The Hedgehog Review articles from June 2011

The Hedgehog Review archives from June 2011

From the editors.(Editorial)
June 22, 2011... IN HIS ESSAY FOR THIS ISSUE, RICHARD WOLIN QUOTES THE FRENCH POET, Paul Valery, saying "we no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit." It's a curious idea, since we usually think of ways to banish boredom, not make it bear fruit. How does...

Humanism amidst our machines.
June 22, 2011... At the close of the twentieth century, the entrepreneur and futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted in The Age of Spiritual Machines that "the primary political and philosophical issue of the next century will be the definition of who we are." He was by...

Reflections on the crisis in the humanities.
June 22, 2011... Introduction In the late 1990s, George Steiner published a thought-provoking study on "The Humanities--At Twilight?" At points, his tone was veritably Spenglerian. Steiner's narrative, as prefigured by the title, surveys a cultural landscape...

Humanism (1).(in connection with displacement)(Essay)
June 22, 2011... In this essay, I want to explore some dimensions of what the term "humanism" means--what it meant in the past and what it means today. In particular, I would like to consider the relation of displacement and humanism--a cultural ideal on the one...

Last Man or Overman? Transhuman Appropriations of a Nietzschean Theme
June 22, 2011... The existence on earth of an animal soul turned against itself, taking sides against itself was something so new, profound, unheard of enigmatic, contradictory, and pregnant with a future that the aspect of the earth was essentially altered. ...

On technology and humanity: a bibliographic essay.
June 22, 2011... It would be hard to exaggerate the aggregate significance of technology for human life. Few today are so naive as to hope for a technological solution to all of life's woes, let alone a technological solution to human life altogether, although...

Blurring the boundary between "person" and "product": human genetic technologies through the year 2060.
June 22, 2011... Police inspector: "You are playing God!" Scientist: Somebody has to!" --Steve Martin (2) Genetic technologies have been growing rapidly in sophistication and efficacy over recent decades, opening new avenues for humans to modify their own...

Homegrown jihadists.(link between terrorism cases and possible radicalization of American Muslims)(Report)
June 22, 2011... Nearly a decade after the attacks of 9/11, the possible radicalization of Muslims living in the United States remains an ongoing concern. Just as the media coverage of the killing of Osama Bin Laden in early May was subsiding, several cases of...

The secularity of intelligent design.
June 22, 2011... FEW ENDEAVORS WOULD APPEAR TO BE as anti-secular as Intelligent Design's (ID) challenge to modern science. As the heir to scientific creationism's attempt to develop an alternative to secular biology, ID is a collection of theories that hope to...

An excerpt from The Retrieval of Ethics.(BOOK FORUM)(Excerpt)
June 22, 2011... ACADEMIC SPECIALIZATION MAKES CLEAREST SENSE IN THOSE FIELDS WHERE THE POINT OF research is the efficient and reliable production of discrete bits of information that can be grasped and put to use by others without recapitulation of the arduous...

Raimond Gaita comments.(BOOK FORUM)(philosophy as an academic discipline; 'The Retrieval of Ethics' by Talbot Brewer)(Critical essay)
June 22, 2011... In Plato's wonderful dialogue, Gorgias, Callicles puts the philosophical life seriously to the question. Philosophy, he tells Socrates, is admirable in the young. The man who does not pursue it, he says, is "illiberal and one who will never...

Timothy Chappell comments.(BOOK FORUM)(philosophy of science; 'The Retrieval of Ethics' by Talbot Brewer)(Critical essay)
June 22, 2011... Wilfrid Sellars thought the point of philosophy was to see how things--in the broadest sense of the word "things"--hang together--in the broadest senses of the words "hang" and "together." Different possibilities emerge when we get more specific...

Nicholas Wolterstorff comments.(BOOK FORUM)(state of philosophy; 'The Retrieval of Ethics' by Talbot Brewer)(Critical essay)
June 22, 2011... Tal Brewer is a philosopher whose area of concentration is ethics; he is not a philosopher whose specialty is ethics. Philosophers don't have specialties; they aren't specialists. Why isn't a philosopher's area of concentration his or her...

Talbot Brewer responds.(BOOK FORUM)(practice of philosophy; 'The Retrieval of Ethics')(Essay)
June 22, 2011... I'm grateful to Rai Gaita, Tim Chappell, and Nick Wolterstorff for these thought-provoking comments on the closing words of my book, where I wanted to say something about the telos of theoretical reflection that did not fit comfortably within...

The theological roots of liberalism in Turkey: "Muslimism" from Islamic fashion to foreign policy.
June 22, 2011... MANY SOCIAL THEORISTS, ESPECIALLY IN international relations and sociology, assume that there is a divide both between religion and modernity and between politics and culture. These divides are then used in depictions of Islamic revivalism,...

Student health.(emotional health of college freshmen)(Survey)
June 22, 2011... For the past 25 years, the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA has been asking a vast sample of incoming college freshmen to rate their emotional health. In the annual survey, "The American Freshman," HERI also asks students how often...

The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History.
June 22, 2011... Samuel Moyn Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. There is no more universal moral language in the world today than human rights. Indeed, it is striking that American government officials have invoked "human rights" even more...

What is a person?
June 22, 2011... Christian Smith Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2010 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The card-carrying sociologist's first reaction to Christian Smith's hefty new book might well be to scratch her head in bewilderment at the title. "What...

White Coat Black Hat: adventures on the dark side of medicine.
June 22, 2011... Carl Elliott Boston: Beacon, 2010. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Reading Carl Elliott's disarming expos[C] of the effects of big pharmaceuticals on medical practice in America, I initially could not avoid thinking of Bernie Madoff, the epitome...

Age of Fracture.
June 22, 2011... Daniel T. Rodgers Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2011. If the word Zeitgeist has any legitimacy left, then its a useful descriptor of what Daniel T. Rodgers's new book, Age of Fracture, tries to describe for...

The New Metaphysicals: spirituality and the American religious imagination.
June 22, 2011... Courtney Bender Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. American religion has been described as a spiritual marketplace in which people are religious consumers free to shop for the faiths that meet their individual tastes and...