In the west, the idea of autonomy is often associated with a sense of freedom – a self-interested state of being unfettered by rules or obligations to others. This original anthropological study explores a type of “obedient” autonomy that thrives on setbacks, blossoms as more rules are imposed, and flourishes in adversity. Obedient Autonomy analyzes this model, and explains its precepts through examining the specialized and highly organized discipline of archaeology in China. The book follows Chinese students on their journey to becoming full-fledged archaeologists in a bureaucracy-saturated environment. Often required to travel in teams to the countryside, archaeologists are uniquely obliged to overcome divisions among themselves, between themselves and their peasant-workers, and between themselves and bureaucratic officials. This analysis reveals how these interactions provide teachers of archaeology with stories used to foster obedient autonomy in their students. Moreover, it demonstrates how this form of autonomy enables a person to order and control their future careers in what appears to be a disorderly and uncertain world. A masterly contextualization of archaeology in China, Obedient Autonomy shows how the discipline has accommodated itself to a Chinese social structure, and uncovers the moral, ethical, political, and economic underpinnings of that context. It will be accessible to students of anthropology even as it will provoke Euro-American archaeologists and interest social theorists of science, philosophers, gender theorists, and students of Chinese society.

This book constitutes the refereed post-workshop proceedings of the International Workshop on Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN 2007. The 23 papers in this volume were carefully selected from 38 initial submissions.

This collection of essays presents a systematic analysis of some of the foremost issues in the philosophy of religion. The focus is on the epistemology of religion, the most significant area of recent interest in the field. After developing a religious epistemology in the first half of the book, that epistemology is both further expanded, and explicitly applied to salient issues in the contemporary discussion. The central question throughout the essays is how our world-views affect our perception, especially our perception of God. The first essays set out a general epistemology of perception. The next two sets of essays build upon this in assessing the cognitive value of religious experience, and analyzing the proper epistemic foundations for belief in God. Then, in view of the role of faith developed in those essays, the final essays address the dual challenges to traditional theism of theological non-realism and of religious pluralism.

This book develops a unique account of autonomy in which its attribution to agents is dependent in part on their relationships with others and not merely upon their mental states. This is then applied to bioethical issues—e.g., informed consent and patient confidentiality—in which autonomy plays a central role.

In Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life, Neera K. Badhwar offers a new argument for the ancient claim that well-being as the highest prudential good - eudaimonia - consists of happiness in a virtuous life. Virtue is a source of happiness, but happiness also requires external goods. The argument takes into account recent work on happiness, well-being, and virtue, and defends a neo-Aristotelian conception of virtue as an integrated, but limited, intellectual-emotional-action disposition. These conceptions of well-being and virtue are argued to be widely-held and compatible with experimental psychology. Badhwar's main argument for the thesis that well-being as the highest prudential good requires virtue is as follows: (i) well-being as the highest prudential good requires an objectively worthwhile life; (ii) such a life entails realism as a character trait; (iii) realism entails a life of virtue; (iv) hence well-being as the highest prudential good requires a life of virtue. A realistic person understands important aspects of her own life and human life in general, and is disposed to act on her understanding. Her understanding springs from her autonomy and reality-orientation, i.e., her disposition to think for herself and seek truth or understanding. But the demands of virtue in the face of our emotional and cognitive limitations make complete virtue impossible, and this is one reason why complete well-being is also impossible.

A New Companion to Milton builds on the critically-acclaimed original, bringing alive the diverse and controversial world of contemporary Milton studies while reflecting the very latest advances in research in the field. Comprises 36 powerful readings of Milton's texts and the contexts in which they were created, each written by a leading scholar Retains 28 of the award-winning essays from the first edition, revised and updated to reflect the most recent research Contains a new section exploring Milton's global impact, in China, India, Japan, Korea, in Spanish speaking American and the Arab-speaking world Includes eight completely new full-length essays, each of which engages closely with Milton's poetic oeuvre, and a new chronology which sets Milton's life and work in the context of his age Explores literary production and cultural ideologies, issues of politics, gender and religion, individual Milton texts, and responses to Milton over time