Simply because they are large scavenging birds, vultures are often viewed as harbingers of death. But, as Thom van Dooren shows in this cultural and natural history, that dominant association leaves us with a very one-dimensional understanding of a group of actually rather fascinating and diverse creatures.

Vulture offers an enlightening new history of this much-misunderstood bird. Vultures vary in type and size, and while some have a diet mainly of bone, others are actually almost completely vegetarian. Most interesting, despite its notorious  association  with death, the vulture very rarely, if ever, kills for itself. In different cultural mythologies, vultures play a role in disposing of the dead and officiating over human sacrifices, but they have often been viewed as courageous and noble creatures as well—believed to be indispensable in the containment of waste and disease and even to be world creators and divine mothers. Van Dooren explores these many histories, from some of the earliest-known Neolithic sites in which vultures are thought to have consumed the dead to contemporary efforts to reintroduce the bearded vulture into the Alps.

Highlighting the rich diversity of vultures and the many ways in which people have understood and lived with them, Vulture invites a new appreciation and wonder for these incredible birds.

In the village of the ghost bells, the church chimes ring—even though the church has no bells. One of the neighbors wants to buy dreams—or is she a dream that someone else is dreaming? Where and why do dreams become nightmares?

These are only some of the fascinating questions raised in Village of the Ghost Bells, Edla Van Steen’s second novel. First published in 1983 as Coraçôes mordidos, the novel tells the story of the would-be utopian community built on an old plantation of the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil. Its atmosphere is dreamlike, often verging on the supernatural, and strange events signal the transformation of the utopian dream into a nightmare. Ultimately destroyed by greed, corruption, and exploitation, the community becomes a microcosm of the Brazilian socioeconomic system, in which it takes all of a person’s warmth, idealism, passion, and humor to survive the bleak environment.

Vanguard of Nazism is the first full history of the German Free Corps and of its contributions to the rise of Nazism. This dramatic and horrifying story sheds new light on a dark corner of the recent past, and it has an unhappy relevance to neo-Nazist tendencies in Germany today.

The newly established Weimar Republic, defenseless against the Communists, hired groups of volunteer soldiers (the Free Corps) to fight for it. These volunteers—born of the pre–World War I youth movement, nourished on the battlefields of the War, unreconciled to defeat and determined to avenge it—fought for the Republic (which they despised) from Munich to Berlin, from Düsseldorf to the Baltic. When the Republic, in fear, tried to disband them, they went underground until they reappeared in the brown shirts of the Nazis.

The savage spirit, brutal acts, and perverted ideology of the men whom Hermann Goering called “the first soldiers of the Third Reich” stand out in glaring relief in this record. The book is based on contemporary newspaper accounts and government documents, but the story it tells would hardly be credible were it not for the memoirs of the Free Corps fighters themselves, from which Robert G. L. Waite quotes liberally. With this material, Waite is able to show that the Free Corps contributed to Hitler’s Germany powerful political shock troops, labor camps, a youth movement, a well-developed Führer concept, and the basic tenets of National Socialist ideology.

The movement, half a million strong, swept Germany at a time when Hitler was an unknown political agitator. But when Hitler came to power, leaders of the Free Corps emerged as leaders of the Third Reich. Waite lists the names of these men in a valuable appendix to the book, which shows the activities of each man in both movements.

Waite emphasizes and substantiates the thesis that National Socialism really began in the months and years immediately following World War I. Aside from its importance as history, the story of these self-styled Freebooters has all the ingredients of a fantastic adventure tale: intrigues, conspiracies, quick reversals, and sudden death follow each other in dramatic succession.

The patrolman has the most difficult, complex, and least understood task in the police department. Much less is known of him than of his better publicized colleague, the detective. In this important and timely book, James Q. Wilson describes the patrolman and the problems he faces that arise out of constraints imposed by law, politics, public opinion, and the expectations of superiors.

The study considers how the uniformed officer in eight communities deals with such common offenses as assault, theft, drunkenness, vice, traffic, and disorderly conduct. Six of the communities are in New York State: Albany, Amsterdam, Brighton, Nassau County, Newburgh, and Syracuse. The others are Highland Park, Illinois, and Oakland, California.

Enforcing laws dealing with common offenses is especially difficult because it raises the question of administrative discretion. Murder, in the eyes of the police, is unambiguously wrong, and murderers are accordingly arrested; but in cases such as street-corner scuffles or speeding motorists, the patrolman must decide whether to intervene (should the scuffle be stopped? should the motorist be pulled over?) and, if he does, just how to intervene (by arrest? a warning? an interrogation?). In most large organizations, the lowest-ranking members perform the more routinized tasks and the means of accomplishing these tasks are decided by superiors, but in a police department the lowest-ranking officer—the patrolman—is almost solely responsible for enforcing those laws which are the least precise, the most ambiguous. Three ways or “styles” of policing—the watchman, the legalistic, and the service styles—are analyzed and their relation to local politics is explored.

In the final chapter, Mr. Wilson discusses if and how the patrolman’s behavior can be changed and examines some current proposals for reorganizing police departments. He observes that the ability of the patrolman to do his job well may determine our success in managing social conflict and our prospects for maintaining a proper balance between liberty and order.

The world shows up for us—it is present in our thought and perception. But, as Alva Noë contends in his latest exploration of the problem of consciousness, it doesn’t show up for free. The world is not simply available; it is achieved rather than given. As with a painting in a gallery, the world has no meaning—no presence to be experienced—apart from our able engagement with it. We must show up, too, and bring along what knowledge and skills we’ve cultivated. This means that education, skills acquisition, and technology can expand the world’s availability to us and transform our consciousness.

Although deeply philosophical, Varieties of Presence is nurtured by collaboration with scientists and artists. Cognitive science, dance, and performance art as well as Kant and Wittgenstein inform this literary and personal work of scholarship intended no less for artists and art theorists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and anthropologists than for philosophers.

Noë rejects the traditional representational theory of mind and its companion internalism, dismissing outright the notion that conceptual knowledge is radically distinct from other forms of practical ability or know-how. For him, perceptual presence and thought presence are species of the same genus. Both are varieties of exploration through which we achieve contact with the world. Forceful reflections on the nature of understanding, as well as substantial examination of the perceptual experience of pictures and what they depict or model are included in this far-ranging discussion.

Virtues of Thought is an excursion through interconnecting philosophical topics in Plato and Aristotle, under the expert guidance of Aryeh Kosman. Exploring what these two foundational figures have to say about the nature of human awareness and understanding, Kosman concludes that ultimately the virtues of thought are to be found in the joys and satisfactions that come from thinking philosophically, whether we engage in it ourselves or witness others’ participation.

Kosman examines Aristotle’s complex understanding of the role that reason plays in practical choice and moral deliberation, and the specific forms of thinking that are involved in explaining the world and making it intelligible to ourselves and others. Critical issues of consciousness and the connection between thinking and acting in Aristotle’s philosophical psychology lead to a discussion of the importance of emotion in his theory of virtue. Theories of perception and cognition are highlighted in works such as Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. When his focus turns to Plato, Kosman gives original accounts of several dialogues concerning Plato’s treatment of love, self-knowledge, justice, and the complex virtue known as sophrosyne in such texts as Charmides and the Republic.

Bringing together in a single volume previously unpublished essays along with classics in the field, Virtues of Thought makes a significant contribution to our study of ancient Greek philosophy.

The Epicurean teacher and poet Philodemus of Gadara (c. 110-c. 40/35 BC) exercised significant literary and philosophical influence on Roman writers of the Augustan Age, most notably the poets Vergil and Horace. Yet a modern appreciation for Philodemus' place in Roman intellectual history has had to wait on the decipherment of the charred remains of Philodemus' library, which was buried in Herculaneum by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. As improved texts and translations of Philodemus' writings have become available since the 1970s, scholars have taken a keen interest in his relations with leading Latin poets.

The essays in this book, derived from papers presented at the First International Symposium on Philodemus, Vergil, and the Augustans held in 2000, offer a new baseline for understanding the effect of Philodemus and Epicureanism on both the thought and poetic practices of Vergil, Horace, and other Augustan writers. Sixteen leading scholars trace his influence on Vergil's early writings, the Eclogues and the Georgics, and on the Aeneid, as well as on the writings of Horace and others. The volume editors also provide a substantial introduction to Philodemus' philosophical ideas for all classicists seeking a fuller understanding of this pivotal figure.

A reclamation of experience as the foremost concept in the work of William James, and a powerful argument for the continuing importance of his philosophy.

How does one deploy experience without succumbing to a foundationalist epistemology or an account of the subject rooted in immediately given objects of consciousness? In the wake of the so-called linguistic turn of the twentieth century, this is a question anyone thinking philosophically about experience must ask.

Alexis Dianda answers through a reading of the pragmatic tradition, culminating in a defense of the role of experience in William James’s thought. Dianda argues that by reconstructing James’s philosophical project, we can locate a model of experience that not only avoids what Wilfrid Sellars called “the myth of the given” but also enriches pragmatism broadly. First, Dianda identifies the motivations for and limitations of linguistic nominalism, insisting that critics of experience focus too narrowly on justification and epistemic practices. Then, by emphasizing how James’s concept of experience stresses the lived, affective, and nondiscursive, the argument holds that a more robust notion of experience is necessary to reflect not just how we know but how we act.

The Varieties of Experience provides a novel reconstruction of the relationship between psychology, moral thought, epistemology, and religion in James’s work, demonstrating its usefulness in tackling issues such as the relevance of perception to knowledge and the possibility of moral change. Against the tide of neopragmatic philosophers such as Richard Rorty and Robert Brandom, who argue that a return to experience must entail appeals to foundationalism or representationalism, Dianda’s intervention rethinks not only the value and role of experience but also the aims and resources of pragmatic philosophy today.

Vanishing into Things explores the concept of knowledge in Chinese thought over two millennia, from Confucius to Wang Yangming (ca. 1500 CE), and compares the different philosophical imperatives that have driven Chinese and Western thought. Challenging the hyperspecialized epistemology of modern philosophy in the West, Barry Allen urges his readers toward an ethical appreciation of why knowledge is worth pursuing.

Western philosophers have long maintained that true knowledge is the best knowledge. Chinese thinkers, by contrast, have emphasized not the essence of knowing but the purpose. Ideas of truth play no part in their understanding of what the best knowledge is: knowledge is not deduced from principles or reducible to a theory. Rather, in Chinese tradition knowledge is expressed through wu wei, literally “not doing”—a response to circumstances that is at once effortless and effective. This type of knowledge perceives the evolution of circumstances from an early point, when its course can still be changed, provided one has the wisdom to grasp the opportunity.

Allen guides readers through the major Confucian and Daoist thinkers including Kongzi, Mengzi, Xunzi, Laozi, and Zhuangzi, examining their influence on medieval Neoconfucianism and Chan (Zen) Buddhism, as well as the theme of knowledge in China’s art of war literature. The sophisticated and consistent concept of knowledge elucidated here will be of relevance to contemporary Western and Eastern philosophers alike.

Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago the Greek thinker Heraclitus supposedly uttered the cryptic words "Phusis kruptesthai philei." How the aphorism, usually translated as "Nature loves to hide," has haunted Western culture ever since is the subject of this engaging study by Pierre Hadot. Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both the ancients and later thinkers such as Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, Hadot traces successive interpretations of Heraclitus' words. Over time, Hadot finds, "Nature loves to hide" has meant that all that lives tends to die; that Nature wraps herself in myths; and (for Heidegger) that Being unveils as it veils itself. Meanwhile the pronouncement has been used to explain everything from the opacity of the natural world to our modern angst.

From these kaleidoscopic exegeses and usages emerge two contradictory approaches to nature: the Promethean, or experimental-questing, approach, which embraces technology as a means of tearing the veil from Nature and revealing her secrets; and the Orphic, or contemplative-poetic, approach, according to which such a denuding of Nature is a grave trespass. In place of these two attitudes Hadot proposes one suggested by the Romantic vision of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schelling, who saw in the veiled Isis an allegorical expression of the sublime. "Nature is art and art is nature," Hadot writes, inviting us to embrace Isis and all she represents: art makes us intensely aware of how completely we ourselves are not merely surrounded by nature but also part of nature.

In Voices of the Mind, James Wertsch outlines an approach to mental functioning that stresses its inherent cultural, historical, and institutional context. A critical aspect of this approach is the cultural tools or “mediational means” that shape both social and individual processes. In considering how these mediational means—in particular, language—emerge in social history and the role they play in organizing the settings in which human beings are socialized, Wertsch achieves fresh insights into essential areas of human mental functioning that are typically unexplored or misunderstood.

Although Wertsch’s discussion draws on the work of a variety of scholars in the social sciences and the humanities, the writings of two Soviet theorists, L. S. Vygotsky (1896–1934) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), are of particular significance. Voices of the Mind breaks new ground in reviewing and integrating some of their major theoretical ideas and in demonstrating how these ideas can be extended to address a series of contemporary issues in psychology and related fields.

A case in point is Wertsch’s analysis of “voice,” which exemplifies the collaborative nature of his effort. Although some have viewed abstract linguistic entities, such as isolated words and sentences, as the mechanism shaping human thought, Wertsch turns to Bakhtin, who demonstrated the need to analyze speech in terms of how it “appropriates” the voices of others in concrete sociocultural settings. These appropriated voices may be those of specific speakers, such as one’s parents, or they may take the form of “social languages” characteristic of a category of speakers, such as an ethnic or national community. Speaking and thinking thus involve the inherent process of “ventriloquating” through the voices of other socioculturally situated speakers. Voices of the Mind attempts to build upon this theoretical foundation, persuasively arguing for the essential bond between cognition and culture.

Alex Kozulin, translator of Vygotsky's work and distinguished Russian-American psychologist, has written the first major intellectual biography about Vygotsky's theories and their relationship to twentieth-century Russian and Western intellectual culture. He traces Vygotsky's ideas to their origins in his early essays on literary criticism, Jewish culture, and the psychology of art, and he explicates brilliantly his psychological theory of language, thought, and development.

Kozulin's biography of Vygotsky also reflects many of the conflicts of twentieth-century psychology--from the early battles between introspectionists and reflexologists to the current argument concerning the cultural and social, rather than natural, construction of the human mind.

Vygotsky was a contemporary of Freud and Piaget, and his tragically early death and the Stalinist suppression of his work ensured that his ideas did not have an immediate effect on Western psychology. But the last two decades have seen his psychology become highly influential while that of other theoretical giants has faded.

In a book of intellectual breadth, James Wertsch not only offers a synthesis and critique of all Vygotsky’s major ideas, but also presents a program for using Vygotskian theory as a guide to contemporary research in the social sciences and humanities. He draws extensively on all Vygotsky’s works, both in Russian and in English, as well as on his own studies in the Soviet Union with colleagues and students of Vygotsky.

Vygotsky’s writings are an enormously rich source of ideas for those who seek an account of the mind as it relates to the social and physical world. Wertsch explores three central themes that run through Vygotsky’s work: his insistence on using genetic, or developmental, analysis; his claim that higher mental functioning in the individual has social origins; and his beliefs about the role of tools and signs in human social and psychological activity Wertsch demonstrates how the notion of semiotic mediation is essential to understanding Vygotsky’s unique contribution to the study of human consciousness.

In the last four chapters Wertsch extends Vygotsky’s claims in light of recent research in linguistics, semiotics, and literary theory. The focus on semiotic phenomena, especially human language, enables him to integrate findings from the wide variety of disciplines with which Vygotsky was concerned Wertsch shows how Vygotsky’s approach provides a principled way to link the various strands of human science that seem more isolated than ever today.

Is a human being a person or a machine? Is the mind a social construction or a formal device? It is both, William Frawley tells us, and by bringing together Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of the mind and cognitive science's computational model, he shows us how this not only can but must be. To do so, Frawley focuses on language, particularly on how the computational mind uses language to mediate the internal and the external during thought. By reconciling the linguistic device and the linguistic person, he argues for a Vygotskyan cognitive science.

Frawley begins by exploding the internalist/externalist dichotomy that presently drives cognitive science and falsely pits computationalism against socioculturalism. He replaces the reigning Platonic paradigm of computational mind-science with a framework based on an unusual, unified account of Wittgenstein, thus setting the stage for a Vygotskyan cognitive science centered on three aspects of mind: subjectivity, real-time operation, and breakdown. In this context, he demonstrates how computational psychology accommodates a critical aspect of Vygotskyan theory--private speech--as the mind's metacomputational regulator. An examination of certain congenital disorders (such as Williams Syndrome, Turner Syndrome, and autism) that disrupt speech further clarifies the issue of computational and cognitive control.

Groping around a familiar room in the dark, or learning to read again after a traumatic brain injury; navigating a virtual landscape through an avatar, or envisioning a scene through the eyes of a character—all of these are expressions of one fundamental property of life, Alain Berthoz argues. They are instances of vicariance, when the brain sidesteps an impasse by substituting one process or function for another. In The Vicarious Brain, Creator of Worlds, Berthoz shows that this capacity is the foundation of the human ability to think creatively and function in a complex world.

Vicariance is often associated with proxies and delegates, but it also refers to a biological process in which a healthy organ takes over for a defective counterpart. Berthoz, a neuroscientist, approaches vicariance through neuronal networks, asking how, for example, a blind person can develop a heightened sense of touch. He also describes how our brains model physical reality and how we use these models to understand things that are foreign to us. Forging across disciplinary boundaries, he explores notions of the vicarious in paleontology, ethology, art, literature, and psychology.

Through an absorbing examination of numerous facets of vicariance, Berthoz reveals its impact on an individual’s daily decision making and, more broadly, on the brain’s creation of worlds. As our personal and social lives are transformed by virtual realities, it is more crucial than ever before that we understand vicariance within our increasingly complex environment, and as an aspect of our own multiplying identities.

A concise introduction to Christian ethics, this book surveys the moral values of the Catholic tradition and applies them to contemporary issues. Prominent authors address such topics as scriptural sources, reverence for human life, sexuality and intimacy, family responsibilities, the concept of peace in the modern world, economics, and Catholic higher education.

Vision and Values is both an overview of the major perspectives which inform moral decisions and a guide to how these principles interrelate. It can help readers determine how to make complex moral judgments in a Christian context as it demonstrates the vitality of the Catholic theological tradition.

This book offers a clear and systematic introduction to virtue ethics, a topic which has inspired one of the most interesting contemporary debates in ethical theory—the question of whether virtues can replace duties as the primary notion in ethical theory.

The volume comprises an introduction to virtue ethics by Daniel Statman and a collection of the most important essays published on the topic in the last decade. The essays encompass a wide range of aspects: the difference between virtue ethics and traditional duty ethics; arguments for and against virtue ethics; the practical implications of virtue ethics; and Aristotelian and Kantian attitudes towards virtue ethics.

Luxury. The word alone conjures up visions of attractive, desirable lifestyle choices, yet luxury also faces criticism as a moral vice harmful to both the self and society. Engaging ideas from business, marketing, and economics, The Vice of Luxury takes on the challenging task of naming how much is too much in today's consumer-oriented society.

David Cloutier’s critique goes to the heart of a fundamental contradiction. Though overconsumption and materialism make us uneasy, they also seem inevitable in advanced economies. Current studies of economic ethics focus on the structural problems of poverty, of international trade, of workers' rights—but rarely, if ever, do such studies speak directly to the excesses of the wealthy, including the middle classes of advanced economies. Cloutier proposes a new approach to economic ethics that focuses attention on our everyday economic choices. He shows why luxury is a problem, explains how to identify what counts as the vice of luxury today, and develops an ethic of consumption that is grounded in Christian moral convictions.