As in other European countries, in Denmark philosophy was an important factor in the cultural life of the nineteenth century. Kierkegaard lived and wrote in Copenhagen, where Hegelianism both flourished and met with serious criticism, and both of these elements can be found in his authorship. This chapter explores possible sources of inspiration for Kierkegaard's rejection of Danish Hegelianism and its follower, speculative theology, and discusses his influence on the fashionable Danish philosopher of the day, Rasmus Nielsen. By way of (...) conclusion, it is emphasized that Kierkegaard's understanding of Christianity and his struggle over it were decisive for a shift in Danish intellectual life around 1870. (shrink)

Large-scale transnational land acquisition of agricultural land in the global south by rich corporations or countries raises challenging normative questions. In this article, the author critically examines and advocates a human rights approach to these questions. Mutually reinforcing, policies, governance and practice promote equitable and secure land tenure that in turn, strengthens other human rights, such as to employment, livelihood and food. Human rights therefore provide standards for evaluating processes and outcomes of transnational land acquisitions and, thus, for determining whether (...) they are ethically unacceptable land grabs. A variety of recent policy initiatives on the issue have evoked human rights, most centrally through the consultation and negotiation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests concluded in 2012. However, a case of transnational land appropriation illustrates weak host and investor state enforcement of human rights, leaving the parties to in interaction with local groups in charge of protecting human rights. Generally, we have so far seen limited direct application of human rights by states in their governance of transnational land acquisition. Normative responses to transnational land acquisition—codes of conduct, principles of responsible agricultural investment or voluntary guidelines—do not in themselves secure necessary action and change. Applying human rights approaches one must therefore also analyze the material conditions, power relations and political processes that determine whether and how women and men can secure the human rights accountability of the corporations and governments that promote large-scale, transnational land acquisition in the global south. (shrink)

Remembering seems, to philosophers and scientists, one of the most mystifying of human activities. Yet natural language users have no problem understanding what is meant by ‘memory’. Memory is simply the ability to recall personally experienced events and certain kinds of information such as facts, names, or faces; or how to perform certain actions, like riding a bike or playing chess. It is on this basis that people sometimes make claims about themselves or others having a good or bad memory, (...) especially for things like names, numbers, or faces. Why then is memory such a mystery? Because, firstly, of its diversity: memory enables us to perform a plethora of different tasks, including the continuous interpretation of every moment of consciousness. Secondly, different forms of memory have different standards of accuracy, and often dramatically different criteria for success. (shrink)

This remarkable book presents a rich and up-to-date view of evolution that explores the far-reaching implications of Darwin's theory and emphasizes the power, significance, and relevance of evolution to our lives today. After all, we ourselves are the product of evolution, and we can tackle many of our gravest challenges -- from lethal resurgence of antiobiotic-resistant diseases to the wave of extinctions that looms before us -- with a sound understanding of the science.

Addresses the concept of truth in Chinese Daoist philosophy and ritual. Through wide-ranging research into Daoist ritual, both in history and as it survives in the present day, shows that the concept of true reality that informs this tradition posits being as a paradox anchored in the inexistent Way"--Provided by publisher.

Carl F. Craver investigates what we are doing when we use neuroscience to explain what's going on in the brain. When does an explanation succeed and when does it fail? Craver offers explicit standards for successful explanation of the workings of the brain, on the basis of a systematic view about what neuroscientific explanations are.

We propose the FoodSmart City framework as a transdisciplinary avenue to promote sustainable seafood consumption. We argue that a change in human seafood consumption towards eating at lower trophic levels may be helped by discovering forgotten cultural practices and tapping into locally-sourced marine resources. We set out a framework of knowledge exchange and production between academia, businesses, and civil society to promote and assist healthy and ecologically sustainable living using digital tools and intangible cultural heritage while engaging with innovative chefs (...) and educationalists. The framework targets Dublin City, Ireland, but may potentially be replicated in other contexts. (shrink)

Carl Craver investigates what we are doing when we sue neuroscience to explain what's going on in the brain.

Gregory Bateson developed his transdisciplinary thinking in the shadow of sociology, but his ideas are not generally viewed as part of the field of classical sociology. This article will explain this exclusion by arguing that Bateson’s way of theorising – while attempting to make progress in the understanding of reality – returns to ideas that were already rejected within the field in which he first worked. Furthermore, as a reading of Bateson through the lens of Durkheim will show, Bateson’s theories (...) fail to provide a better understanding of social reality than those of his predecessors. This type of critical analysis demonstrates the weakness of some of Bateson’s central claims and contributes to a more in-depth understanding and reassessment of his ideas from a sociological perspective. Pointing out that Bateson’s critique of the modern worldview is based on a pre-critical and pre-modern philosophy of wholeness is not to invalidate Bateson’s foundational intuition that our current mode of thinking challenges our chances of surviving as a species. However, in order to make a theoretically convincing argument concerning how our thinking challenges our survival, a more critical understanding of the relation between mind and society than the one Bateson offers is required. (shrink)

This paper presents an interpretation of Husserl''s phenomenological epoché or bracketing ( Einklammerung), which makes it possible to compare his position with philosophical programs developed within the framework of modern analytical philosophy. At the same time it asks in what sense Husserl''s phenomenology is a form of idealism or exceeds the traditional discussion of idealism versus realism.

While the influence of classical philosophy on sociology has been the subject of several studies, less attention has been given to the question of how the founders of sociology viewed classical philosophy. This article discusses Émile Durkheim’s account of the historical role of Greek philosophy as described in his lectures on The Evolution of Educational Thought. It demonstrates how Durkheim makes several erroneous claims concerning Greek morality that, taken together, produced a stereotyped image of the Greeks as intellectual giants but (...) moral dwarfs. Downplaying the historical role of Greek morality, Durkheim attributes one of the most important social facts in connection with the development of Western moral individualism – the inward-oriented morality – to the innovative power of Christian religion. Despite this bias, the great twentieth-century interpreters of social thought, such as Talcott Parsons, Steven Lukes and Robert A. Jones, have continually referred to Durkheim’s historical analyses without questioning his assertions. Sociologists need to cease citing Durkheim as an authority on moral education in the classical world inasmuch as so many of his claims promote a false image of Greek morality and education. (shrink)

Translated into Danish by Henrik Jøker Bjerre.

This book is open access under a CC BY license. The first of its kind, this 'Report' gives an overview of the humanities worldwide. Published as an Open Access title and based on an extensive literature review and enlightening interviews conducted with 90 humanities scholars across 40 countries, the book offers a first step in attempting to assess the state of the humanities globally. Its topics include the nature and value of the humanities, the challenge of globalisation, the opportunities offered (...) by the digital humanities, variations in funding patterns around the world, and the interaction between humanities and society. Despite the stereotypical view of humanists as scholars locked away in their ivory towers, the picture that emerges from this report is that they are deeply committed to the social value of their work and appreciate the long-term importance it has for addressing global challenges. The report will be of interest not only to researchers and students in the humanities themselves, but also to administrators and funders. (shrink)

This volume on anthropology and authority in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) offers its reader nineteen timely discussions of two fundamental categories pertaining to the literary, philosophical, and theological production of this prominent 19th century Danish thinker, whose vast influence upon 20th century intellectual life continues to grow as the new millennium approaches. The volume's nineteen contributors - from Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, Italy, and the United States - inquire into such complex problematics in Kierkegaard's oeuvre as (...) the interrelationship between the human, the divine, and the spiritual; between the secular and the Christian; between human and Christian love; between state and church institutions and the single individual of faith; and between this individual's concern for quality in civic and religious life and the quantitative forces of modern society's masses and crowds. Special attention is given to the indisputable authority of God, Christ, and the apostles as opposed to the debatable authority, or non-authority, of the author. Of particular interest is the nexus between Kierkegaard's existential and religious concerns, on the one hand, and his intricate textual conceptions, multifarious poetic strategies, and various means of pseudonymous and indirect communication, on the other. Between the covers of Anthropology and Authority some chapters seek to refine received knowledge of Kierkegaard in such disciplines as theology and moral philosophy. Conversely, other chapters submit rather postmodern critiques of the author's stylistic and rhetorical devices. A summary assessment of the nineteen contributions would fail to recognize this considerable methodological and theoretical diversity. Instead, the reader's access to the smorgasbord of insights has been facilitated by an introduction in which one of the American editors briefly outline the individual contributions on a general historical and intellectual background. Altogether, the probing insights of Anthropology and Authority go to the core of Søren Kierkegaard's authorship. Individual chapters either update previous responses to the many challenges presented by this work, or the chapters face new challenges and/or present critical challenges on their own. (shrink)

This chapter discusses Kierkegaard's impact on creative writers worldwide. Traditional attempts to identify his individual “influence” have increasingly yielded to an interest in “intertextuality,” a more socially oriented take on authorial interrelationships, overcoming the narrow specificity of “influence,” while sometimes tending to be overly broad and general instead. Concurrently, Kierkegaard's role as a literary writer has recently been favored over his role as a Christian thinker, although by no means exclusively so. Altogether, intertextual reception of his corpus significantly extends his (...) literary profile as an existential storyteller, while also engaging in a multifaceted dialogue about both humanism and anti‐humanism. (shrink)

This article discusses how the results of infant research challenge the assumptions of the classical sciences of social behaviour. According to A.J. Bergesen, the findings of infant research invalidate Durkheim's theory of mental categories, thus requiring a re-theorizing of sociology. This article argues that Bergesen's reading of Emile Durkheim is incorrect, and his review of the infant research in fact invalidates his argument. Reviewing the assumptions of sociology in the light of the findings of infant research, it is argued that (...) the real challenge is to formulate a research strategy that combines the findings of the two sciences. (shrink)

The dominant neuroscientific theory of spatial memory is, like many theories in neuroscience, a multilevel description of a mechanism. The theory links the activities of molecules, cells, brain regions, and whole organisms into an integrated sketch of an explanation for the ability of organisms to navigate novel environments. Here I develop a taxonomy of interlevel experimental strategies for integrating the levels in such multilevel mechanisms. These experimental strategies include activation strategies, interference strategies, and additive strategies. These strategies are mutually reinforcing, (...) providing a kind of interlevel and intratheoretic robustness that has not previously been recognized. (shrink)

Kantian Deeds revokes and renews the tradition of Kant's moral philosophy. Through a novel reading of contemporary approaches to Kant, Henrik Bjerre draws a new map of the human capacity for morality. Morality consists of two different abilities that are rarely appreciated at the same time. Human beings are brought up and initiated into a moral culture, which gives them the cognitive mapping necessary to act morally and responsibly. They also, however, acquire an ability to reach beyond that which is (...) considered moral and thus develop an ability to reinterpret or break 'normal' morality. By drawing on two very different resources in contemporary philosophy - more conservative trends in analytic philosophy and more radical sources in recent works of psychoanalytically informed philosophy - and claiming that they must be read together, Kantian Deeds provides a new understanding of what is termed 'the structure of moral revolutions'. Essentially, deeds are revolutionary changes of moral character that can only be performed by such creatures that have acquired one. (shrink)