Need For Humility Research Articles

The Evolution of Faith and Ethics in Philosophy History: A Comparative Study of Kierkegaard, Augustine, and Greek Myths

This article explores the evolution of faith and ethics among philosophy history, based on the work of Sren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. It argues that Kierkegaard's analysis of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac reveals the paradoxical and existential nature of faith, which challenges the rational and universal claims of ethical theories. Furthermore, it compares the story of Abraham and Isaac with the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, who were also asked to sacrifice their children by the gods. The different outcomes of these stories reflect different views of faith, ethics, and divine will would be remarkable. Another Christian philosopher is going to be mentioned, who is Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus. This article explores how both Augustine and Kierkegaard emphasise the role of grace and love in the life of faith, and how they understand faith as a personal and dynamic relationship with God, rather than a static and formal adherence to doctrines or rules. It is suggested that further insights are available by refection upon the question how they both acknowledge the limits and errors of human reason, and the need for humility and repentance in the face of God's mystery and mercy.

Reading Alexander the Great in Medieval Bohemia: A Moralistic Example and a Functional Label

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the figure of Alexander the Great and the stories associated with him became a stable part of the Bohemian literary landscape. Here, he represented a great ruler and conqueror, as well as a reminder of the transience of worldly glory and the need for humility. The study focuses on the role of Alexander's figure in different literary contexts and how the reading and use of the character have shifted according to the changing political and social situation.

Host Perspectives of High-Income Country Orthopaedic Resident Rotations in Low and Middle-Income Countries.

International orthopaedic resident rotations in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are gaining popularity among high-income country (HIC) residency programs. While evidence demonstrates a benefit for the visiting residents, few studies have evaluated the impact of such rotations on the orthopaedic surgeons and trainees in LMICs. The purpose of this study was to further explore themes identified in a previous survey study regarding the local impact of visiting HIC resident rotations. Using a semistructured interview guide, LMIC surgeons and trainees who had hosted HIC orthopaedic residents within the previous 10 years were interviewed until thematic saturation was reached. Twenty attending and resident orthopaedic surgeons from 8 LMICs were interviewed. Positive and negative effects of the visiting residents on clinical care, education, interpersonal relationships, and resource availability were identified. Seven recommendations for visiting resident rotations were highlighted, including a 1 to 2-month rotation length; visiting residents at the senior training level; site-specific prerotation orientation with an emphasis on resident attitudes, including the need for humility; creation of bidirectional opportunities; partnering with institutions with local training programs; and fostering mutually beneficial sustained relationships. This study explores the perspectives of those who host visiting residents, a viewpoint that is underrepresented in the literature. Future research regarding HIC orthopaedic resident rotations in LMICs should include the perspectives of local surgeons and trainees to strive for mutually beneficial experiences to further strengthen and sustain such academic partnerships.

Exploring Epistemic Humility and its Limits in Therapeutics

Exploring Epistemic Humility and its Limits in Therapeutics Douglas Porter, MD* (bio) I would like to thank Scott Waterman for sharing what must have been very challenging personal circumstances. Waterman's reflections touched upon many complex issues. For my part, I would like to explore how Waterman's experience underscores the importance of epistemic humility regarding the limits of scientific knowledge and our sense of the meaning of scientific knowledge while still recognizing the significance and power of scientific knowledge. The first epistemic challenge presented by Scott Waterman's experience of "patienthood" that demonstrates the limits of scientific knowledge is the ability to know pain. Of course, we have all known pain, but such firstperson knowledge would not qualify as scientific knowledge. To scientifically know pain, we would need to have an intersubjectively verifiable correlate of the pain. This is all well and good so long as scientific knowledge is not embraced with a form of epistemic hubris such that scientific knowledge is regarded as the only true form of knowledge. It is not uncommon for the knowledge associated with first-person experience to be denigrated as inherently dubious and merely subjective. Phenomenologists (see Merleau-Ponty, 1964, for example) have pointed out that ultimately the veracity of scientific knowledge must rely upon the veracity of knowledge gained from lived experience and, consequently, regarding first-person experience as inherently invalid is tantamount to regarding the entire scientific enterprise as invalid. Epistemic hubris regarding scientific knowledge may therefore be regarded as self-contradictory and irrational. But, when epistemic hubris regarding scientific knowledge becomes wed, as it sometimes does, to a certain form of metaphysical thinking then epistemic hubris becomes downright pernicious. The metaphysics I am referring to would regard reality as that which is scientifically knowable and, ipso facto, that which cannot be known scientifically as not really real. Such thinking would regard the experience of pain as merely an epiphenomenon to what is really going on which is, loosely put, some nerve signals firing away. Such thinking leads to a perverse inversion of priorities in therapeutics where the person experiencing pain should be understood as the salient phenomenon and the value of scientific knowledge must ultimately be measured by its relevance for addressing that experience of pain. In this sense I can echo Scott Waterman's assertion that humanism and the concern for scientific rigor should not be regarded [End Page 111] as antithetical or even complementary, but are better regarded as being cut from the same cloth. It is the humanist knowledge of the significance and meaning of suffering, in this case the distress of experiencing chronic pain, that motivates and measures the concern for the tools of science to intervene and relieve that suffering. Science untied to humanist moorings in therapeutics is science gone rogue. Waterman's experience with chronic pain demonstrated the need for epistemic humility regarding the limits of scientific knowledge. I think it also underscores the need for humility involving our sense of the exact meaning of science. A friend of mine who happens to be an anthropologist recently attended a party with members of the physics department and found the status of anthropology as a "science" to be met with some incredulity by some of the physicists in attendance. It seems to me that hubris regarding physics being the paradigmatic science would severely hamper any meaningful scientific assessment of the treatment of pain. Waterman explored the scientific relevance of the purported mechanisms of action for several treatment alternatives for pain. The etymology of the term mechanism refers to machines. As I have never known a machine to experience pain, I immediately questioned the limits of mechanistic thinking regarding this topic. But what has been dubbed "the new philosophy of mechanics" (Craver & Tabery, 2019) has jettisoned some of the cartesian physicalist assumptions originally associated with mechanistic reasoning in science. This new philosophy has embraced a more liberal stance to accommodate the myriad ways in which explanatory mechanisms are actually used in scientific practice. As an example, Illari and Williamson (2012) offered this definition of a mechanism for science, "A mechanism for a phenomenon consists of entities and activities organized in such a way that they are...

Estimating the probability of sexual recidivism among men charged or convicted of sexual offences: Evidence-based guidance for applied evaluators

Risk assessment is routinely applied in forensic decision-making. Although relative risk information from risk scales is robust across diverse samples and settings, estimates of the absolute probability of sexual recidivism are not. Nonetheless, absolute recidivism estimates are still necessary in some evaluations. This paper summarizes research and offers guidance on evidence-based practices for assessing the probability of recidivism, organized largely around questions commonly asked in court. Overall, estimating the probability of sexual recidivism is difficult and should be undertaken with humility and circumspection. That being said, research favours empirical-actuarial risk tools for this task, more structured scales, and the use of multiple scales. Professional overrides of risk scale results should not be used under any circumstances. Paradoxically, however, professional judgement is still required in some circumstances. Risk scales do not consider all relevant risk factors, but the added value of external risk factors reaches a point of diminishing returns and may or may not be incremental (or worse, can degrade accuracy). There are reasons actuarial risk scales may both underestimate recidivism (e.g., undetected offending, short follow-ups) and overestimate recidivism (e.g., inclusion of sex offences not of interest in some referral questions, data on declining crime and recidivism rates, newer studies demonstrating overestimation of recidivism). Given all these considerations and the need for humility, in the absence of exceptional circumstances, I would not deviate too far from empirical estimates.

The epiphanic moments of COVID-19: the revelation of painful national truths

ABSTRACT Focusing on the small nation state of Denmark, this article considers the implications of responses to COVID-19 for the dynamics of multiple belonging involving Western and Asian nations. The claim is that COVID-19’s cultural dimensions include the phenomenon of weakened attachments to an originary homeland on the part, for example, of non-resident Danes and a concomitant strengthening of commitments to adopted homelands in Asia, such as Hong Kong. To understand these shifting allegiances, it is necessary to be attuned to the cultural virulence of COVID-19. In coining the term ‘cultural virulence’ I seek to draw attention to the ways in which the virus has been not only a source of contagion and illness, but a veritable engine of telling cultural revelations. In COVID-19’s cultural virulence we discover striking manifestations of painful national truths that we ignore at our peril. Careful scrutiny of COVID-19’s epiphanic moments brings to light Western arrogance and exceptionalism, a costly refusal to acknowledge the tried and tested efficacy of Asian practices. Faced with a future marked by pandemics, we must recognize the need for humility in the West regarding the cultural and geographic provenance of best practices as these relate to the containment of serious epidemiological threats.

Theology in lockdown

The starting point for this paper is to reflect on Karl Barth’s assertion that that, when faced with a major crisis, the most appropriate response for Christian theology is to carry on as if nothing has happened. David Fergusson emphasises the need for humility and very careful thought in a situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic, however this does not mean that we must remain silent. Three points for reflection are offered: (1) an examination of how ideas about God’s providence, and our ability to give meaning to calamitous events, have changed over time; (2) consideration of what lessons might be learned from the experience of living through a pandemic in terms of what it means to be human; and (3) thoughts on the theme of hope in the teaching and life of Jesus, and implications and opportunities for the church.

Teaching Note—Exploring Podcast-Facilitated Course Work on Racism

ABSTRACT Social work educators teach cultural competency and guide students to understand and address racism. Using mixed methods, we explored the influence of a one-semester course on racial attitudes, skills, and knowledge among 10 diverse undergraduate students. The Seeing White podcast delivered content about historic and systemic race-based oppression and discrimination in American society. Students participated in seminars, maintained reflective journals, and wrote a self-analysis paper to integrate learning. Findings indicate increased knowledge and understanding of key concepts and a commitment to respond to institutional racism. Implications for social work education suggest the need for humility and a willingness for educators and institutions to share power. Ideas for course work on racism are provided.

Ecumenical Outreach and Interfaith Dialogue in Montreal

This Romanian-born author heads the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism and teaches at Concordia University, both in Montreal. She describes the sociopolitical concept of ecumenical cooperation and multicultural and interfaith concerns in Montreal and throughout Canada. She emphasizes the need for humility and love among Christians and in their meeting with persons of other faiths.

El giro no-liberal contemporáneo en economistas: emergencia del neoliberalismo y el posneoliberalismo en la visión de Hirschman

<p align="right"> </p><p>Este trabajo está dirigido a responder una pregunta. ¿Cómo podría Albert O. Hirschman tener una teoría del papel de la profesión de los economistas en los impulsos no-liberales que han surgido en muchas partes del mundo? Se argumenta que Hirschman consideraría que la profesión está significativa-mente implicada en haber creado las condiciones que produjeron la crisis democrática en desarrollo. Esto no se debería a la adhesión de la profesión a ningún modelo económico individual, ya sea keynesiano, neoliberal o cualquier otro. En cambio, Hirschman habría arraigado la culpabilidad de la profesión económica en su idealización y búsqueda de la coherencia institucional y política, es decir, en la búsqueda de la pureza teórica y el esfuerzo por realizarla en la práctica. Ese era el proyecto que estrechamente vinculaba a la arrogancia de la profesión económica. Y es sobre la necesidad de humildad, paciencia y reconocimiento de las limitaciones epistémicas de la profesión que Hirschman fue quizás más perspicaz y original.</p><p>JEL: B15; B17; B25</p><div><br clear="all" /><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div><p> </p></div></div>

Mass Digitization of Chinese Court Decisions: How to Use Text as Data in the Field of Chinese Law

Over the past five years, Chinese courts have placed tens of millions of court judgments online. We analyze the promise and pitfalls of using this remarkable new data source through the construction and examination of a dataset of 1,058,990 documents from Henan province. Courts posted judgments in roughly half of all cases in 2014 and, although the percent of cases posted online has likely risen since then, the single greatest challenge facing researchers remains documenting gaps in the data. We find that missing data varies widely by court, and that intermediate courts disclose significantly more documents than basic level courts. But court level, GDP per capita, population, and mediation rates are insufficient fully to explain variation in disclosure rates. Further work is needed to better understand how resources and incentives might be skewing the data. Despite incomplete information, however, a topic model of 20,321 administrative court judgments demonstrates how mass digitization of court decisions opens a new window into the practice of everyday law in China. Unsupervised machine learning combined with close reading of selected cases reveals surprising trends in administrative disputes as well as important research questions. Taken together, our findings suggest a need for humility and methodological pluralism among scholars seeking to use large-scale data from Chinese courts. The vast amount of incomplete data now available may frustrate attempts to find quick answers to existing questions, but the data excel at opening new pathways for research and at adding nuance to existing assumptions about the role of courts in Chinese society.

Reflections on the Economics Profession, the Neoliberal Conjuncture, and the Emerging Democratic Crisis: An Analysis in the Spirit of Albert O. Hirschman

How might Albert O. Hirschman have us theorize the culpability of the economics profession in the profound anti-democratic impulses that have taken root in so many parts of the world? In my reading, Hirschman would want to hold the profession accountable for having produced the unfolding democratic crisis. He was a profound critic of the pursuit of institutional and policy coherence, such as embodied in the utopian neoliberal project, and the associated pursuit of theoretical purity. Hirschman tied grand, systemic thinking to the hubris of the economics profession. He emphasized in particular, the need for humility, patience, and recognition of the epistemic limitations of the profession and the ineluctable complexity of social systems.

Responding to Fundamentalism: Secularism or Humble Faith?

The prospect of opening management research and practice to religious faith perspectives admits both hopeful possibilities and threatening hazards. Religions envision possibilities for human flourishing; they also raise the specter of anti-intellectualism and division among people due to fundamentalism. As such, this article addresses this question: How can researchers and practitioners draw on their religious faiths to enrich, rather than undermine, collegiality and progress in the field of management? Current practices within the field of management generally conform to secularism, which suppresses religious expression. By contrast, postsecularism recognizes the unavoidability of faith in making knowledge claims and affords a place for religious voices in academic discourse and public life. Religious traditions themselves provide a way to limit their hazards while opening to their constructive possibilities. In particular, they point to the need for humility in practicing and espousing faith. Reflective believing and interfaith dialogue can produce new understanding if practiced with humility.

The Personalism of John Henry Newman by John F. Crosby

Reviewed by: The Personalism of John Henry Newman by John F. Crosby John T. Ford C.S.C. (bio) The Personalism of John Henry Newman By John F. Crosby. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014. Pages: xxv + 227. Cloth: $59.95, ISBN 978-0-8132-2689-7; Paperback: $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8132-2917-1; E-book: $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8132-2690-3. In 1879, John Henry Newman chose as his cardinalatial motto—Cor ad cor loquitur—"Heart speaks to heart." Genealogically, this motto is a paraphrase of a saying of Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), whose portrait was given a place of prominence in Newman's private chapel at the Birmingham Oratory. Philosophically this motto reflects Newman's distinction between notional apprehension/assent, which emphasizes the role of the intellect in human thinking, and real apprehension/assent, which involves not only the intellect but also the imagination and will in the process of decision making. Pastorally, this motto exemplifies the core of Newman's ministry—both Anglican and Roman Catholic—religion is a matter not only of intellectual understanding, but also of personal commitment. As John Crosby's book indicates, this dual dimension was evident in Newman's sermons, which not only insisted on the importance of Christian doctrine, but were also aimed at eliciting a personal commitment from his hearers. In fact, many of his Anglican listeners long remembered the powerful impact that Newman's sermons made on their minds and hearts. As Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) once reminisced, "Who could resist the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's rising into the pulpit, and then in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were religious music—subtle sweet and mournful?" For his contemporaries, Newman's "personalism" was persuasive as well as memorable. As a newly ordained cleric of the Church of England, he almost single-handedly resurrected a moribund parish on the fringe of Oxford. As vicar of St. Mary's, his sermons were so popular that a Sunday excursion to Oxford was incomplete without hearing Newman preach. As a Roman Catholic, his writings attracted English readers around the world; his surviving letters, numbering some twenty thousand—roughly a third of his total output—were addressed to people from all walks of life. These are only a few examples of the "personalism" that characterized Newman's life and work. [End Page 75] Crosby's book examines Newman's "personalism" from a philosophical perspective. Starting with Newman's emphasis on "theocentric religion," Crosby notes a coincidentia oppositorum between objectivity—seen in Newman's espousal of "the dogmatical principle"—and subjectivity—exemplified in his personal acceptance of dogmatic teaching. Crosby then examines another coincidentia: the real and the notional, the imagination and the intellect, and discusses Newman's interpersonal encounters that are symbolized by cor ad cor loquitur. Crosby next discusses how religious truth is effectively transmitted more by personal influence than by doctrinal definitions or apologetical arguments. "Personalism" is then a necessary component of both intellectual understanding and practical reasoning. Newman was not reticent about reminding his audiences of the need for humility; similarly, today the "big bang theory" clearly emphasizes "an infinite abyss of existence." Finally, Crosby comes full circle by illustrating the "personalism" in Newman's view of the primordial knowledge of God. On the whole, this book is a masterwork. Crosby has accomplished what very few writers could do successfully; he has provided a stellar synthesis of Newman's personalist thought both in itself and in relation to many philosophers and theologians. Crosby is well versed in the corpus of Newman's writings—not only such familiar works as his Essay on Development, Idea of a University, Apologia pro Vita Sua and Grammar of Assent, but also his many essays, numerous sermons, and abundant correspondence. Crosby's interpretation of Newman's writings is dialogically interactive with such classical authors as Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Augustine, and Aquinas, as well as such modern writers as Buber, Husserl, William James, Kant, Kierkegaard, Marcel, Maritain, Rudolf Otto, Scheler, and von Hildebrand. As a result, Crosby...

Voices of Dissent

VOICES OF DISSENT The Unrepentant Renaissance: From Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton by Richard Strier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Pp. 328. $46.00 cloth.Taking his cue, and virtually his book title, from Michel de Montaigne's essay Of Repentance (Du repentir), Richard Strier argues that major Renaissance, Reformation, and CounterReformation authors did not necessarily uphold what he calls official values of time: reason, patience, moderation of anger, subordination of physical to spiritual, ordinary decency and morality, rejection of materialism and worldliness, and assertion of need for humility. Authors could, on contrary, challenge all these values and often did. This argument recalled to my mind a moment in a Shakespeare Association of America seminar years ago in which a prominent English academic, having been hauled over coals by seminar members, finally said, Oh, I see. You want me to be humble. Well, I won't be.For Strier, official values represent a Christian-Platonic synthesis to which all were expected to subscribe. Strier wants to make case that, in being bumptious, full-throated, perhaps perverse (2),Renaissance and Reformation authors frequently proved recalcitrant, yet reader may already pull up short to ask, Who ever thought otherwise? Names like those of Pietro Aretino (surprisingly, not mentioned in book), Leon Battista Alberti, Michelangelo Buonarotti (as poet), Giordano Bruno (one footnote), Niccolo Machiavelli (passing reference), Galileo Galilei (passing reference), Pico della Mirandola (not mentioned, although the dignity of man looms large in book), Francois Rabelais (not mentioned), Benvenuto Cellini (passing reference), Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, and Ben Jonson are known to everyone and not known for tame acquiescence. (God forbid that we should recall painter Caravaggio here.) Even if one is not on lookout for more insurrectionary spirits, which major English Renaissance author was free of bumptiousness, fullthroatedness, or perversity? William Shakespeare? George Chapman? John Donne? Philip Sidney? John Marston? Thomas Middleton? Andrew Marvell?The question, then, is why Strier feels he has to argue a point that, on face of it, no one would dispute. Part of Strier's implied answer is that resistance to official values could be pursued on a principled, systematic basis. It wasn't just a matter of bad boys (or girls) acting out. (Regrettable, in a way, since resistance to official values thus tends to become more a matter of principled, civil debate than misbehavior.) If official values were Christian and Platonic, Renaissance authors could appeal against them to Aristotle for vindication of proper pride, of greatness of mind or soul, and of just self-estimation. Those values could be opposed to official ones on both ethical and worldly grounds; ethical in that they discountenanced excessive or futile self-abjection (not without its own overreaching vanity); worldly in that they gave credit to dignified social appearances. According to Strier, this ethical Aristotelianism placed humanistically schooled Renaissance writers implicitly, but nevertheless often and deeply, at odds with leading Protestant Reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, both of them insisting on radical human unworthiness and depravity. In reformers' book, repentance was certainly called for, even if it remained unavailing without grace. Yet even when a writer like John Milton marched under banner of Protestant Christianity, he remained, in Strier's view, an unrepentant Aristotelian. Strier additionally argues that even Neoplatonism of Plotinus could be enlisted against prevailing Christian-Platonic synthesis. Plotinus's conception of value, unlike Plato's, gave pride of place to multiplicity, diversity, and expansiveness rather than unity and circumscription. His conception of value can therefore be seen as underwriting triumph of infinite variety (2. …

Sharing Place, Learning Together: Perspectives and Reflections on an Educational Partnership Formation With a Remote Indigenous Community School

Sustainable partnership formation in a remote Indigenous community involves social, cultural and political considerations. This article reports on the project, ‘Sharing Place, Learning Together: Supporting Sustainable Educational Partnerships to Advance Social Equity’, funded by the Melbourne Social Equity Institute (MSEI) at the University of Melbourne (UoM). The project's aims were to document insights into working with communities and educators in a remote community school in Western Arnhem Land, and to promote and raise Aboriginal students’ aspirations for engagement in further education through knowledge exchanges. Two project deliverables focus this paper: a participatory workshop conducted at UoM by educators and students from the school, and a qualitative research study that investigated the mutual partnership capacity building between the school community and UoM. The workshop provided an environment conducive to the participants sharing their cultural knowledge and perspectives on a two-way Learning on Country program with the wider UoM community. Extensive interview data collected from school and community-based participants identified the enabling and constraining factors impacting the formation of a sustainable partnership. The findings revealed the importance of prioritising relationship-building, the valuing of resource development, and the need for humility and openness to criticism when working with remote communities.

Renaissance Symposium

Renaissance Symposium Daniel Leary (bio) The Unrepentant Renaissance: From Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton. Richard Strier. University of Chicago Press. http://press.uchicago.edu. 328 pages; cloth, $5.00, eBook, $7.00–$36.00. Click for larger view View full resolution Detail from Cover Don’t take it unless you’re willing to sit up straight, take notes, and think. I’ve seen him in action before a group right here at City. He’s a sage on stage—like most good teachers, tends toward the histrionic, but he’s in earnest, got what he’d call “sprezzatura”—you know, with your nautical background, “yare,” takes on some of the biggies like Stephen Greenblatt on Thomas More and Stanley Fish on Milton. Strier is a big one himself: Distinguished Service Professor in the English Department and the Divinity School at Chicago and author/editor of books and articles on Renaissance texts and George Herbert’s poetry. Can that opening! My charade of advising a grad student at CUNY is unsustainable. So why did I start that way? Well, I got your attention, didn’t I? Here you are in the second paragraph already—might as well read it all. And there really is schoolroom aliveness in Strier’s give-and-take between text and footnotes—more about footnotes later. Finally, Freud would suggest my indirect approach reflects uneasiness, questioning whether I was unsure, whether I was in sympathy with what he was doing, whether I should—as they say—recuse myself. Professor Richard Strier is a cultural historian focused on “who in the when.” I’m a superannuated new critic focused on “what’s on the page.” The best use both, oriented toward one or the other critical approach, but always open to the unexpected. In Strier’s book, the surprises are in his revealing readings, not in his historical machine, his predetermined conclusions. When Strier chooses to devote a full chapter to a second-rate Shakespearean play—The Comedy of Errors—because it nicely demonstrates domestic materiality and worldliness in the English Renaissance, I’m put in mind of Horace’s Ars Poetica, in which he advises maintaining proportion between effort and result else we have “the mountain giving birth to a mouse.” Again, when Strier devotes the final chapters to the legalistic tangles of Milton’s writings on the Protestant Church and human will and penance, I note ruefully that he gives short shrift to Paradise Lost (1667), though, in fairness, Paradise Regained (1671) and Samson Agonistes (1671) earlier on were given space and attention. After wallowing through the Puritanical prose, is our reward to be Milton’s cautious suggestion that Luther/Calvin may be in error when they teach that half a world of blameless people are predestined for hell? Are we to tally this as an unrepentant’s refusal to accept humbly the dictates of ecclesiastics? This time, I’m put in mind of James Joyce’s Stephen confiding to a friend: “I’ve lost my faith,” and the friend, “You’ve become a Protestant?” and Stephen, “I’ve lost my faith, not my mind!” So that’s part of what my uneasiness is about. In the rest of the volume, Strier deals with major literary works with rich results, in spite of his history-of-ideas orientation. He outlines the five-fold schema that I am so uneasy about in the first sentences of the “Introduction”: Reason, patience, and moderation of anger; a proper understanding of the inferiority of the physical to the spiritual; ordinary decency and morality; a rejection of materialism and worldliness; an assertion of the need for humility—these are certainly recognized and widely voiced values in the…Renaissance period…. The chapters that follow treat, in order, texts that oppose [each of the above]…. That is why these texts are all, as my title suggests “unrepentant.” The texts cover a wide range of the Renaissance. Aside from the three authors in the title, we have Luther, Calvin, Herbert, Ignatius Loyola, Machiavelli, Francois de Sales, Donne, More, Montaigne, Descartes, Erasmus, and throw in these influences or commentators: Aristotle, Plato, St. Augustine and Nietzsche and Burckhardt, all of whom have multiple index citations. In...

Crossing the line

The use of military force has long represented a key foreign policy schism on the left and the legacy of two unpopular wars has widened this schism. Whether it is Libya today, or Afghanistan, Iraq, Rwanda or the Balkans over the past two decades, military intervention on humanitarian grounds provokes fierce debate among progressives.How do international obligations and the moral imperative to protect the innocent relate to the rights and expectations of other states and their citizens and the demands of domestic politics and policymaking?Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy makes the case for intervention, applauding the principles behind the UN's Responsibility to Protect and arguing that popular anger at the war in Iraq should not be allowed to trump international shame at events in Rwanda.By contrast, Dan Smith of International Alert expresses deep reservations, highlighting the need for humility when using lethal force in another sovereign nation and arguing that the duty to intervene comes only with the capacity to do so.Finally, Michael Harvey places the debate on progressive interventionism in the wider political context of traditional and new thinking on the British left and Labour's foreign policy for the future.

Polanyi's tacit knowing and the relevance of epistemology to clinical medicine

Most clinicians take for granted a simple, reductionist understanding of medical knowledge that is at odds with how they actually practice medicine; routine medical decisions incorporate more complicated kinds of information than most standard accounts of medical reasoning suggest. A better understanding of the structure and function of knowledge in medicine can lead to practical improvements in clinical medicine. This understanding requires some familiarity with epistemology, the study of knowledge and its structure, in medicine. Michael Polanyi's theory of tacit knowing is advanced as the basis for developing a more accurate understanding of medical knowledge. Tacit knowing, which explores the taken-for-granted background knowledge that underlies all human knowing, is explained in detail with a focus on its relevance for clinical medicine. The implications of recognizing tacit knowing in medicine and medical decisions are discussed. These include the ability to explain the importance of the clinical encounter in medical practice, mechanisms for analysing patient and doctor as persons, and the need for humility given the uncertainty that the tacit dimension injects into all medical decisions. This more robust medical epistemology allows clinicians to better articulate the nature and importance of patient-centred care, to avoid pitfalls inherent in reductionist approaches to medical knowledge, and to think more clearly about the relationships between medicine and health care at the individual and population levels.

The Fringes of Belief: English Literature, Ancient Heresy, and the Politics of Freethinking, 1660–1760 by Sarah Ellenzweig

105 writers importantly contributes to our understanding of the Enlightenment’s emergence. Their writings on toleration and the ways in which they were connected make a good start. This book lacks, however, a clear picture of the complexities of toleration— the subject of Part III. Mr. Marshall does not deliver the promised analysis. Instead their ideas are reviewed as onedimensional expressions of a more general ‘‘tolerationist’’ viewpoint. Despite the same simple tune, Locke and Bayle present diverse perspectives. For example , Locke’s arguments for promoting toleration of Protestant dissenters initially appeared in 1667 as beneficial to commerce; they reappear in the Letter, surrounded by a theological introduction , which makes the radical proposal that toleration is the chief mark, the ruling virtue, of the Christian Church. Yet it is a limited toleration that Locke proposes . Atheists are excluded from it; so too are those whose religions are headed by the ruler of a sovereign state. These limitations are political, not theological. The sort of toleration Locke proposes, moreover, aims at concord among Christians and conversion of unbelievers . In the Second and Third Letters concerning Toleration (and an unfinished Fourth), Locke clearly is not advocating religious pluralism. In his Philosophical Commentary, Bayle proposes a simple philosophical method. Toleration is purely rational: he argues that the words of Jesus cited in his title (Luke 14.23) must not be interpreted literally by a magistrate on the grounds that literal scriptural interpretations to justify a wrongful act must be rejected. In this instance , the wrongful act would be to deny the right of an individual to practice religion as conscience dictates. In civil society, natural rights trump revelation (among which is a right to obey the dictates of conscience). Yet Bayle’s toleration is limited, since he denies that atheists can properly appeal to conscience ; that would appeal to a transcendent authority whose existence they refuse to accept. Mr. Marshall’s narrative in Part III fails to bring out that the progress of modern society toward openness and universal toleration was not direct or inevitable, but crooked. Readers should also consult the more satisfactory treatment of Bayle and Locke on toleration by Jonathan Israel: Enlightenment Contested (Oxford, 2006), pp. 135–163. Victor Nuovo Middlebury College SARAH ELLENZWEIG. The Fringes of Belief: English Literature, Ancient Heresy , and the Politics of Freethinking, 1660–1760. Stanford: Stanford, 2008. Pp. xii ⫹ 240. $60. At the heart of this study is a proposed paradox: aristocratic English freethinkers who doubted the veracity of Scripture and revealed religion nevertheless found both necessary for an ordered society. Such freethinkers, the study contends, concealed their genteel unbelief through literary devices such as irony or ambiguity, even as they expounded a civil religion they deemed necessary for the masses. This twofold philosophy had precedents, Ms. Ellenzweig argues, in classical writers, who similarly viewed religion as a necessary fiction. The study probes the alliance between such skeptical unbelief and political conservatism. Through that alliance , religion was adapted to suit the needs of the modern state. The list of freethinkers under consideration— Rochester, Behn, Swift, and Pope— 106 suggests the study’s problematic use of the term ‘‘freethinker.’’ Almost immediately, readers will confront the deficits of treating eighteenth -century religious experience as if it simply mirrored modern religious experience. Concepts such as ‘‘freethinker ,’’ ‘‘skeptic,’’ and ‘‘deist’’ are discussed largely in the abstract, divorced from the polarizing force of religious and political controversy that often used these terms, not to advance unbelief, but to demonize opponents. The philosophical skepticism used by Catholic apologists to argue for the need for humility and clerical guidance in the face of complex religious and philosophical questions was intentionally equated with and thus reduced to theological skepticism or unbelief by Protestant polemicists , who hoped to discredit such lines of inquiry. For their part, Catholics repeatedly reduced the Anglican and radical Protestant emphasis on reason to Socinianism and later to deism. In actuality , confessional currents often bled into one another, but the rhetoric of controversy drew sharp distinctions between confessional identities. Creating a credible taxonomy of confessional belief requires a willingness to contrast the fixed boundaries of polemical debate with the far more porous boundaries of religious experience. The literary devices Ms. Ellenzweig...