Moral reasoning and emphasis on different kinds of moral content

A test designed to differentiate between conventional and postconventional moral reasoning was completed by 56 university students, who also rated positive and negative items in four general moral content areas. Postconventionality was related to relatively greater stress on social and especially on international moral content. Overall and within-area differences were discussed with reference to the structural characteristics of each type of moral orientation, especially the consequences of the postconventional capacity to apply ideal role-taking in moral reasoning.     

ONE BRAIN,TWO MINDS: AN ESSAY ON PRIMORDIAL AND ADVANCED MENTAL ACTIVITY

The Primordial Mind in Health and Illness: A Cross‐Cultural Perspective. By Michael Robbins. London/New York: Routledge, 2011. 240 pp.     

THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER AND GOETHE'S UNDERSTANDING OF MELANCHOLIA

The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Louise Bogan. 167 pp. In The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Novella. New York: Random House, 1971.     

A Comedian and a Fascist Walk into Freud's Bar: On the Mass Character of Stand-Up Comedy

This article explores the psychoanalytic points of commonality between stand-up comedy shows and fascist rallies, arguing that both are concerned with the creation of a “mass” audience. The article explores the political significance of this analogy by arguing that while stand-up shows are not as regressive as fascist rallies, their “mass” character does run counter to any political aspirations they may have toward the end of critical consciousness raising.     

The Gospels in the Muslim Discourse of the Ninth to the Fourteenth Centuries: An exegetical inventorial table (part I)

Whereas it is generally accepted that Muslim polemicists against Christianity habitually condemned the Gospels as corrupt, a surprising number in fact quoted from all four Gospels, and employed them in arguments that were both directed against Christian beliefs and constructed to defend Islam. This article brings together in tabular form more than 1270 Gospel references from 23 works by 20 Muslim authors, from the early third/ninth century to the early eighth/fourteenth century, and by means of a system of keys shows how they were deployed in support of a range of doctrinal points. The article is divided into four sections that appear in the four issues of ICMR vol. 14 through 2003.     

KNOWLEDGE AND IMAGINATION IN FICTION AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Abstract: Autobiographies are particularly interesting in the context of moral philosophy because they offer us rare and extended examples of how other people think, feel and reflect, which is of crucial importance in the development of phronesis (practical wisdom). In this article, Martha Nussbaum's use of fictional literature is shown to be of limited interest, and her arguments in Poetic Justice against the use of personal narratives in moral philosophy are shown to be unfounded. An analysis of Aristotle's concept of mimesis shows that Nussbaum's claims for fictional literature also apply to personal narratives. A case is then made for the importance of personal narratives in developing practical wisdom, and three sub‐genres of autobiography are discussed: (1) the confession, (2) the apology and (3) the testimonial. These sub‐genres exemplify some of the unique features of personal narratives.