Ambitious Thesis Research Articles

WRITING IN PHILOSOPHY: REPLY TO FREDERICK

Frederick (2021, see the preceding article) offers a critique of my writing tips aimed at undergraduate students coming to philosophy – and in many cases, essay writing – for the first time (Earp, 2021, in this volume) Frederick claims that most of my tips are good tips but characterizes two of them as bad tips, as follows: Bad tip 1. Be very careful about making any universal claims (involving words such as ‘every’, ‘never’, ‘always’). Such a claim can be refuted by just a single counterexample. Do not leave yourself open to such refutation. Make a universal claim only if you are sure that there are no counterexamples.Bad tip 2. Pick a smaller, more narrow thesis and argue for it thoroughly rather than a more ambitious thesis for which you argue less thoroughly.

A short argument from modal rationalism to fundamental scrutability

I argue that those who accept modal rationalism, the idea that all of modal space is accessible to a priori reflection, must also accept a seemingly much more ambitious thesis: fundamental scrutability, which says that from a description of the world's fundamental layer, one can reason a priori to all truths.

Review: Modernism's Visible Hand: Architecture and Regulation in America, by Michael Osman

Michael Osman Modernism's Visible Hand: Architecture and Regulation in America Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018, 280 pp., 70 b/w illus. $30 (paper), ISBN 9781517900984 “This is not a history of enthusiastic people doing interesting things,” Michael Osman archly warns readers of Modernism's Visible Hand (ix). He argues that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a new imperative to regulate exerted profound influence on the built environment of the United States, from middle-class households to large industrial plants. Technologies for keeping ambient room temperature constant were connected in surprising ways with efforts to manage factory labor, to mitigate economic fluctuations, and to study the natural world. These developments collectively shaped the American built environment far more, Osman asserts, than the creative efforts of canonical architects. His book is part of a broader reexamination of the history of environmental control, building on but also pushing beyond Reyner Banham's now-classic polemical elevation of technical systems as the repressed protagonists of modernism. In more recent accounts, technology is shown to be interwoven with social, political, and aesthetic issues.1 Hence, Osman's title is a reference to the work of business historian Alfred Chandler, whose book The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business was published in 1977. Chandler argued that in the nineteenth century, the activity of large corporations began to be guided not by capitalism's passive “invisible hand” but more actively by a new class of professional managers.2 The efforts of these managers to steady the corporate ship amid market turbulence reflected a fundamental change in the economy. By the same token, Osman argues that the emergence of active environmental and economic regulation led to profound shifts in how buildings were conceived and used. It would be difficult to pursue such an ambitious thesis in the form of a methodically structured proof. Instead, Osman offers five quasi-independent essays about regulation in diverse contexts. As a result, his book has the character of a …

Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism by Robert C. Holub

Reviewed by: Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism by Robert C. Holub Daniel Blue Robert C. Holub. Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Pp. xx + 271. Cloth, $35.00. Robert Holub’s book, Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism, fundamentally concerns two topics: Was Nietzsche the man anti-Jewish? Was he somehow responsible for inspiring anti-Semites and particularly fascists and Nazis? These are different issues—one of biography, the other of reception—and Holub would have been advised not to link them in a single volume. Nonetheless, one reason for the connection is immediately evident. Holub distinguishes between anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, separating them before discussing their interplay. He conceives the first as a nationalist political movement opposed to Jews, and the second as prejudices against Jews at a personal level. He then uses this distinction to undermine a standard ploy used to exonerate Nietzsche of an anti-Judaic outlook. Political anti-Semites contemporary with Nietzsche did think he shared their views and attempted to enlist him, only to find themselves rebuffed. This gave rise to the impression that Nietzsche viewed Jews favorably. Holub disagrees and in five chapters argues that Nietzsche held anti-Judaic views from at least the age of twenty-one to the close of his productive life. These cannot be attributed to his friendship with Richard Wagner, nor did his sister accentuate them unduly. If they are regrettable, the fault is Nietzsche’s. Holub summarizes these and associated points in a list of seventeen theses at the close of his book (204–7). Holub’s arguments are not so airtight as he suggests, and Nietzsche scholars will detect omissions and exaggerations. To mention just one, he cites critical remarks the philosopher made about his Jewish friends, Paul Rée and Siegfried Lepiner, but does not feature the philosopher’s favorable remarks on Helen Zimmern or his defense of Georg Brandes against his sister’s anti-Semitic slurs. Many similar caveats and corrections could be made. More damaging, the book inevitably enlists anachronism in its cause. This is not Holub’s fault. He recognizes the danger and musters evidence in an attempt to circumvent this accusation. Nonetheless, given the sensitivity of our century and the comparative insensitivity of the nineteenth, it is inevitable that almost anyone in the German states of the time will, at least occasionally, sound anti-Jewish today, some because they made negative statements and others because their positive statements now sound patronizing. Despite these problems, Holub is thoughtful, inventive, and tries to be balanced. His seventeen points cannot be sustained in their entirety. However, a later and simpler summation does hold true: Nietzsche “was more anti-Jewish in his early adulthood than has commonly been understood, and . . . he never completely relinquished anti-Jewish attitudes even when he opposed anti-Semitism” (209). These are controversial statements, but Holub presents evidence in their support, and a reading of Nietzsche’s entire correspondence will confirm their validity. Holub is not content, however, to limit himself to observations on Nietzsche the man. Instead, he wants to connect Nietzsche’s personal views to themes in his philosophy, a linkage of the biographical to the conceptual that many philosophers would question. Further, he wants to explore Nietzsche’s relationship to various right-wing thinkers and particularly to the Third Reich. This final ambition is particularly unfortunate. Most of Holub’s serious research deals with Nietzsche’s personal attitudes and, to a lesser extent, how these may have been reflected in his publications. By contrast, the framing chapters (and therefore those that define the book’s intentions) focus on Nietzsche’s reception and especially the uses made of him during the Nazi era. This different topic forces Holub to change methodologies. His investigations of Nietzsche the man were scholarly and presented with admirable sobriety, although perhaps with some appeal to confirmation bias. However, as Holub honestly acknowledges, “Movements . . . create their own precursors” (213), and it is impossible to prove that policies enacted in a later century reflected Nietzsche’s own intentions. Unable to establish his more ambitious thesis in a scholarly...

This Seat of Mars: War and the British Isles, 1485–1746 by Charles Carlton (review)

Reviewed by: This Seat of Mars: War and the British Isles, 1485–1746 by Charles Carlton Nathan James Martin This Seat of Mars: War and the British Isles, 1485–1746. By Charles Carlton. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011. 336 pp. $40.00 (cloth). Charles Carlton’s This Seat of Mars: War and the British Isles, 1485–1746 bears the markings of a magnum opus: an ambitious thesis, an extensively broad but well-researched and footnoted manuscript, and an exploration of themes that transcend the immediate historical context of the scope of the study that can be applied to different times and situations. Moreover, the work has been produced by a veteran historian and well-established expert on military history. In this book, Carlton deals directly with the ways that warfare affected both the individual on the micro level and the state at the macro level. War is important at both of these extremes as well as everywhere in between. The main goal for Carlton here is “not to say soft things, but to examine [End Page 688] the hard reality of how war—which Tolstoy calls ‘the vilest thing in life’—affected the history of early modern Britain” (p. xx). The reality of war is the driving force of this work, distinguishing it from traditional military history. Such a perspective is undoubtedly enhanced and reinforced by the author’s personal military experience as a soldier in the British Territorial Army and service as an officer in the Welsh Regiment, Special Air Service Regiment, and Intelligence Corps. Beyond this personal connection to the subject, Carlton does well to intimate the importance of realism in war in the Tudor and Stuart periods. Early in the introduction, he describes the ultimate purpose of battle in stark terms: “killing is fundamental to war” (p. xvi). It is a simple truism to be sure, but one that has frequently been neglected in macro-histories of battles and campaigns of the past. It has only been in recent decades that historians have given full examination to this idea. Carlton substantiates this by stating that “by focusing on the actualities of war, on killing, by examining continuity as well as change, and by using a wide range of sources, the new military historians have transformed the discipline” (p. xix). Part of this new approach involves using a plethora and variety of sources in constructing a representation of war in the past. Beyond the usual source material for most military histories, Carlton peppers this work with allusions to major and minor literary sources in different genres (such as sermons, diaries, and drama) to enhance the larger points he makes. For example, in a chapter about recruitment and training, Carlton cites a section of Sir Aston Cockayne’s Trappolin in which two characters conclude that it is better for one to be a thief than a soldier because there is less danger in stealing and a higher payout (p. 21). In discussing the influence of militarism on English culture, the author states that Christopher Marlowe, for example, likely used Raymond Fourquevaux’s Instructions for the Warres, a military treatise, in writing Tamburlaine (p. 57). Such literary knowledge adds much to Carlton’s treatment of the influence of war in England. This Seat of Mars’s chapters alternate between macro and micro themes. This interlaced structure is effective in reiterating the basic argument made by Carlton: War affects both the state and the individual progressively. There is a general chronological advancement for the macro-level chapters, beginning with the early Tudor period in chapter 1 and arriving at the Battle of Culloden by chapter 12. The micro chapters mimic the span of a typical soldier’s life and experience. That is, the second chapter deals with joining and training, the sixth with limited combat (campaigning), and the ninth with high-level combat (battles and sieges), and the penultimate regales the soldier’s life after war. [End Page 689] With this organizing principle, Carlton is able to make a good case that by examining the reality of war and its effects on the individual and society, modern scholarship can better understand warfare. There are dozens of allusions to twentieth...

Studien zu den Beziehungen zwischen den Sasanidenreich und der Mittelmeerwelt by J. Wiesehöfer, P. Huyse

208 PHOENIX we see the landowners' activities from their victims' perspective. Through increased and efficient production and commodification they contributed to economic growth, but also to massive inequality (81-86, 179). In fact, the currency reforms of their man in the palace, Anastasios, depressed the standard of living of the majority of the population (200-201). With that we are touching upon Sarris's broader argument for the role of the estates in later Roman history. His close reading of the papyri is persuasive, detailed, and lucid, and especially valuable for the non-expert. The overarching argument is rather more sketchy and bold. This book offers an ambitious thesis in Chapters Ten and Eleven. In brief, the increased needs of later Roman government (beginning with Diocletian) created a class of men more powerful than had been seen before, who used and abused their authority to amass estates and evade, by influence and corruption, paying taxes. They squeezed the lower orders, taking on more and more of them as clients, and starved the state of money. Only Justinian attempted seriously to curb their growth, in part because he needed money for war?and he failed (the snake strangled the eagle after all, despite the blood on the cover). The estates had so taken over the empire by 600 that the population was content to see the old regime fall (the Conclusion, where the influence of de Ste Croix shows through, has an apocalyptic tone). There is no space to showcase or query the many points that are made throughout this stimulating book. I will end with some questions that would have to be answered more fully before I accept the broader argument: Were Egyptian estates typical of the empire at large? Was Oxyrhynchustypical ofEgypt? Were the Oxyrhynchiteestatesof the Apiones typical of their holdings elsewhere? Were the Apiones typical of landowners elsewhere? Were there no longor short-term processes tending to estate-dissolution, thus checking, if only partially, their unrestrained growth? How is it that Anastasios, the landowners' emperor, amassed record surpluses? How would he have coped with protracted warfare? If Justinian cracked down on the estates because he was so worried about paying forwar, why did he spend less on his wars than on other projects? Why does Prokopios give the impression that he basically abandoned the East when Sarris's argument makes the fiscal demands of "superpower warfare" (229) the motive for internal reform? Sarris is tempted to view Justinian's foreign wars as "prestige-garnering exercises ... meant further to appeal to conservative opinion at home to sweeten the pill of internal reform" (216), but was reform not imposed because of war? Sarris provides allusive or partial answers to these questions (compared to his meticulous investigation of the management of the Apiones' Oxyrhynchite estates). Perhaps some of them cannot be answered definitively based on surviving evidence, which, of course, does not invalidate the broader argument. At this stagethe latterremainsa tantalizing possibilitythatstill has tobe fleshedoutbefore itcan become a narrative of decline and fall. By contrast, the inner and outer workings of the Apiones' estates emerge with impressive (and disquieting) clarity. The Ohio State University Anthony Kaldellis Studien zu den Beziehungen zwischen den Sasanidenreich und derMittelmeer welt. Edited by J. Wiesehofer and P. Huyse. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag (Oriens etOccidens 13). 2006. Pp. 285. This volume brings together twelve papers from a conference held at Eutin in 2000, four years after an earlier conference that gave rise to another valuable collection, BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 209 J. Wiesehofer (ed.), Das Partherreich und seine Zeugnisse (Stuttgart 1998), reviewed by the present reviewer in CR 51 (2001) 133-135. The present volume, although more restricted in scope, nevertheless represents an important contribution to the study of the Sasanian empire, and in particular its relations with the west. The bias of the work is towards the third and fourth centuries: the articles of Drijvers, Hartmann, Luther, andWeber all deal with this period, although others are more general, and one (Panaino) deals with the early seventh century. It is a shame that, despite the delay in publication, the contributors were unable to take into account more recent works, in particular the large number of papers presented...

The Urban South and the Coming of the Civil War. By Frank Towers. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004. xiv, 285 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8139-2297-6.)

Recent books about rural nonslaveholders challenge the supposed unity of the Confederate South, and this work shows that the planters could not rely on southern urban workers either. Frank Towers examines Baltimore, New Orleans, and St. Louis, and finds that they were the sites of Union triumphs at the beginning of the Civil War because they contained significant loyalist elements. The two cities in border states played a major role in keeping those states in the Union, and New Orleans had a large population of loyalists on whom the U.S. Army could rely after it seized lower Louisiana in 1862. Many Union adherents in these cities sympathized with the cause of Abraham Lincoln because they shared with him a vision of democracy that would keep the planter class out of the West, and make the federal government an instrument of positive change for all citizens. At the risk of oversimplifying the book's ambitious thesis, Towers argues that everything the mechanics in these cities believed and did was offensive to the planter- and industrialist-dominated Democratic party. The mechanics embodied Thomas Jefferson's nightmare of a politically organized working class. They lived by an ideology in which manual labor was noble rather than degrading, in which free labor was superior to slave labor, and in which citizenship was a set of valuable rights and must inform the worker's decisions in the labor market. As a result, they despised the planters' degradation of labor, suspected the motives of employers who allied with the planters, and hated the cheapening of labor by immigrants who did not Americanize themselves fast enough and who supported the Democratic party. Many native common men embraced the American party in the 1850s, and the Know-Nothings managed to win control of the government in all three cities, although Lincoln's party quickly ousted the Know-Nothings in immigrant-dominated St. Louis. While historians have focused on the bigotry of the Americans toward the new immigrants, Towers emphasizes the rational basis of their politics and their contest with aristocratic opponents. Party rivalry was about real issues, class issues, until the Democrats used the secession question in an attempt to destroy the unity of the urban upstarts by vehement rhetoric and force. It created an explosive situation as Lincoln moved to support the Union elements in the spring of 1861. Since Towers describes fully the electoral violence as the Americans took over in the mid-1850s, it comes as no surprise that battles erupted in Baltimore and St. Louis between secessionists and loyalists that left many dead and wounded. The cities were not a sideshow but a crucial first arena of battle in the war.

'Wir sind anders'. Gender und Ethnizität in Barbara Frischmuths Romanen by Andrea Horváth

232 AUSTRIAN STUDIES l6 (20 8) Reich and can legitimately be seen as a forerunner of the annihilation camps. In short, Klambauer's book is awkwardly written and at times digresses excessively, but it is full of interesting observations and insightful interpretations. Nottingham Trent University Bill Niven Wir sind anders \Gender und Ethnizit?t inBarbara Fr?schmuthsRomanen. ByAndrea Horv?th. W?rzburg: K?nigshausen & Neumann. 2007. 172 pp. 24,80. isbn 978-3-8260-3632-3. Andrea Horv?th shows in this study how the novels of Barbara Frischmuth can be read as charting and reflecting a shift in recent feminist thought: from an exposure of and investigation into 'gender', towards an acknowledgement of this construct as intertwined with other factors ? race, class, sexuality and so on? that all play a part in the shaping of the subject. Horv?th demonstrates that Frischmuth's early works ? for example, the Sternwieser-Tnlogie, published in the 1970s ? are concerned to express and affirm a specifically feminine identity and aesthetic. She points out that Frischmuth has long been interested inTurkish culture, and argues that in novels such as Das Verschwinden des Schattens in der Sonne (1973), Die Schrifi desFreundes (1998) and Die Entschl?sselung (2001), the Turkish 'other' ishighlighted and explored, and 'difference' ? a key term in recent critical theory ? isproblematized and relativized. This isa convincing argument, and itserves to cast Frischmuth's work in a new and interesting light. But Horv?th 's intriguing and ambitious thesis is not adequately worked out, and while her book is engaging, it is also flawed. Horv?th introduces a large body of theoretical writings early on, offering a decent and ? in the context of German Studies ? refreshing introduction to terms such as 'hybridity' and 'alterity'. She draws on thework of, among others, Homi Bhabha (to whose 'wilde[...] Formulierungen' she amusingly refers [p. 30] ), Stuart Hall, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva and Donna Haraway. She argues that the issue of colonialism has been wrongly ignored by German Studies and alludes interestingly to Freud's concept of the uncanny (das Unheimliche). She does not, however, mention thework of Rosi Braidotti, whose notions of 'nomadism' (1994) and 'transposition' (2006) might have offered useful theoretical tools. An impressive array of theory is presented here, then, and it is usefully and clearly summarized; but the material could perhaps have been better marshalled. As Horv?th herself acknowledges, it is 'eklektisch, unsystematisch und rhetorisch abstrakt' (p. 55) :a description that indicates a lack of confidence in the thesis being developed. Indeed, the theory is not very effectively deployed in the readings of the texts that follow, which are disappointing. In her analysis of Frischmuth's treatment of femininity, Horv?th relies on the readings offered by Christa G?rtler in 1985. She summarizes plots and critical views rather than furnishing fresh interpretations that integrate the theory she has earlier introduced so well. I was also not convinced by Horv?th's understanding ofFrischmuth's use of fantasy.Frischmuth's depiction of a timeless, AUSTRIAN STUDIES l6 (20 8) 233 ahistorical, 'feminine' realm does not seem to me to be very productive or subversive. The relationship between theory and fiction isnot sufficiently explored, which leads to some confusion, as in the following observation: 'InDie Entschl?sselung l?st sich alles in Literatur, in Vieldeutigkeit und R?tsel auf, was eigentlich Derridas Theorie der "Nachtr?glichkeit" und der "Verschiebung" von Schrift best?tigt. Dies k?nnte eine Kritik der Autorin an "der neuen Leidenschaft der Philologie" bedeuten oder an den philologischen Theorien und akademischen Institutionen' (p. 134). The notion that a literarywork 'confirms' a theory is odd. The speculation as to Frischmuth's intentions isalso unhelpful. Elsewhere, a novel is referred to as 'eine fiktionalisierte Version der dargestellten Theorien' (p. 11o) :a rather reductive view of the literary text.Horv?th returns constantly to theory; the fictional texts come to seem incidental to the discussion. This might be because the novels themselves are not that interesting ? can Frischmuth's texts bear the weight of the complex theories presented here? Readings often seem inconclusive. Horv?th raises the question as to whether Frischmuth's works are 'orientalist' in Edward Said's sense, but leaves it...

The Heart of Revolution: The Radical Life and Novels of Olive Dargan by Kathy Cantley Ackerman (review)

Kathy Cantley Ackerman. The Heart ofRevolution: The Radical Life and Novels of Olive Dargan. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. 237 pages. Hardback. $29.95. If only for her longevity, Olive Tilford Dargan is a significant figure in American letters. Born in 1869, she lived just one year short of a century and enjoyed a fifty-eight year publishing career. Her first book, Semiramis and Other Plays, was published by Scribners in 1904. Her final book, Innocent Bigamy and Other Stories, was issued by John F. Blair in 1962. Though not prolific, she was versatile, claiming plays, poetry, short stories, and novels among her fifteen volumes. In midcareer she adopted a pseudonym, Fielding Burke, which she used for each of her three novels, all proletarian and polemical works. Perhaps both her longevity and versatility have mitigated against a deserved critical reputation. Today she is remembered primarily for one novel and one collection of short stories. The addition of Kathy Ackerman's thoroughly researched and gracefully written study is welcomed as the first full length book about this extraordinary literary figure. As her title indicates, she limits her attention to the Fielding Burke novels: Call Home the Heart (1932), A Stone CameRolling (1935), and Sons ofthe Stranger (1947). Her ambitious thesis is that Dargan's work should be considered in light of her "treatments of proletarianism, feminism, and race, with special attention to the ways these issues intersect in the southern Appalachian region." The question of why Ackerman did not simply use Fielding Burke as the title is answered by one of her primary tenets: that Dargan's radical inclinations began long before she demonstrated them in the novels. For instance, in the biographical section that begins the work, Ackerman tells the anecdote of Dargan's working in Boston as a stenographer to a rubber manufacturer. One day he dictated two letters, one ordering the abrupt closing of a factory, the other complaining about the upholstery of his yacht. Thus the inequalities of the capitalist industrial system were brought forcefully home to her. In 1904 Dargan met Rose Pastor Stokes, a founding member of the American Communist Party, who became one of her closest friends. Ackerman offers more than one suggestion as to why Dargan chose to use a non-gender specific pseudonym for her three novels, but the most salient one is that they were so radical that the author feared reprisal in that politically charged era. Though Dargan's college education included a year at Radcliffe and her early jobs were in Nova Scotia, Boston, and New York, it was 74 her move to Appalachia that advanced her writing career. In 1925 she published her most successful book, Highland Annals (later reissued as From My Highest Hill). That collection of short stories is based on her experiences in rural Appalachia and is generally a genial retelling of her relationship with the mountain folk she encountered. But when she moved from the country to the town, her writing became more radical. She was living in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1929, the year of cotton mill strikes in nearby Gastonia and Marion, the events that provided her with specific material to embody her political stances and move to a new genre, the novel. One of the most impressive aspects of Ackerman's book is her use of unpublished letters found in several collections throughout the country. Dargan's correspondence with Rose Stokes reveals that she actually went to Gastonia and visited with the strikers, something she was able to do because of Rose's influence. In April 1929, Dargan wrote Rose, "I'm stamped 'middle-class' all over... . But the strikers like me and make me feel like blood-kin—bless their weary bones!" Ackerman has found so much correspondence, in fact, that an edition of Dargan's letters would be a useful tool to Appalachian scholars. Call Home the Heart is the literal center of Ackerman's study. She examines it, and to a lesser extent, the sequel, A Stone Came Rolling, in light of the proletarian movement in American letters, in comparison to other strike novels of the period and in the historical accounting of the events of the...

A comparative studies perspective

The re-publication after nearly half a century of the late Joseph Ben-David's first academic article is a mark of signal recognition, entirely befitting one of the f'mest sociologists to emerge in Israel. In the original version, the paper was couched in a rather forbidding Hebrew-sociologese that was fashionable in Jerusalem in the 1950s; now it is presented in an admirably lucid translation. The work advances two principal arguments: one on the structure and cohesion of the traditional Jewish community, and the other on the vicissitudes of elites, particularly yeshiva scholars, in the context of nineteenth-century transformations. The arguments are stated in the terms of the functionalist sociological theory that prevailed when the author was a graduate student. This led him to pronounce that "far-reaching changes could not take place in part of the system without its effects being felt in other parts of the system" (see above, p. 83). Academic fashion has changed since then, and most sociologists would not now assume such a well-tailored integration of systems. But Ben-David was concerned with the small-scale Jewish communities of pre-modern Hungary, in which he claims, "everybody knew everybody else" (see above, p. 75), and "the community functioned as a sort of expanded primary group" (see above, p. 66). In that setting, if these empirical generalizations are well-founded, the functionalist paradigm was perhaps appropriate. More crucially, the author argues, the social cohesion of the traditional Hungarian communities was built on an interlocking of elites - religious and economic. This interlocking led to mutual responsibility and tight social control. That thesis has wide ramifications for understanding the vitality of traditional Jewry in general, and sociologists and social historians of Jewry on the whole accept and use it. But this generally well-taken ambitious thesis entails a problem. It is so sweeping that it ought to apply to all traditional Jewish communities, not just to the small

The Acceptance of a Legal System

The interest of political theory in the acceptance of law is obvious. If one believes that a regime is legitimate only if it governs with the consent of the governed, then the notion of acceptance is deeply linked with the notion of legitimacy, a fundamental concern of political theory. The interest of legal theory in the notion of acceptance is less obvious. I construe it to arise in the following way. One central tradition in legal theory is that of positivistic or content-independent theories of law. Positivism, crudely speaking, is characterized by some form of the Separation Thesis—that the existence of law is one thing and its merit or demerit another. But if it is important for positivistic legal theory to mark the separation of law and the merits of law, then it must also be important to mark the separation between law and the acceptance of law. The existence of law must be one thing and its acceptance as meritorious another. In deference to the separation of existence and merit, positivism tries to find a content-independent account of the validity of law. Equally, in deference to the separation of law and acceptance, positivism tries to find a content-independent account of the acceptance of law. The topic of this paper is whether the separation of law and the acceptance of law is possible. I shall try to suggest, in service of a non-positivistic or content-dependent approach to law, that this separation is not possible. I will attempt to argue on the basis of points which legal positivism itself has acknowledged to form valid constraints on any theory of acceptance. My ambitious thesis is that positivism has presented us with the reasons for rejecting it. Even if that thesis is not made out, I have a less ambitious thesis which I am confident of securing, that the demand for an account of law which permits law to be accepted ‘for any reason whatever’ is not a theoryneutral demand which might decide between positivism and natural law theory. Rather, it is an expression of a prior commitment to positivism. It is the familiar demand of natural law theory that the convergence of attitudes towards law which makes for acceptance of law must be a convergence for the right kind of reasons; ones that have to do with the value of law.

Using multiple class indicators to examine working-class ideology

Eysenck showed that working-class supporters of any particular political party tended to be more conservative than middle-class supporters of the same party. Lipset has put forward the more ambitious thesis that working-class people in general are more authoritarian and conservative than middle-class people (except on economic issues). Existing evidence for the Lipset thesis suggests at best weak support for it with a lot depending on the particular scales used and the particular class index used. A comprehensive study is therefore presented in which six scales of conservatism, two scales of authoritarianism and political party preference are correlated with five social-class indices. Ss were a community sample of 203 Australians. Significant correlations were sparse and of low magnitude with working-class people tending to be radical rather than conservative on non-economic issues. Authoritarians also tended to be middle class rather than lower class. There were however two weak correlations with education in the direction predicted by Lipset.

Feuerbach, and: Scientific Materialism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 365 Marx W. Wartofsky. Feuerbach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Pp. xx + 460. $24.95. Frederick Gregory. Scientific Materialism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Studies in the History of Modem Science, no. 1. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1977. Pp. xxiv + 279. $28.00; $13.50, paper. The appearance of two studies, both dealing in some way with the philosophy and enduring influence of the "fiery brook," Ludwig Feuerbach, marks a significant deepening of Englishlanguage understanding of this seminal philosopher, and provides a clearer picture of his legacy for twentieth-century thought. Wartofsky's book pairs logically with the study of German materialism by the historian of science Frederick Gregory, and the latter work is prefaced by a laudatory recommendation by Wartofsky. Feuerbach is a mature and thorough study, representing the first exhaustive attempt in English to deal with Feuerbach as a major nineteenth-centuryphilosopher. Reaching considerably deeper than a common view of Feuerbach either as a nineteenth-centurycritic of religion, or as a transitional left-Hegelian--the foil against which Marx would write his Theses in 1845--Wartofsky has treated Feuerbach in light of the whole corpus of his writings, from his early dissertation on Hegel, through his history of modem philosophy, into his final materialistic writings. Those works seen as critical are subjected to long discussion and detailed analysis, with the main focus on writings illustrating the development of Feuerbach from a youthful Hegelian into the mature critic of theology and speculative Idealism in the Essence of Christianity and the Essence of Religion. In his central concern with Feuerbach's transition away from Hegel, Wartofsky discusses his reaction not only specifically to idealism, but also to Spinoza, Descartes, Leibniz, Hobbes, Locke, and in great detail, Pierre Bayle. Wartofsky's point In spending a large portion of text on this material is not, however, simply to work out Feuerbach's intellectual biography, but rather to make a more ambitious thesis--that Feuerbach's own thought is developing dialectically through his reflection on the preceeding history of modem philosophy: "Philosophy is preeminently the inquiry into truth itself. The history of philosophy, therefore, presents the living process of this inquiry, and doing philosophy consists in the twofold activity of criticism and speculative construction . Criticism is the principle of motion by which the dialectic advances" (p. 135). In terms of the larger dialectical framework imbedded in Wartofsky's exposition, the argument of the book proceeds in such a way that the best known aspect of Feuerbach's thought--his reduction of theology to anthropology---emerges as the maturation of an ongoing dialectical development that reaches its culminationin his analysis of speculative philosophy as itself but a masked form of theology. From this point, it seems, Feuerbach's work, for Wartofsky, lapses into the dusk left behind by the flight of Hegel's minervan owl. The dialectical critique implicitly passes to Karl Marx, who would perceive the still "abstract" and "ahistorical" character of Feuerbach's anthropology, and the further reduction still made possible by a genuine historical materialism and an anthropology grounded on a concretized, world-transforming praxis. By concentrating on Feuerbach's dialectical method, Wartofsky feels that he has discerned the key to Feuerbach's unifying Problematick. The convincing attempt to unify Feuerbach's diverse writings by a grasp of a more fundamental set of questions and options is the great achievement of the book and represents history of philosophy at its best. With this Wartofsky is thus able to discriminate the more obvious and popular critique of religion in the Essence of Christianity from what he sees as its deeper and more esoteric philosophical content--a dialectical attack on alienating forms of consciousness in general. Three long chapters of the book deal with aspects of Feuerbach's attack on theology and religious belief, giving specific analyses of his reductive critiques of central Christian doctrines--incarnation , creation, redemption, and communion--andin great detail expounding the substance of 366 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY his reduction of theology to anthropology. It is obvious that Wartofsky is generally sympathetic with these critiques, but at the same time he has taken pains to discern with clarity Feuerbach's differing assessment of rational theology and religious sentiment. It is...

The “New Biology” and the Causes of War

La « nouvelle biologie » est un amalgame de faits et d'interprétations glanés auprès des sciences naturelles et les sciences sociales et tendant à donner une nouvelle explication des causes de la guerre. Tout comme les théoriciens qui les ont précédés, K. Lorenz et R. Ardrey, principaux représentants de cette école, situent la racine de la guerre dans une agressivité intrinsèque à la nature humaine. L'homme, selon eux, aurait, comme la plupart des vertébrés, un besoin inné de combattre les membres de sa propre espèce, et la violence Internationale n'en serait que la transposition en termes plus spectaculaires et plus complexes.Cette interpétation soulève la critique sur de nombreux points : (1) l'existence de l'agression comme instinct autonome et de pure projection reste à prouver; (2) l'agression individuelle n'est pas analytiquement reliée à l'agression collective; (3) le rôle de l'idéologie comme cause à la guerre est passé sous silence; (4) la distinction n'est pas faite entre l'agression offensive et l'agression préventive.Malgré ses déficiences, ce schéma interprétatif présente un intérêt analytique en faisant la lumière sur certains aspects internes de la ténacité défensive et du nationalisme militant, phénomènes dont la compréhension pourrait étre accrue par l'emploi d'un vaste cadre d'interprétation utilisant à la fois le territoire et l'idéologie. La « biologie nouvelle » peut également être utile aux hommes d'état : ainsi les diplomates qui assumeraient l'existence de cette agressivité humaine pourraient la considérer comme une barrière à la solution des conflits et au triomphe de la paix. Tel est du moins l'avis de Lorenz et Ardrey. Cependant les hommes d'état pourraient voir cette agressivité, sous un autre éclairage, comme motivant un effort accru pour dénouer des situations conflictuelles et structurer un environnement qui rendrait la violence internationale moins probable et moins nocive.

Araucanian Patri-Organization and the Omaha System

T HE thesis of this paper is that Araucanian society has been patrilineally organized since the time of the Conquest, but that the appearance of the Omaha system is a very recent development and not fully representative of Araucanian society. It is concerned, therefore, with the development of Araucanian social organization under four sections: (1) brief review of two basic assumptions about the development of Araucanian kinship and social organization; (2) examination of historic kinship terminology and other data on social organization, in connection with these assumptions; (3) presentation of data obtained in the field in 1953, and other recent material on Araucanian kinship and social organization; and (4) an interpretation of the development of Araucanian social organization on the basis of historical material and the present pattern of distribution. For about three centuries the Araucanian Indians of Chile withstood the large-scale colonization of their native habitat, Araucania. These so-called fighting came to be known by the generic term which means, in their language, people of the land. During the period of Spanish colonization the Mapuche lived between the Bio-Bio River and an ill-defined boundary north of the town of Valdivia, in a rather thickly forested area which lies between the Andes and the Pacific. North of the Bio-Bio River lived the Picunche Indians, who were closely related to the Mapuche and were part of the over-all Araucanian group. From the environs of Valdivia south to the Island of Chilo6, the more open country was inhabited by the Huilliche Araucanians or people of the south. These cultural subgroups shared a common language, Araucanian, the regional dialects of which were mutually intelligible. Today only the Mapuche remain as a large, easily definable ethnic group in southern Middle Chile. The Picunche were rapidly acculturated during the early colonial period. The Huilliche, for the most part, have been absorbed into the mestizo population between the southern limits of Araucania and the Island of Chilo6. Perhaps the most ambitious thesis dealing with the evolution of Araucanian society was presented by Ricardo E. Latcham (1924), who drew heavily on colonial documents for supplementation to field work he conducted among the Mapuche in Cautin Province, the heart of Araucania. The premises upon Which Latcham based his fundamental arguments in favor of matrilineal organization do not bear close scrutiny. Nevertheless, he stands out with Guevara Silva as one of the most assiduous students of Araucanian culture who wrote in the early decades of the twentieth century. American anthropologists have recently shown interest in exploring histor-