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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Limits Of The Senses In The Zhongyong, Jane Geaney
The Limits Of The Senses In The Zhongyong, Jane Geaney
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
The Zhongyong ends with an odd statement about de 德 (charisma or virtue).2 It cites a line from the Book of Songs that appears to say that de resembles a piece of hair—perhaps in being equally light—but the Zhongyong rejects this analogy, noticing that de is without smell or sound.3 This seems to be a strange comment since, while it might be plausible to think of hair as smelling, there seems to be no way around the incongruity of speaking of hair in terms of whether or not it makes sound. Perhaps the passage is attempting to say, …
Introduction To John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, G. Scott Davis
Introduction To John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, which first appeared in three installments of Fraser's Magazine in 1861, was intended as a defense of the notorious doctrine identified with the liberal reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and with the author's father, James Mill (1773-1836). The defense was successful. While "the principle of utility, or as Bentham has latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle," may have scandalized Victorian England, Mill's Utilitarianism became one of the defining documents of modern British and American liberalism. It is impossible to appreciate contemporary social and political life without coming to grips with utilitarianism.
Introduction To G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, G. Scott Davis
Introduction To G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
When Principia Ethica appeared, in 1903, it became something of a sacred text for the Cambridge-educated elites-Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes-who, along with Virginia Woolf, would form the core of the Bloomsbury Group. In a letter of October 11, 1903, Strachey confesses to Moore that he is "carried away" by Principia, which inaugurates, for him, "the beginning of the Age of Reason." Moore's critique of convention, his caustic dismissal of his philosophical predecessors, and the relentless rigor of his method promised a revolution in morality commensurate with the modernist transformation of art and literature. Principia Ethica shifted …