"Richard Linklater's trilogy of critically-acclaimed 'Before' films - Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight - depict the ongoing relationship and romantic destiny of two characters played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. This collection of specially commissioned chapters explores the many philosophical issues raised in the films, including: the nature of love, romanticism and marriage the meaning of life the passage and experience of time the narrative self gender death. Including an introduction by the (...) editors summarising the trilogy, and an interview with Julie Delpy in which she discusses the key themes of the films and the importance of studying philosophy, The Philosophy of Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy is essential reading for students of philosophy, aesthetics and film studies, and also of interest to those in closely related subjects such as literature and gender studies"--. (shrink)

Richard Linklater’s celebrated Before trilogy chronicles the love of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) who first meet up in Before Sunrise, later reconnect in Before Sunset and finally experience a fall-out in Before Midnight. Not only do these films present storylines and dilemmas that invite philosophical discussion, but philosophical discussion itself is at the very heart of the trilogy. This book, containing specially commissioned chapters by a roster of international contributors, explores the many (...) philosophical themes that feature so vividly in the interactions between Céline and Jesse, including: the nature of love, romanticism and marriage the passage and experience of time the meaning of life the art of conversation the narrative self gender death Including an interview with Julie Delpy in which she discusses her involvement in the films and the importance of studying philosophy. (shrink)

Melancholy is a central expressive property of the Before films and key to understanding and appreciating the trilogy as a whole. That, in a nutshell, is the thesis I develop in this paper. In the first section, I present a philosophical account of melancholy in general and aesthetic melancholy in particular. Melancholy is understood here as the profound and bittersweet emotional experience that occurs when we vividly grasp a harsh truth about human existence in such a way that we (...) come to appreciate certain aspects of life more deeply. The second section of the paper focuses on the many intense as well as more subtle moments of melancholy in the various encounters between Celine and Jesse. These moments, I argue, are partly prompted by the environment and the circumstances in which they find themselves. But both of them also actively seek out and create such moments by the stories they tell and the reflections they engage in. That seems part of who they are as individuals and, I contend, it may be part of what attracts them to each other. In the third section, I address ‘film expression’, as opposed to ‘character expression’, and argue that melancholy is not just present in the characters’ dialogue and in their facial and bodily expressions but is also expressed through various cinematic means. The final section centres on the audience and the reception of the Before trilogy. I introduce the distinction between expression and expressiveness and suggest that the films may have resonated deeply with some viewers because they are so expressive of melancholy. (shrink)

According to the book blurb (p. iv), the themes explored in the volume include the nature of love, romanticism, and marriage; the passage and experience of time; the meaning of life; the art of conversation, the narrative self; gender; and death. All these topics are indeed touched upon to a greater or lesser extent. I find this book to be, in its essence, an investigation of love and romance. So, my main question here is: what can we learn about romantic (...) life from this philosophical exploration of the Before trilogy? (shrink)

I argue that Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight are best seen as an example of memento mori art. Memento mori, the admonition to remember death, can take many forms, but the idea remains the same, namely that an awareness of our inevitable end should bear on how we live. I show how Richard Linklater’s warning works in each of the movies and argue that with the Before trilogy he makes a Frankfurt-style case that (...) romantic love is life’s summum bonum--i.e. "the ultimate ground of practical rationality.". (shrink)

This article examines the Kierkegaardian existentialism set in motion by Richard Linklater's Before trilogy: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. In doing so, it asserts the efficacy of cinema as a medium of existential import, one that is particularly suited to give form to Søren Kierkegaard's project. The identification of three existential stages of life – the aesthetic, ethical, and religious – is perhaps Kierkegaard's most notable contribution to philosophy. This article contends that Linklater's (...) aesthetic strategy – namely, his distinctive use of long dialogic takes and open endings – grapples with these existential categories: the aesthetic and ethical existence-spheres, as well as the border zone of irony that rests between them. By mapping the shifting utility of the long take and open endings throughout the trilogy, the article charts the differing existential states of the trilogy's enduring couple, Jesse and Céline, as well as the ensuing complications that arise from their clash. In particular, the Before trilogy demonstrates the difficulty of reconciling aesthetic desire and ethical responsibility. Focusing on this dilemma, the article goes on to discuss how the differing existential states of Jesse and Céline prevent a proper appropriation of the ethical requirement into their lives, and that this existential disparity is what eventually surfaces the dysfunction of their romantic union. (shrink)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging global infrastructure that employs wireless sensors to collect, store, and exchange data. Increasingly, applications for marketing and advertising have been articulated as a means to enhance the consumer shopping experience, in addition to improving efficiency. However, privacy advocates have challenged the mass aggregation of personally-identifiable information in databases and geotracking, the use of location-based services to identify one’s precise location over time. This paper employs the framework of contextual integrity related to privacy (...) developed by Nissenbaum (Privacy in context: technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2010) as a tool to understand citizen response to implementation IoT-related technology in the supermarket. The purpose of the study was to identify and understand specific changes in information practices brought about by the IoT that may be perceived as privacy violations. Citizens were interviewed, read a scenario of near-term IoT implementation, and were asked to reflect on changes in the key actors involved, information attributes, and principles of transmission. Areas where new practices may occur with the IoT were then highlighted as potential problems (privacy violations). Issues identified included the mining of medical data, invasive targeted advertising, and loss of autonomy through marketing profiles or personal affect monitoring. While there were numerous aspects deemed desirable by the participants, some developments appeared to tip the balance between consumer benefit and corporate gain. This surveillance power creates an imbalance between the consumer and the corporation that may also impact individual autonomy. The ethical dimensions of this problem are discussed. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethical issues surrounding information systems practice with a view to encouraging greater involvement in this aspect of IS research. Information integrity relies upon the development and operation of computer-based information systems. Those who undertake the planning, development and operation of these information systems have obligations to assure information integrity and overall to contribute to the public good. This ethical dimension of information systems has attracted mixed attention in the IS academic (...) discipline. Design/methodology/approach The authors are a multidisciplinary team providing a rich, diverse experience which includes professional and information ethics, management information systems, software engineering, data repositories and information systems development. Each author has used this experience to review the IS ethics landscape, which provides four complimentary perspectives. These are synthesised to tease out trends and future pointers. Findings It is confirmed that there is a serious lack of research being undertaken relating to the ethical dimension of the Information Systems field. There is limited crossover between the well-established multidisciplinary community of Computer Ethics research and the traditional Information Systems research community. Originality/value An outline framework is offered which could provide an opportunity for rich and valuable dialogue across the two communities. This is proposed as the starting point for a proactive research and practice action plan for information systems ethics. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to explore the technologization of peace work through “remote support monitors” that use social and digital media technologies like social media to alert local violence prevention actors to potentially violent situations during demonstrations. Design/methodology/approach Using a distributed cognition lens, the authors explore the information processing of monitors within peace organizations. The authors adopt a qualitative thematic analysis methodology composed of interviews with monitors and documents from their shared communication and discussion channels. The authors’ analysis seeks to (...) highlight how information is transformed between social and technical actors through the process of monitoring. Findings The authors’ analysis identifies that the technologization of monitoring for violence prevention to assist nonviolent activists produces two principal and related forms of transformation: appropriation and hidden attributes. Monitors “appropriate” information from sources to fit new ends and modes of representation throughout the process of detection, verification and dissemination. The verification and dissemination processes likewise render latent supporting informational elements, hiding the aggregative nature of information flow in monitoring. The authors connect the ideas of appropriation and hidden attributes to broader discourses in surveillance and trust that challenge monitoring and its place in peace work going forward. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to focus on the communicative and information processes of remote support monitors. The authors demonstrate that adoption of social and digital media information of incipient violence and response processes for its mitigation suggests both a social and technical precarity for the role of monitoring. (shrink)

Judging works of art is one thing. Loving a work of art is something else. When you visit a museum like the Louvre you make hundreds of judgements in the space of just a couple of hours. But you may grow to love only one or a handful of works over the course of your entire life. Depending on the art form you are most aligned with, this can be a painting, a novel, a poem, a song, a work of (...) architecture, or some other art object or performance. As it happens, however, we have fallen in love with a series of films: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. But what does it mean to love a film? What’s the difference between liking a film, loving a film, and being a film lover? How rational or irrational is it to fall in love with a film? What are the constitutive elements of such a love? These are the questions we seek to address in this paper. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss Babylonian observations of a “massing of the planets” reported in two Astronomical Diaries, BM 32562 and BM 46051. This extremely rare astronomical phenomenon was observed in Babylon between 20 and 30 March 185 BC shortly before sunrise when all five planets were simultaneously visible for about 10 to 15 min close to the horizon in the eastern morning sky. These two observational texts are not only interesting as records of an extremely rare planetary (...) configuration, but also because the observers appear to be confused by the presence of all planets simultaneously and mix them up in their reports, and the two reports of the same observations are so different that we are forced to conclude that they were carried out by two different observers. There is an additional astronomical event which makes this planetary configuration even more unique: the exact conjunction of the planets Mars and Jupiter in the afternoon of 25 March 185 BC. An exact conjunction, where two planets are so close together that they appear as one object in the sky, is also extremely rare. Although this exact conjunction between Mars and Jupiter occurred during the day so that it was not observable, it was correctly predicted by the Babylonian scholars: a remarkable achievement and a nice illustration of their astronomical craftsmanship. Finally, our study clearly exposes one of the limitations of Babylonian naked-eye astronomy. When first appearances of the planets Mercury, Mars and Saturn are expected around the same date, it is nearly impossible to correctly identify them because their expected positions are only approximately known while they have about the same visual magnitude so that they become visible at about the same altitude above the horizon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.1 (2003) 112-125 [Access article in PDF] You Make My Heart Sing David Rothenberg Last March I went to Pittsburgh to play music live with birds. The plan was to arrive at dawn, to catch the wary singers at their best—in the early morning chorus, when the most sound was happening. I met my friend Michael Pestel at the gates of the National Aviary, a (...) mostly forgotten federal institution in a rundown neighborhood. I had never heard of the aviary before Pestel told me what a great place it was to jam with the more-than-human world. The staff was rumored to be friendly, and they liked to let musicians in during the early hours before the public, mostly guided schoolchildren, would storm the gates.Pestel was there with his flute and various homemade stringed instruments. I had clarinets and saxophones, coaxed out of their cases, a bit tired from the long ride, but ready to hear what these birds had up their sleeves. We headed for the marsh room, a vaulted expanse with an observation deck and waterbirds from all over the world. I strained my ears to catch some pretty rocking bird beats, but they sounded familiar. Too familiar—the aviary was blaring Marvin Gaye at top volume to these birds at six o'clock in the morning. They were definitely squawkin' and squealin'."I cannot work in these conditions," muttered Pestel. "We've got to get these people to turn that racket down.""Didn't you warn them we were coming?""No," he shook his head. "You can't do that. Art always arrives without warning." [End Page 112]"You sure they'll let us do this?""No problem, man, I've come here many times before. These people know me. These birds know me."Marvin was turned down. The sprinklers were turned down (rain must start in the rainforest room every day before sunrise). How else to keep the gaudy barbets happy? Does a blue-crowned motmot (Momotus momota) or a violaceous euphonia (Euphonia violacea) really want to hear strange instrumental shrieks before breakfast? Weren't they content with "What's Going On?"Athanasius Kircher 1 knew the birds were onto something even in 1650:And then Wittgenstein had the nerve to warn us that if a lion could talk, we would not understand him. 2 When a lion roars, we do understand him (or her). If a cat purrs, we understand her, too. If the voice of an animal is not heard as message but as art, interesting things start to happen: Nature is no longer inscrutable, some alien puzzle, but instead immediately something beautiful, a source of exuberant song, a tune with some space for us to enter, at once a creative place for humanity to join in.We set up on the wooden deck, listening out over the water. Instruments out of their cases, recording equipment wired and set to go. An American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) was in the center of the action, sitting on a branch at the side of the room. He cocked his head, eyed us knowingly. Looking like there was something he wanted to say. [End Page 113]Pestel played a long, low sliding note, followed by a scratchy puff of air. Something strange swooped down next to my feet, shuffled its large black wings. Some kind of ungainly turkey... I read from a plaque on the railing that it was a Palawan peacock pheasant (Polyplectron emphanum). Its quizzical gaze was mute."What are you looking at?" I glared. He stepped cautiously toward the microphone cable, ready to gobble it in his hooked, formidable beak."Hey," I brushed him off. "Stop dancing. Sing!" But no, he was the prancing, silent type.All of a sudden there was a strange voice. A human voice? "Who." I heard. "Who. Who what where why. Who what where why."It was the crow. But not just any crow. He spoke."Did you hear that?" I coaxed Pestel up from the flute."Oh," he said. "That's Mickey. He's been here for years.""Does... (shrink)

This article addresses the role and meaning of prayer as well as the language of piety and praise in Nietzsche’s writings, notably in Zarathustra. This essay was first presented as a talk in German at the 2017 Nietzsche colloquium in Sils Maria, the theme of which was “Zarathustra und Dionysos”. In preparing it for a publication in English, the argument has been reworked and expanded and references have been added, while partly preserving the tone and structure of the oral delivery. (...) I am grateful to the instructive comments and suggestions of the anonymous reviewers for Nietzsche-Studien. Nietzsche can be read as an uncompromising critic of religion but also as the initiator of a new form of faith, described by some scholars as a “Dionysian piety”. The analysis takes its lead from the way in which Z refers to his yes-saying as also saying “amen”, exploring how Nietzsche explicitly incorporates the language of religious discourse into his writing. Examining passages where he explicitly questions the adoption of confessional language and prayer, it criticizes as overly simplistic the view of his thinking as seeking a new piety. The discussion of the significance of prayer from a psychological, linguistic, and poetological perspective highlights the experience of “inspiration” as a key to the adoption of confessional language in Z. In an interpretation of the last part of this book, it shows how its concluding scenes coalesce precisely around the role and possibility of prayer and piety, and how a crisis in the narrative is triggered by the inability of Zarathustra’s visitors to properly understand his message in this regard. A concluding interpretation of the section “Before Sunrise” in the third part of the book shows how it gathers the philosophical stakes involved in Nietzsche’s understanding of prayer, piety, and confessional praise. (shrink)

Suetonius says that Augustus was born on the ninth day before the Kalends of October , in the year when Cicero and Antonius were consuls , a little before sunrise,1 and also that he was born under Capricorn.2 Mr. H. W. Garrod, in his recent edition of Manilius,3 maintains that the date which Suetonius gives belonged to the pre- Julian calendar, and corresponded with December 20 of the Julian. Remarking that, ‘ according to our present reckonings,’ the (...) sun enters Capricorn on December 22, he adds that ‘the astronomers of Cicero's time placed the beginnings of the sign some 7 degrees in advance of our reckonings. If, therefore,’ he concludes, ‘ Augustus was born on Sept. 22 paulo ante solis exortum, Capricorn was his natal sign.’. (shrink)

The practice of attributing aesthetic properties to scientific and philosophical theories is commonplace. Perhaps one of the most famous examples of such an aesthetic judgement about a theory is Quine's in 'On what there is': "Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes". Many other philosophers and scientists, before and after Quine, have attributed aesthetic properties to particular theories they are defending or rejecting. One often (...) hears that a view is "elegant", "attractive", "beautiful", or even "sexy". [...] The general claim that aesthetic properties supervene on non-aesthetic properties is a largely debated one. In this paper, I wish to address this issue from an angle which has not been really explored so far: I shall neither concentrate on cases of artefacts nor of natural objects, like the beauty of a painting or the beauty of a sunrise, rather, my main centre of attention will be the somewhat more special, theoretical case of the beauty of philosophical theories (with a focus on metaphysical theories). As we will see, there are some interesting issues concerning claims that attribute aesthetic properties to theories, in part because, even if such claims are commonplace in philosophy and in science, little has been said about the nature of the relevant supervenience basis – that is, about what it is exactly that the beauty of a theory is supposed to supervene on. Moreover, we shall see that aesthetic properties of theories play a crucial role in theory choice and evaluation. Indeed, it seems that the aesthetic properties of a theory can be appealed to in theory evaluation and when it comes to preferring one theory over another. But before we ask ourselves what role the attribution of aesthetic properties to theories can play, I will adress the question how theories come to have their aesthetic properties in the first place. (shrink)

Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous, elephants abstract or biscuits teleological. This should not need mentioning, but Richard Dawkins's book The Selfish Gene has succeeded in confusing a number of people about it, including Mr J. L. Mackie. What Mackie welcomes in Dawkins is a new, biological-looking kind of support for philosophic egoism. If this support came from Dawkins's producing important new facts, or good new interpretations of old facts, about animal life, this (...) could be very interesting. Dawkins, however, simply has a weakness for the old game of Brocken-spectre moralizing—the one where the player strikes attitudes on a peak at sunrise, gazes awe-struck at his gigantic shadow on the clouds, and reports his observations as cosmic truths. He is an uncritical philosophic egoist in the first place, and merely feeds the egoist assumption into his a priori biological speculations, only rarely glancing at the relevant facts of animal behaviour and genetics, and ignoring their failure to support him. There is nothing empirical about Dawkins. Critics have repeatedly pointed out that his notions of genetics are unworkable. I shall come to this point later, but I shall not begin with it, because, damning though it is, it may seem to some people irrelevant to his main contention. It is natural for a reader to suppose that his over-simplified drama about genes is just a convenient stylistic device, because it seems obvious that the personification of them must be just a metaphor. Indeed he himself sometimes says that it is so. But in fact this personification, in its literal sense, is essential for his whole contention; without it he is bankrupt. His central point is that the emotional nature of man is exclusively self-interested, and he argues this by claiming that all emotional nature is so. Since the emotional nature of animals clearly is not exclusively selfinterested, nor based on any long-term calculation at all, he resorts to arguing from speculations about the emotional nature of genes, which he treats as the source and archetype of all emotional nature. This strange convoluted drama must be untwisted before the full force of the objections from genetics can be understood. (shrink)

In the Qurʾān, the night which encompass half of human life, is expressed by various concepts. From sunset to sunrise (night), various moments of the time frame are also named with different words and concepts. On the other hand, besides sleep and rest, some worship and actions that are asked to be done at night are also mentioned in the Qur’ānic verses. Also sleep at night and the night itself is mentioned as a proof of Allah and an important (...) blessing for us. When we say “night”, people first think of sleep and rest. However, as it is understood from the Qur’ānic verses, the night should not be seen only as a sleep time and rest time. Such that one of the first commandments to the Prophet Muḥammad was to wake up at night and perform various worship and deeds. Also, it is emphasized in the Qurʾān that night worship and actions influence and leave permanent impacts on human being. In this context, in this study, we tried to identify the concepts and expressions stated in the Qurʾān expressing the night-time or the time slices in it by taking into account the references in the Qur’ānic verses. Moreover, we have also examined worship and actions performed or recommended to do at night. Again, we have researched how the worship and actions performed in the calm and darkness of the night will contribute to human being. Thus, we tried to determine how the Qurʾān addresses the "night" which is the preparation time for the next day and the assessment time of the previous day.Summary: One lives half of his life during the day and the other half at night. However, he plans his daily tasks mostly according to daytime, and spends his nights mostly for sleep and rest. On the other hand, sparing the night completely for sleep and rest means that a long period of life passes passively by. That is why we have decided to do a night-time study that expresses an important time frame for human being. Although there are some ḥadīth about the importance of night worship in the sources, we tried to conduct our research within the framework of the Qur’ānic verses about the night. To determine the meaning and the importance attributed to the night by the Qurʾān, we have examined the Qur’ānic verses referring to night-time, night events and worship and actions that are desired to be done during these times. We concluded our research by making use of the main sources of tafsīr and relevant copyrighted works, articles, papers and encyclopedia articles.During the research we saw that the Qurʾān refers to the night and some time periods in it with different names. In this context, we see that concepts such as leyl (ليل), beyāt (بيات), fajr (فجر), seḥar (سحر), ğāsik (غاسق), ʿashiyy (عشيّ) and asīl (أصيل) are used in the āya. In many Qur’ānic verses, phrases reffering an entire day with specific composition such as day-night and morning-evening are used. In the composition of day and night, night is always mentioned first. In the compositions in the form of morning-evening, we see that sometimes the morning is mentioned first, and sometimes the evening. In addition to these, there are expressions such as before the sunrise, sunset, stay until evening that evokes night-time in the Qurʾān.Another point that draws attention in the research is that there are vows on the night or on certain times in the night in the Qurʾān. We can say that the vows in question are an indication of the importance that Allah gives to the night and some time in it. In fact, Allah points to the night, the functions of the night and its relationship with the day as a āyah (proof) of his existence, might and uniqueness.On the other hand, there are many good and bad historical events that happened during the night in the Qurʾān. First of all, it should be noted that the beginning of the waḥy (devine revalation), which is one of the biggest historical events, took place at night. The Qurʾān describes this night, which is mentioned as Laylat al-Qadr, as better than a thousand months. Again, it is mentioned in the Qurʾānic verses that Prophet Moses and Lūṭ left their countries by taking advantage of the darkness of the night with the believers to get rid of the evil of the oppressors. Also, deniers sometimes chose especially the night-time to carry out cheats and traps for the prophets and believers, and even attempts to assassinate. The fact that the night is dark, quiet and calm obsufucates such negative actions. For this reason, the Qurʾān recommended to take refuge in the Lord of the daybreak from the evil of the darkness.The research demonstrates that the Qurʾān asks people to perform various worships and actions in certain time periods of the night. In fact, even in the early days of waḥy, the Prophet was commanded to wake up at night and perform some worship and actions. In this context, he was asked to pray at night, read the Qurʾān by contemplating and understanding, and chant the name of his Lord. Actually, the Prophet is prepared for the heavy responsibility he took spiritually with such actions that he performed at night. Because a strong spirit and mind are necessary for facing up to what will happen during the next day. It is already stated in the Qurʾān that getting up at night has effective and permanent effects on people. Again, during the prophethood, The Prophet has advised to perform some actions such as sajdah (prostration), qiyām, tasbīḥ and tahajjud ṣalāt (night prayer) -as a special night prayer- during the night.In the Qurʾānic verses examined, some prayers and actions are asked to do at night and day regardless of time. Especially three of the farḍ of prayer (ṣalāt), namely evening, ʿišāʾ and fajr prayer (ṣalāt), are performed during the time defined as night. In addition, some aspects such as duʿāʾ (prayer), istighfār (ask for forgiveness), ṣadaqa and daʿwah (call) are mentioned in the Qurʾānic verses. It is an order or recommendation that all this be done at night as well as during the day. Especially for istighfār which means to ask for forgiveness, it is mentioned the time of dawning.As a result, we can say that there are some special features that make the night different from daytime. For instance, it prepares a suitable environment to sleep and rest for one who is tired mentally, spiritually and physically after the daytime; as the night has features such as darkness, silence and tranquility that man needs to rest and be calm. On the other hand, Allah does not want the night, which means half of human life, to be spent entirely with sleep and rest. As, one rests not only his body but also his mind and soul in the quiet and calm atmosphere of the night, Hereby, human-being starts the next day with a more vigorous mind, spirit and body. At night-time, while making an evaluation of the previous day's deeds and actions, people are also prepared spiritually and mentally for the next day's works.We can say that worship and deeds performed at night are more sincere than those performed during daytime, because man stays alone with his nafs and his Lord at night, away from the eyes. This can keep people away from riyā (pretension) and vanity that invalidates their deeds. Man's waking up and worshiping his Lord at a time when everyone is asleep shows his ikhlāṣ and sincerity. All these indicate that the time of responsibility for man is not limited to daytime. For this reason, people should think day and night together within the framework of his responsibilities and do their work accordingly. (shrink)

In 1773, the Scottish traveller Patrick Brydone published an account of visiting Mount Etna, in which he drew on three distinct categories of thought: the scientific, the aesthetic, and the cultural. He carried his barometer up the volcano to measure it; he was overwhelmed with awe on viewing the sunrise from its summit; and he carefully set his account in the context of different mythological and philosophical explanations of Etna, largely drawn from the writings of classical authors. In preceding (...) centuries, Thomas Burnet’s Theory of the Earth and Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus viewed mountains as laboratories for better understanding nature, for evoking a sense of eschatological awe, and as embedded in long traditions of cultural appreciation. Earlier still, Pietro Bembo in 1496 recounted his journey to the summit of Etna which wove together personal observation, classical insights, and aesthetic admiration. In an ancient example, the first-century anonymous Aetna poem urged readers to move beyond mythological explanations for volcanic activity and to instead enjoy true aesthetic pleasure in investigating the volcano and its causes for themselves. This article offers a close reading of these texts in order to demonstrate three key points. The first is that an intense aesthetic experience of volcanoes can be found in accounts predating the eighteenth-century articulation of the ‘natural sublime’. The second is that the compulsion to investigate and understand natural phenomena, as a key element of aesthetic appreciation, is also evident before the Enlightenment. Third, the article suggests that a sense of Etna as ‘classic ground’—as a feature which both intensified the viewer’s interest in its natural phenomena and produced an ‘interested’ aesthetic experience of its natural greatness—likewise extends back even to the ancient texts from which later travellers would draw their own cultural associations. (shrink)

The Aymara of the Andes use absolute (cardinal) frames of reference for describing the relative position of ordinary objects. However, rather than encoding them in available absolute lexemes, they do it in lexemes that are intrinsic to the body: nayra (“front”) and qhipa (“back”), denoting east and west, respectively. Why? We use different but complementary ethnographic methods to investigate the nature of this encoding: (a) linguistic expressions and speech–gesture co-production, (b) linguistic patterns in the distinct regional Spanish-based variety Castellano Andino (...) (CA), (c) metaphorical extensions of CA’s spatial patterns to temporal ones, and (d) layouts of traditional houses. Findings indicate that, following fundamental principles of Aymara cosmology, people, objects, and land—as a whole—are conceived as having an implicit canonical orientation facing east, a primary landmark determined by the sunrise. The above bodily based lexicalizations are thus linguistic manifestations of a broader macro-cultural worldview and its psycho-cognitive reality. (shrink)

A preliminary investigation into the orientation of twelve Greek Byzantine churches towards the east is made in relation to the day of sunrise. Measurements were carried out using magnetic compass with inclinometer and GPS while declination corrections included a) local magnetic declination and b) refraction. The position of sunrise in the horizon as well as during morning hours was computed with in-house software. Accounting for the differences between Gregorian and Julian calendars, orientation of the nave towards spring and/or (...) autumn, i. e. around the two equinoxes, was found for most churches. Orientations toward the summer solstice and the name day of the saint were also found. (shrink)

Following on from _A Life of One’s Own_ and _An Experiment in Leisure_, _Eternity’s Sunrise_ explores Marion Milner’s way of keeping a diary. Recording small private moments, she builds up a store of ‘bead memories.’ A carved duck, a sprig of asphodel, moments captured in her travels in Greece, Kashmir and Israel, circus clowns, a painting _-_ each makes up a 'bead' that has a warmth or glow which comes in response to asking the simple question: What is the most (...) important thing that happened yesterday? From these beads – sacred, horrific, profane, funny – grows a sense of an ‘answering activity’, the result of turning one’s attention inwards to experience real joy. What Marion Milner conveys so vividly and inspirationally is her lifelong intention to live as completely as possible in the moment. With a new introduction by Hugh Haughton, _Eternity’s Sunrise_ will be essential reading for all those interested in reflecting on the nature of their own happiness – whether readers from a literary, an artistic, a historical, an educational or a psychoanalytic/psychotherapeutic background. (shrink)

Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in Before the Law, Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics.

"The world's leading expert on the unconscious mind reveals the hidden mental processes that secretly govern every aspect of our behavior. For more than three decades, Dr. John Bargh has been conducting revolutionary research into the unconscious mind--not Freud's dark, malevolent unconscious but the new unconscious, a helpful and powerful part of the mind that we can access and understand through experimental science. Now Dr. Bargh presents an engaging and enlightening tour of the influential psychological forces that are at work (...) as we go about our daily lives--checking a dating app, holding a cup of hot coffee, or getting a flu shot. Dr. Bargh takes you into his labs at New York University and Yale where his ingenious experiments have shown how the unconscious guides our actions, goals and motivations in areas like race relations, parenting, business, consumer behavior, and addiction. He reveals the pervasive influence of the unconscious mind on who we choose to date or vote for, what we buy, where we live, how we perform on tests and in job interviews, and much more. Before You Know It is full of surprising and entertaining revelations as well as tricks to help you remember to-do items, shop smarter, and sleep better. Before You Know It will profoundly change the way you understand yourself by introducing you to a fascinating world only recently discovered, the world that exists below the surface of your awareness and yet is the key to unlocking new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving."--Jacket. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, we often think of Nietzsche, nihilism, and the death of God as inextricably connected. But, in this pathbreaking work, Michael Gillespie argues that Nietzsche, in fact, misunderstood nihilism, and that his misunderstanding has misled nearly all succeeding thought about the subject. Reconstructing nihilism's intellectual and spiritual origins before it was given its determinitive definition by Nietzsche, Gillespie focuses on the crucial turning points in the development of nihilism, from Ockham and the nominalist revolution to Descartes, (...) Fichte, the German Romantics, the Russian nihilists and Nietzsche himself. His analysis shows that nihilism is not the result of the death of God, as Nietzsche believed but the consequence of a new idea of God as a God of will who overturns all eternal standards of truth and justice. To understand nihilism, one has to understand how this notion of God came to inform a new notion of man and nature, one that puts will in place of reason, and freedom in place of necessity and order. (shrink)

This is a completely revised and updated second edition of Rights Before Courts (2005, paper edition 2008). This book carefully examines the most recent wave of the emergence and case law of activist constitutional courts: those that were set up after the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. In contrast to most other analysts and scholars, the study does not take for granted that they are a "force for good" but rather subjects them to critical scrutiny against (...) a background of wide-ranging comparative and theoretical analysis of constitutional judicial review in the modern world. The new edition takes in new case law and constitutional developments in the decade since the first edition, including considering the recent disturbing disempowerment of the Hungarian Constitutional Court (which previously was probably the most powerful constitutional court in the world) resulting from the fundamental constitutional changes brought about by the Fidesz government. (shrink)

Late Tokugawa society and the crisis of community -- Before the Kojikiden : the divine age narrative in Tokugawa Japan -- Motoori Norinaga : discovering Japan -- Ueda Akinari : history and community -- Fujitani Mitsue : the poetics off community -- Tachibana Moribe : cosmology and community -- National literature, intellectual history, and the new Kokugaku -- Conclusion : imagined Japan(s).

The first history of American medical ethics published in more than a half century, Before Bioethics tracks the evolution of American medical ethics from colonial midwives and physicians' oaths to current bioethical controversies over abortion, AIDS, animal rights, and physician-assisted suicide.

It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the time appointed for the arrival of Lucian's leviathan was intended to bring to the reader's mind Nearchus' account of an alarming encounter with a school of whales in the course of his famous voyage from the Indus to the Persian Gulf ).

In this book, F.M. Cornford explains why the life and work of Socrates stand out as marking a turning-point in the history of thought. He shows how Socrates revolutionized the concept of philosophy, converting it from the study of Nature to the study of the human soul, the meaning of right and wrong, and the ends for which we ought to live. This is, in fact, the story of the whole creative period of Greek philosophy - the Ionian nature of (...) science before Socrates, Socrates himself, and his chief followers, Plato and his pupil Aristotle. It tells of the different contributions each made, and shows how within three centuries the Greek tradition grew to maturity and the fullness of intellectual power. (shrink)

In the 17th century not all manuscripts were clandestine because there also existed manuscripts written for public circulation (first and foremost the correspondences that were semi-public, or certain collections of poems that circulated first in manuscript and then in printed form), but it is undeniable that most of the resolutely “heterodox” authors found it useful to entrust their ideas to manuscripts both to protect themselves against the retaliation of the authorities and to circumvent the censorship to which printed books were (...) subject. These philosophical manuscripts were messengers of “full heterodoxy” which we could call “global” and not “local”. The exclusion did not regard one or another context but all (or almost) of the contexts of the Ancien Régime, as they expressed a radical dissent in contrast with all of the orthodoxies of modern Europe. Bodin’s Colloquium, like Theophrastus redivivus and Meslier’s Mémoire, could not have been published either in a Catholic country or in a Protestant one, either in an absolute monarchy or in a republic. The clandestine authors were aware that it would be impossible to spread their ideas outside a circle protected by the manuscript form and most often by anonymity. (shrink)

Summary Popular science journalism flourished in the 1860s in England, with many new journals being projected. The time was ripe, Victorian men of science believed, for an ?organ of science? to provide a means of communication between specialties, and between men of science and the public. New formats were tried as new purposes emerged. Popular science journalism became less recreational and educational. Editorial commentary and reviewing the progress of science became more important. The analysis here emphasizes those aspects of popular (...) science which have been identified by Frank Turner as ?public science? and by Thomas Gieryn as ?boundary-work?. The religious, intellectual, and utilitarian values claimed for science by editors and contributors in their tasks of persuading the public to support science and of distinguishing science from what they often called ?applied science? are discussed. These values are shown to vary among editors and, for the editors examined here, Shirley Hibberd, Henry Slack, James Samuelson, William Crookes, and Henry Lawson, to differ significantly from those of T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, and Norman Lockyer, on whom much study of the popularization of science in the 1860s has focused. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses. By Bonnie Steinbock.

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.”—Franz Kafka..

This paper explores the significance of intelligent social behavior among non-human animals for philosophical theories of communication. Using the alarm call system of vervet monkeys as a case study, I argue that interpersonal communication (or what I call “minded communication”) can and does take place in the absence of the production and recognition of communicative intentions. More generally, I argue that evolutionary theory provides good reasons for maintaining that minded communication is both temporally and explanatorily prior to the use of (...) communicative intentions. After developing these negative points about the place of communicative intentions in detail, I provide a novel alternative account according to which minded communication is characterized in terms of patterns of action and response that function to coordinate the representational mental states of agents. I show that an account which centers on patterns of representational coordination of this sort is well suited to capture the theoretical roles associated with minded communication and that it does so in a way that provides a good fit with comparative facts about the presence of minded communication among non-human animals. (shrink)

America’s legal system harbors serious, widespread injustices. Many defendants are sent to prison for nonviolent offenses, including many victimless crimes. Convicts often serve draconian sentences in crowded prisons rife with abuse. Almost all defendants are convicted without trial because prosecutors threaten defendants with drastically higher sentences if they request a trial. Most Americans are terrified of encountering any kind of legal trouble, knowing that both civil and criminal courts are extremely slow, unreliable, and expensive to use. This book explores the (...) largest injustices in the legal system and what can be done about them. Besides proposing institutional reforms, the author argues that prosecutors, judges, lawyers, and jury members ought to place justice before the law – for example, by refusing to enforce unjust laws or impose unjust sentences. Issues addressed include: · The philosophical basis for judgments about rights and justice · The problems of overcriminalization and mass incarceration · Abuse of power by police and prosecutors · The injustice of plea bargaining · The appropriateness of jury nullification · The authority of the law, or the lack thereof Justice Before the Law is essential reading for everyone interested in legal ethics, the rule of law, and criminal justice. It is also ideal for students of legal philosophy. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1994, Richard McKirahan's _Philosophy Before Socrates_ has become the standard sourcebook in Presocratic philosophy. It provides a wide survey of Greek science, metaphysics, and moral and political philosophy, from their roots in myth to the philosophers and Sophists of the fifth century. A comprehensive selection of fragments and testimonia, translated by the author, is presented in the context of a thorough and accessible discussion. An introductory chapter deals with the sources of Presocratic and Sophistic texts (...) and the special problems of interpretation they present. In its second edition, this work has been updated and expanded to reflect important new discoveries and the most recent scholarship. Changes and additions have been made throughout, the most significant of which are found in the chapters on the Pythagoreans, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles, and the new chapter on Philolaus. The translations of some passages have been revised, as have some interpretations and discussions. A new Appendix provides translations of three Hippocratic writings and the Derveni papyrus. (shrink)

Research on the capacity to understand others' minds has tended to focus on representations ofbeliefs,which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations ofknowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one does not even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across cognitive science, (...) we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that nonhuman primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge (but not belief) attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibits a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind – one that is focused on understanding others' minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it. (shrink)

Everyone knows that a tiny acorn grows into a mighty oak and a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. But in this clever, visually enchanting volume, it's also true that a cow can result in both a bottle of milk and a painting of a cow, and an ape in a jungle may become an urban King Kong. Just as day turns into night and back again, a many-tiered cake is both created and eaten down to a single piece. With simple, graphic (...) illustrations sure to appeal to even the youngest of children, this beautiful rumination on the passage of time will please the most discerning adult readers, too. (shrink)