Individual Wills Research Articles

Family Relations of Aged Colonial Jews: A Testamentary Analysis

ABSTRACTContent analysis of wills probated in New York State between 1704 and 1799 is used to reconstruct the family relations of aged colonial Jews. The modernisation theory of ageing provides a backdrop for this beginning effort to specify variations in family life in history. In general, regardless of marital status, aged Jewish colonial testators followed a familistic inheritance pattern. Individual wills contained articulated and vindictive bequests. It is suggested that while the Jewish family was an important mechanism for maintaining cultural cohesion and identity, it was also an important support structure in adapting to the realities of a Christian colonial America that was rapidly modernising. Future work in the history of the family relations of aged individuals will have to be comparative.

Civilizing Practices

Abstract Maclntyre’s contrast between contemporary individualist versions of morality, expressive of arbitrary selfwill, and some less willful or less arbitrary moral guidance, is queried. All social practices, both those Maclntyre disapproves of and those he prefers, are claimed to contain elements of arbitrariness, and some scope for the expression of some individual human wills. Maclntyre’s neglect of the question of what allocation of power a particular practice or set of practices involves is contrasted with Hume’s due but not undue attention to this matter. Maclntyre’s treatment of Hume’s place in the history of the Aristotelian conception of the moral life as cultivation of virtues is criticized and tentatively explained as really due not to Hume’s anti-rationalism, but to his acceptance of the political and commercial practices which Maclntyre distrusts, and to his rejection of the non-Aristotelian religious concepts of other-worldly goods, sin and redemption from it, which Maclntyre wants added on to Aristotle’s moral theory.

Majority rule: Second thoughts and refutations

We have observed that some recent results cast serious doubts uponthe applicability of majority rule as a device for forming a group-willout of individual wills. On the other hand, majority rule has manyproperties to recommend it. Especially, the decisiveness propertyshould please anyone interested in efficiency considerations. How-ever, when it comes to the second major criterion, consistency, major-ity rule with pairwise comparison of alternatives often leads to diffi-culties. Indeed, we have seen that there is typically no core or Con-dorcet winner when the policy space is multidimensional real space.And when there is no core, the situation looks grim indeed for major-ity rule: literally any outcome may become the majority winner. Somerelief of this very strong result is provided by the fact that no majoritycycles can go through the outcomes that belong to the M2 bargainingset. This finding, of course, solves the problem facing majority rule onlyinsofar as a method can be devised by which the M2 bargaining set out-comes can be determined in a reliable way. Here, thus, we are con-fronted with the sincerity problem. The absence of the core can lead to chaotic trajectories of votingoutcomes in multidimensional space. However, there are ways of over-coming the difficulties if a sufficient amount of flexibility is allowedin institutional design. If we consider the various nonequilibrium solu-tion concepts, and the minimax set in particular, we can always designa decision rule which (under mild restrictions) makes the vote-maximiz-ing outcome trajectory enter the solution set. The flexibility needed isgreat, indeed: the decision rule, λ-majority, must be alterable for eachvoting situation. The determination of the winner in a pair-wise comparison of alter-natives is not the main source of the difficulties surrounding majorityrule. As a matter of fact, the method of building the agenda is the mostcrucial part of the problem of cyclical majorities. In multicandidatecontests the occurrence of cyclical majorities has motivated the studyof other.decision procedures in addition to the majority comparisonof alternatives. The most recent proposal, approval voting, is morestrategyproof than its competitors in the class of single-ballot, non-ranked voting systems. At the moment the relationships betweenapproval voting and majority rule are not clear. It seems that furtherstudy of the interrelationships of these procedures is called for. Thefeatures in which approval voting is superior to majority comparisonof pairs of alternatives, however, are not, strictly speaking, procedural,but are external to the method of making collective decisions.

Rebellion in Huaraz: The newspaper account of an ?obscure? revolt in Peru

We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite antecedents and conditions... In the second place, however, history proceeds in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, and every one of them is in turn made into what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This may in its turn again be regarded as the product of a power which operates as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one intended 1.

Individual Will And Social Conditions: Toward An Effective Health Maintenance Policy

Many prominent health experts now assert that major improvements in the health of the American people must come from individual efforts to alter unhealthy per sonal habits and lifestyles rather than through medical services and technology. But it does not necessarily follow that a more ethical and feasible national health policy would focus primarily on exhorting Americans to mobilize their indi vidual willpower to change to more healthful personal habits. In determining the nature of such policy, three main points are essential. First, the "health and individual responsi bility" argument may overestimate the health benefits which will accrue from personal habit changes. Second, that argu ment tends to overlook or misconstrue the nature of societal constraints on individual will. It fails to specify the socio logical conditions under which millions of individuals can change their lives significantly and the role social condi tions play in maintaining unhealthy behavior and attitudes. Finally, the focus on individual decisionmaking deempha sizes the role of collective efforts, of public policy, in securing higher health standards. In essence, then, we suggest that a health policy that promotes curbing unhealthy habits and encourages healthy ones through societal action is more ethical and feasible than one focusing on "health as individual responsibility."

Feste's "Whirligig" and the Comic Providence of Twelfth Night

Shakespeare's plays frequently counterpose the powers of human and of suprahuman will, and the antithesis usually generates a definition of natures, both human and suprahuman. These definitions vary, however, according to the play. For instance, Hamlet's providence does not seem the same as the darker, equivocating power that encourages Macbeth to pit his will against a larger order; and these controls differ from Diana and Apollo in the later plays, Pericles and The Winter's Tale. Furthermore, Hamlet's submission and Macbeth's submission to non-human controls (if indeed they do submit their individual wills) cannot be understood as the same action or even to imply the same kind of human vision. Many of the conflicts of Twelfth Night seem to be concerned with the contest between human will and suprahuman control; yet, the latter manifests itself in various ways and is called different names by the characters themselves.' As each contest between the human will and another designer works itself out, the involved characters recognize that their will is fulfilled, but not according to their planning. The individual's will is finally secondary to a design that benevolently, but unpredictably, accords with what he truly desires.2 For example, when Olivia, at the end of Act I, implores Fate to accord with her will in allowing her love for Cesario to flourish, she has no idea that her will must be circumvented for her own happiness. Yet the substitution of Sebastian for Cesario in her love fulfills her wishes more appropriately than

John Arden's essential vision: Tragical‐historical'political

Despite their variety, John Arden's plays express a coherent and consistent view of human experience, understandable in terms of tragic conflict between individual wills and the public world. King Herod is condemned by history; Serjeant Musgrave is destroyed by the will to survive of a strike‐torn coal town, despite its severe internal divisions; Krank fails to control destructive social and political circumstances.

Preferences and the Common Good

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscussionPreferences and the Common GoodB. M. BarryB. M. Barry Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 72, Number 2Jan., 1962 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/291390 Views: 4Total views on this site Copyright 1962 University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Malraux and the Individual Will

Previous articleNext article No AccessMalraux and the Individual WillPhilip Blair RicePhilip Blair Rice Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 48, Number 2Jan., 1938 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/intejethi.48.2.2989407 Views: 5Total views on this site Journal History This article was published in The International Journal of Ethics (1890-1938), which is continued by Ethics (1938-present). PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Malraux and the Individual Will

Malraux and the Individual Will

LONDON

<h3>Evolution of Human Races, Past and Present</h3> In a lecture at a meeting of the Anthropological Society, Sir Arthur Keith discussed the evolution of human races. <h3>TROUBLE RESULTING FROM DIVISION INTO RACES</h3> The differentiation of mankind into races is a continuous source of trouble. Peace is disturbed by the friction engendered when race meets race. In Palestine, the Jew and the Arab cannot live in harmony. In South Africa, Boer and Briton, who have everything to gain by working together, find themselves thrust apart by some impulse stronger than their individual wills. If men in all parts of the world had been cast in the same mold and if nature had dressed them in the same racial livery, the establishment of harmonious settlements in East Africa would have been easy. As it is, the problem of planting in the same country peoples wearing three different liveries—white, brown and