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Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Early Modern Debates on Human Sameness and Difference -- Chapter 2. Chambers's Cyclopaedia and Supplement: The Growth of the Natu ral History of Humanity -- Chapter 3. Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie: A New Human Science -- Chapter 4. De Felice's Encyclopédie d'Yverdon: Expanding and Contesting Human Science -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Mill's harm principle and the financial externalities of risky behavior are routinely invoked to justify health and safety regulation. However, this approach fares poorly when subjected to theoretical scrutiny. First, it is false: individuals engaging in risky behavior do not harm others. Second, even if risky behavior were harmful to others, the argument from harmful externalities does not imply safety-enhancing policy interventions, at least not without additional appeals to paternalism. Third, focusing on the economic impacts of accidents invites perverse victim-blaming attitudes toward accident victims that undermine democratic values and justice. To improve our moral understanding of health and safety regulation, I sketch a theory of public policy justification grounded in the controversies which attract our attention to paternalistic polices in the first place. On this account, justificatory arguments are plausible if they identify goods that individuals genuinely affirm on their own terms, are sensitive to causal responsibility and imbalances between restraint and protection, and comparatively engage with possible policy alternatives. Illustrating the shortcomings of one dominant approach to public policy justification and reorienting us toward the controversies that policy justifications need to confront reflect two ways that political theory can help enhance justice in public policy design and articulation.

After emigrating from Ottoman territory to Safavid Iran in the mid-sixteenth century, the Shiite scholar Husayn b. 'Abd al-Samad al-'Amili wrote an eloquent letter-cum-travel account describing his experiences to his teacher Zayn al-Din al-'Amili who had remained in Jabal 'Amil. A manuscript of this fascinating document has now come to light and been edited twice, in 2001 and 2003. An analysis of the undated letter shows that it was written in 961/1554 and describes a journey that occurred earlier that same year. Husayn's statements do not spell out the exact cause of his flight from Ottoman territory but suggest that he was wary of being denounced to the authorities and felt that his academic career was severely limited there. He evidently supported Safavid legitimacy wholeheartedly, though he harbored misgivings about the moral environment in Iran and had sharp criticisms for Persian religious officials.

This work is a careful examination of the punishment narratives in the Qur[ham]an, focusing
on the "triangular drama" among God, Muhammad (along with the believers), and
the unbelievers. Expanding the work of Horovitz, Bell, and others, Marshall's analysis
builds on the observation that Qur[ham]anic narratives concerning earlier prophetic figures often
reflect and comment on, more or less directly, the contemporary situation of the Prophet
Muhammad. Many passages portray Noah, Hud, Salih, and others addressing their peoples in
their capacity as messengers of God. They are rebuked and meet with little success in their efforts
to convince the unbelievers of their misguidance and to convert them to worship of the one true
God. They then warn the unbelievers of the dire punishment that awaits them should they insist on
refusing to believe, but to no avail. God inflicts the threatened punishment upon the unrepentant
peoples, annihilating them in a cataclysmic event: the flood in the case of Noah's people; a
raging wind in the case of [ayn]Ad, the people of Hud; a shower of stones in the case of
Lot's people; and so on. These narratives portray the relationship between the messengers
and their recalcitrant audiences in some detail and can therefore serve as the basis for a fruitful
analysis of the relationship between Muhammad and the unbelievers among his people, the
Quraysh.

Published in 1933, Walther Hinz's detailed study on the short and turbulent reign of Safavid Shah Ismacil II (984-85/1576-77), which he likens to that of Ivan the Terrible, has yet to be surpassed. Although Hinz consulted many Safavid chronicles then in manuscript, including a number which have yet to be published, his discussion of a major facet of the period's history, Shah Ismacil II's religious policies, is based primarily on the account of Iskandar Beg Munshi inTārīkh-icālam-ārā-yicAbbasī,which he essentially paraphrases. Hinz concludes that Shah Ismacil II's pro-Sunni policies, including primarily his prohibitions against cursing the Companions of the Prophet and his attempt to remove the Shicite credal statementcAlīyun walī Allāh"cAli is the ally of God" from the coinage, resulted not from political expediency but rather from personal conviction. In the end, these policies failed. Realizing that he could not win over the Qizilbash and that he himself was in grave danger, Shah Ismacil rescinded his decrees, had his pro-Sunniṣadrand advisor, Mirza Makhdum Sharifi, placed under house arrest, and reconfirmed his commitment to Shicism before the end of his short reign.