Antisthenes was famous in antiquity for his studies of Homer's poems, his affiliation with Gorgias and the sophistic movement, his pure Attic writing style, and his inspiration of Diogenes of Sinope, who founded the Cynic philosophical movement. Antisthenes stands at two of the greatest turning points in ancient intellectual history: from pre-Socraticism to Socraticism, and from classical Athens to the Hellenistic period. Antisthenes' works form the path to a better understanding of the intellectual culture of Athens that shaped Plato and (...) laid the foundations for Hellenistic philosophy and literature. Antisthenes of Athens keeps in mind the goals and polemics framing each philosophical and textual discussion. The volume considers the ancient traditions about Antisthenes' rejection of Plato's “Theory of Forms,” his assertion of the paradox, “It is impossible to gainsay,” and his denial that definition of essence is possible, as well as the plausible intentions of Antisthenes. In cases where these questions are not easily settled, and where modern interpretation has varied, Susan H. Prince identifies the roots of the disagreements. The goal and meaning of Antisthenes' other famous ancient paradox, “I would rather go mad than have pleasure,” is illuminated by comparison with other evidence showing that pleasure does have a place in his ideology. Evidence for his relationship to Diogenes of Sinope, and for his receptions by the Cynics, Stoics, Skeptics, Christians, and Neo-Pagans is examined for both its historical value and its distorting tendencies. (shrink)

At On Generation and Corruption I.7.323b1–324a5, Aristotle claims that his new method of analysis for fundamental bodies and properties resolves a traditional apparent incompatibility between opposed principles applied by different philosophical authorities to the problem of affecting and being affected (poiein and paschein): that the like interacts with the unlike, and that the like interacts with the like. Twice in this passage, Aristotle uses a form of the term hupenantion (etymologically, ‘sub-oppositional’) in an extended discussion that includes his declaration of (...) the critical insight for solving the problem and illuminates the partial truth of each of the apparently antithetical universal principles. Because Aristotle uses the uncommon term twice in close context, and because he also explains in the context how he understands the apparent incompatibility—characterized both as a verbal opposition or enantiologia and also as a partial articulation of what should be theorized as a whole—it seems (and has seemed) plausible that this augmented form of the frequently used term enantion (‘opposite’ or ‘contrary’) carries methodological weight for indicating a kind of apparent incompatibility that can be resolved through supplementation to both of the opposed statements rather than elimination of or even favor for one or the other. Although the sense of hupenantion in On Generation and Corruption 1.7 is not continuous with the concept of the ‘subcontrary’ developed by ancient commentators on Aristotle’s Interpretations and early modern logicians, a full survey of the use of this term in Aristotle’s writings shows that Aristotle did recognize and lexically mark a special kind of opposition, one productive of intellectual progress rather than indicative of total error on one side of the debate. (shrink)

In the world according to Hume, people are complicated creatures, with convoluted, often contradictory characters. Consider, for example, Hume's controversial assessment of Charles I: "The character of this prince, as that of most men, if not of all men, was mixed .... To consider him in the most favourable light, it may be affirmed, that his dignity was free from pride, his humanity from weakness, his bravery from rashness, his temperance from austerity, his frugality from avarice .... To speak (...) the most harshly of him, we may affirm, that many of his good qualities were attended with some latent frailty, which, though seemingly inconsiderable, was able, when seconded by the extreme malevolence of his fortune, to disappoint them of all their influence: His beneficent disposition was clouded by a manner not very gracious; his virtue was tinctured with superstition; his good sense was disfigured by a deference to persons of a capacity inferior to his own; and his moderate temper exempted him not from hasty and precipitate resolutions." This sketch shows Charles in all his complexities, with his virtues, near virtues, and contradicting virtues. I have quoted it at length because it is hard to summarize without losing the subtleties that lie within it. Hume's moral theory is based fundamentally on judgments of character, 2 so those subtleties are important to his view. The character sketches that pervade the.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:?;5. HUME AND SPINOZA It is strange that there has been so little interest in comparing two great philosophers, Hume and -Spinoza, who were both so important and influential in bringing about the decline of traditional religion. Jessop's bibliography indicates no interest in Hume and Spinoza up to the 1930 's. The Hume conferences of 1976, as far as I have been able to 2 determine, avoided the topic. (...) In one of the better new Hume volumes, Livingston and King, Hume, A Re-evaluation, 3 Spinoza is cited twice, and once incorrectly at that. On the other hand, in the massive new Spinoza volume edited by Siegfried Hessing, Speculum Spinozanun 1677-1977, Hume is mentioned four times, but only one of these has any real relevance to Hume's views vis-a-vis Spinoza's. Some discussion of Hume's comments, usually brief, occurs in the commentators. B. M. Laing, in David Hume, (London 1932), has just three short references to Spinoza. John Laird, in Hume's Philosophy of Human Nature, (London 1932) has a couple of cursory references to Spinoza, plus a bit more extended statement of Pierre Bay le" s critique of him. In H. H. Price, Hume's Theory of the External World, (Oxford 1940), there is one paragraph on Hume and Spinoza. In Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume (London 1941), there are three references to Spinoza. Rachel Kydd, Reason and Conduct in Hume's Treatise (Oxford 194 6), has the greatest number of references to Spinoza. She was concerned to compare him with Hume on other matters than are dealt with in this paper, namely Spinoza's theory of reason and 9 the passions. In contrast, André Leroy, David Hume, (Paris 1953), has just one paragraph on Spinoza dealing with the immateriality of the soul; and Ernest C. Mossner, in his monumental Life of David Hume, (Austin 1954), has only one reference to Spinoza - James Beattie's denunciation of Hume, Hobbes, Malebranche, Leibniz and Spinoza. Lastly, in a fairly recent commentary by James Noxon, Spinoza is mentioned 66. three times, but not for anything in Hume's text. Noxon does point out (p. 75) that Spinoza is not mentioned in ] 2 Hume's correspondence. John H. Randall has offered an explanation for this neglect of Spinoza by Hume scholars, namely that "Hume stands for all time as the antithesis of Spinoza in his thought". In the England of Hume's day, Spinoza was little known, but still better known at the time than he was in France or England. Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 14 had been twice translated into English anonymously. He had been attacked by Bishop Stillingfleet, by John Evelyn, by Berkeley and several others. But Spinoza was not a major figure, except to the English Deists, and to Hume's early patron, the Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay. Most of the information known about Spinoza came from Pierre Bayle' s Historical and Critical Dictionary, where the article "Spinoza" is the longest in the Dictionary, about three hundred pages in length. My suspicion, or hypothesis, is that Hume first became interested in Spinoza through Ramsay, and then learned what he knew about Spinoza from Bayle' s article. When the young David Hume went to France to write his A Treatise of Human Nature in 1734, he went first to see the Chevalier Ramsay, who entertained Hume for about two weeks. Ramsay was a leading Scottish Catholic, was the teacher of Bonnie Prince Charlie, a leading Scottish revolutionary, 18 as well as the Grand Master of the Free Masons. With Ramsay's eclectic views it is not odd that he had a serious interest in Spinoza's theory, and that he was composing answers to it. Ramsay advised Hume about his own book, and Hume felt he had to show Ramsay the Treatise before he 19 brought it back to England. In the Treatise there is a not too well studied section on Spinoza, Of the immateriality of the soul 20 (T240-45). In introducing Spinoza into the discussion of 67. the immateriality of the soul, Hume follows what was common practice in his day, namely to insult Spinoza and his theory... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:212 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY with Gassendi and his studies on atomism. Yet Papi gives us very little which is not already generally known. There is but a mere hint of how atomistic philosophy was handled by the Aristotelians and to what extent they actually absorbed some of that tradition themselves. Nothing in detail is said of the process whereby atomistic and Platonic motives became coupled, not only by Bruno, (...) but by Ficino before and by Cudworth afterwards. On the credit side, however, the author does call attention to the commentary and paraphrase of Lucretius by Girolamo Frachetta of Rovigo (printed 1589), a work of some interest, which has been but little studied. Such rays of light are all too infrequent in this section and Papi is usually content to follow the conventional beaten path. For one to write a book on Bruno which breaks new ground is now difficult, for the field has been so thoroughly worked over. This one takes up a number of interesting themes found in Bruno's writings and sheds some light on them, but it seldom if ever says anything very different from the well-established tradition of Bruno scholarship in Italy which has produced so many mediocre books over the years. The specialist on Bruno and the sixteenth century will find little to detain him; the more casual reader could be ~rected to a number of superior treatments of various aspects of the Nolan's thought. In short, this study adds but little to what is already known. CHAm~V_SB. ScH~rrr University of Leeds Sir Walter Ralegh dcrivain, l'~uvre et les iddes. By Pierre Lefranc. (Qutbec: Les Presses de l'Universit~ Laval, 1968. Pp. 733. $19.50) This excellent study, the fruit of more than a dozen years of research, throws much light on Ralegh's thought and literary achievement. Lefranc has examined the manuscript sources, and unearthed quite a few new ones, and has patiently, carefully, and with much detective work, established what is no doubt the best available hypothesis of what is authentic among Ralegh's purported prose and poetic writings, and the date and circumstances of their composition. He has analyzed them in the context of Ralegh's carver, and has developed an exciting and rich interpretation of his political, philosophical and religious ideas. Ralegh's role in intellectual history derives mainly from his reputation as a Machiavellian, as an atheist, and from his mammoth, "pious," much-read providential History of the World (written during his years as a prisoner in the Tower of London). Lefranc deftly sorts and weighs the evidence for the various views and attitudes attributed to Ralegh in his own day and by interpreters ever since, and emerges from this examination with a fresh and striking picture of one of the liveliest bridge figures between the Elizabethan Renaissance and the modern world. The establishment of the canon leads to discarding as not by Ralegh many writings that have previously been used in interpreting the courtier's views. Three philosophical works which have played a role in twentieth-century interpretation, "A Treatise of the Soule," "The Prince, or Maxims of State" and "The Sceptick" are shown to be doubtful to a greater or lesser degree. "The Sceptick," which Strathmann (Sir Walter Ralegh,,4 Study in Elizabethan Skepticism, New York, 1951) had used to interpret Ralegh as a sceptical-Christian fideist, had been questioned earlier by Lefranc, Sprott, and myself. It is just a translation of portions of Book I of Sextus F_znpiricus' Outlinea of Pyrrhonism, and contains no connection with Ralegh, except that it was BOOK REVIEWS 213 published in his literary remains in 1651. Lefranc now, examining the evidence of the four manuscripts that have been discovered, concludes that it was a part of Ralegh's documentation when he was doing his research, but that 'Tattribution de 'The Sceptick' Ralegh lui-m~me ne repose sur rien" (p. 67). With the canon shorn of the dubious items, Lefranc proceeds to unfold a picture of Ralegh's intellectual world. As a practical statesman, buccaneer and explorer, Ralegh had a view of the role England should play vis-,'t-vis Spain and the New World that contained... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Machiavelli’s Moses and Renaissance PoliticsJohn H. GeerkenWithin the almost Dantesque array of humanity that populates the pages of Machiavelli’s canon, Moses occupies a special place. He first appears in chapter six of The Prince concerning those who acquire new princedoms by dint of their own virtù and military self-sufficiency. He last appears in the Discourses as one who was forced to kill a host of envious opponents. There (...) is some irony in these representations: in The Prince, with its tyrannical overtones, Moses appears as God’s friend; but in the Discourses, with its republican associations, Moses is an executioner. Machiavelli captures some of the ambiguity that attends on Moses when he declares that “Moses should not be discussed, since he was a mere executor of things laid down for him by God, nevertheless he ought to be exalted, if only for the grace that made him worthy to speak with God.” 1 Are we to exalt Moses, but not discuss him? Then, too, why bother with either God or Moses? Why complicate the search for the effectual truth of things by invoking metaphysical elements or inimitable biblical figures? How are we to understand these references? Are these ironic as sometimes asserted?But what are the heuristic possibilities in a non-ironic approach? If Moses had so great a teacher, what was his curriculum? Since no other figure in the Machiavellian census is so associated with slavery, was Moses a vehicle for making an assertion about slavery and liberation, or about politics and religion, or about the morality of politics? Then, too, how did Machiavelli’s Moses compare to the Moses who was so prominent in Renaissance iconology? These are the questions which this study addresses.I. Of the several references to Moses, the most telling is the last one in the Discourses. Machiavelli writes: “He who reads the Bible intelligently [sensata-mente] [End Page 579] sees that if Moses was to put his laws and regulations into effect, he was forced to kill countless men who, moved by nothing else than envy, were opposed to his plans.” 2A great deal is compressed into this passage: the confrontation of Moses’ virtù with the necessity imposed by his opposition, the need to use violent means to achieve lawful ends, and the implied sanction of sacred Scripture. But the Bible, Machiavelli asserts pointedly, must be read intelligently—presumably not in a devotional, liturgical, or exegetical manner, but in effect politically. Machiavelli wrote that he himself read in order to learn the reasons for human actions. 3 Indeed, one of his reasons for writing history was to convey his conviction that “[i]f any reading is useful to citizens who govern republics, it is that which shows the causes of the hatreds and factional struggles within the city, in order that such citizens having grown wise through the sufferings of others, can keep themselves united.” 4In a word reading can be political. References to biblical figures in his works indicate that for Machiavelli the Bible was not exempt from a political reading; it, too, could yield the reasons for human actions and the causes of hatred and factionalism. 5 We can assume, therefore, that he read the Book of Exodus with these concerns in mind even as he invited his own readers to read the Bible. What, therefore, can the Book of Exodus show us?II. The Book of Exodus records at least forty-three conversations between God and Moses, thirty-three of which were initiated by God in order to instruct, command, announce, predict, threaten, remind, warn, and legislate. It records God’s determination to rescue his convenanted people despite pharaoh’s sustained resistance. 6 It records as well the instructional conversations dealing with the plagues, the sacrifices, the Passover, the plundering of Egypt, the escape routes and the encampments. 7 And of course there is the account of the crossing of the Red Sea which no Egyptian pursuer survived. 8Noteworthy, too, is the fact that, for his part, Moses initiated ten conversations with God, declaring his personal doubts and inadequacies, offering his excuses, complaining about the hardships of his mission, reporting on the grumbling... (shrink)

By considering the irreducible representations of the Lorentz group, an analysis of the different spin-2 waves is presented. In particular, the question of the helicity is discussed. It is concluded that, although from the point of view of representation theory there are no compelling reasons to choose between spin-2 waves with helicity σ=±1 or σ=±2, consistency arguments of the ensuing field theories favor waves with helicity σ=±1.

Averroës, 1126-1198; Arab philosophy; views on; God; simplicity; pantheism; Islamic philosophy.

With B. M. Pap. 273 , which consists of a number of fragments from a papyrus book containing an unknown epic on the subject of Dionysus and his Indian expedition, is bound up a small fragment, evidently by a different hand. This I have recently identified as from the Phaenomena of Aratus; and I therefore publish it here. Apparently no papyrus fragment of this poem has yet been discovered; there is, however, at Berlin a portion of a commentary on Aratus, (...) which has been published by Maass in his Commentariorum in Aratum Reliquiae, Berlin, 1898, pp. 556–558. (shrink)

In 2003, a photograph taken by Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) , sold at auction for $332,300. Some might be surprised that a photograph could garner such a sum, but, in this case at least, none more so than Jim Krantz. Krantz might be allowed a certain level of incredulity, for Prince's photograph was a photograph of another photograph, this one taken by Krantz himself. As far as copyright is concerned, Krantz's photograph and Prince's are the same work, (...) and so Krantz is almost certainly infringing on Prince. Copyright protects ‘authored works’, and not art works per se . And unfortunately, while copyright law assumes some metaphysical basis to its objects, this basis tends to go largely uninvestigated. In this paper, I work to develop a comprehensive, coherent, and consistent account of the ontology of authored works suitable for the purposes of copyright law. (shrink)

Study on the Qurʼānic teaching for ideal society.

Refusal of organ donation is common, and becoming more frequent. In Australia refusal by families occurred in 56% of cases in 1995 in New South Wales, and had risen to 82% in 1999, becoming the most important determinant of the country's very low organ donation rate .Leading causes of refusal, identified in many studies, include the lack of understanding by families of brain death and its implications, and subsequent reluctance to relegate the body to purely instrumental status. It is an (...) interesting paradox that surveys of the public continue to show considerable support for organ donation programmes—in theory we will, in practice we won't .In this paper we propose that the Australian community may, for good reason, distrust the concept of and criteria for “whole brain death”, and the equation of this new concept with death of the human being. We suggest that irreversible loss of circulation should be reinstated as the major defining characteristic of death, but that brain-dead, heart-beating entities remain suitable organ donors despite being alive by this criterion. This presents a major challenge to the “dead donor rule”, and would require review of current transplantation legislation. Brain dead entities are suitable donors because of irreversible loss of personhood, accurately and robustly defined by the current brain stem criteria."Even the dead are not terminally ill any more.". (shrink)

Purpose of the study is to shed light on the role of psychophysiology in the creative process, namely, the style corrections connected with pathological changes in the artist’s organism, deviating from empirical-descriptive methods. Theoretical basis of the study implies the interpretation of the notions style and disease not in their narrow professional limitation but from the standpoint of expanding the parameters of these concepts to philosophical dimensions. Based on the principle of analogy, the research findings prove that non-mimetic creative process (...) manifests itself exclusively in connection with a human from a bodily viewpoint through anthropological mimesis, which can program the propensity to certain capabilities of the individual organism. C. G. Jung was the first who pointed to the productivity of this method in his work "Theoretical Reflections on the Nature of the Psyche". The creativity phenomenon reflects not only "pure" psychology and the intellectual and spiritual component but also its relation to the artist as a physical being. It, outside its belonging to and being conditioned by transcendent factors, includes a quantitative aspect related to the moment of intensity. The disease acts to some extent as a stimulator of the production/change of aesthetic enzyme. In this context, the dialectic method is also effective because the subject of study cannot be comprehensively argued using naturalistic approaches only and requires a semantic explanation too. The essence of it is the logic of contradictions. In this case, the antinomy of matter-spirit plays a conceptual role in the projection on the plane of word-formation. Originality of the research findings is in the expansion of the causal relationship range of the creative process, namely the inclusion of the factor of psycho-physiological pathology into the system artist-work. This factor performs important stylistic functions. Conclusions. In contrast to scientific studies, where 1) style is analyzed separately and 2) the figure of the artist, this study argues the need to correlate these issues, taking them beyond descriptiveness to avoid schematics and one-dimensionality. (shrink)

At 2.00 am on the morning of May 24, 1995 the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly Australia passed the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act by the narrow margin of 15 votes to 10. The act permits a terminally ill patient of sound mind and over the age of 18 years, and who is either in pain or suffering, or distress, to request a medical practitioner to assist the patient to terminate his or her life. Thus, Australia can lay claim to (...) being the first country in the world to legalise voluntary active euthanasia. The Northern Territory's act has prompted Australia-wide community reaction, particularly in South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory where proposals to legalise euthanasia have already been defeated on the floor of parliament. In New South Wales (NSW) the AIDS Council of NSW has prepared draft euthanasia legislation to be introduced into the Upper House as a Private Member's Bill some time in 1996. In this paper, we focus on a brief description of events as they occurred and on the arguments for and against the legalisation of euthanasia which have appeared in the media. (shrink)