bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What Theology Should and Should Not Learn from the Social Sciences About the Common Good
Authors: Hirschfeld Mary L.
Published: November 2017

There are two ways to answer the question, What can Catholic social thought learn from the social sciences about the common good? A more modern form of Catholic social thought, which primarily thinks of the common good in terms of the equitable distribution of goods like health, education, and opportunity, could benefit from the extensive literature in public policy, economics, and political science, which study the role of institutions and policies in generating desirable social outcomes. A second approach, rooted in pre-Machiavellian Catholic thought, would expand on this modern notion to include concerns about the way the culture shapes our understanding of what genuine human flourishing entails. On that account, the social sciences offer a valuable description of human life; but because they underestimate how human behavior is shaped by institutions, policies, and the discourse of social science itself, their insights need to be treated with caution.
What Are Rare Earths?
Authors: Kalantzakos Sophia
Published: November 2017

Rare earths are seventeen elements essential for hundreds of applications in renewables, high-tech, and defense. They include the family of lanthanide elements, as well as yttrium and scandium, and are divided into two main categories: light and heavy. They are called “rare” because of the low concentrations in which they are found and because it is difficult to mine and process them. This chapter catalogues a range of their most important uses for different industries and provides an overview of processing techniques and the serious environmental risks that accompany them. Finally, it examines the possibilities and limitations of recycling and substitution.
How China Came to Dominate the Rare Earth Industry
Authors: Kalantzakos Sophia
Published: November 2017

Once a leader in the production and trading of rare earths, the United States relinquished the reins to China in the 1990s. The People’s Republic of China declared rare earths “protected and strategic materials” and proceeded to control production and processing, introduced export quotas, and sought to dominate the supply chain for crucial applications. It also made investments in mines worldwide. The 2010 crisis caused a parabolic rise in prices, leading the United States, the European Union, and Japan to file a complaint against China at the World Trade Organization, in 2012, and to launch trilateral cooperation workshops, starting in 2011, to promote recycling, substitution, and innovation. China lost its WTO appeal and removed the export quotas in May 2015. The market corrected itself, and it may seem today that China lost an initial battle; but closer examination indicates that it may not have lost the war.
Introduction
Authors: Franko William W. , Witko Christopher
Published: November 2017

Chapter 1 is the introductory chapter. In this chapter the authors briefly lay out the scope of income inequality in the United States, in comparison to past periods of US history and to other wealthy democracies. They also describe the growing salience of inequality in American politics, and explain how policy decisions made by the federal government have been critical to the growth of inequality, and how the federal government has failed to take action to reduce inequality. They conclude by explaining that, in keeping with American history, the states are beginning to tackle this growing economic problem and present a brief overview of each of the chapters.
Taxing the Rich
Authors: Franko William W. , Witko Christopher
Published: November 2017

In this chapter the authors further explore how public attitudes about inequality shape support for redistributive tax policies by taking advantage of Washington State’s highly redistributive initiative Proposition 1098. This proposal, dubbed the millionaire’s tax, allowed citizens to vote directly to increase taxes on the wealthy, in the context of a policy debate that very much focused on the growth of income inequality. This episode provides us a rare opportunity to understand how inequality shapes individual voter attitudes toward redistribution and increasing taxes on the wealthy in the context of specific policy debates in which discussion of inequality features prominently, which has been very rare in recent decades. While most states are unlikely adopt highly progressive tax policy in the near future, the authors show that recent trends in initiative states to push for higher taxes on the rich can provide insight into the future of state tax policy.
Building on Success
Authors: Franko William W. , Witko Christopher
Published: November 2017

In chapter 7 the authors examine how state adoptions of the earned income tax credit (EITC), an alternative means of boosting the incomes of the working poor by adjusting their incomes with the tax code, were influenced by the growing awareness of inequality and other state-specific factors. Unlike the minimum wage, the EITC was originally enacted by the federal government in the 1970s and has historically been accepted by conservatives. As Republicans have more recently begun to question this policy at the federal level, we see that it has been expanded substantially at the state level. The analysis shows that this has been the case in states that are most aware of inequality and those where labor unions are strong, and also that, unlike minimum wage increases, both liberal and conservative governments adopted EITC laws at similar rates.
Introduction
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas
Published: November 2017

This chapter introduces the two main aims of the book. The first is to establish a class of inner virtues and vices—states relevant to moral character that are independent of overt, voluntary action. These states include pleasure, emotion, and attention. The second is to offer a substantive, unifying explanation of how these various inner states are virtuous or vicious; that is, to explain what these diverse states all have in common that connects them to our moral character. These states are morally virtuous or vicious, I’ll argue, by manifesting moral cares or concerns.
Pleasure
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas
Published: November 2017

In this chapter I defend an account of how pleasure can be a virtuous or vicious state independently of any connection to overt actions. After a brief overview of what pleasure is, I argue that pleasure is relevant to moral character when it manifests moral concern. I then discuss the relationship between pleasure and concern in more detail and, in doing so, highlight some of the psychological complexities that arise. Finally, I use the account to solve some puzzles about virtuous and vicious pleasure by focusing on schadenfreude, pleasure in the suffering of others, and mudita, pleasure in the success and good fortune of others.
Emotion
Authors: Bommarito Nicolas
Published: November 2017

After a brief discussion of the nature of emotion, I argue that emotions can be morally virtuous or vicious independently of their associated overt behaviors. They are relevant to moral character by manifesting our underlying moral cares and concerns. I then defend two important features of the account: First, though emotions play an important part of being a virtuous person, particular emotions are not necessary for being morally virtuous. In particular, I discuss the moral relevance of emotional defects associated with autism and psychopathy. Second, I argue that emotions can be morally virtuous even when they are irrational. This best explains cases where irrational emotions still reflect well on one’s moral character. These features allow for cultural and individual variation between morally virtuous people.
Fables of Detachment
Authors: Foltz Jonathan
Published: November 2017

This chapter outlines the way that film shaped key modernist debates about aesthetic form and the elevation of literature as a form of art. It draws on a range of contemporaneous theories of aesthetic form—from those of Roger Fry and Clive Bell to those of Vernon Lee, José Ortega y Gasset, I. A. Richards, and William Empson—and suggests that critics have failed adequately to credit the historical anxiety about media and mediation implicit in modernist constructions of autonomy. The desire to distinguish the purity of artistic form from ordinary modes of lived perception frequently led theorists to ponder, and puzzle at, the remarkable impurity of cinema. Indeed, film in the modernist period was commonly understood as a figure of aesthetic paradox: lacking the purposive form and stylistic nuance of true art, yet also exemplifying the detachment from life that art was held to achieve.
Out of Character
Authors: Foltz Jonathan
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the evolving status of character in modernism in light of film’s evacuation of psychological depth. It approaches this topic through the work of Virginia Woolf—modernism’s most vocal exponent of interiority. Placing Woolf’s many comments on film alongside her increasingly wayward theories of fiction, the chapter recovers the role of film in delineating a future for the novel beyond modernism, a future in which, as she puts it, “that cannibal, the novel, which has devoured so many forms of art will by then have devoured even more.” Film, with its evocation of emotions not clearly bound to characters, was a medium well poised to provoke Woolf’s fascination with forms of life that in her view, had so far “escaped the novelist.” The Waves—her most formless and generically unstable work—is the most sustained elaboration of her theory of character as a form of media.
Taste that the Lord is Good!
Authors: Myers Alicia D.
Published: November 2017

Building on the review of generative and parturitive theories from Chapter 3, this chapter explores the physiological constructions of breastmilk in the ancient Mediterranean context. Breastmilk is portrayed as the same substance communicated to a fetus in the womb now provided by a mother’s breast. For this reason, breastmilk was understood as character forming, and an important part of the educational process of children. Using this background, this chapter analyzes the breastmilk and nursing imagery found in the Gospel of John, Pauline letters (Gal; 1 Thess; 1 Cor), Hebrews, and 1 Peter. The unconventional and male mothers that surface in the metaphors used in these New Testament writings birth and provide superior milk in the place of literal, female mothers. At the same time, however, their metaphors rely on the constructions and work of actual, biological mothers whom they claim to replace.
Salvation and Childbearing
Authors: Myers Alicia D.
Published: November 2017

Augustus’s prioritization of family life to promote his own masculinity resulted in a simultaneous emphasis on motherhood in the Roman world. Not only did motherhood advertise a man’s masculine purposing of his woman/wife, but it was also a legitimate path to increased agency for free(d) women. Situated in this context, New Testament and other early Christian traditions offer varying constructions of “feminine virtue,” some of which prioritize or assume motherhood and others of which downplay or even reject it. This chapter examines these themes in the Pastoral Epistles, New Testament household codes (Col 3:18–4:3; Eph 5:21–6:9; 1 Pet 2:9–3:12), the Acts of Thecla, Acts of Andrew, and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas. In their sustained wrestling with and formations of Christian gender(s), these writings present salvation as masculinization for all followers of Christ, but they disagree on whether motherhood should be a part of this process.
Letter versus Spirit
Authors: Camper Martin
Published: November 2017

Chapter 4 turns its attention to the stasis of letter versus spirit. Traditionally, this stasis has been understood as pitting the exact words of a text against the author’s intent, but the chapter expands the notion of spirit to include other animating forces of textual meaning, such as an overarching principle of interpretation brought by readers to the text. The chapter shows how both the letter and spirit of a text can be divided, with arguers disputing the text’s real versus apparent letter or the author’s real versus apparent intent. To demonstrate how arguers construe authorial intention for their own ends, the chapter analyzes the controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign over the “God damn America” sound bite extracted from a sermon preached by Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s then-pastor. Critics dismissed Wright’s defense of his intentions, pointing to the sermon’s exact wording as evidence of his, and by extension Obama’s, anti-Americanism.
Conflicting Passages
Authors: Camper Martin
Published: November 2017

Chapter 5 examines how arguers resolve apparently conflicting passages through argument. First, the problem that textual inconsistency poses for interpreters is considered, followed by a discussion of the three types of disputes that rhetors can have over an apparent inconsistency. Ancient rhetoricians viewed controversies in this stasis as consisting of a double letter versus spirit dispute, and the lines of argument detailed in the previous chapter are available in this stasis. But, as this chapter illustrates, there remain other special lines of reasoning that rhetors can use to resolve evidently conflicting passages. Several of these strategies have been used to reconcile apparently conflicting biblical passages concerning women’s preaching, as exemplified by the chapter’s main example: an epistolary debate over the issue reproduced in Frances Willard’s 1889 Woman in the Pulpit. Disputes in this stasis reveal the logical connections between passages and how these connections can be rhetorically constructed.
Jurisdiction
Authors: Camper Martin
Published: November 2017

Chapter 7 investigates the multiple ways arguers can question the legitimacy of an interpretation, thereby entering the stasis of jurisdiction. There are two main points of contention in this stasis: whether the person issuing the interpretation has the right to do so, and whether the interpreted text has any authority on the issue at hand. Other concerns involve the place, time, style, and delivery of an interpretation, as well as the hermeneutic method behind an interpretation. This chapter’s extended analysis examines the lines of argument fifteenth-century Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla employed to discredit the forged Donation of Constantine, an imperial decree allegedly written by Constantine the Great that ceded power over the Western Roman Empire to the pope. Studying the types of arguments people use in the stasis of jurisdiction reveals the specific ways that communities manage, control, and coordinate acts of textual interpretation in alignment with their values.
Mississippi
Authors: Jones David K.
Published: November 2017

Mississippi is the only state in the country to have a proposal for an exchange rejected by the federal government. This was a fascinating outcome considering how badly the Obama administration wanted Republican-led states to run their own exchanges. The debate in Mississippi was unique because an independently elected Republican insurance commissioner believed he could establish an exchange without his governor’s support. It seemed he would be able to—until the Tea Party joined the fight, with the support of national and state-level conservative think tanks. They made their presence felt at obscure meetings in highly technical parts of the process. Fellow-Republican Governor Phil Bryant then put his foot down and said no exchange would be created in Mississippi without his support. The Obama administration may have been tempted to approve the exchange anyway, but decided to stay out of the intrastate fight.
Michigan
Authors: Jones David K.
Published: November 2017

Michigan very nearly was the first Republican-led state to create its own health insurance exchange. By November 2012, legislation to create an exchange had passed the Michigan Senate and was supported by Governor Snyder and the Speaker of the House. A broad coalition of interest groups lobbied in favor of a state-based exchange, including insurers, businesses, providers, hospitals, and consumer advocates. They were opposed by passionate Tea Party leaders using “targeted activism” to make their presence felt. As in Mississippi, they were supported by national and state conservative think tank organizations. Opponents at the last minute attached an abortion amendment to the key bill and the House Health Policy Committee voted down authorizing legislation in November 2012, killing the possibility of a Michigan-run exchange. Governor Snyder tried to establish a partnership exchange but was blocked by the legislature refusing to appropriate money the state had been promised in federal grants.
New Mexico
Authors: Jones David K.
Published: November 2017

The fight over an exchange had a very different dynamic in New Mexico because there were no loud voices on the right calling for the state to reject control. Republican Governor Susanna Martinez supported retaining control, but strongly preferred a governance model that allowed insurers to serve on the board of directors and limited the degree of oversight by the board on the types of plans that could be sold on the exchange. Governor Martinez vetoed legislation in 2011 that would have set up a different model of an exchange. Institutional quirks meant the legislature did not have the opportunity to weigh in again for two years, until 2013. By this point it was too late and the state had to rely on the federal website despite passing legislation to run its own exchange.
Historical Roots of Dissemination and Implementation Science
Authors: Dearing James W. , Kee Kerk F. , Peng Tai-Quan
Published: November 2017

This chapter describes the evolution of diffusion of innovations theory, and how concepts from that paradigm as well as knowledge utilization and technology transfer research have contributed to the evidence-based medicine and evidence-based public health emphases in dissemination and implementation. It covers methods of studying how new innovations are adopted. The authors suggest that dissemination and implementation researchers and practitioners will continue to find relevance and applicability in these former research traditions as they seek ways to study and apply new information and communication technologies to the challenges of dissemination activity by innovation proponents, diffusion responses by adopters, and then subsequent implementation and sustained use.
Ethical Issues in Dissemination and Implementation Research
Authors: DuBois James M. , Prusaczyk Beth
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses primarily on the protection of human participants in D&I studies. It begins by reviewing the Belmont principles that undergird US research regulations and considering the ethical case for D&I research. It then proceeds to examine some ethical issues that might arise during the course of a public health, D&I research agenda in middle schools. It covers the ethical case for D&I research and common ethical challenges. The chapter also discusses strategies for ethical decision-making. While these strategies may be beneficial to all researchers, the authors believe they are of particular value to dissemination and implementation researchers because the nature of their work—context specific, complex, and unfamiliar to many peers, collaborators, and reviewers—means they will deal with uncertainty and conflict on a regular basis, and solutions to the problems they face will rarely be found through simple reference principles, rules, or regulations.
Design and Analysis in Dissemination and Implementation Research
Authors: Landsverk John , Brown C. Hendricks , Smith Justin D. , Chamberlain Patricia , Curran Geoffrey M. , Palinkas Lawrence , Ogihara Mitsunori , Czaja Sara , Goldhaber-Fiebert Jeremy D. , Vermeer Wouter , Saldana Lisa , Rolls Reutz Jennifer A. , McCue Horwitz Sarah
Published: November 2017

A wide variety of dissemination and implementation designs are now being used to evaluate and improve health systems and outcomes. This chapter discusses randomized and nonrandomized designs for the traditional translational research continuum or pipeline, which builds on existing efficacy and effectiveness trials to examine how one or more evidence-based clinical/prevention interventions are adopted, scaled up, and sustained in community or service delivery systems. The chapter also considers other designs, including hybrid designs that combine effectiveness and implementation research, and designs that use simulation modeling. A case example of a recent large-scale implementation study is presented as an example of measurement and design considerations in dissemination and implementation research. The chapter provides suggested readings and websites useful for design decisions.
Dissemination and Implementation in Social Service Settings
Authors: McMillen J. Curtis , Adams Danielle R.
Published: November 2017

Social service settings offer numerous complexities in their staffing, consumers, and payer mix that require careful consideration in designing dissemination and implementation efforts. However, social services’ unique access to vulnerable populations with health problems may prove vital in efforts to improve the health status of many of our citizens and reduce health disparities. While a number of well-developed, blended dissemination and implementation models are being used in social service settings, they all require additional documentation, research, and field experience. Nonetheless, the lessons learned in the social services may help organizations in other sectors better implement health interventions with complex consumers in complex settings.
Dissemination and Implementation Research in Worksites
Authors: Hannon Peggy A. , Harris Jeffrey R.
Published: November 2017

The workplace provides an opportunity to reach more than 60% of adults in the United States with evidence-based health promotion. There is substantial research on the effectiveness of specific workplace health promotion programs, but comparatively little research on disseminating and implementing effective programs. Most of the for-profit vendors are focused on working with large employers and with good reason—they can reach large numbers of people more efficiently. Unfortunately, this focus on large employers leaves almost half of the workforce out, and that half is disproportionately at risk for health disparities. There are unique opportunities in workplace health promotion dissemination and implementation research for partnerships between academic researchers, employers, and both for-profit and not-for-profit vendors to identify (and create) effective workplace health promotion programs, tailor them to meet the needs and capacities of employers, and evaluate impact and use the results to improve the programs and increase their reach.
Policy Dissemination Research
Authors: Purtle Jonathan , Dodson Elizabeth A. , Brownson Ross C.
Published: November 2017

Policy dissemination research is focused on understanding and addressing these barriers and can be defined as: the study of the targeted distribution of scientific evidence to policymakers to understand how to promote the adoption and sustainment of evidence-based policies. Policy dissemination research studies can be classified as audience research studies—which are formative assessments of policymakers’ knowledge, attitudes, and uses of research evidence and policy contexts—and intervention studies, which test the effectiveness of different policymaker-focused dissemination strategies. Outcomes of policy dissemination research studies include self-report policymaker research utilization, self-report policymaker support for evidence-based policies, and observed policymaker research utilization. There is also a need to grow the field of policy implementation research and integrate theories, frameworks, and methods across the fields of public administration research, political science, and implementation science. Among the topics covered in this book, policy dissemination research is among the least developed.
Dissemination and Implementation Research among Racial/Ethnic Minority and Other Vulnerable Populations
Authors: Yancey Antronette (Toni) , Glenn Beth A. , Ford Chandra L. , Bell-Lewis LaShawnta
Published: November 2017

The evidence base on dissemination and implementation of interventions for racial/ethnic minority communities is expanding rapidly. Although the strength of the evidence varies depending on the health outcome, some general trends are apparent. Key lessons include that cultural appropriateness enhances community “buy-in” of interventions. Interventions that reflect a community’s cultural values and that are implemented in ubiquitous settings are also associated with success. Efforts that account for place characteristics (e.g., neighborhood geography, intervention setting) can also improve the uptake of interventions. In conclusion, the importance of inclusivity and equity in public health efforts to prevent and control disease is paramount. The best way to achieve social justice and improve the health of the entire population is to ensure that the strategies most effective in preventing disease are disseminated within the populations at greatest risk.
The Self-Undermining State
Authors: Chowdhury Arjun
Published: November 2017

This chapter provides an informal rationalist model of state formation as an exchange between a central authority and a population. In the model, the central authority protects the population against external threats and the population disarms and pays taxes. The model specifies the conditions under which the exchange is self-enforcing, meaning that the parties prefer the exchange to alternative courses of action. These conditions—costly but winnable interstate war—are historically rare, and the cost of such wars can rise beyond the population’s willingness to sacrifice. At this point, the population prefers to avoid war rather than fight it and may prefer an alternative institution to the state if that institution can prevent war and reduce the level of extraction. Thus the modern centralized state is self-undermining rather than self-enforcing. A final section addresses alternative explanations for state formation.
The Politics of Return
Authors: Luis Roniger
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the politics of return and shows that the impact of exile was acknowledged more promptly by ample social and political sectors in Chile and Uruguay, which facilitated initiatives on the part of nongovernmental organizations and state agencies toward the reinsertion of displaced conationals, with more solid foundations than in Argentina or Paraguay. It also traces the legal attempts to undo banishment and the efforts carried out by transnational networks and international agencies to facilitate the return from exile. The chapter also assesses the politics of return and return policies in their design and results, identifying the differential capacity of exile communities to galvanize the diasporas and advocacy networks, and define a shared agenda despite internal differences and strategies..
Surviving Authoritarianism, Contributing to the Agenda of Democratization
Authors: Luis Roniger
Published: November 2017

Upon democratization, the public spheres of the Southern Cone countries were diversified, with former exiles, expatriates, and migrants deciding whether to return home or stay abroad, or perhaps to join the ranks of sojourners and move back and forth between countries of origin and of residence. Returnees, migrants, and sojourners played important roles in all four countries, albeit in different arenas and with varied short-term and long-term impacts. This chapter addresses the persisting pockets of creativity maintained in Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina during the authoritarian period and the various forms of reinsertion of former exiles and expatriates. It pays attention to the role that returnees among others played in each of the four countries in reconstructing democracy, in shedding some myths, and in reshaping public institutions.
Different Shades of Seventeenth-Century Probabilism
Authors: Tutino Stefania
Published: November 2017

This chapter provides a thematic analysis of some of the most significant applications of probabilism to a number of epistemological, intellectual, political, and theological questions. It focuses on four early seventeenth-century authors, each using probabilism to advance a specific intellectual agenda: Tomás Sánchez and his effort to articulate probability as a trait d’union between conscience and law in the context of his elaboration on the doctrine on marriage; Leonardus Lessius and his attempt to use probabilism to update Catholic doctrine and especially Catholic economic thought; Juan Azor and his endeavor to structure probabilism within a stable and coherent system of knowledge; and Emmanuel Sa and his vulgarization of probabilism for the sake of confessors and other readers who did not necessarily have a deep background in, and extensive knowledge of, moral theology.
The Roman Reaction
Authors: Tutino Stefania
Published: November 2017

During the central decades of the seventeenth century, Caramuel’s understanding of probabilism was the object of both acute interest and widespread, and at times violent, criticism. As a result, the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Book and the Holy Office decided to examine and eventually censure two of Caramuel’s most influential works. Through an analysis of the lengthy process leading to the censure and correction of these books, this chapter examines the theological, intellectual, moral, and political issues at stake in the debate over Caramuel’s doctrine and explores the complex and ambivalent way in which the institutional and theological center of the Catholic Church responded to probabilism.
Reason of State(s) and Reasons of Church
Authors: Tutino Stefania
Published: November 2017

This chapter uses the case of the French Jesuit natural philosopher and moral theologian Honoré Fabri as a lens through which we can analyze the polemical, political, ecclesiological, and theological battles between Jesuits and Jansenists that exploded in the second half of the seventeenth century, especially after the publication of Pascal’s Provincial Letters. This chapter shows that the debates on moral theology must be seen within a wider intellectual context, including the recent developments in the realm of natural philosophy, and were inextricably linked to the political history of early modern Europe, and especially to the political rivalry between France and Spain.
Buying with You, Selling with You, Praying with You
Authors: Tutino Stefania
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents a second case study showing another concrete example of the issues to which probabilism was applied. Like the previous chapter, this chapter puts the theoretical and theological discussions on probabilism into the concrete social, economic, and cultural reality of the post-Reformation Catholic Church. This chapter explores the relationship between Catholic theology and money lending by examining the key role that probabilism played in helping theologians to maintain the traditional Catholic ban on usury while at the same time engaging with the burgeoning money-market economy and with other religious traditions with different doctrinal and social views on money, such as Judaism.
All That Live Must Die, Passing Through Nature to Eternity
Authors: Tutino Stefania
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents the third and final case study showing how relevant probabilism was in the development of modern Western culture. In early modern Europe, the emergence of new medical and philosophical theories on the nature and development of fetuses challenged the traditional doctrine, which was based on the Aristotelian notion of animation. In this situation, theologians, natural philosophers, and medical doctors were confronted with new and unprecedented doubts and dilemmas, which touched on the crucial medical, biological, philosophical, theological, and moral problem of how to establish what it means for humans to be alive. This chapter explains the role of probabilism in addressing one of these dilemmas, namely whether miscarried fetuses were in fact endowed with a soul, and consequently whether they should be baptized.
Conclusion
Authors: Tutino Stefania
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores the reasons why the doctrine of probabilism is no longer prominent in our intellectual and scholarly horizon. These reasons include the advent of Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori’s equiprobabilism; the progressive loss of political, social, and cultural capital of the nineteenth-century Roman Curia; and the triumph of Cartesian epistemology in the modern secularized world. This chapter also argues for the necessity to recover the centrality of probabilism, both because probabilism and moral theology were a crucial component of the cultural, political, and religious history of early modern Europe, and because learning how early modern probabilists grappled with uncertainty can be distinctively useful for us today. Even though we are the most informed generation on Earth, we seem to be losing the ability to distinguish facts and truths from opinions. Thus, appreciating the historical significance of probabilism can help us to navigate our current epistemological and moral uncertainties.
Introduction
Authors: Zamir Tzachi
Published: November 2017

The introduction sets out the book’s main themes: a philosophical reading of Paradise Lost, in which the relationships between philosophy and literature, literature and religion, and religion and philosophy are examined. The book's guiding metaphor—an ascent—is explained. The introduction explains why previous routes by which philosophy and literature have been successfully connected before are less suitable for religious poetry. The book does not follow the “compensatory” model, in which literature overcomes limitations that hamper philosophy. Instead, the reading hopes to expose episodes of misalliance between philosophy and literature. Implications for interdisciplinarity are briefly discussed. The tensions between religion and literature in relation to beauty, knowledge, and the imagination are presented. Finally, some methodological clarifications are made.
At the Base Camp
Authors: Zamir Tzachi
Published: November 2017

This portion of the book presents two paradigms by which knowledge, the imagination, and literature can be connected. The first (more familiar one) holds that while imagining, one accesses knowledge that is then added to what is known without imagining. The second proposes that some knowledge can be possessed only while imagining. (Some) religious poetry aims to aid the believer in entering and sustaining imagining of the second kind. For faith, the ability to go on dwelling in an imaginary mindscape is not connected just to knowledge, but is a condition for meaningful living. Connections between the book’s argument and overlapping proposals regarding the religious imagination are pointed out.
Fifth Climb
Authors: Zamir Tzachi
Published: November 2017

The remaining two forms of gratitude, the Son’s and the poet’s, are presented. Both turn gratitude into an act, rather than a felt experience. The Son overturns the standard economic logic, by taking upon himself debts that are not his. The poet inserts himself into the poem not as a speaker, but as a flesh and blood man, speaking about his own blindness. The blindness echoes the fallen reader’s limitations: if Milton is placed within a world he cannot see, the reader sees a world without seeing it as given. Poetic descriptions of natural beauty in Paradise Lost become exemplifications of the fallen state. As a form of gratitude, the poet stands for being grateful for that which can no longer gratify. Both Son and poet attempt to turn themselves into a gift, by pushing human beings back to God.
Introductory Remarks
Authors: DeFelipe Javier
Published: November 2017

Almost everything that humankind creates has a touch of art, despite the fact that we do not need beauty or an aesthetic perception to survive. Rather, we simply derive intellectual pleasure, which is also true of other mental activities, such as reading a book or listening to music. For centuries, many philosophers and scientists have tried to define, explain, and locate various aspects of human cognition, including artistic talent. As we will see in ...
Spinal Cord
Authors: DeFelipe Javier
Published: November 2017

This section contains a gallery of original Cajal drawings pertaining to the spinal cord.
Degeneration and Regeneration of the Nervous System
Authors: DeFelipe Javier
Published: November 2017

This section contains a gallery of original Cajal drawings pertaining to the degeneration and regeneration of the nervous system.
Women Who Fly
Authors: Young Serinity
Published: November 2017

The desire to transcend the mundane and the terrestrial, and to reach new heights of spiritual experience, has been expressed through myths, folk tales, and the arts throughout the world and across centuries. Flight from both the captivity of earth’s gravity and the mental constraints of time-bound desire are the backbone of myth-making. Women and goddesses have figured prominently in such myths, both as independent actors and as guides for men. Women Who Fly is a history of religious and social ideas about such aerial females as expressed in legends, myths, rituals, sacred narratives, and artistic productions. It is also about the varied symbolic uses of women in mythology, religion, and society that have shaped, and continue to shape, our social and psychological reality. The motif of the flying female is an intriguing and unstudied area of the history of both religion and iconography. It is a broad topic. Rather than place restrictions on this theme (or its imagery), or force it into the confines of any one discipline or cultural perspective, the goal here instead is to celebrate its thematic and cultural diversity, while highlighting commonalities and delineating the religious and social contexts in which it developed. Aerial women are surprisingly central to any full and accurate understanding of the similarities between various religious imaginations, through which these flying females have carved trajectories over time.
The Fall of the Valkyries
Authors: Young Serinity
Published: November 2017

An examination of the ancient sources for the Valkyrie Brunhilde, such as the Volsung Saga (a thirteenth-century Norse saga), in which she is wise and strong, and the medieval European Nibelungenleid, in which she is helpless, jealous, complaining, and scheming, reveals a marked decline in the status of flying females—indeed, their humiliation through forced marriage. These shifting presentations of her character are reflective of changing understandings of gender, marriage, and family unity: to whom is a woman’s loyalty due, her husband or her natal family? In Norse mythology, Valkyries carry fallen warriors to Valhalla, or the Norse heavens, continuing aerial women’s connections to war, death, and immortality begun in earlier chapters. This is the history brought forward by Richard Wagner in his opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Swan Maidens: Captivity and Sexuality
Authors: Young Serinity
Published: November 2017

The ancient Indian tale of Urvaśī, the earliest swan tale known to exist, underscores and highlights themes of female captivity, human shape-shifting in and out of animal forms, matrilocal versus patrilocal marriage, sexuality, fertility and the ability to grant immortality. This ancient folk-tale motif of the swan is known around the world in various forms. Its themes are repeated in two Middle Eastern tales, and continue in later, somewhat different versions of East Asian tales that reconciled the swan form into heavenly women who wear feather robes and perform magical dances. In northern Europe, the swan was reimagined in Tchaikovsky’s misleading Swan Lake.
Angels and Fairies: Male Flight and Contrary Females
Authors: Young Serinity
Published: November 2017

Angels present an opportunity to explore the theme of male flight, in that all angels were originally male, and sometimes said to be androgynous, which is much the same thing. Once female angels became popular, the belief in angels was trivialized and domesticated. Fairies are mostly women, sometimes winged, who can be captured and who then bring their captors great wealth and happiness. Usually in these tales, the men who captured them fail to observe a taboo laid out by the fairy, thus allowing her to escape. All fairies are time- benders, so often in these tales, the men awake to discover that centuries have gone by in a few days. This is the case in both Western and Asian tales. In the West, fairies frequently appear in Arthurian legends, especially in the figure of the troublesome Morgan le Fay, half-sister to King Arthur.
Top Notes
Authors: Maxwell Catherine
Published: November 2017

After a brief discussion of Eugene Rimmel and Septimus Piesse, two major manufacturers and promoters of Victorian perfume, this chapter provides an overview of fragrance use for the Victorians, and explores attitudes towards perfume in early and mid-Victorian fiction with special reference to the figure of the scented dandy. The second part of this chapter shows how Victorian poetry reflects the influential perfumed legacy of Romanticism and, in particular, Shelley, a key precursor for many aesthetic and decadent writers, with an illustrative reading of Edmund Gosse’s ‘Perfume’, a sonnet saturated with echoes from both Shelley and Keats. After a brief discussion of the ‘hothouse’ atmosphere of aestheticism, decadence, and the fin de siècle, the chapter concludes with reference to the aggressive reaction of male modernists, and in particular, T. S. Eliot, to a Romantic and Victorian culture seen as decadent, feminine, and perfumed.
Resolution of Balance-of-Payments Crises
Authors: Ocampo José Antonio
Published: November 2017

This chapter analyses the history and effectiveness of the two major mechanisms of resolution of balance-of-payments crises: IMF emergency financing and complementary mechanisms, and sovereign debt workouts. It argues that IMF lending has historically met its counter-cyclical objectives and has been improving in recent decades in terms of providing adequate lending facilities as well as focusing conditionality on macro-relevant areas. Swap arrangements among central banks constitute the most important complementary mechanism, but benefit mainly developed countries. In contrast to advances in IMF financing, the need to have a better framework for debt resolution remains one of the major gaps of the international financial architecture. In this regard, this chapter proposes a multilateral mechanism that would lie between the voluntary and statutory solutions that have been proposed in the global debate. This mechanism would offer a sequence of voluntary negotiations, mediation, and eventual arbitration that would take place with pre-established deadlines.
Heads of International Organizations
Authors: Yi-chong Xu , Weller Patrick
Published: November 2017

This chapter first considers the means, from election to selection to nomination, by which IO leaders are (s)elected and the consequences of those methods. It is followed by a discussion on the qualities regarded as necessary for successful tenure, stressing the need for trust, expertise, and legitimacy. It then analyses the three roles that the leaders of IOs, to a greater or lesser extent, must play. They are diplomats dealing with state leaders and talking in international forums. They are politicians negotiating with the state representatives on a daily basis. They are managers heading an often large secretariat. How they balance these roles often determines their capacity to shape the outcomes of their organization.
Agenda Setting
Authors: Yi-chong Xu , Weller Patrick
Published: November 2017

Agenda setting and agenda management are key elements for the effective operation of IOs. They are at the centre of political manœuvring among member states and between states and IOs, and are a competitive process within which players strive to get their issues on the agenda. This chapter first examines how the mandates are interpreted and reinterpreted. It then explores the potential role played by the key players in agenda setting, be they IO leaders, international civil servants, member states, or non-state players. It finally examines how competing multilateral institutions changed the politics of agenda setting in IOs. The conclusion stresses how pluralistic agenda setting has become. It is not the sole prerogative of powerful member states but is open to a much larger range of influences.
Funding International Organizations
Authors: Yi-chong Xu , Weller Patrick
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the internal competition and coordination in mobilising resources from regular and extra-budgetary sources at the six IOs. As the traditional assessed contribution from member states to IOs has been by and large fixed and the share of other sources has been expanding, the challenge for IOs is how to manage (a) the contribution from different parts of member states (assessed vs. voluntary contribution), (b) that of member states and non-state contributors, and (c) the participation of non-state bodies in IO activities which pose serious challenges for the head of IOs, the secretariat and member states. It particularly explains the two different types of budget process within IOs: managing the budget and deficit-driven budgeting, and shows why and how they are done.
Location
Authors: Yi-chong Xu , Weller Patrick
Published: November 2017

This chapter identifies the two groups of IOs among those we study—those that are centralized and those that are dispersed. It then explores the dilemmas raised by issues of location and centralization: the interplay required to balance geographical representation and subject specialization; the need to identify priorities between normative standard setting and service delivery to member states; the levels of discretion and lines of accountability, and the requirement to manage the careers of staff. It argues that distance and location challenge easy assumptions about control and agency in IOs. They are factors in creating the incoherence that is part of any international organization. The existence of regional and country offices provides a series of perspectives that divide both member states and staff. They fundamentally affect the traditional notions of control by member states interacting with one another and with the heads of IOs and staff at the IOs’ HQs.
Portuguese Relative Clauses in Synchrony and Diachrony
Authors: Cardoso Adriana
Published: November 2017

This book sheds light on language variation and change from a generative syntactic perspective, based on a case study of relative clauses in Portuguese and other languages. Concretely, it offers a comparative account of three linguistic phenomena documented in the synchrony and diachrony of Portuguese: remnant-internal relativization, extraposition of restrictive relatives, and appositive relativization. The research methodology adopted involves comparative syntax, both in the diachronic and the synchronic dimensions: Contemporary European Portuguese is systematically compared with earlier stages of Portuguese; moreover, Portuguese is compared with other languages, in particular Latin, English, Dutch, and Italian. The book provides new perspectives on the syntax of relativization. From a theoretical perspective, it shows that competing analyses need not be either false or true universally, but can be instrumental in explaining language variation (both diachronically and synchronically). As for the variation found in the synchronic and diachronic dimensions, it is proposed that languages (and different stages of the same language) might vary according to whether they allow relativization to be derived from specifying coordination. Moreover, the book reports a series of changes that took place in the history of Portuguese after the sixteenth century, which reduced the patterns of nominal discontinuity available in the language.