This is the first complete, one-volume English translation of the ancient Chinese text Xunzi, one of the most extensive, sophisticated, and elegant works in the tradition of Confucian thought. Through essays, poetry, dialogues, and anecdotes, the Xunzi articulates a Confucian perspective on ethics, politics, warfare, language, psychology, human nature, ritual, and music, among other topics. Aimed at general readers and students of Chinese thought, Eric Hutton’s translation makes the full text of this important work more accessible in English than ever (...) before. Named for its purported author, the Xunzi has long been neglected compared to works such as the Analects of Confucius and the Mencius. Yet interest in the Xunzi has grown in recent decades, and the text presents a much more systematic vision of the Confucian ideal than the fragmented sayings of Confucius and Mencius. In one famous, explicit contrast to them, the Xunzi argues that human nature is bad. However, it also allows that people can become good through rituals and institutions established by earlier sages. Indeed, the main purpose of the Xunzi is to urge people to become as good as possible, both for their own sakes and for the sake of peace and order in the world. In this edition, key terms are consistently translated to aid understanding and line numbers are provided for easy reference. Other features include a concise introduction, a timeline of early Chinese history, a list of important names and terms, cross-references, brief explanatory notes, a bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The contributions of the great physicist Ludwig Boltzmann to philosophy and biology are not known sufficiently. In philosophy, he was a realist, and much opposed to his colleague's, Mach's, positivism, but also to Berkeley's, Kant's, Hegel's and Schopenhauer's idealisms. In biology, Boltzmann was a passionate Darwinist and tried to explain on the basis of evolution the meaning of photosynthesis as well as the origin of life and of the mind. Boltzmann argued for evolutionary epistemology. Opposing Kant, he derived the fundamental (...) ideas of space, time and causality from the experience of mankind and its ancestors. The laws of thought were acquired in evolution. While they must be broadly true they need not be faultless. Antinomies arise when thought overshoots the mark, i. e. exceeds the limits of the area for which it evolved. As for Boltzmann the experience of the organism in the course of evolution is the only and exclusive source of knowledge, he may be called an absolute Darwinist. A short account of Boltzmann's Darwinian ideas on the origin of morality, on the sense of beauty and on happiness is also given. (shrink)

A comprehensive, self-contained survey of the theory and applications of differential games, one of the most commonly used tools for modelling and analysing economics and management problems which are characterised by both multiperiod and strategic decision making. Although no prior knowledge of game theory is required, a basic knowledge of linear algebra, ordinary differential equations, mathematical programming and probability theory is necessary. Part One presents the theory of differential games, starting with the basic concepts of game theory and going on (...) to cover control theoretic models, Markovian equilibria with simultaneous play, differential games with hierarchical play, trigger strategy equilibria, differential games with special structures, and stochastic differential games. Part Two offers applications to capital accumulation games, industrial organization and oligopoly games, marketing, resources and environmental economics. (shrink)

Hardy’s paradox was originally presented as a demonstration, without inequalities, of the incompatibility between quantum mechanics and the hypothesis of local causality. Equipped with newly developed tools that allow for a quantitative assessment of realism, here we revisit Hardy’s paradox and argue that nonlocal causality is not mandatory for its solution; quantum irrealism suffices.

Today’s larger corporations engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for myriad reasons. Anchored in philosophical treatises, the paper discusses the different facets of CSR. It presents some CSR practices of local and multinational corporations and how these practices take care of the triple bottom line and maintain good corporate image. It also presents drawbacks to business ethics.The last part of the paper presents some challenges that CSR is facing. This paper argues that businesses should see CSR as a responsibility of (...) creating a better life for the larger society as it creates a better life for its stakeholders. (shrink)

CHAPTER INTRODUCTION This study is in the form of Policy Research in the area of Foundations in Higher Education. The issue of affirmative action is both ...

The global financial crisis and ensuing weak growth have increased interest in macroeconomic issues within comparative political economy. CPE, particularly the dominant Varieties of Capitalism approach, has based its analyses on mainstream economics, which limits analysis of the relation between distribution and growth and neglects the role finance plays in modern economies. It overstates the stability of the capitalist growth process and understates the potential effectiveness of government interventions. Baccaro and Pontusson have suggested a post-Keynesian theory of distribution and growth (...) as an alternative. This article generalizes their point. PK theory highlights the instability of the growth process and lends itself to an analysis of income distribution and power relations. The article identifies the analysis of financialization and financial cycles, the understanding of neoliberal growth models, and the political economy of central banks as areas where PK economics provides specific insights for CPE. It also highlights that these arguments have important implications for government policy in an era of secular stagnation with ongoing social, distributional, and economic crises. (shrink)

In 'Een handvol filosofen' staan de filosofen centraal die sinds de oprichting van de Vrije Universiteit in 1880 aan deze instelling verbonden zijn geweest. Het gaat hierbij niet alleen om de inhoud van hun werk, maar ook om de personen zelf. Er waren filosofiedocenten die zich met de universiteit identificeerden en zich volledig konden ontplooien. Er waren er echter ook voor wie dit niet gold, die geïsoleerd of in gewetensnood raakten. Veel filosofiestudenten waren actief betrokken bij wat er in hun (...) faculteit gebeurde. Zij namen initiatieven, protesteerden soms tegen de gang van zaken en kozen partij in conflictsituaties. Sinds het eind van de jaren zestig van de twintigste eeuw verloor de Vrije Universiteit geleidelijk haar christelijk karakter. Tegenwoordig werken alle stafleden vanuit hun eigen motivatie mee aan een hoofdzakelijk seculier geworden universiteit, die ruimte biedt voor religieuze en levensbeschouwelijke diversiteit. (shrink)

What role does the wild duck play in Ibsen's famous drama? I argue that, besides mirroring the fate of the human cast members, the duck is acting as animal subject in a quasi-experiment, conducted in a private setting. Analysed from this perspective, the play allows us to discern the epistemological and ethical dimensions of the new scientific animal practice (systematic observation of animal behaviour under artificial conditions) emerging precesely at that time. Ibsen's play stages the clash between a scientific and (...) a romantic understanding of animals that still constitutes the backdrop of most contemporary debates over animals in research. Whereas the scientific understanding reduces the animal's behaviour, as well as its environment, to discrete and modifiable elements, the romantic view regards animals as being at one with (or violently disconnected from) their natural surroundings. (shrink)

"Überphilosophie" ist das spannende Gedankenexperiment Engelbert Lorenz Fischers zu bis dato bestehenden philosophischen Strömungen und Theorien. Fischer verfolgt hierbei den Grundsatz der Harmonisierung, in dem er versucht, sich über bestehende Gegensätze und Einseitigkeiten in der Philosophie zu erheben und die Hauptgegensätze der Philosophie zu einer höheren Einheit zu verbinden. Sorgfältig bearbeiteter Nachdruck der Originalausgabe von 1907.

We defend the reliability of Hurlburt's Descriptive Experi-ence Sampling method against some of Schwitzgebel's attacks. But we agree with Schwitzgebel that the method could be used much more widely than it has been, helping to answer questions about the nature and structure of consciousness in addition to cataloguing the latter's contents. We sketch a number of potential lines of further enquiry.

Even before Kant's proclamation of the primacy of practical reason, Anselm of Canterbury's discovery of the epistemic priority of moral value opened the door to philosophical avenues of exploration that are rarely followed consistently. This consistency manifests itself in the resolve to perceive man's moral self-understanding as an epistemic opportunity rather than as a problem that stands in the way of scientistic explanations of the world. In these essays, Recktenwald shows, in constructive dialogue with contemporary philosophies, that this opportunity is (...) not a delusion, but only waiting to be seized in favor of a humane image of man. (shrink)

Introduction: Platonic dramatology -- The political and philosophical problems. Using pre-Socratic philosophy to support political reform: the Athenian stranger ; Plato's Parmenides: Parmenides' critique of Socrates and Plato's critique of Parmenides ; Becoming Socrates ; Socrates interrogates his contemporaries about the noble and good -- Paradigms of philosophy. Socrates' positive teaching ; Timaeus-Critias: completing or challenging Socratic political philosophy? ; Socratic practice -- The trial and death of Socrates. The limits of human intelligence ; The Eleatic challenge ; The trial (...) and death of Socrates -- Conclusion: Why Plato made Socrates his hero. (shrink)

The health care systems in Austria, Germany and Switzerland owe their institutional structure to different historical developments. While Austria and Germany voted for the Bismarck-Model of social health insurance,Switzerland adopted a voluntary system of health insurance. In all three countries, until very recently, the different challenges which the healthcare sector faced were met by piecemeal approaches and by stop and go policies, which, in the long run were not very successful either in containing costs or in improving efficacy and efficiency. (...) During the 1990 more fundamental reforms in the health care systems of all three countries took place. Germany and Switzerland chose the path of deregulation of the health insurance system, which consequently strengthened the competition between the insurance companies, and, to some extent between the suppliers of medical services. While this can be seen as an essential part of the reform process for these two countries, Austria favors a state-oriented and interventionist approach in order to meet the challenges. (shrink)

This article presents a response to Richard Rorty's paper "Is Philosophy Relevant to Business Ethics?" The author questions Rorty's views on the depreciation of the role of philosophy in applied ethics, and outlines four reasons why philosophy retains its relevance. The author addresses the role of moral reasoning in the development of the moral imagination. The author also concludes that humans have the means necessary to make moral progress and are capable of moral reasoning, and need only to develop a (...) strong moral imagination. (shrink)

Edmund Pellegrino considered medicine as a skill, art, and perhaps most importantly, a moral enterprise. In this essay, I attempt to exemplify how the legacy and contributions of Edmund Pellegrino, as a teacher and a physician, could allow for a renaissance of medical practice in which physicians engage intellectual and moral virtue to both effect sound care, and do so in a humanitarian way, rather than in simple accordance with a business model of medicine. The virtues are viewed in a (...) renewed light as being key characteristics of physicians, and important to patient centered care. (shrink)

In this paper, I will reread the history of molecular genetics from a psychoanalytical angle, analysing it as a case history. Building on the developmental theories of Freud and his followers, I will distinguish four stages, namely: (1) oedipal childhood, notably the epoch of model building (1943–1953); (2) the latency period, with a focus on the development of basic skills (1953–1989); (3) adolescence, exemplified by the Human Genome Project, with its fierce conflicts, great expectations and grandiose claims (1989–2003) and (4) (...) adulthood (2003–present) during which revolutionary research areas such as molecular biology and genomics have achieved a certain level of normalcy—have evolved into a normal science. I will indicate how a psychoanalytical assessment conducted in this manner may help us to interpret and address some of the key normative issues that have been raised with regard to molecular genetics over the years, such as ‘relevance’, ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘promise management’. (shrink)

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and the (...) Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment. "--John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."--Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

The present piece focuses on the influence of Plotinus' understanding of time and eternity as articulated in Plotinus' third and fifth Enneads upon Mīr Dāmād's (d. 1631–2) conception of eternity, perpetuity, and time found in his Book of Blazing Brands (Kitab al‐Qabasāt). Although Mīr Dāmād's conception of eternity, perpetuity, and time resembles that of Plotinus' cosmology and ontology, he departs from Plotinus' hypostases in establishing strict parameters for each domain. Unlike Plotinus, Mīr Dāmād argues that the realm of eternity is (...) reserved for God alone, while the realm of Perpetuity contains the Platonic Forms. For Mīr Dāmād, the realm of time is an effect of the realm of Perpetuity and a tool for human beings to understand how to measure events in the temporal world. Unlike many other Shī'ite philosophers, Mīr Dāmād's articulation of these three cosmological realms incorporates thought found in the works of both prominent Sunni and Shī'ite scholars such as Ibn Sīnā, Abū Ḥāmid al‐Ghāzālī, Suhrawardī, and Naṣīr al‐Dīn Ṭūsī. Although his most successful student, Mullā Ṣadrā Shirazī, had ultimately disagreed with his teacher's cosmological doctrine, he remained influenced by the multitude of sources that his teacher had used. (shrink)

Commentators disagree about the extent to which Kant’s ethics is compatible with consequentialism. A question that has not yet been asked is whether Kant had a view of his own regarding the fundamental difference between his ethical theory and a broadly consequentialist one. In this paper I argue that Kant does have such a view. I illustrate this by discussing his response to a well-known objection to his moral theory, namely that Kant offers an implicitly consequentialist theory of moral appraisal. (...) This objection was most famously raised by Mill and Schopenhauer, but also during Kant’s time by Pistorius and Tittel. I show that Kant’s response to this objection in the second Critique illustrates that he sees the fundamental difference between his moral theory and a broadly consequentialist one to be one that concerns methodology. (shrink)