From Ethics to Aesthetics: A Reconsideration of Buddhist Monastic Rules in the Light of Michel Foucault's Work on Ethics

This article considers the recent debate over the nature of Buddhist ethics largely conducted by scholars who have argued in different ways that Buddhist ethics may be assimilated to or may correspond with different forms of western ethical theory.

I argue that the interpretation of Buddhist texts, and in particular the Vinaya, in light of western ethical theory creates misunderstanding. I argue that in each case of a supposed ethical dilemma, Buddhist ethics should be seen as empirical, since the ultimate point of reference for the choices involved in a proposed action lies in the purity and wholesomeness of each individual action.

My approach follows Foucault's argument for scepticism with regard to the notions of a universal nature or of a universal rationality. I argue that it is not instructive to read Buddhist texts against generalized standards. Rather, it is more productive to regard ethics as creating a space for the ethical, not in a normative sense but one arising from personal practice as related to individual circumstances.

At the same time, this article outlines the role of beauty and its role in ethical formation. I suggest that one interpretation of Theravada Buddhism has regarded beauty as a form of sensuous pleasure, which is seen as a danger for someone on the spiritual path. However, an alternative reading of such texts is more sympathetic to the educative role of beauty.     

PREGNANCY: AN UNTHINKABLE REALITY

A therapist's pregnancy is bound to provoke profound conflicts in all patients, particularly those relating to envy, exclusion and loss as infantile aspects of the patient and their relation to the maternal object are revived. This paper explores the impact of the therapist's pregnancy on two patients for whom the experience was felt to be catastrophic. I suggest that in their early efforts to adapt to an inaccessible, disturbed and disturbing object who could not face reality or cope with life, these patients were compromised in their own ability to accept the facts of life and moreover to bear the frustration of exclusion, representing for them as it did, total inaccessibility. The pregnancy was so hated and distorted that it seemed to take on the meaning for them of a cruel ‘mad’ idea.     

Stacking fault and dislocation glide on the basal plane of graphite

Generalized stacking-fault energies for the basal plane of graphite are calculated from first principles for slip along two high-symmetry directions. The rhombohedral fault energy compares well with experiment and the anisotropy in behaviour is consistent with observed dislocation network geometry. Utilizing these calculated fault energies within a modified Peierls-Nabarro model, we estimate the barrier for basal dislocation motion based on lattice friction. This is found to be extremely small, from which we conclude that dislocation network interaction and pinning, rather than the Peierls barrier, must determine the practical shear strength of graphite. However, at low dislocation densities or over small crystallite regions, the shear strength should tend to this lower limit. We discuss the relevance of this to the mechanism of lubrication.     

Reviews

The Gulag Archipelago (Vols. 1 and 2) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Collins, 1974 and 1975, 600 pp. and 712 pp. £3.50 and £4.95.

Arkhipelag Gulag (Vols. 1, 2 and 3) YMCA Press, Paris, 1973, 1974 and 1976, 606 pp., 657 pp. and 581 pp. No price.

A Marxist Looks at Jesus by Milan Machovec, Darton Longman & Todd, 1976, 220 pp. £2.95.

White Book on Restrictions of Religion in the USSR by Michael Bourdeaux, Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR, Brussels, 1976, 66 pp., 65p.

Religious Liberty in the Soviet Union: WCC and USSR—A Post‐Nairobi Documentation edited by Michael Bourdeaux, Hans Hebly and Eugen Voss, Keston College (CSRC), 1976, 96 pp., £1.50.     

The Adolescent Unresolved Attachment Questionnaire: The Assessment of Perceptions of Parental Abdication of Caregiving Behavior

This article reports on the Adolescent Unresolved Attachment Questionnaire (AUAQ), a brief questionnaire that assesses the caregiving experiences of unresolved adolescents (as recipients of caregiving). The AUAQ was developed and validated in a large normative sample (n = 691) and a sample of 133 adolescents in psychiatric treatment. It is a self-report questionnaire consisting of 3 scales with Likert-type responses ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The Aloneness/Failed Protection Scale assesses the adolescent's perception of the care provided by the attachment figure. The Fear Scale taps the fear generated by the adolescent's appraisal of failed attachment figure care. The Anger/Dysregulation Scale assesses negative affective responses to the perceived lack of care from the attachment figure. All scales demonstrated satisfactory internal reliability and agreement between scores for adolescents (n = 91) from the normative sample who completed the AUAQ twice. Adolescents in the clinical sample also completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1984/1985/1996); the AUAQ demonstrated high convergent validity with the AAI.     

g2K

To answer the questions posed by the organizers of the millennial debate on g, or general cognitive ability, we begin by briefly reviewing its history. We tackle the question of what g is by addressing g as a psychometric score and examining its psychological and physiological correlates. Then tacit knowledge and other non-g characteristics are discussed. Next, we review the practical utility of g in personnel selection and conclude by explaining its importance to both organizations and individuals.     

On Not Three Male Gods: Retrieving Wisdom in Trinitarian Discourse

Abstract : In response to recent debates over gender and the Trinity, this essay examines how biblical texts concerning Christ as the Wisdom of God played a crucial role in developing the case for the co‐equal Trinity. The theme of wisdom not only helps us understand why trinitarian doctrine precludes a tritheism of three male gods or a hierarchy within the Trinity, but it also provides insight into what lies at the heart of the Trinity and the incarnation.     

International–local remuneration differences across six countries: Do they undermine poverty reduction work?

Despite the rhetoric of a single global economy, professionals in poorer countries continue to be remunerated differently depending on whether they are compensated at a local vs. international rate. Project ADDUP (Are Development Discrepancies Undermining Performance?) surveyed 1290 expatriate and local professionals (response rate = 47%) from aid, education, government, and business sectors in (1) Island Nations (Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands), (2) landlocked economies (Mala?i, Uganda), and (3) emerging economies (India, China). Difference in pay was estimated using purchasing power parity, from the World Bank's World Development Indicators 2007. Psychological measures included self‐reported pay and benefits (remuneration), self‐attributed ability, remuneration comparison, sense of justice in remuneration, remuneration‐related motivation, thoughts of turnover and thoughts about international mobility. We included control measures of candour, culture shock, cultural values (horizontal/vertical individualism/collectivism), personality (from the “big five”), job satisfaction and work engagement. Controlling for these and country (small effects) and organization effects (medium), (a) pay ratios between international and local workers exceeded what were perceived to be acceptable pay thresholds among respondents remunerated locally; who also reported a combination of a sense of relative (b) injustice and demotivation; which (c) together with job satisfaction/work engagement predicted turnover and international mobility. These findings question the wisdom of dual salary systems in general, expose and challenge a major contradiction between contemporary development policy and practice, and have a range of practical, organizational, and theoretical implications for poverty reduction work.     

A judgement analysis of social perceptions of attitudes and ability

A judgement analysis of people's social inferences of attitudes and ability was conducted. University students were asked to infer the liberalness (N = 60; Study 1) or intelligence (N = 40; Study 2) of targets seen in pictures. Multiple regression analyses revealed that attractiveness was the most important cue for predicting inferences of liberalness, while an ethnic cue (i.e., being Asian) was the most important cue for judgements about intelligence. Results also showed that a single-cue model was less susceptible to overfitting, but significantly less accurate than a multiple-cue model in predicting participant's intelligence judgements. Although the multiple regression models suffered a degree of overfitting, cross validation showed that they continued to have significant predictive value when applied to new data. Furthermore, a “random partner” method (comparing each participant's own regression equation with that of another, randomly selected, participant) provided evidence of significant idiosyncratic variation in the way intelligence judgements were made.