Press. 1931. Pp. xxii + 216. Price 16s. 6d. net.) Mr. Everett has many claims on the gratitude of those who are at all interested in Jeremy Bentham. For a century, or more, masses of Bentham's manuscripts (about 75,000 pages) lay neglected and mouldering at University College, London. Extremely few people showed even a fleeting interest in them, and these were mostly foreigners. At long last a good fairy appeared in the person of Mr. Everett, who energetically devoted several years to the examination and cataloguing of the voluminous material, and to the editing of some of it. Mr. Everett's familiarity with all the available material eminently qualifies him to act as Bentham's biographer. The present volume, although it is not exactly a full-dress biography, is really more comprehensive than the title is likely to suggest to most readers. The average English student of philosophy knows rather little of Bentham. Historians of Ethics have a way of treating his "felicific calculus" in a perfunctory manner, which shows more subtlety than insight. Leslie Stephen was an exception in this respect. His English Utilitarians shows a truer appreciation of Bentham's real aims and achievements. More recently Professor Halevy's book, entitled Philosophical Radicalism, casts a new light on Bentham's political philosophy. And now we have Mr. Everett's biographical study, which gives the most lifelike portrait of Bentham that has yet been published. Anyone who will take the trouble to read the three works just mentioned will have an adequate understanding of the life and work of Bentham. The recent celebration of the centenary of his death must have awakened a certain amount of interest in Bentham even among people who had heard little or nothing of him before. Mr. Everett's book may be commended to them as likely not only to satisfy their curiosity, but also to amuse them in no small degree.
Examining, for a symposium on xenophilia, the views of some of the period’s most open-minded and tolerant thinkers, as well as the historical development of Christian writers’ treatment of Muslims, this article considers whether the term Islamophilia can be applied to any Christian’s attitudes during the Middle Ages. The analysis considers what qualifies as an expression of love for Muslims, the distinction between positive regard for Islam and positive regard for Muslims, and whether Islamophilia essentializes Muslims in the same way that Islamophobia does. The author argues that any search for Christian Islamophilia must be broad enough to encompass evidence found in unexpected places. For instance, due to the Christian belief that Muslims who did not convert to Christianity would suffer eternally, a desire to convert them may well qualify as a stance of love toward them, despite the offense to modern sensibilities that such implies. Paradoxically, indifference toward Muslims’ religion, such as on the part of neighbors or business partners, might also have a place in a discussion of Islamophilia, precisely because it rejects essentialism.
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