Adam Smith and the Stoic principle of suicide

A substantial portion of Adam Smith's discussion of Stoicism in TMS VII is dedicated to the Stoic “principle of suicide,” according to which suicide is sometimes morally required. While scholars agree that Stoicism exercised considerable influence over Smith, no recent work has explored his views on suicide, despite the central role it plays in his treatment of Stoicism. I argue that Smith opposes the principle of suicide on both epistemic and moral grounds, providing an important critique of Stoicism. I also show how Smith departs from other early modern accounts of suicide by offering a notably humane analysis of this tragic act. I conclude by considering what Smith's discussion of Stoicism and suicide tells us about how his moral theory, and I forward a reading of Smith as a skeptic.     

Adam Smith,Ethicist

This essay argues that Adam Smith's political economy is premised upon a moral anthropology, and that greater attention to Smith from religious ethicists may both improve Smith scholarship and deepen dialogue on economic themes within the field of religious ethics. It does so first by surveying common readings of Smith and noting that engagement of his work within religious ethics and theology tends to rely on misconceptions prevalent in these readings. It then outlines the moral psychology that links Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations and explains the importance of this moral psychology for Smith's ambivalent analysis of commercial society. Reflecting on the case of Smith's work, it concludes by arguing that attention from religious ethicists may also improve contemporary political economic debates, given that they are often premised upon latent assumptions about moral anthropology.     

Hume's Internalist Epistemology in EHU 12

Much has been written about Kemp Smith's (1941) famous problem regarding the tension between Hume's naturalism and his scepticism. However, most commentators have focused their attention on the Treatise; those who address the Enquiry often take it to express essentially the same message as the Treatise. When Hume's scepticism in the Enquiry has been investigated in its own right, commentators have tended to focus on Hume's inductive scepticism in Sections 4 and 5. All in all, it seems that Section 12 has been unduly neglected. This paper seeks to address Kemp Smith's problem from the standpoint of Hume's treatment of scepticism in EHU 12, and finds an interesting internalist account that makes sense both of Hume's discussion in EHU 12, and his aims in the Enquiry as a whole. Moreover, it is one that is of substantive philosophical interest, having intriguing parallels to contemporary epistemological accounts.     

Teaching Elder: Erik H. Erickson

A renowned child psychoanalyst, Erik H. Erikson (1902–1994) is perhaps best known for his work on developmental theory (Childhood and Society, 1950) and his studies of the lives of Martin Luther (Young Man Luther, 1958) and Gandhi (Gandhi's Truth, 1969). Twice he found himself intensely engaged in the role of teacher – once as a young artist who had been called by a friend to help in the progressive school formed for the children of Sigmund and Anna Freud's patients in Vienna (1927–1932), and years later (1960–1970) as a tenured professor at Harvard. This essay describes Erickson's teaching experience in both settings and suggests some of the reasons he was honored by Harvard in 1980 as a “humane teacher.” Implications from Erikson's educational practice are drawn that demonstrate how Erikson moved beyond the rote memorization and authoritarian educational practice he experienced as a youth. The essay suggests Erikson's teaching stance at Harvard fits the author's theological tradition's use of the term “teaching elder.”     

Regulation of Teacher Elicitations in the Mathematics Classroom

Using the perspective of instructional conversation, we investigated how one teacher regulated student participation and conceptual reasoning in the middle-school mathematics classroom. We examined the elicitations—questions and provocative statements—made by the teacher over a four-day algebra lesson. Analyses showed how the teacher systematically regulated the level of cognitive complexity of his elicitations in reaction to students' responses. When students gave inaccurate or incomplete answers, the teacher tended to reduce the level of cognitive complexity needed to respond to a subsequent elicitation, with the apparent impact being that he scaffolded participation and reasoning. When students provided responses that were mathematically accurate, the teacher usually increased the elicitation level, which subsequently engaged students in more sophisticated forms of reasoning.     

An Open Heart,an Open Mind: An Interview With Dr. Cheri Smith

Dr. Cheri Smith has been a distinguished and contributing member of the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling (ASERVIC) for over 20 years. Dr. Smith's commitment as well as advocacy for ASERVIC and the counseling profession is remarkable. The purpose of this article is to highlight Dr. Smith's contributions to ASERVIC through an interview that focuses on her inspirations and influences; involvement in various leadership roles; and views on ASERVIC's past, present, and future.     

Scientology and Catholicism Do Mix: A Note on Teaching New Religions in a Catholic Classroom

Abstract. This note from the classroom explores teaching new or alternative religions within the context of a Roman Catholic Liberal Arts College. The essay will specifically focus on a section of a course entitled “Modern Religious Movements” in which students were asked to consider different methodological approaches to the teaching and study of Scientology and the Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary. This note from the classroom details how this rather unexpected comparison prompted students to reconsider the category cult and argues that encouraging self‐reflexivity in a largely Catholic classroom can become a crucial means for engaging a broader discussion of new religions, cult discourse, and the academic study of religion itself.     

Vodou and Haiti: A Conference on Haitian Vodou,Mission Statement of a New Association: The Congress of Santa Barbara

J oseph Smith, Jr claimed to have seen an angel in the autumn of 1823, and to have learned from that angel of the Book of Mormon. He further claimed that the da y after his vision he found the Book of Mormon plates. An analysis of Smith's vision narratives-the earliest of which dates to 1832-shows that such claims were anachronistic. Smith could not have found the plates that year. Possibly Smith invented the vision in order to gain status in his family; more probably, however, there was a vision (hallucination) which Smith interpreted differently as time passed and he saw its significance for his career as prophet and ' translator'.     

Challenging Sociological Reductionism

The author analyzes Christian Smith's What Is a Person? from a Christian theological‐ethical perspective, assessing the way in which he tackles sociological theories that reflect secularized and reductionist assumptions about the human person, and offering a friendly critique of the Christian personalist, humanist, and virtue ethic that he deploys to challenge his field.     

Classroom quality as a predictor of first graders' time in non-instructional activities and literacy achievement

This study investigated how quality of the classroom learning environment influenced first grade students' (n = 533) time spent in two non-instructional classroom activities (off-task and in transition) and their subsequent literacy outcomes. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that higher classroom quality was related to higher student performance in reading comprehension and expressive vocabulary. Further, classroom quality predicted the amount of time students spent off-task and in transitions in the classroom, with slopes of change across the year particularly impacted. Mediation effects were detected in the case of expressive vocabulary such that the influence of classroom quality on students' achievement operated through students' time spent in these non-instructional activities. Results highlight the importance of overall classroom quality to how students navigate the classroom environment during learning opportunities, with subsequent literacy achievement impacted. Implications for policy and educational practices are discussed.     

Love,money and madness: Money in the economic philosophies of Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In this paper, the economic philosophies of Adam Smith (1723–1790) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) are discussed, with special reference to their respective views on money. It is argued that self-love plays an important role in their philosophies of money. For Smith, self-love is the foundation of economic activity and a means to quantify exchange relations. Rousseau, in turn, rejects money because of the possibility that it may give rise to destructive and narcissistic forms of self-love—which he calls amour-propre. It seems that Smith's and Rousseau's views of money are in opposition to each other; however, both argue that their view of money becomes unsustainable, if not qualified, by the embedded tension present in self-love. For Smith, self-love must remain in tension with sympathy for the economy to function, as discussed in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Rousseau concedes that in society both amour-propre and amour de soi (passionate, sacrificial love) are necessary. This tension introduces a moment of madness that may have important implications when contemporary philosophies of economics engage issues such as economic inequality and poverty.     

Increasing Student Classroom Participation Through Self-Modeling

ABSTRACT

The study investigated the effect of self-modeling as an intervention to improve classroom participatory behavior and whether or not increased classroom participation influenced teacher's perceptions of the students' behavior. The study employed a multiple baseline design across five students, and a control, with a follow-up. All students evidenced an increase in classroom participation subsequent to viewing the intervention videotapes. In addition, teacher perceptions of students' behavior improved on several dimensions.     

The Emergence and Development of Bekhterev's Psychoreflexology in Relation to Wundt's Experimental Psychology

After its foundation, the Laboratory for Experimental Psychology at Leipzig University became an international center for psychological research, attracting students from all over the world. The Russian physiologist and psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev (1857–1927) was one of Wilhelm Wundt's students in 1885, and after returning to Russia he continued enthusiastically his experimental research on mental phenomena. However, he gradually distanced himself from Wundt's psychological project and developed a new concept of psychology: the so‐called Objective Psychology or Psychoreflexology. The goal of this paper is to analyze Bekhterev's position in relation to Wundt's experimental psychology, by showing how the former came to reject the latter's conception of psychology. The results indicate that Bekhterev's development of a philosophical program, including his growing interest in establishing a new Weltanschauung is the main reason behind his divergence with Wundt, which is reflected in his conception of scientific psychology. Despite this, Wundt remained alive in Bekhterev's mind as an ideal counterpoint.     

Adam Smith: Self-Command,Practical Reason and Deontological Insights

In this paper, I argue that, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith conflates two different meanings of ‘self-command’, which is particularly puzzling because of the central role of this virtue in his theory. The first is the matrix of rational action, the one described in Part III of the TMS and learned in ‘the great school of self-command’. The second is the particular moral virtue of self-command. Distinguishing between these two meanings allows us, on the one hand, to solve some apparent paradoxes of the text; and, on the other, to identify various features of both the practical reason and deontological ethical traditions that are present in Smith's sentimentalism, enriching his phenomenological account of moral actions.     

On being and holding responsible

In his Responsibility and the moral sentiments, Wallace develops the idea that we should think of what it is to be morally responsible for an act in terms of norms for holding someone responsible for that act. Smith has recently claimed that Wallace's approach and those like it are ‘fundamentally misguided’. She says that such approaches make the mistake of incorporating conditions for ‘actively blaming’ others into the basic conditions for being responsible, when in fact the conditions for active blame ‘go beyond’ the basic conditions. In this essay, I argue that Smith's otherwise illuminating discussion of these ‘Normativist’ approaches does not undermine them. Specifically, I maintain that being actively blamable by certain persons with the relevant standing is actually constitutive of being responsible for at least some acts. By distinguishing between persons with different sorts of standing, a Normativist approach can avoid Smith's challenge. My larger aim is thus to clarify and defend the Normativist approach.     

Murakami,Connoisseur of Uncertainty: Commentary on Paper by Thomas Rosbrow

My discussion embroiders around Thomas Rosbrow's view of Murakami as a “trauma analyst.” I highlight the ways in which Murakami's writing reflects his keen sensitivity to existential uncertainty and how he seems to understand trauma, much as I do, as a shattering experience that destroys the certainties that organize psychological life and generates efforts at self restoration. Although I share Rosbrow's view that “After the Quake” depicts a character's awakening from the dissociative manifestations of trauma, I spell out how my perspective on this process differs from his.     

Robertson Smith,Durkheim, and sacrifice: An historical context for the elementary forms of the religious life

The influence of William Robertson Smith's Lectures on the Religion of the Semites on Emile Durkheim's sociology of religion was profound; and since that 1889 work was largely concerned with the origin and meaning of the institution of sacrifice, an examination of the contemporary literature concerned with that rite is of considerable value in understanding Durkheim's intentions in writing certain portions of the Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. The discussion of sacrifice is thus traced with particular emphasis on Tylor, Wellhausen, Smith, Frazer, Hubert, and Mauss. Within this intellectual context, Durkheim's treatment of sacrifice in the Elementary Forms appears a rather unlikely combination of a speculative reconstruction of early Hebrew society, an ambiguous body of Australian ethnographic data, and a reformulation of Kantian ethics. Some concluding remarks are made concerning the value of such reconstructions of intellectual context in the study of the history of the social sciences.     

II. The business of anthologies

This article examines Nozick's claim (in Anarchy, State and Utopia) to have shown that a commitment to individual liberties requires acceptance of full capitalist property rights. The main gap in Nozick's argument is that he fails to show how individuals can become entitled to full control over previously unheld resources. Nozick draws on Locke's view that title is acquired by ‘mixing one's labour’. But he excises certain (dubious) premisses on which Locke's theory relies and provides no alternative grounds for thinking that the labourer is entitled to full control over his product.     

Learning as Leaving Home: Fear,Empathy, and Hospitality in the Theology and Religion Classroom

The article is a response to this journal's call for papers on metaphors for teaching, and also draws from a previous publication in which Kent Eilers developed a methodology for teaching global theologies. In this methodology, the ultimate goal was the development of “hermeneutical dispositions of empathy, hospitality, and receptivity toward culturally diverse voices” (2014, 165). This article considers the goals of Eilers' methodology, and others like his, and how it is that the metaphors of “leaving home” and “communal imagination” highlight the importance of the ambient and interpersonal features of a classroom and their effect on the attainment of the above goals. In so doing, it extends the conversation beyond content and methodology in teaching theology and religion into the realms of philosophy of education, as well as the fields of moral and values education. It is contended that the metaphors informed by these areas of study facilitate the attainment of such goals, and similar ones, by demonstrating that the cultivation of an ambience of care, trust, and compassion within the classroom constitutes an essential foundation for learning in which students “leave home” and cultivate “communal imagination.” The article finishes with practical suggestions for educators in theology and religion.     

Responses to the AAR‐Teagle White Paper: “The Religious Studies Major in a Post‐9/11 World”

In October 2008 The American Academy of Religion published the findings of an eighteen month study (conducted with funding from the Teagle Foundation) on “The Religious Studies Major in a Post–9/11World: New Challenges, New Opportunities.” Re‐published here, this AAR‐Teagle White Paper provides the opportunity for four respondents to raise issues and questions about the teaching of religion in their own institutional contexts. First, Jane Webster describes how the White Paper's “five characteristics of the religion major” find expression in her biblical literature course. Then James Buckley suggests some of the general level teaching issues provoked by the study and analyzes how well the White Paper aligns with how the teaching of religion is conceived in his Catholic university context. Tim Jensen draws comparisons between the White Paper and the higher education structures and goals from his university context in Denmark, raising questions about what motivates students to major in religious studies, the “utility” of a religious studies major, and whether students' religious and spiritual concerns ought to enter the classroom. And finally Stacey Floyd‐Thomas finds surprising similarities between the state of the religion major and the various crises facing contemporary North American theological education.