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2089 results in Cambridge Elements

Page 1 of 105

E. E. Constance Jones

E. E. Constance Jones
  • Gary Ostertag
  • Published online:
    01 August 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2025
  • E. E. Constance Jones (1848–1922) published widely in philosophical logic and in ethics and moral psychology and was an active member of the British philosophical community from 1890 until her death. Her contributions to philosophical logic were wide-ranging and sophisticated, anticipating celebrated insights of later twentiethcentury philosophy of language and logic. In ethics, her writings on hedonism and practical reason, though influenced by her mentor, Henry Sidgwick, were innovative and merit further examination.
Unrealized Arguments and the Grammar of Context

Unrealized Arguments and the Grammar of Context
  • Rui P. Chaves, Paul Kay, Laura A. Michaelis
  • Published online:
    31 July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • In null instantiation (NI) an optionally unexpressed argument receives either anaphoric or existential interpretation. One cannot accurately predict a predicator's NI potential based either on semantic factors (e.g., Aktionsart class of the verb) or pragmatic factors (e.g., relative discourse prominence of arguments), but NI potential, while highly constrained, is not simply lexical idiosyncrasy. It is instead the product of both lexical and constructional licensing. In the latter case, a construction can endow a verb with NI potential that it would not otherwise have. Using representational tools of sign based construction grammar, this Element offers a lexical treatment of English null instantiation that covers both distinct patterns of construal of null-instantiated arguments and the difference between listeme-based and contextually licensed, thus construction-based, null complementation.
Deception and Self-Deception

Deception and Self-Deception
  • A Unified Account
  • Vladimir Krstić
  • Published online:
    31 July 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2025
  • Received theories of self-deception are problematic. The traditional view, according to which self-deceivers intend to deceive themselves, generates paradoxes: you cannot deceive yourself intentionally because you know your own plans and intentions. Non-traditional views argue that self-deceivers act intentionally but deceive themselves unintentionally or that self-deception is not intentional at all. The non-traditional approaches do not generate paradoxes, but they entail that people can deceive themselves by accident or by mistake, which is controversial. The author argues that a functional analysis of deception solves these problems. On the functional view, a certain thing is deceptive if and only if its function is to mislead; hence, while (self-)deception may but need not be intended, it is never accidental or a mistake. Also, self-deceivers need not benefit from deception and they need not end up with epistemically unjustified beliefs; rather, they must 'not be themselves'. Finally, self-deception need not be adaptive.
The Earth Intoxicated on Imagination

The Earth Intoxicated on Imagination
  • Annabelle Dufourcq
  • Published online:
    31 July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • The aim of this Element is to forge new conceptual tools to give more ecological power to the human imagination. Imagination, both an innovative force and one that distances and blinds, is central to the ecological crisis as well as its potential resolution. Human imagination creates a bubble of denial, fostering the illusion of a smooth, reassuring, controlled, and neatly compartmentalized world. This Element critically contrasts the harmful modern concepts of reality and imagination with a more grounded “earthly” and “animal” imagination. It proposes to overcome the tension between two currents in environmental thought: those advocating imagination for utopian transformation, and proponents of realism, urging confrontation with the material world beyond anthropocentrism. Through analysis of key contemporary environmental work alongside insights from ethology and biosemiotics, the Element underpins the concept of “animal imagination,” offering an alternative approach to environmental imagination and activism that fosters deeper engagement with the living world.
Testimony and Historical Knowledge

Testimony and Historical Knowledge
  • Authority, Evidence and Ethics in Historiography
  • Jonas Ahlskog
  • Published online:
    29 July 2025
    Print publication:
    21 August 2025
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  • This Element explores the relation between historiography and testimony as a question about what it means to know and understand the past historically. In contrast with the recent rapprochement between memory accounts and history in historical theory, the Element argues for the importance of attending to conceptually distinct relations to past actions and events in historical thinking compared with testimony. The conceptual distinctiveness of history is elucidated by placing historical theory in dialogue with the epistemology of testimony and classical philosophy of history. By clarifying the rejection of testimony inherent in the evidential paradigm of modern historical research, this Element provides a thoroughgoing account of the ways in which historical knowledge and understanding relates to testimony. The argument is that the role of testimony in historiography is fundamentally shaped by the questioning-activity at the core of critical historical research. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Kant on Social Suffering

Kant on Social Suffering
  • Nuria Sánchez Madrid
  • Published online:
    28 July 2025
    Print publication:
    21 August 2025
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  • This Element analyses how Kant's practical philosophy approaches social suffering, while also taking into account the elusiveness of this concept in his work, especially when viewed through a contemporary lens. It claims that Kant's theory of human dignity is a vital tool for detecting social structures in need of improvement, even if the high demands it imposes on the subject show a propensity to conceal situations of domination and oppression. In his writings, Kant investigated various societal challenges such as widespread poverty, duties towards animals, care for the mentally ill, and motherhood out of wedlock, suggesting that the state should solve most of these through financial support from the wealthier segments of society. Although the direct testimony of victims of social suffering does not play a role in Kant's approach, the author holds that he views social interdependence – including, notably, non-humans – as a fundamental commitment underpinning human development.
Platonist Women

Platonist Women
  • Crystal Addey
  • Published online:
    28 July 2025
    Print publication:
    21 August 2025
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  • This Element examines the roles and activities of women and their contributions to the Platonic tradition from Plato's time-fourth century BCE- through to the sixth century CE. Drawing on recent research on female agency, gender studies and the connections between ancient philosophy and religious traditions, this Element re-assesses the multi-faceted roles of women within Platonism. Methodologically, any assessment of ancient women philosophers must consider the contexts of the production, transmission and (partial) survival of the range of evidence attesting to their activities, and the historical minimisation or elision of women's intellectual contributions within the western philosophical tradition, science and the academy. As such, this Element argues that the existing evidence allows us to glimpse a much wider pattern of female philosophical and intellectual activity within the Platonic tradition and that we should be careful not to underestimate or minimise the significance of ancient women within the history of Platonism.
Writing the Detectives

Writing the Detectives
  • Character and the Series Form
  • Elspeth Latimer
  • Published online:
    28 July 2025
    Print publication:
    21 August 2025
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  • Crime fiction first emerged in the Victorian era and its series form continues to dominate the genre. Despite the prevalence of crime series, very little research has been done on how character is conceived. The Element's focus is contemporary, from the 1970s onward, and it determines the theory and conventions behind writing the detectives in these modern meganarratives. Exemplary series and a range of subgenres are analysed, thriller to cosy crime, professional investigator to amateur sleuth, embracing diversity and different gender identities. Previous examinations have tended to interpret the detective figure as either mythic or realist, but the author argues that both modes are combined in the contemporary crime series, generating a mythorealist protagonist. This creative-critical Element celebrates the vibrancy of the form and its capacity to investigate the human condition. It also considers future trends and concludes with the author's own guide to writing a crime fiction series.
Performing Female Intimacy in Japan's Takarazuka Revue

Performing Female Intimacy in Japan's Takarazuka Revue
  • Nobuko Anan
  • Published online:
    26 July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • Japan's Takarazuka Revue is arguably the most commercially successful all-female theatre company in the world. Renowned for its glamour-laden staging of musicals and revues, the company's signature shows are heterosexual Western romances where women play both male and female roles. Since its audience consists almost entirely of women, Takarazuka creates a space for queer intimacy between performers and ardent female fans. This Element analyses the recent experimental show, The Poe Clan, directed by Koike Shūichirō, which portrays a male homoerotic relationship, argued as a façade for a queer, kin-like relationship between women. It also explores works by the female director Ueda Kumiko, which depict an anti-capitalist shared commons for female intimacy. These shows exhibit resistant girls' aesthetics, expressed in the company's two-dimensional performance style.
Inclusive Publishing and the Quest for Reading Equity

Inclusive Publishing and the Quest for Reading Equity
  • Agata Mrva-Montoya
  • Published online:
    25 July 2025
    Print publication:
    21 August 2025
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  • Despite unprecedented opportunities to publish content in accessible formats, most books remain inaccessible to people with print disability. Technological advances and new legal frameworks are creating a transition toward inclusive publishing practices, but systemic barriers continue to limit equitable access to books for millions of individuals worldwide. Scholarship has also moved slowly, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of the strategic, technological and ethical dimensions of inclusive publishing. This Element offers the first holistic examination of this landscape, and argues for the need to move away from ad hoc remediation of books towards the commercial production of 'born-accessible' content. Through policy research, industry case studies, and strategic partnership mapping, it critically examines the rationale, implementation, and potential of inclusive publishing. By articulating both business imperatives and social responsibilities, it proposes a transformative framework for understanding accessibility that offer valuable insights for researchers, industry professionals, and advocacy groups.
Hieratic

Hieratic
  • An Ancient Egyptian Cursive Script
  • Fredrik Hagen
  • Published online:
    25 July 2025
    Print publication:
    14 August 2025
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  • Hieratic was the most widely used script in ancient Egypt, but is today relatively unknown outside Egyptology. Generally written with ink and a brush, it was the script of choice for most genres of text, in contrast to hieroglyphs which was effectively a monumental script. The surviving papyri, ostraca and writing boards attest to the central role of hieratic in Egyptian written culture, and suggest that the majority of literate people were first (and not infrequently only) trained in the cursive script. This Element traces the long history of hieratic from its decipherment in the nineteenth century back to its origins around 2500 BC, and explores its development over time, the different factors influencing its appearance, and the way it was taught and used.
The Philosophy of Linguistics

The Philosophy of Linguistics
  • Ryan M. Nefdt
  • Published online:
    23 July 2025
    Print publication:
    21 August 2025
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  • The philosophy of linguistics reflects on multiple scientific disciplines aimed at the understanding of one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence, our ability to produce and understand natural language. Linguistics, viewed as a science, has a long history but it was the advent of the formal (and computational) revolution in cognitive science that established the field as both scientifically and philosophically appealing. In this Element, the topic will be approached as a means for understanding larger issues in the philosophy of science more generally.
Art Books for the People

Art Books for the People
  • The Origins of The Penguin Modern Painters
  • David Trigg
  • Published online:
    22 July 2025
    Print publication:
    21 August 2025
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  • The Penguin Modern Painters (1944–1959) was a groundbreaking series of British art monographs designed to promote the work of contemporary artists to a general readership. In examining the factors that influenced the wartime conception and development of the series, this Element makes a contribution to the understanding of the relationship between publishing and the visual arts during the Second World War. The study argues that the emergence of The Penguin Modern Painters was inextricably linked to the aims of British wartime cultural policy and the ideology of the pre-war adult education movement. The key personalities involved are identified and their multiple and often conflicting motives analysed to provide new insights into the shifting perspectives of Britain's elites regarding the way that art was presented to the public in the 1940s. This Element provides a foundation on which further study of twentieth-century art publishing in Britain might be developed.
Reading Creation Myths Economically in Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel

Reading Creation Myths Economically in Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel
  • Eric J. Harvey
  • Published online:
    22 July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • Creation myths in the ancient Middle East served, among other things, as works of political economy, justifying and naturalizing materially intensive ritual practices and their entanglements with broader economic processes and institutions. These rituals were organized according to a common ideology of divine service, which portrayed the gods as an aristocratic leisure class whose material needs were provided by human beings. Resources for divine service were extracted from the productive sectors of society and channeled inward to the temple and palace institutions, where they served to satiate the gods and support their human servants. This Element examines various forms of the economics of divine service, and how they were supported in a selection of myths – Atraḫasis, Enki and Ninmaḫ, and Enūma Eliš from Mesopotamia and the story of the Garden of Eden from the southern Levant (Israel).
Wittgenstein and Social Epistemology

Wittgenstein and Social Epistemology
  • Annalisa Coliva
  • Published online:
    21 July 2025
    Print publication:
    14 August 2025
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  • The last twenty years have witnessed a 'social turn' in analytic philosophy. Social epistemology has been crucial to it. Social epistemology starts by repudiating the kind of individualistic epistemology, which, since Descartes' Meditations and through Kant's maxim 'Think for yourself', has dominated philosophy. It is a sign of the deep erasure of Wittgenstein's ideas from many debates in analytic philosophy that neither his views against fundamental tenets of individualistic epistemology, nor his positive contribution to key themes in social epistemology are considered.This Element on Wittgenstein and Social Epistemology is the first comprehensive study of the implications of the later Wittgenstein's ideas for key issues at the core of present-day social epistemology, such as the nature of common sense and its relations to common knowledge; testimony and trust; deep disagreements in connection with genealogical challenges; and the meaning of 'woman' and the role of self-identification in the determination of gender.
Islam and Pseudoscience

Islam and Pseudoscience
  • Stefano Bigliardi
  • Published online:
    20 July 2025
    Print publication:
    14 August 2025
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  • Pseudoscience includes any practice or argument that is presented as scientific but systematically violates criteria that distinguish science, particularly experimental verification. This Element discusses, in critical fashion, different ideas and approaches that combine pseudoscience and Islam. It begins by historically reconstructing the debate on Islam-related pseudoscience developed by Muslim and non-Muslim critics. It then analyzes three areas which these critics have identified as pseudoscience: iʿjāz ʿilmī or the “miraculous scientific content of the Qur'an”; Islamic creationism; ideas and approaches related to hygiene, nutrition, health, and illness. Each area is dissected, identifying the exact reasons that characterize some of its versions as pseudoscientific. After a section discussing other malpractices and erroneous approaches, which do not strictly qualify as pseudoscience but accompany and foster it, the Element ends with the discussion of overarching questions constituting an agenda for future discussions of Islam-related pseudoscience.
Zoroastrianism and Contemporary Philosophy

Zoroastrianism and Contemporary Philosophy
  • Daniel Nolan
  • Published online:
    17 July 2025
    Print publication:
    07 August 2025
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  • Zoroastrianism is a religion with a long history, but it has been comparatively neglected by contemporary philosophers. This Element aims to bring aspects of its long intellectual history into conversation with contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. Section 1 provides an introduction to Zoroastrianism and its history, some of the important texts, and some contemporary philosophy engaged with Zoroastrian themes. Section 2 discusses distinctive contributions Zoroastrian thought can make to the problems of evil and suffering. And Section 3 discusses a 'quasi-universalist' approach to puzzles about heaven and salvation, inspired by Zoroastrian theological texts. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Magic and Heresy in Ancient Christian Literature

Magic and Heresy in Ancient Christian Literature
  • Shaily Shashikant Patel
  • Published online:
    16 July 2025
    Print publication:
    07 August 2025
  • Magic and Heresy in Ancient Christian Literature is a genealogical study of two parallel but not coequal discursive trajectories: of 'magic' and of 'heresy.' This longue durée analysis charts how these two discursive streams intersect in myriad ways, for myriad ends, across the first four centuries of selected Christian literature. Magic and Heresy attempts to answer in part the question: When and how did early Christian authors start thinking of magic as heresy – that is, as a religious and epistemic system wholly external to their own orthodoxies? Prompted by metacritical concerns about the relationship between magic and heresy, as well as these categories' roles in erecting and maintaining Christian empire, this Element seeks to disrupt tidy conceptual conflations of magic-heresy constructed by ancient authors and replicated in some modern scholarship. Magic and Heresy excavates the cycles of discursive disciplining that eventually resulted in these very conflations.
Psychodrama

Psychodrama
  • A Creative Method to Survive and Thrive
  • Hod Orkibi
  • Published online:
    14 July 2025
    Print publication:
    07 August 2025
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  • This Element presents an integrated account of psychodrama theory, practice, and research. It begins by exploring psychodrama's psychosocial roots and emphasizes Jacob Levy Moreno's pioneering work. Core concepts such as spontaneity, creativity, adaptability, encounter, act-hunger, action insight, and act fulfillment are discussed in detail. This is followed by an overview of psychodrama practice, including session structure, core techniques, and a positive psychodrama intervention program. Five research designs for outcome studies are presented, along with key issues such as bias assessment, treatment fidelity, treatment differentiation, feasibility, and acceptability in psychodrama research. Change process research is reviewed in light of the latest evidence and methods, highlighting eleven therapeutic change factors in psychodrama and discussing concepts such as moderation, mediation, and mechanisms of change. The final section addresses future directions, including nonverbal synchrony and physiological and neurobiological pathways in psychodrama research. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The Fabric of War

The Fabric of War
  • The Material Culture and Social Lives of Banners in Renaissance Europe
  • John Gagné, Timothy McCall
  • Published online:
    14 July 2025
    Print publication:
    14 August 2025
  • The Fabric of War traces the rich history of flags and banners in Renaissance Europe through a critical analysis of the cultural, ideological, material, and artistic histories of these complex and ubiquitous objects. It examines banners as numinous textiles that animated and adorned battle, energized and embellished armies, constructed and celebrated victory. Though flags are often investigated as mere symbols to be deciphered – as heraldic code revealing identity – they were vibrant and charismatic textiles whose mutability, movement, and multivalency constituted their appeal and salience. Banners propelled their viewers not only to decipher or identify, but to act.

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