... examined — which may be called “intellectualist” — share two features: they originate in skeptical doubt about whether what appears to be rational activity really is, and they ascribe knowledge of the norms of her activity to the person doing it. Given their first feature, intellectualist accounts seek...

...-American mind. The reviewer asks whether the Chinese, now facing a plurality of histories, wonder if there may be a plurality of li (principles), as well, or at least if there can be a li that is “universal” in the sense that it is common to them all. The problem here, the reviewer argues, in part derives...

...Anne Marie Wolf Examining, for a symposium on xenophilia, the views of some of the period’s most open-minded and tolerant thinkers, as well as the historical development of Christian writers’ treatment of Muslims, this article considers whether the term Islamophilia can be applied to any...

...Lilith Acadia In a contribution to a symposium on xenophilia, this essay — a study of Brian Friel’s 1980 play Translations — raises the question of whether all xenophilia is by nature doomed to fail. Set in Ireland in 1833, the drama centers on the tension arising from a young British lieutenant’s...

... in the Babylonian Talmud. Examining the story of Rav Rehumi and his wife in Ketubot 62b, the author inquires whether differences of culture and the passage of time make it impossible for us to determine whether love is the affect involved. The case is especially difficult to resolve, given that, while there may...

...Elizabeth Fox-Genovese This text of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's is published posthumously in the context of pieces dedicated to her memory. It is unclear whether she intended it for eventual publication or whether she had intended it as a lecture; nor is there decisive evidence for a date...

... as if a parable, and while its moral goes unstated, the reader's attention is drawn to the unsettled question of whether James exerted maximal effort for minimal results, or whether he knew something about the value of freshness undreamed of by those more patient and dignified in pursuing their desires. © 2013...

...Angela Hobbs In a response to two essays by Jan Zwicky on “lyric philosophy,” this piece questions whether there are positions that cannot be fully articulated in conventional, linear prose without contradiction and, if so, whether or in what sense they can be considered philosophical positions...

..., is continuously essayed. As he writes: “The question, in other words, is [no longer] whether worldviews are commensurable. The question is whether we should do what it takes—all that it takes—to communicate and reconcile with those we fear. . . . But whoever—let us admit it—takes on the task is going to end up...

... question is whether and how inclusionary definitions of belonging can be made to oughtweigh exclusionary ones,” regardless of the political context. Copyright © 2005 Duke University Press 2005 cosmopolitanism Alexandria Etienne Roboly Edward Said empires ...

...Isaiah Berlin; Jeffrey M. Perl Berlin discerns three great crises in Western political thought, each challenging one of its three primary tenets. The three tenets are (1) that questions about correct human actions are answerable, whether the answers are yet known or not; (2) that the answers...

...Manfred Frank; Ruth Morris; Barry Allen; Jeffrey M. Perl Frank in this article treats the disagreement between François Lyotard and Jürgen Habermas over whether there are arguments that cannot be decided rationally. Lyotard identifies rational undecidability as the “postmodern condition.” Habermas...

... more or less culturally homogeneous societies formed around shared values. Williams shares the communitarians’ critique of Rawls’s theory as excessively abstract, questioning whether a rational commitment to pluralism as the most just social arrangement can serve as a sufficiently binding social force...

... (Theophrastus was Aristotle’s student) and geometry in the Euclidean mode have in common is that when their vocabularies are applied to characterization, they delimit characters in terms of established categories—whether of ideal shapes or statistically probable types—while discounting whatever features may...

... in the Eucharist than to dismiss the issue as vexingly trivial in comparison with the question of whether God thinks that each or any of us adequately loves him. For the questions that concern Donne, there are no determinate answers available, and no standard vocabulary. But the poet's alternating acquiescence...

...”: that is, on whether the vertiginous depths of analogy participate in an underlying substrate of meaning, recognizable as “the Word of God.” Copyright © 2021 by Duke University Press 2021 J. M. Coetzee analogy allegory recognition secularism The Childhood of Jesus, The Schooldays of Jesus, The Death...

...Chris Voparil Abstract In a symposium built around a critical reassessment by Nicholas Gaskill of Richard Rorty's pragmatism, this contribution examines the provocative question of whether Rorty's rhetoric hinders Rortian aims. When reconsidering him in company with “the philosophical wing...

... of the universal varies; sometimes it is said to be God, sometimes the moral law, and sometimes reason (whether human reason or an objective reason inherent in the nature of the world). The process of grappling with how human beings must orient themselves toward the universal very often issues in conclusions...

... processes of boundary making and boundary maintenance whereby contrasting cultural traits or contents are arbitrarily assigned to and distributed among preexisting social forms and social scales (whether individuals, communities, or nations). Conversely, the more intensive intertribal engagements described...

...Colin Richmond The author here extends a dialogue with Jeffrey M. Perl, published in the Spring 2010 issue of Common Knowledge , under the title “`Decorate the Dungeon.'” That dialogue concerns whether Thomas More could have avoided martyrdom though he acted with heroic quietism during...