his host people, Wilk was put in the position of seeing this interest conflict with his professional interest in scholarly publication. His attempt to resolve this problem was philosophically perceptive and scientifically sound.
The Psychology of Writing
Authors: Kellogg Ronald T
Published: November 2023

The human ability to render meaning through symbolic media such as art, dance, music, and speech defines, in many ways, the uniqueness of our species. One symbolic medium in particular--written expression--has aroused increasing interest among researchers across disciplines, in areas as diverse as the humanities, education, and the social sciences because it offers a fascinating window into the processes underlying the creation and enunciation of symbolic representation. In The Psychology of Writing, cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg reviews and integrates the fast-growing, multidisciplinary field of composition research, a field that seeks to understand how people formulate and express their thoughts with the symbols of written text. By examining the production of written text, the book fills a large gap in cognitive psychology, which until now has focused on speech production, comprehension, and reading, while virtually ignoring how people write. Throughout, the author masterfully examines the many critical factors that come together during the writing process--including writer personality, work schedules, method of composing, and knowledge. In providing an important new theoretical framework that enables readers from a wide range of backgrounds to navigate the extensive composition literature, the author drives home the profound significance of meaning-making as a defining feature of human cognition. Kellogg not only draws from the work of leading composition scholars, but quotes insights into the writing process proffered by some of the most gifted practitioners of the writing craft--including E.M. Forster, John Updike, and Samuel Johnson. Engaging and lively, The Psychology of Writing is the perfect introduction to the subject for students, researchers, journalists, and interested general readers.
From Trust to Tragedy HIV/AIDS and the Canadian Blood System
Authors: Gilmore Norbert , Somerville Margaret A
Published: November 2023

In May 1993, after six months of hearings into the disastrous impact of the AIDS epidemic on hemophiliacs and blood transfusion recipients in Canada, a House of Commons Committee called for a formal inquiry. The Committee recognized that it was essential to undertake an in-depth examination of the events leading to the contamination of the blood supply in the 1980s, in particular with HIV, and to recommend policies to secure the safety and enhance the efficiency of the blood col lection and distribution system. Characteristic of the fractious politics surrounding the Canadian blood system, amplified by federal-provincial jurisdictional issues, it took another six months for the Privy Council to order a formal inquiry. The Commission of Inquiry into the Blood System in Canada-known as the Krever Commission after the judge who chaired it-began hearings in October 1993. Dramatic testimony, especially from those who were infected by blood treatment, received, often daily, front-page coverage. By the time of its final hearings in November 1995, the Commission had cost over $14 million, had collected 50,000 pages of testimony from hundreds of witnesses, and had assembled more than half a mil lion pages of submissions and documentary evidence.
Blood “Scandal” and AIDS in Germany
Authors: Dressler Stephan
Published: November 2023

It was not until late 1993 that the safety of the German blood supply attracted the attention of the general public and the media. The discovery that the Koblenz based company UB Plasma had used blood and plasma that had been improperly screened for HIV antibody shocked the German public and led the federal minister of health, Horst Seehofer, to open an official inquiry into what was widely per ceived as a “scandal.”1 Such reactions were late in coming, given the fact that press accounts of the effect of HIV contamination of the blood supply had appeared years earlier. In 1991, the mass circulation Der Spiegelhad in “Der Tod Aus der Spritze” (Death by Injection) noted that half of Germany’s hemophiliacs, almost 2000 men, had been infected through HIV-contaminated clotting factor.2 The Sueddeutsche Zeitung, in “Scandal or Just a Sad Story,” had made clear that those dependent on the blood supply had been infected as a consequence of circumstances that were not inevitable.
HIV-Contaminated Blood and Australian Policy the Limits of Success
Authors: Ballard John
Published: November 2023

Australia’s approach to AIDS was different from that of other countries, and much of the difference developed around the issue of blood control. During the formative stage of pol icy making on AIDS, from 1982 to 1985, awareness of risk to the supply of blood and blood products varied critically in industrial societies among those responsible for making policy choices. In the United States, the issue of risk and appropriate response was publicly debated from the end of 1982, but elsewhere that debate was largely ignored. In Australia, however, with an exceptional measure of government responsibility for the blood supply, any risk had a political dimension. By I 984, once a virus was identified and tests indicated that Australian blood was in fact contaminated, there was a political imperative to respond quickly. Matched with scientific capacity, political concern ensured that Australia had its blood supply fully tested and the virus eliminated from blood products before other countries. Political mobilization on the issue of blood then flowed into proactive policies on AIDS education and prevention.
Categories of the Female Voice
Authors: Miller Richard
Published: November 2023

Zerlina and brünnhilde, according to the designations given them by Mozart and Wagner, are both sopranos. Having Briinnhilde sing “Batti, batti” would parallel entering a diesel-powered transport van in the classic Indianapolis 500. Zerlina cannot be put astride Grane for an Immolation Scene excursion without being headed for vocal incineration. Briinnhilde and Zerlina are separated from each other by a wide gulf of laryngeal and vocal-tract constru ction. From contralto to soubrette/coloratura, the category (Fach) of each female voice is largely determined by the physiology of the instrument itself, the location of voice-register demarcations, and adherence to specific tonal concepts.
The Sostenuto Factor
Authors: Miller Richard
Published: November 2023

The two poles of bel canto writing are well illustrated in the cavatina/cabaletta of the opera scena. This musical form traditionally consists of a recitative, a sustained aria, and a swiftly moving pyrotechnical second aria, sometimes with another recitative inserted between the two arias. (The cabaletta following the solo aria may also be found in duet form.) Beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing through Verdi, the scena form flourished in opera, increasingly replacing the da capo aria so characteristic of Handel and his contemporaries. In part, the substitution of the duo aria (cavatina/cabaletta) for the da capo framework came in answer to the growing demand for dramatic evolution of plot and character. No longer did textual and musical repetitions of the ABA form seem adequate for moving the drama forward.
Accomplishing Dynamic Control
Authors: Miller Richard
Published: November 2023

It is destructive for most young sopranos during early training to attempt the full range of dynamic subtlety that an accomplished artist has learned to deliver. Much of the coaching of student and preprofessional singers is less than successful because of rigid adherence to the principle that every voice must meet the demands for dynamic finesse the composer rightly expects from the finished artist.
Pennsylvania Avenue the Avenue of the Presidents
Authors: Jr Paul Boller
Published: November 2023

As a sport, running (like swimming laps) can be boring at times, at least for an amateur, and a few years after taking it up I began combining it, whenever possible, with sightseeing. It seemed like a bright idea: keeping fit while learning something about cities I visited. I did runs around the Emperor’s Palace in Tokyo, down Riverside Drive in Manhattan, along the waterfront in Seattle, on the river walk in San Antonio, near Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and in Rock Creek Park and down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Me Orial, Washington, D.C.
Authors: Dallek Robert
Published: November 2023

When I was asked to contribute an essay on an American place to this well-deserved tribute to Sheldon Meyer, I had no difficulty choosing a subject: the new Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial commemorating my favorite president. It was an opportunity to grouse about the stinginess of Congress and some recent presidents in taking so long to give our greatest twentieth-century president his proper due. More important, it provided an occasion to say something about the attractions of the memorial and how essential such remembrances are in advancing the national well-being.
Vassar College
Authors: Degler Carl N
Published: November 2023

y first sight of Vassar College on the outskirts of the midHudson river-town of Poughkeepsie, New York, occurred on a dark November night in 1948. The occasion was intended to be a brief-in fact, a very brief-honeymoon from New York City, where Catherine Grady and I had married that afternoon. Since both of us were working at universities and had only a weekend to celebrate, and possessed no car, we looked for a hotel near Princeton University, which was close enough by train from New York for a weekend. There were no rooms, however, since the hotels were overfull because of a big Princeton football game. Looking for another nearby college campus, we thought the short train trip to Poughkeepsie would give us a chance to explore Vassar College, which we had heard of but had never visited. After checking into a small hotel, we walked to the campus.
Climbing Stone Mountain
Authors: Harlan Louis R
Published: November 2023

stone Mountain, about sixteen miles northeast of Atlanta, is in the middle range of natural wonders, though some provincials call it the eighth wonder of the world. Compared with other mountains, Stone Mountain is but a foothill, rising 780 feet above its surroundings. Even so, as an entirely stone mountain it is unique, an impressive mass of solid granite, denuded of soil or vegetation except for a small grove of stunted cedars high up, known as Buzzards’ Roost. The granite was formed some two hundred million years ago when a volcano extruded a mound of magma upward without breaking the earth’s crust.
Gettysburg
Authors: McPherson James M
Published: November 2023

I have lost count of the number of times I have visited Gettysburg. Over the past forty years I have walked, bicycled, and driven around the battlefield and town by myselt with a few friends, and with groups as large as a hundred. I honestly believe that if I were blindfolded and winched down to any spot on the battlefield from a helicopter on a cloudy night, I could remove the blindfold and identif)’ my surroundings within seconds. Gettysburg has come to have a special place in my consciousness, just as it has acquired an unequaled place in the American historical consciousness. When Congress created Gettysburg National Military Park in the 1890s, the Gettysburg Electric Railway Company owned part of the land on which the battle had been fought. The GERC had begun moving earth to build a trolley line to carry tourists over the battlefield.
Introduction: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s Odyssey
Authors: Dougherty Carol
Published: November 2023

As when the mind leaps, the mind of a man who has traveled across much territory and thinks with shrewd intelligence, “If only I were there or there “ and wishes many things, so quickly did the eager Hera, a goddess, fly,The Greeks have always been fascinated with travel and its connection to knowledge or wisdom. The figure of Solon, the sixth-century B.C.E. Athenian lawgiver and one of the Seven Sages, typifies this association for the early historical period. According to Herodotus, Solon traveled widely after establishing his new set of laws in Athens, in part for the purpose of sightseeing (theoria) and in part to avoid having to repeal any of the laws he had laid down.
Ships and Song
Authors: Dougherty Carol
Published: November 2023

I said Omerosand O was the conch-shell’s invocation, mer was both mother and sea in our Antillean patois,os, a grey bone, and the white surf as it crashes and spreads its sibilant collar on a lace shore.Derek Walcott, OmerosThroughout much of his poetry, but particularly in his epic poem Omeros, the contemporary Caribbean poet Derek Walcott invokes images of the sea and navigation as metaphors for the poetic process. He places the sea right at the heart of Omeros’ name-“mer was/ both mother and sea in our Antillean patois “and at the center of his poetics. There are two journeys in Walcott’s Omeros, one that the hero makes as he travels from town to town, and the other that the poet embarks upon as he recounts his hero’s adventures:for one, foaming with paper, and dipping the beakof a pen in its foam, while an actual craft carries the other to cities where people speaka different language, or look at him differently ... (p. 291)Walcott’s hero travels on an actual seagoing craft, while the poet conducts his own odyssey from his desk, a metaphorical raft, and Walcott anchors this navigational imagery firmly in the language of poetry by linking raft and craft here in the alternating scheme of his terza rima.1 Obviously, there is something about ships and the sea that powerfully captures the essence of making poetry for Walcott, and, as so often, the modern Caribbean poet sends us back to Homer with fresh eyes to discover a similar metaphorical system already at work in early Greek poetry as well. 2
A Brave New World
Authors: Dougherty Carol
Published: November 2023

At the end of Book 5, Odysseus makes his preparations to leave Calypso and to return home at long last. Once the raft is built, Calypso brings him clothing and provisions for his trip and stirs up a favorable wind to send him on his way (5.263-68). Odysseus then raises the sails to catch the breeze and settles himself expertly (1:EXVTJEV1: , 5 .2 70) at the rudder of his newly built raft. Initially all goes well, and Odysseus successfully navigates the open sea for seventeen days. On the eighteenth, however, just as he catches sight of the island of the Phaeacians appearing like a shield on the sea, Poseidon spies Odysseus making his way home. Furious, the sea god curses this change of events and stirs up a monumental storm intending to smash Odysseus and his raft to bits:So speaking he gathered together the clouds and stirred up the sea, taking his trident in his hands. He roused up all the storms of all kinds of winds, and he hid the land and the sea equally with clouds. And night arose from the sky. (Od. 5.291-94)Odysseus groans in fear at the sounds of the storm and laments his own destiny to die miserably at sea. His companions at Troy were three and four times more blessed to die gloriously on the battlefield.
Phaeacians and Cyclopes: Overseas Settlement
Authors: Dougherty Carol
Published: November 2023

The world of Phaeacia, with Alcinous’ spectacular palace and its wondrous garden, occupies a space in the Greek ethnographic imagination somewhere between the potential wealth of the Near East and the utopian promise of the Golden Age. This is an ideal world, or rather an idealized version of the real world of overseas commerce in metals that implicates the Greeks and Phoenicians in a network of travel and trade. The previous chapter explored the ways in which the world of the Phaeacians works together with that of the Phoenicians to articulate both the positive and negative aspects of overseas commerce in the Odyssey. Taken on its own, however, this Phaeacian/Phoenician dichotomy fails to account for some other, still puzzling aspects of the Phaeacians. Although Phaeacia seems to evoke Greek imaginings about Near Eastern cities and palaces, there are other ways in which the layout and founding of the city recall a Greek colonial settlement. In addition, as we have already noticed, in spite of the Phaeacians’ famed hospitality-and their treatment of Odysseus is extremely generous-there is an undercurrent of hostility to strangers that runs through Books 6-8. What helps explain these basic inconsistencies in the Phaeacian profile is the recognition that there is a second opposition at work here as well, this time contrasting the Phaeacians with their overbearing relatives, the Cyclopes. In this context, the Phaeacians, together with the Cyclopes, both descendants of Poseidon, represent different pictures of what an overseas settler might find when he lands ashore. Again, as with issues of trade in the Odyssey, the institution of hospitality, xenia, provides a familiar framework for articulating these extreme possibilities as well as for imagining a more moderate and realistic colonial landscape.
Phaeacians and Euboeans: Greeks Overseas
Authors: Dougherty Carol
Published: November 2023

For the Phaeacians have no steersmen, nor any rudders, as other ships have. But the ships themselves know the thoughts and minds of men, and they know the cities and fertile fields of all mankind, and they cross the expanse of the sea swiftly, covered with mist and cloud. The invention of the ship traditionally marks with pessimism, or at least some trepidation, the fall of the Golden Age and the beginning of New World voyages of exploration. The Phaeacians, however, famous for their nautical expertise, seem able to occupy a place where these two worldviews converge. It is now time to look back at my discussion of the Phaeacians and their role in accommodating and articulating the ethnographic imagination of the Odyssey. In this section, we turn from thinking about Odysseus’ raft and sailing as a literary and cultural metaphor in the Odyssey to look at the representations of the brave new worlds that Odysseus encounters on his overseas voyages. I began, in chapter 4, by asking why Phaeacia and the court of Alcinous are chosen as the narrative setting for Odysseus’ famous travel tales. Why should Odysseus recount his travels at this point, at the site of his final adventure, rather than, as we might expect, after he has returned home? Perhaps more important, what does it mean for the poem’s audience-both the Greeks and us-to be seated next to the king and queen of Phaeacia rather than beside Penelope and Telemachus in Ithaca as we listen to Odysseus’ tales of bloodthirsty cannibals, seductive.
Brain Organization And Neurobehavioral And Neurocognitive Function
Authors: Taylor Michael Alan
Published: November 2023

The cerebral hemispheres in humans have different specializations and information processing styles (Table 1.1). Knowing these different processing styles helps determine the side of a brain lesion because the different processing styles and specializations affect behavior differently. A helpful metaphor for hemisphere specialization is a train station. Think of the left hemisphere as a train station with one track, so that only one train at a time can enter the station. This forces the left hemisphere to look into each train car (in which metaphorical information is being carried), one car at a time. Tedious and focused, the left hemisphere is very good at detail and is able to analyze and make inferences from that information. For example, if car one has 2 bits of information and car two 4 bits, the functioning left hemisphere will reason that car three is likely to have 6, 8, or 16 bits and, based on what that car actually has in it, the left hemisphere will then know the rule (adding twos, doubling or squaring the number). In contrast, the right hemisphere is like a train station into which several trains can enter simultaneously. Although the right hemisphere can be forced to look at each car in the sequential fashion of the left, it is not good at this. It is best at rapid scanning of information to detect broad patterns, or gestalts (for example: the trains are coming in fast or slowly or there are many trains, or only a few).
Patient Management
Authors: Taylor Michael Alan
Published: November 2023

The principles of management apply equally to biological and interpersonal treatments. Whether you prescribe psychotherapy or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), do not begin treatment until you have made your best diagnostic effort and you have considered factors that influence treatment (e.g., the patient’s personality and likelihood of compliance, cognitive function and intelligence, interpersonal and job situations, general medical health, and specific strengths and weaknesses in each domain). The need to diagnose before treatment is obvious. Sometimes, however, this is not fully accomplished, and targeted symptoms (e.g., psychosis, excitement, trouble keeping a job) get treated rather than the processes underlying the symptoms. The problems with this “target symptom” approach are discussed in the pharmacology section of this chapter.
Anxiety Disorders
Authors: Taylor Michael Alan
Published: November 2023

Anxiety disorders are common (5%-10% of persons have severe forms, and an additional 10%-15% have specific phobias). Anxiety is also a feature of many traditional neurologic and general medical illnesses, so that secondary anxiety disorder is also common, and about half the patients in general medical practice have anxiety symptoms as part of their chief complaint.
Aches And Pains, Sex And Sleep, And Violence
Authors: Taylor Michael Alan
Published: November 2023

Patients with behavioral disorders often complain of sleep problems, headache, and other aches and pains. Sexual dysfunction is a side effect of many psychotropic drugs, and sexual dysfunction is both a sign of disease (e.g., some frontal lobe and epileptic conditions) and a DSM category (e.g., paraphilia). Violence is also a feature of several behavioral syndromes, but may also be a primary behavioral pattern. Each of these topics could fill books, but are covered together here for brevity and because of their common diagnostic challenge: Do they represent a primary condition, or are they features of another disorder? Successful management hinges on knowing the answer to this question. Persistent complaints of headache, other aches and pains, and sleep problems also lead to suffers being labeled “cranks” or “hypochondriacs.” Occasionally, however, these isolated complaints are caused by a debilitating condition. Table 16.1 provides an overview of this chapter, displaying some of the common associations between these complaints and diseases.
Justice, Caring, Responsibility
Authors: Buchanan David R
Published: November 2023

This final chapter turns to a discussion of values that matter. Up to this point, nc attempt has been made to specify any such values. The preceding pages have put forward the idea that human well-being is characterized by living a life of integrity, as individuals and as a society. We flourish as human beings through living lives in accordance with values of human significance, but there is no one single conception of the good life. The values that people consider significant are plural and not necessarily harmonious nor compatible with one another. The tragedy of the human condition flows from the fact that often we must choose between conflicting goods and values that irreconcilably tug on our conscience. In these situations, we must use judgment, making qualitative discriminations of worth, with insight and sensitivity to the specific context and our clearest, most refined interpretation of the good to be achieved and the values that bear on the situation. We must exercise the faculty of practical reason to make the best decision in light of the particular circumstances.
Discovery
Authors: Sudhalter Richard M
Published: November 2023

John Porter Foley had every reason to be happy. Since 1896, his first year as a student at Indiana University, he’d held the post of campus electrician and “mechanician.” Any problem with an electric or mechanical device and—well, just find Mr. Foley. He’d know what to do. So it was that when, on Saturday, January 20, 1906, the bells for the university’s brand-new clock tower finally arrived, John Porter Foley oversaw their installation. They’d been expected in mid-December, in plenty of time to be mounted, adjusted, and rung out on New Year’s Eve. The McShane Bell Company of Baltimore had shipped them on time, but something had gone wrong in transit, and they’d arrived a month late, much to the chagrin of school adn1inistrators.
Bix
Authors: Sudhalter Richard M
Published: November 2023

It’s Tuesday, May 6, 1924, and in Richmond, Indiana, in a single-story, gray wooden building by a spur of the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad line, Ezra Wickemeyer completes one last check of his recording equipment. In the next room, plainly visible through an aperture in the dividing wall, seven young men are setting up musical instruments. The cornet player, a pleasant, sandy-haired lad, flashes him a smile. Nearly ready.
Bread, Gravy, and Cream
Authors: Sudhalter Richard M
Published: November 2023

Eva Ford replaced the telephone receiver and stood for a moment, lost in thought. A songwriter, newly discharged from Flowers Fifth Avenue Hospital, needed home care. One of her friends, a nurse, had been offered the job but couldn’t take it. Would Eva fill in for her? She’d come down to New York after graduation from high school in Cambridge, near Boston, to take up nursing, and this was definitely a nursing opportunity: she couldn’t very well turn it down without at least giving it a chance.
Movie Star
Authors: Sudhalter Richard M
Published: November 2023

To Have and Have Not had shown Hollywood casting directors they had a bankable character actor in Hoagy Carmichael. Offers for new pictures began arriving at 10281 Charing Cross Road, always for-as Hoagy rather wryly put it— “the hound-dog-faced old musical philosopher noodling on the honky-tonk piano, saying to a tart with a heart of gold: ‘He’ll be back, honey. He’s all man.’ “
Ev’ntide
Authors: Sudhalter Richard M
Published: November 2023

Slowly, reluctantly, like a piece of precision machinery turning over despite an encrustation of rust, Hoagy Carmichael’s songwriting mind kept working; the melodies might be harder to find now, fewer and farther between. But he was still reaching. Whatever they had or hadn’t been, the glory days were long gone. No effort by Hoagy Bix, Nacio Herb Brown, Howie Richmond, or anyone else who still believed in Hoagy Carmichael would change that, or revive a market where none now existed.
Rural Health in the United States
Authors: Ricketts Thomas C
Published: November 2023

Providing a comprehensive view of the health status and health care resources of the rural areas of the USA, this well-organized and well-illustrated book updates Health Care in Rural America, published by the Office of Technology Assessment in 1990.
Primary Photochemical Processes in Some Important Light-Absorbing Products of Atmospheric Oxidation of the Alkenes
Authors: Calvert J G , Atkinson R , Kerr J A , Madronich S , Moortgat G K , Wallington, T J , Yarwood G
Published: November 2023

Many of the first-generation products of the atmospheric oxidation of alkenes act as additional sources for ozone generation and promote other atmospheric processes, not only by their reactions with OH, N03, and03 molecules, but also by their photodecomposition in the sunlight to generate radical products. In this chapter, a review and an evaluation are given of the quantum yields of the primary photochemical processes (¢) and the absorption cross sections (a) for several of the most common first-generation products of alkene atmospheric oxidation. The solar actinic flux (F) at visible and ultraviolet wavelengths drives the photodissociation processes. The wavelength-dependent quantities (¢, a, and F) are therefore required to estimate the extent of photodissociation for each
Mantel Tests: Spatial Structure in Field Experiments
Authors: Fortin Marie-Josée , Gurevitch Jessica
Published: November 2023

Landscapes are composed of mosaics of patches, with different degrees of spatial autocorrelation within and among them. The phenomenon of spatial autocorrelation, the spatial dependence of the values of a variable, has been widely reported (chapter 15; Cliff and Ord 1981; Upton and Fingleton 1985; Legendre and Fortin 1989). Positive spatial autocorrelation may result from the microenvironment or from dispersal of offspring near the maternal parent, among other causes. Negative spatial autocorrelation may result, for example, from competition for resources.
Introduction
Authors: Macedo Stephen
Published: November 2023

That we are in the midst of a renewal of interest in democratic principles and practices seems hard to deny. In the world’s older democracies no less than the newer ones, the banner of deliberative democracy has attracted increasing numbers of supporters.
Democratic Deliberation: The Problem of Implementation
Authors: Bell Daniel A
Published: November 2023

The most influential political philosophers today divide their work into two tasks. The first task is to present and rigorously defend morally desirable political principles, and the second is to think about how to implement them. Quite often, the first task proves to be overwhelming, and it is left to others to think about feasibility. The problem, of course, is that the political principles often prove to be useless or counterproductive in practice, which undermines the first task. One might have thought that the political principles themselves should be assessed partly by the extent to which they can be usefully implemented in practice, but philosophical purists seem to worry about the possible implication that there may not be one unique, universally applicable, and eternally valid set of political principles.
Democratic Disagreement
Authors: Gutmann Amy , Thompson Dennis
Published: November 2023

What is the value of deliberative democracy? What are its limits? The thoughtful commentaries in this volume help us answer these questions more fully than we did in Democracy and Disagreement. The first group of commentators calls into question the desirability of deliberation. In reply, we develop our views about the value of deliberation. The second group agrees that deliberation is desirable, and some of these commentators even call for a greater role for deliberation than we defend. In reply, we examine the limits of deliberation. Although we cannot address every point made by every commentator, we try to address the most challenging issues and to proceed throughout in the spirit of deliberative democracy, seeking agreement where it is possible and maintaining mutual respect where it is not.
Defining and Measuring Quality of Life in Palliative Care
Authors: Cohen S Robin
Published: November 2023

Palliative care is “the active total care of patients whose disease is not responsive to curative treatment. Control of pain, of other symptoms, and of psychological, social, and spiritual problems, is paramount. The goal of palliative care is achievement of the best quality of life (QOL) for patients and their families.”1 Therefore, if palliative care providers wish to evaluate the full impact of their care, they must measure changes in QOL as well as improvements in areas specifically targeted by particular interventions (e.g., pain; depression).
Setting Course
Authors: Hallett Garth L
Published: November 2023

It is now widely agreed that strict proof—starting with evident premises, proceeding by sure steps, and thereby establishing an airtight conclusion on some controversial issue—is not likely to succeed. It is not likely to succeed with regard to free will, justice, the uniformity of nature, or extraterrestrial intelligence. Neither is it likely to succeed with regard to God.
Analogy
Authors: Hallett Garth L
Published: November 2023

Like most, Owen regards the argument from analogy as the chief support for belief in other minds. Like most, he construes the analogy in terms of behavior. Like many, he recognizes no similar argument (“by the analogy of the immediately felt relation between our own acts and their mental source”) for God. His remarks therefore suggest a framework for this chapter’s comparative inquiry. First, does the argument from analogy suffice to “justify the ‘moral certainty’ which accompanies our intuition” of other minds? Second, does no similar argument hold for God? How great, in fact, is the alleged disparity? The focus here, as throughout this inquiry, will be epistemological, not psychological.
Good and Evil
Authors: Hallett Garth L
Published: November 2023

With regard to good and evil, two related issues must be distinguished: the validity of the teleological argument for God’s existence and the validity of the argument from evil against God’s existence. The connections of these two questions to each other and to our comparative inquiry can be sketched, in first outline, as follows: (1) A satisfactory explanation of all the world’s evils would doubly strengthen the case for God’s existence, both by reinforcing the teleological argument on the one hand and by removing the objection from evil on the other. So doing, it would greatly reinforce Plantinga’s hypothesis that belief in God is epistemically comparable to belief in other minds, for little or no teleological evidence backs many an other-minds belief (for instance, my belief in Mrs. M’s love). Even limited explanatory success might bolster Plantinga’s thesis to some extent; however, given our cognitive limitations and the complexity of the universe, it appears unlikely that we humans could succeed in providing a detailed, compre hensive explanation of all evils.
The Dhammapada
Authors: Kupperman Joel J
Published: November 2023

If the central thesis of the Upanishads is easy to summarize (atman is Brahman), so also is the central claim of early Buddhist philosophy. It is anatman: there is no atman. The Dhammapada centers a picture of what we are like, and of what the world is like, on this claim. This metaphysics is opposite to that of Hindu philosophy. Where the Upanishads sees the world as most profoundly a unity, Buddhist philosophy sees it as a swirl of fragments, linked by causal relations and by other associations. Not only is there no atman, there also is no Brahman. The two traditions share a scorn of egoism and individual ism. But the grounds are very different. In the view of the Upanishads, there are no differences among individuals in ultimate reality, because there really are no individuals. The Buddhist view is that there are differences, but (understood properly) they are largely matters of convention and are unimportant.
The Bhagavad Gita
Authors: Kupperman Joel J
Published: November 2023

Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy had a great impact on India, becoming strongly competitive with Hinduism and the philosophy of the Upanishads, and eventually (but only for a while) gaining the upper hand. Hinduism, though, had considerable vitality left in it. Plainly part of the appeal of Buddhism, especially close to the grassroots level, was that it offered possibilities of life, including a feeling of connectedness with others, that seemed richer to many than the austere withdrawal mandated for those who really took seriously the ethics of the Upanishads. The Bhagavad Gita presents a philosophy of Hinduism that in a way meets this Buddhist challenge, by also offering greater possibilities, including the possible combination of spiritual enlightenment with active participation in the world. The philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita at the deepest level agrees with that of the Upanishads. It remains the case that atman is Brahman. It also remains the case that liberation can be achieved by an austere and difficult full realization of this. However, the Bhagavad Gita goes beyond these claims, offering a rich menu of options for arriving at a life consonant with the identity of atman and Brahman. In the new dispensation, there are multiple forms of the ethical ideal instead of a single ideal. In the process, the Bhagavad Gita presents a subtle psychology of action and of love, and a dramatic vision of how some one can be in the world and yet not really in it.
The Zhuangzi
Authors: Kupperman Joel J
Published: November 2023

Zhuangzi, also known as Chuang-tzu, very probably was a real person, who lived in the fourth century BCE.The book to which his name is attached has accretions that stamp it as the work of many hands. Scholars sometimes isolate within the Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tzu) what are called the “Inner Chapters” (chapters I through 7), which are viewed as a core early text and also as exceptionally vivid presentations of the point of view of the book. That point of view may not be entirely evident right away to the first-time reader. The book is fanciful, and there are many digressions and changes of tone. The overall impression may be of someone who is clever and is fooling around. There are works (the eighteenth century novel Tristram Shandy is an example) whose “unity” is their disunity, their lack of discursive integration; and the Zhuangzi may seem to be one of these works. Nevertheless, I wish to suggest that at least the Inner Chapters are in their way highly integrated, with no words wasted and no line of thought as random as it may look. There is a consistent set of philosophical positions and implicit arguments for these. Read right, the Zhuangzi is real philosophy--although it also is a lot of fun and is a strangely beautiful book.
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Authors: Kupperman Joel J
Published: November 2023

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a collection of anecdotes and incidents connected with Zen Buddhism, many of them several hundred years old and originating in China. Most in fact represent Chinese Chan Buddhism, which in Japan became known as Zen. They are pungent, frequently amusing, and to all appearances not at all systematic. In this chapter we will explore them along with a classic Chan text, the Platform Sutra, that is in a way systematic. Here is a story from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. It is No. 1 in The Gate less Gate, the second part of the book. A monk asks a Chinese Chan/Zen master whether a dog has Buddha nature or not. The master replies “mu,” which means something like “nothingness”. Six paragraphs of comment follow, which basically say that this is an extremely important problem. Great energy and persistence are required to penetrate the meaning of “mu,” but if you can do it this will transform your life.
Introduction
Authors: Van Norden Bryan W
Published: November 2023

The similarities continue. Although all three were literate, perhaps all highly so, neither Confucius, nor Jesus, nor Socrates left behind any of his own writings. We know each only through the later writings of his admirers and detractors. In addition, each had a distinctive, charismatic, and complex personality. These three common features have made each the object of love, hatred, admiration, denigration, and debate for over two millennia.1
Conformity, Individuality, and the Nature of Virtue: A Classical Confucian Contribution to Contemporary Ethical Reflection
Authors: Wilson Stephen A
Published: November 2023

There can be no happy outcome in the contemporary debate that pits the priority of individual fulfillment against more traditional claims about the distinctive benisons of shared sources of meaning. This is, at least partly, because there are at least two different kinds of human flourishing, each one being raised up by one side or the other as the comprehensive human good. One kind of flourishing involves the distinctive development of what is unique to each individual agent as irreplicable subject. Although the total content of our identities may be ultimately unknowable,1 most advocates of this view allow agents some substantive insights into their personalities—enough, in any case, to give determinate content to notions of self-interpretation. Another kind of flourishing stems from what given communities take human beings to be in some universal sense (given human nature, basic human capabilities, and so on). The successful formation of communally valued character traits is thought to enable participants to fulfill the highest possibilities afforded by that (or any) community’s way of life. Both forms of flourishing represent very significant goods, and both are, in my judgment, indispensable to a nuanced understanding of the fullest human potential. To slight either, as both sides of the contemporary debate slight one or the other, is not only to impoverish ethical reflection but also to falsify human experience.
Childhood (1906–1919)
Authors: Fay Laurel E
Published: November 2023

Though the Shostakovich family was of Polish-Lithuanian extraction, the composer’s immediate forebears came from Siberia. His paternal grandfather, Boleslav Petrovich Shostakovich, had been exiled there in 1866 in the crackdown that followed Dmitriy Karakozov’s assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II. After the expiration of his term of exile Boleslav Shostakovich decided to remain in Siberia. He eventually became a successful banker in Irkutsk and raised a large family. His son, Dmitriy Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the composer’s father, was born in exile in Narïm in 1875 and attended St. Petersburg University, graduating in 1899 from the faculty of physics and mathematics. After graduation, he went to work as an engineer under Dmitriy Mendeleyev at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in St. Petersburg. In 1903, he married Sofya Vasilyevna Kokoúlina, another Siberian transplant to the capital.
Conservatory (1919-1926)
Authors: Fay Laurel E
Published: November 2023

n the immediate postrevolutionary period, the Petrograd Conservatory changed little from prerevolutionary days. At the helm of the institution, Alexander Glazunov, prodigious late-nineteenth-century composer turned respected administrator, was a living link to the venerable traditions of Rimsky-Korsakov and the golden age of Russian music. He provided a source of continuity and stability for the institution through uncertain times. Glazunov’s tireless devotion to the cause of professional music, his active involvement in all aspects of Conservatory life, and his magnanimous disregard for his personal tastes in the identification and advancement of gifted youth earned him the universal respect and affection of students and colleagues.
Spreading Wings (1926-1928)
Authors: Fay Laurel E
Published: November 2023

Shostakovich was both exhilarated and exhausted after all the anticipation and anxiety of the months preceding the premiere of his First Symphony. In the weeks following the debut, he was at loose ends; he longed to go south to Anapa for the summer to rest but griped that the Conservatory was only giving him eighty rubles for the trip, scarcely enough to cover the cost of “papirosï” (the distinctive Russian cardboard-tipped cigarettes he smoked), and counted instead on the advance promised for the publication of his symphony. He started to write a piano concerto but abandoned it in disgust: “I am waiting for inspiration from above.” The fickleness of his muse was a source of ongoing concern to him.
Tragedy-Satire (1932-1936)
Authors: Fay Laurel E
Published: November 2023

when Shostakovich took on the status quo in the Soviet musical theater in late 1931 with his “Declaration of a Composer’s Duties” and swore off theatrical commissions for five years, what he had not yet acknowledged publicly was that he was already hard at work on a new opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, a project undertaken independent of any commission or planned production. With what was by now wide-ranging experience as a composer of music for film and theater, and with convictions honed by an arduous apprenticeship, Shostakovich was ready to reassert control over his creative destiny and try his hand at another opera.
The War Years (1941-1944)
Authors: Fay Laurel E
Published: November 2023

In the week that followed the declaration of war, activities at the Conservatory proceeded almost as if nothing had happened. Exams were completed, students were graduated, and stipend recipients for the next year were selected. Shostakovich had immediately volunteered for the army but was told, “We’ll call you when we need you.” Another application to join, dated 2 July 1941, also met with rejection. The impatient composer signed up with the Home Guard, then in the process of formation: “I am going to defend my country and am prepared, sparing neither life nor strength, to carry out any mission I am assigned.” Shostakovich spent the next few weeks— with a brigade of volunteers from the Conservatory—digging ditches and throwing up weapon emplacements and antitank barriers around Leningrad. Later in the month he was assigned to the firefighting brigade at the Conservatory to protect the roof against incendiary attacks. He never actually had occasion to extinguish an incendiary; Conservatory official Aron Ostrovsky confessed to him toward the end of the war that they had deliberately devised excuses to get him off the roof, especially when danger was imminent, exploiting the pressing need for musical arrangements for frontline performance.But posed photographs of the helmeted composer steadfastly standing guard on the roof of the Conservatory, shot on 29 July and disseminated around the globe, served as potent symbols of Leningraders’ heroic resistance.
The Thaw (1953-1958)
Authors: Fay Laurel E
Published: November 2023

In April 1953, Shostakovich traveled to a sanatorium in Kislovodsk in the foothills of the Caucasus for a month of rest and recuperation. His health had never been robust since childhood, and his letters chronicle a steady stream of afflictions and hospitalizations. On one occasion, after the whole family had been stricken with various illnesses, Shostakovich quipped that God must have allocated the good health and beauty to his in-laws. In early June 1953, Shostakovich was a member of a cultural delegation sent to Vienna and Graz. He attended a concert of music by Berg, Honegger, and Stravinsky and confided in a colleague that the Austrian composer who had exerted the most influence on him from his earliest years was Gustav Mahler. He surprised his travel companions with his impulsive insistence on riding a daredevil roller-coaster at the Prater. He returned exhilarated: “I love the madcap, it gave me great pleasure. You’ve undoubtedly forgotten that I am the author of the opera The Nose!” The composer rated the “hell-train,” on which he also took a spin, “cheap and primitive.”