Essays on a Science of Mythology is a cooperative work between C. Kerényi, who has been called "the most psychological of mythologists," and C. G. Jung, who has been called "the most mythological of psychologists." Kerényi contributes an essay on the Divine Child and one on the Kore, together with a substantial introduction and conclusion. Jung contributes a psychological commentary on each essay. Both men hoped, through their collaboration, to elevate the study of mythology to the status of a science.In (...) "The Primordial Child in Primordial Times" Kerényi treats the child-God as an enduring and significant figure in Greek, Norse, Finnish, Etruscan, and Judeo-Christian mythology. He discusses the Kore as Athena, Artemis, Hecate, and Demeter-Persephone, the mother-daughter of the Eleusinian mysteries. Jung speaks of the Divine Child and the Maiden as living psychological realities that provide continuing meaning in people's lives.The investigations of C. Kerényi are continued in a later study, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter. (shrink)

Scholar of religion Karl Kerényi’s last book, Dionysos, is a grand attempt at reinterpreting ζωη ( zoe ), the Greek concept of indestructible life, which he distinguishes from βίος (bios), finite life. In Kerényi’s view, the meaning and sensual experience of zoe was expressed in its richest form in the Cretan beginnings of the cult of Dionysos. The major characteristics of this cult, as Kerényi describes, were beyond the cultural, political, and sexual limits of the Christian interpretations of life (...) and nature. Searching for modern analogies to zoe , Kerényi explains the idea in relation to molecular biology’s minimum definition of life. Despite the fact that Kerényi’s book contains only minor references to contemporary philosophy, the philosophical consequences of his interpretations of Dionysos are not only radical but outline a notion of biopolitics far in advance of the mid- to late 20 th -century development of it. By the affirmation of indestructible life and animality , Kerényi proposes a new humanism that moves beyond the limits of Kantian anthropology and also takes a radically different perspective to that of Heidegger’s philosophy of being, or Agamben’s notion of biopolitics. According to Kerényi’s investigations, since this alternative humanism, which is based on the radical recognition of the individuality and diversity of life forms, was once possible in an earlier stage of human culture, it is possible to reanimate it in order to shape anew how zoe is understood and therefore lived. Our relation to nature can thereby undergo a Dionysian transvaluation and assign us new responsibilities as well as open up a new trajectory for the 21 st -century human. (shrink)

Revision of the main intellectual referents of Ángel Álvarez de Miranda who was professor of History of Religions at the University of Madrid from 1954 until his death in 1957. A more detailed study is made of Mircea Eliade and Raffaele Pettazzoni, but also are revised Santiago Montero Díaz, Pedro Laín Entralgo, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, José Ortega y Gasset, Karl Kerenyi, Angelo Brelich, Xavier Zubiri, José Luis López Aranguren, Julio Caro Baroja, Wilhelm Schmidt and Gerardus van der Leeuw.

In what follows I raise the question of Ariadne and Dionysus for Nietzsche, including the relative size of Ariadne’s ears, as Dionysus observes at the close of “Ariadne’s Lament” [Klage der Ariadne]. Nietzsche’s references to ears invoke not only Nietzsche’s “selective” concern with having the right ears but also the question of myth and genealogical context. Reading through myth is key not only in terms of the textual, lyric tradition but also painting and sculpture, including sarcophagi in antiquity. It makes (...) all the difference to ask, as Karl Kerényi cites Nietzsche as asking: Wer weiß …was Ariadne ist? And not less: who was she to Dionysus? To this extent, Nietzsche’s concern with ears, small and long, is less incidental or furry fetish than hermeneutic attunement. (shrink)

A highly interesting collection of lectures on the central themes of contemporary philosophy and theology in the European tradition. Out of twenty-seven fascinating titles a few especially interesting ones are: Heinrich Ott, "The Structure of the Act of Faith," Karl Kerényi, "The Myth of Faith," Antoine Vergote, "Myth, Belief, and Theological Faith," Henri Bouillard, "To Believe and to Understand," Geo Widengren, "Myth and Faith in the Light of Religious Phenomenology," Giulio Girardi, "Demythisation and Atheism," René Marlé, "Is the Christian (...) Faith a Religion?" Huguette Fugier, "Time and the Sacred in the Religious Vocabulary of the Romans," Renato Lazzarini, "Myth and Faith in Eschatological Perspective." All the lectures and the discussions centered around them are in French.—M. J. V. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer attempts to present a coherent view of panentheism that eschews Pickwickian senses of “in” and aligns itself with, and builds upon, familiar diagrammed portrayals of panentheism. The account is accordingly spatial-locative and moreover accepts the proposal of R.T. Mullins that absolute space and time be regarded as attributes of God. In addition, however, it argues that a substantive parthood relation between the world and God is required. Pfeifer’s preferred version of panpsychism, viz. panintentionalism, is thrown into the (...) mix as an optional add-on. On this account, God is conceived of as a “spiritual field” whose nature can be made more intelligible by regarding “God” as having a mass-noun sense in some contexts. Pfeifer closes with the suggestion that we look to topology and mereology for further development of the position outlined in his paper. (shrink)

This article argues that, under likely empirical conditions, sufficientarianism leads not to an easily achievable duty to maintain a social minimum but to the onerous duty of maintaining a social maximum at the sufficiency level. This happens because sufficientarians ask us to give no weight at all to small benefits for people above the sufficiency level if the alternative is to relieve the suffering of people below it. If we apply this judgment in a world where there are rare diseases (...) and hard-to-prevent accidents that cause people to fall below the sufficiency threshold, all of our discretionary spending will have to be devoted to bringing harder and harder cases up to sufficiency. Nothing will be left for anyone to consume above the sufficiency level. (shrink)

This article argues the following points. The Hobbesian hypothesis, which we define as the claim that all people are better off under state authority than they would be outside of it, is an empirical claim about all stateless societies. It is an essential premise in most contractarian justifications of government sovereignty. Many small-scale societies are stateless. Anthropological evidence from them provides sufficient reason to doubt the truth of the hypothesis, if not to reject it entirely. Therefore, contractarian theory has not (...) done what it claims to do: it has not justified state sovereignty to each person subject to it by demonstrating that they benefit from that authority. To be justified in contractarian terms, states have to do something to improve the living standards of disadvantaged people under their rule. (shrink)

This book is an anthology of some of the most influential research on basic income in the period of roughly 1960-2010.

Although John Locke’s theory of appropriation is undoubtedly influential, no one seems to agree about exactly what he was trying to say. It is unlikely that someone will write the interpretation that effectively ends the controversy. Instead of trying to find the one definitive interpretation of Locke’s property theory, this article attempts to identify the range of reasonable interpretations and extensions of Lockean property theory that exist in the contemporary literature with an emphasis on his argument for unilateral appropriation. It (...) goes through Locke’s argument point-by-point discussing the controversy over what he said and over what he perhaps should have said to make the most valuable and coherent argument. The result is an outline of Lockean theories of property: a menu of options by which one might use appropriation to justify property rights. Supporters only need to pick the version they find most plausible, but opponents should be aware of the entire menu. Anyone claiming to refute appropriation-based property rights must address not only one but all potentially valid versions of it. (shrink)

Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research presents a compilation of six decades of Basic Income literature. It includes the most influential empirical research and theoretical arguments on all aspects of the Basic Income proposal. -/- Includes six decades of the most influential literature on Basic Income Includes unpublished and hard-to-find articles The first major compendium on one of the most innovative political reform proposals of our age Explores multidisciplinary views of Basic Income, with philosophical, economic, political, and sociological views (...) Features contributions from key and well-known philosophers and economists, including Atkinson, Simon, Friedman, Fromm, Gorz, Offe, Rawls, Pettit, Van Parijs, and more Presents the best theoretical and empirical arguments for and against Basic Income -/- . (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer revisits Wittgenstein’s parenthetical allusion in the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ to the Grimms’ fairytale “The Golden Lads”, confirming that it does not work well as an illustration of the notion of “internal identity” that figures in Wittgenstein’s picture theory. He then proposes alternative ways of understanding the relationship of identity apparent in “The Golden Lads”.

This paper argues that a guaranteed income is not only consistent with the principle of reciprocity but is required for reciprocity. This conclusion follows from a three-part argument. First, if a guaranteed income is in place, all individuals have the same opportunity to live without working. Therefore, those who choose not to work do not take advantage of a privilege that is unavailable to everyone else. Second, in the absence of an unconditional income, society is, in effect, applying the principle, (...) “(S)he who does not work, will not eat.” If the application of this principle is to be consistent with reciprocity, it must be applied to everyone. Most modern industrial societies exempt many citizens from that choice. For example, the owners of external assets do not face the work-or-starve choice and do take advantage of a privilege that is not available to others. An unconditional guaranteed income is one way to eliminate that violation of reciprocity. Third, this paper addresses the criticism that the guaranteed income exploits middle-class workers by demonstrating that a basic income will have a positive effect on wages, which will at least partially counteract the effect of the taxes needed to pay for it. (shrink)

Enrique Dussel's writings span the theology of liberation, critiques of discourse ethics, evaluations of Marx, Levinas, Habermas, and others, but most importantly, the development of a philosophy written from the underside of Eurocentric modernist teleologies, an ethics of the impoverished, and the articulation of a unique Latin American theoretical perspective. This anthology of original articles by U.S. philosophers elucidating Dussel's thought, offers critical analyses from a variety of perspectives, including feminist ones. Also included is an essay by Dussel that responds (...) to these essays. (shrink)

The introduction (pp. 7-29) discusses Nazi denigration of "Jewish philosophy, " from Spinoza to Bergson and Husserl, and the elevation of "German" philosophers, particularly Eckhart and Nietzsche, to the role of forerunners of Nazism. The chapters on the work of the four Jewish philosophers mention briefly their murder by the Nazis (in the case of Benjamin, his death while fleeing the Nazis).

We explore the nature of forgetting in a corpus of 125,000 students learning Spanish using the Rosetta Stone® foreign-language instruction software across 48 lessons. Students are tested on a lesson after its initial study and are then retested after a variable time lag. We observe forgetting consistent with power function decay at a rate that varies across lessons but not across students. We find that lessons which are better learned initially are forgotten more slowly, a correlation which likely reflects a (...) latent cause such as the quality or difficulty of the lesson. We obtain improved predictive accuracy of the forgetting model by augmenting it with features that encode characteristics of a student's initial study of the lesson and the activities the student engaged in between the initial and delayed tests. The augmented model can predict 23.9% of the variance in an individual's score on the delayed test. We analyze which features best explain individual performance. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer argues against the view that an aesthetic experience must be a uniquely special kind of experience by means of an analogy with sexual experiences. Nonetheless, he leaves open the possibility that some aesthetic experiences might still be of a special kind.

Karl Pfeifer distinguishes between humor used extraneously in the delivery of philosophical content and humor intrinsic to the content itself: “Enlivening the delivery isn’t the same as enlivening the content of the delivery.” Using examples from topics in philosophy of mind and moral philosophy he illustrates how humor can be used to make certain ideas more engaging and memorable for students. He also gives an example of what to avoid.

Durante los años 1853 y 1854 surgió una ola de huelgas en varios distritos industriales de Inglaterra, especialmente en los sectores textiles de Lancashire y Manchester. Este ciclo de luchas, que pugnaba principalmente por un aumento de los salarios, fue visto por Ernest Jones y el movimiento Cartista como una oportunidad para organizar una asociación obrera a escala nacional. Karl Marx, que compartía la visión de los cartistas, analizó el movimiento desde el New York Tribune, brindando apoyo a la (...) iniciativa a la que dio lugar: el Parlamento Obrero. A continuación, se ofrece la traducción de cuatro textos periodísticos que Marx publicó en apoyo a la institución obrera –la mayoría inéditos en español–, seguidos de «Las luchas por la organización obrera en la época victoriana (1853-1854)», un estudio crítico sobre el ciclo de huelgas y las expectativas de organización obrera durante aquellos años, donde se defiende que este fallido intento de organización constituye un precedente de la sección británica de la Asociación Internacional de Trabajadores. La traducción y edición de los textos de Marx, y el estudio crítico que los acompaña, han sido realizados por Mario Espinoza Pino (Universidad de Granada). (shrink)

Senza una filosofia della storia, la storia non è altro che un incomprensibile susseguirsi di eventi che non trasmette le autentiche motivazioni umane ad agire. Capire il fine ultimo della storia significa porsi in un'ottica assoluta, metafisica, abbandonando la concezione del corpo sociale come semplice lotta per la sopravvivenza. In questo senso la filosofia è sorella della teologia come dimostrano, secondo Karl Lowith, le tappe fondamentali del pensiero europeo. Dalla Bibbia a sant'Agostino, da Voltaire a Marx, da Vico a (...) Hegel, l'interpretazione filosofica della storia rimane ancorata a un'originaria matrice religiosa. Anche quando alla fede e all'idea di provvidenza sostituisce quella di progresso. (shrink)