This work focuses on the relational dimension of the encounter between teacher and students meant as a structural element for teaching practice. By using theoretical group-analytical and anthropo-analytical coordinates, the authors psychodynamically problematize some relational conditions that may influence learning. This research concentrates on the circumstances that limit and allow the birth of a group arrangement capable to learn from experience, rather than on a perspective to teach-learn in a perfect agreement with planning. Intercultural education is pointed out and located (...) as a horizon and ideal term to guide educational practice. (shrink)

Leibniz participates in a quite important thought tradition of christian Europe, that of concordia between Christians, or between religions. With him this heritage is universalised: the globalization of concordia gives birth to Leibniz’s harmony of universal truth, that the whole of humankind can access.

Popkin set Erasmus as the beginner of modern skepticism, and made of him an apologetic sort of sceptic, that uses doubt to make acceptable the tradition and authority of the church. The pivotal moment is the debate concerning free will. Luther is particularly upset by Erasmus’ professions of skepticism in his De libero arbitrio, although it was meant by him as an appeal to moderation: the key to Erasmus’ skepticism isn’t religious incredulity, but putting doubt to good use, in suspending (...) judgements that are not necessary and might be dangerous to peace and concord among christians. Doubt isn’t endorsed by the christian tradition, nor by the literary one, and technical treatments (in logic or rhetorics) are not favored by Erasmus. Moreover skepticism receives the same ambiguous consideration that Erasmus has for philosophy in general. But he practices doubt nevertheless, in both forms of dubitare and ambigere. The latter is particularly important, since this practice of skepticism is particularly useful in avoiding the common error of doing what one had better omit. These ideas of Erasmus play a role in his cultural, theolocial, and ecclesiastical program, developed by him along many years, and specifically in the years of the crudest confrontation among emerging religious factions. In the works of the greats catholic skeptics, such as Huet, skepticism and fideism will be tightly connected, Erasmus supports skepticism as a means to gain for all contending parties a right to doubt and ask for suspension of judgement in matter of warlike controversy, aiming instead to concile intellectual freedom and irenic perspectives. (shrink)

Spacetime as we know and love it is lost in most approaches to quantum gravity. For many of these approaches, as inchoate and incomplete as they may be, one of the main challenges is to relate what they take to be the fundamental non-spatiotemporal structure of the world back to the classical spacetime of GR. The present essay investigates how spacetime is lost and how it may be regained in one major approach to quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity.

In this paper, I argue that no theory of consciousness can simultaneously respect four initially plausible metaphysical claims – namely, ‘first-person realism’, ‘non-solipsism’, ‘non-fragmentation’, and ‘one world’ – but that any three of the four claims are mutually consistent. So, theories of consciousness face a ‘quadrilemma’. Since it will be hard to achieve a consensus on which of the four claims to retain and which to give up, we arrive at a landscape of competing theories, all of which have pros (...) and cons. I will briefly indicate which kinds of theories correspond to the four horns of the quadrilemma. (shrink)

Appeared in 2012. It was presented in conference form in the concluding session of the 2011 Leibniz-Kongress. Complete concepts, a key notion of Leibniz’s philosophy, are analysed in their metaphysical genesis in Leibniz’s theory of creation. Both forms they are supposed to have (collections of predicates, individual histories) are discussed in the framework of Leibniz’s metaphysics of individual essences.

_Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism_ fundamentally rethinks the nature of the transgressive theories and practices of the Buddhist Tantric traditions, challenging the notion that the Tantras were "marginal" or primitive and situating them instead--both ideologically and institutionally--within larger trends in mainstream Buddhist and Indian culture. Critically surveying prior scholarship, Wedemeyer exposes the fallacies of attributing Tantric transgression to either the passions of lusty monks, primitive tribal rites, or slavish imitation of Saiva traditions. Through comparative analysis of modern historical narratives--that depict (...) Tantrism as a degenerate form of Buddhism, a primal religious undercurrent, or medieval ritualism--he likewise demonstrates these to be stock patterns in the European historical imagination. Through close analysis of primary sources, Wedemeyer reveals the lived world of Tantric Buddhism as largely continuous with the Indian religious mainstream and deploys contemporary methods of semiotic and structural analysis to make sense of its seemingly repellent and immoral injunctions. Innovative, semiological readings of the influential _Guhyasamaja Tantra_ underscore the text's overriding concern with purity, pollution, and transcendent insight--issues shared by all Indic religions--and a large-scale, quantitative study of Tantric literature shows its radical antinomianism to be a highly managed ritual observance restricted to a sacerdotal elite. These insights into Tantric scripture and ritual clarify the continuities between South Asian Tantrism and broader currents in Indian religion, illustrating how thoroughly these "radical" communities were integrated into the intellectual, institutional, and social structures of South Asian Buddhism. (shrink)

_Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism_ fundamentally rethinks the nature of the transgressive theories and practices of the Buddhist Tantric traditions, challenging the notion that the Tantras were "marginal" or primitive and situating them instead -- both ideologically and institutionally -- within larger trends in mainstream Buddhist and Indian culture. Critically surveying prior scholarship, Wedemeyer exposes the fallacies of attributing Tantric transgression to either the passions of lusty monks, primitive tribal rites, or slavish imitation of Saiva traditions. Through comparative analysis of (...) modern historical narratives -- that depict Tantrism as a degenerate form of Buddhism, a primal religious undercurrent, or medieval ritualism -- he likewise demonstrates these to be stock patterns in the European historical imagination. Through close analysis of primary sources, Wedemeyer reveals the lived world of Tantric Buddhism as largely continuous with the Indian religious mainstream and deploys contemporary methods of semiotic and structural analysis to make sense of its seemingly repellent and immoral injunctions. Innovative, semiological readings of the influential _Guhyasamaja Tantra_ underscore the text's overriding concern with purity, pollution, and transcendent insight -- issues shared by all Indic religions -- and a large-scale, quantitative study of Tantric literature shows its radical antinomianism to be a highly managed ritual observance restricted to a sacerdotal elite. These insights into Tantric scripture and ritual clarify the continuities between South Asian Tantrism and broader currents in Indian religion, illustrating how thoroughly these "radical" communities were integrated into the intellectual, institutional, and social structures of South Asian Buddhism. (shrink)

One of the hallmark themes of Karl Popper’s approach to the social sciences was the insistence that when social scientists are members of the society they study, then they are liable to affect that society. In particular, they are liable to affect it in such a way that the claims they make lose their validity. “The interaction between the scientist’s pronouncements and social life almost invariably creates situations in which we have not only to consider the truth of such pronouncements, (...) but also their actual influence on future developments. The social scientist may be striving to find the truth; but, at the same time, he must always be exerting a definite influence upon society. The very fact that his pronouncements do exert an influence destroys their objectivity.” (Popper 1963. (shrink)

The article deals with the issue of solidarity in health care,with particular reference to the Italian context. It presents thedifficulties of the Italian NHS and assesses the current proposalto counter the crisis of the Welfare State by giving upinstitutional arrangements, in order to favour the so-called`social private'. Moreover, it addresses the question ofprioritisation and targeting in the context of health care,arguing for the insufficiency of the standard approach of neutralliberalism, and showing how the concept of solidarity might helpto develop a (...) different account. Lastly, it discusses the case oforgan transplantion in Italy, as an example ofsolidarity-inspired health care policy. (shrink)

Did it all begin with Tschirnhaus? This paper discusses the exemplary role that Tschirnhaus could play in the reconstruction of an empirically oriented, scientific, somewhat radical and variously unorthodox current in 18th-century German philosophy, starting from 18th-century characterizations of his intellectual image.

The scattered and pervasive variability of material objects, being a conspicuous part of the very experience of early-modern and modern science, challenges its purely theoretic character in many ways. Problems of this kind turn out in such different scientific contexts as Galilean physics, chemistry, and physiology. Practical answers are offered on the basis of different approaches, among which, in particular, two can be singled out. One is made out by what is often called an ‘art’ of experiments. From the Renaissance (...) until J. H. Lambert’s writings of the 1750–1760s, we can follow a train of reflections on the art of making experiments that deal precisely with the persistence of contingency in the material objects of pure science. The other is the analysis of contingency in probabilistic terms. They develop subsequently and eventually meet, as it can be seen precisely in Lambert’s work: among the first to pursue this path are Jakob Bernoulli and Leibniz. (shrink)

Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777) galt schon den Zeitgenossen als Universalgenie von europäischem Rang. Tatsächlich forschte und publizierte Lambert als Mathematiker und Philosoph, und zwar vor allem zur Logik und Metaphysik, zur Erkenntnis- und Sprachtheorie, als Astronom und Physiker. Seinem Aufklärungsverständnis gemäß wirkte er nicht nur mit einer Vielzahl von Publikationen in die Wissenschaften, sondern als Popularphilosoph darüber hinaus auch in die sich ent- wickelnde Gesellschaft und den Staat der Aufklärung hinein. Dass Lambert vor dem Hintergrund dieses Selbstverständnisses als Aufklärer auch (...) Gedichte verfasste, überrascht dabei nicht. Der Band versammelt erstmals Studien zu allen Werkteilen des Berliner Gelehrten. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the controversy of Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov, the so-called “another Bolshevik”, with Lenin and his associates on the question of the revolution and the ways of building a socialist society and state. It is shown that Bogdanov expressed a critical attitude towards the revolution and its socialist nature, the ability of the proletariat to play a decisive role in it, and wrote about Russia’s unpreparedness for an anti-capitalist coup, thereby expressing a distinctly marked anti-Leninist position. Based (...) on the analysis of a large corpus of Bogdanov’s works, the authors focused their attention on the following aspects of his work relating to the theme of revolution: the contradictions between Bogdanov and Lenin in its interpretation even before October 1917; Bogdanov’s views on the revolution and real socialism after its completion; his interpretation and evaluation of “war communism”; the program for building socialism in the USSR and the search for ways to form fundamentally new social structures developed in the context of the science of tectology, created by him; Bogdanov’s project “Proletkult” and his utopian novels, in which he foresaw how “socialism in one country” would be built and how the transition from the old exploitative to new forms of human coexistence would be carried out, as well as the danger of the degeneration of democracy into a dictatorship. (shrink)

The problem of free will as it is know in Western philosophical traditions is hardly known in China. Considering how central the problem is in the West, this is a remarkable fact. We try to explain this, and we offer insights into discussions within Chinese traditions that we think are related, not historically but regarding the issues discussed. Thus we introduce four central Chinese concepts, namely: (1) xīn 心 (heart, heart-mind), (2) xìng 性 (human nature, characteristic tendencies, inborn capacity), (3) (...) mìng 命 (lifespan, fate, command, allotment, endowment), and (4) zìrán 自然 (self-so, so of itself, nature, spontaneity), and we indicate how these concepts and their discussions can be related to discussions on free will. (shrink)

This is a chapter of the planned monograph "Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Theories of Gravity", co-authored by Nick Huggett and Christian Wüthrich and under contract with Oxford University Press. (More information at www<dot>beyondspacetime<dot>net.) This chapter introduces causal set theory and identifies and articulates a 'problem of space' in this theory.

This anthology is based on a symposium in the series "Young Philosophy of Religion," jointly organized by the Catholic Academy in Berlin and the Research Institute for Philosophy Hanover. German text.

Mémoire de Mons. Lange contre cette philosophie -- Réponse préliminaire d'un auteur anonimeà ce mémoire -- Sommaire de la réponse de Mr. Wolf mȩme avec un avis au lecteur de l'histoire de ce nouveau différend.

Abstract:Robert Sugden has suggested a normative standard of freedom as ‘opportunity’ that is supposed to help realign normative economics – with its traditional rational choice orientation – with behavioural economics. While allowing preferences to be incoherent, he wants to maintain the anti-paternalist stance of orthodox welfare economics. His standard, though, presupposes that people respond to uncertainty about their own future preferences by dismissing any kind of self-constraint. We argue that the approach lacks psychological substance: Sugden's normative benchmark – the ‘responsible (...) person’ – can hardly serve as a convincing role model in a contractarian setting. An alternative concept is introduced, and some implications are briefly discussed. (shrink)

Des Herrn Doct. und Prof. Joachim Langens, oder, Der Theologischen Facultaet zu Halle Anmerckungen über des Herrn Hoff-Raths und Professor Christian Wolffens Metaphysicam ... nebst beygefügter Hr. Hoff-R. und Prof. Christian Wolffens gründlicher Antwort -- Herrn D. Joh. Francisci Buddei S.S. Theol. P.P.O. zu Jena Bedencken über die Wolffianische Philosophie, mit Anmerckungen erläutert von Christian Wolffen.

De differentia nexus rerum sapientis et fatalis necessitatis -- Monitum ad commentationem luculentam de differentia nexus rerum sapientis et fatalis necessitatis.

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Ethik und Technik" verfügbar.