Bloch, E. Discussing expressionism.--Lukács, G. Realism in the balance.--Brecht, B. Against Georg Lukács.--Benjamin, W. Conversations with Brecht.--Adorno, T. Letters to Walter Benjamin.--Benjamin, W. Reply.--Adorno, T. Reconciliation under duress.--Adorno, T. Commitment.--Jameson, F. Reflections in conclusion.

Ernst Bloch gives a striking account of materialism that traces emancipatory elements of modern thought to medieval Islamic philosophers' encounter with Aristotle. He argues that the great medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina) planted the seeds of a radical materialism still relevant for critical theory today.

This volume contains a selection of essays in translation by the German philosopher and man of letters Ernst Bloch, on the philosophy of music. For Bloch - often simply assimilated to the Marxist tradition, but whose thought shows a strongly individual and idealist cast - music was a primary focus on reflection. His musical knowledge and expertise were of a very high order and he was well acquainted with many of the leading composers and theorists of music of (...) his time in Germany: even divorced from his philosophy his criticism remains of value and significance. Throughout, whether discussing the complex and varied relations between text and music, or questions relating to the 'expressive' as opposed to the 'descriptive' functions of music, Bloch is intent on elucidating and placing musical experience. (shrink)

Pubblicato agli inizi degli anni Cinquanta del Novecento da Ernst Bloch (1885-1977), Gli strati della categoria della possibilità diventò in seguito il diciottesimo capitolo del suo Principio speranza. Vi è presentata un’indagine teorica e storica su che cosa sia la possibilità. Da Aristotele a Marx, passando per Averroè, Giordano Bruno e Hegel, lettrici e lettori ripercorreranno le proposte avanzate nella storia della filosofia per affrontare la questione del possibile, fino a scoprire la teoria della possibilità reale. Grazie alla sua (...) particolare struttura, che sviluppa l’argomentazione facendo emergere in ordine di complessità crescente i principali elementi dell’ontologia del non essere ancora, questo testo è una preziosa chiave per orientarsi nella lettura della filosofia di Bloch. (shrink)

The Cramér–Rao bound, satisfied by classical Fisher information, a key quantity in information theory, has been shown in different contexts to give rise to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we show that the identification of the mean quantum potential, an important notion in Bohmian mechanics, with the Fisher information, leads, through the Cramér–Rao bound, to an uncertainty principle which is stronger, in general, than both Heisenberg and Robertson–Schrödinger uncertainty relations, allowing to experimentally test the validity (...) of such an identification. (shrink)

This article relates the emergence of a group of faculty researchers utilizing complexity science approaches. The narrative emerges from three projects combining research into complexity, communities, and technologies. Details of how the research was initiated, and the nature and quality of the conversational method, are provided. In addition, theoretical concepts that were consciously applied and others that arose through insights from the data as it was collected are discussed. Although this is like most real narratives, a never-ending story, it concludes (...) with a presentation of some of the ideas that separate complexity-informed research from other paradigms. (shrink)

Taking notice of race is both risky and inevitable, in medicine no less than in other endeavors. On the one hand, race can be a useful stand-in for unstudied genetic and environmental factors that yield differences in disease expression and therapeutic response. Attention to race can make a therapeutic difference, to the point of saving lives. On the other hand, racial distinctions have social meanings that are often pejorative or worse, especially when these distinctions are cast as culturally or biologically (...) fixed. I argue in this essay that we should start with a presumption against racial categories in medicine, but permit their use when it might prolong lives or meaningfully improve health. Use of racial categories should be understood as an interim step; follow-up inquiry into the factors that underlie race-correlated clinical differences is important both to improve the efficacy of clinical care and to prevent race in itself from being misunderstood as a biological determinant. If we pursue such inquiry with vigor, the pernicious effects of racial categories on public understanding can be managed. But perverse market and regulatory incentives create the danger that use of race will be “locked-in,” once drugs or other therapies are approved. These incentives should be revisited. (shrink)

Afhandlinger om den tyske filosof Ernst Bloch's værker og idéer.

Bloch's The Spirit of Utopia, here presented for the first time in English translation, is one of the great historic books from the beginning of the twentieth-century. A peculiar amalgam of biblical, Marxist, and Expressionist turns, drawing on both Hegel and Schopenhauer for the groundwork of its metaphysics of music, but consistently interpreting the cultural legacy in the light of a certain Marxism, The Spirit of Utopia is a unique attempt to rethink the history of Western civilizations as a (...) process of revolutionary disruptions and to reread the artworks, religions, and philosophies of this tradition as incentives to continue disrupting. The first part concerns a mode of 'self-encounter' which presents itself in the history of music from Mozart through Mahler as an encounter with the problem of a community to come. The second part is entitled 'Karl Marx, Death and the Apocalypse'. (shrink)

Several tasks in artificial intelligence require the ability to find models about knowledge dynamics. They include belief revision, fusion and belief merging, and abduction. In this paper, we exploit the algebraic framework of mathematical morphology in the context of propositional logic and define operations such as dilation or erosion of a set of formulas. We derive concrete operators, based on a semantic approach, that have an intuitive interpretation and that are formally well behaved, to perform revision, fusion and abduction. Computation (...) and tractability are addressed, and simple examples illustrate the main results. (shrink)

This book represents a unique attempt to reconcile the traditional oppositions of the natural law and social utopian traditions, providing basic insights into the meaning of human rights in a socialist society.

A chilling subplot in the twentieth-century saga of state-sponsored mass murder, torture, and other atrocities was the widespread incidence of medical complicity. Nazi doctors' human and assistance in genocidal killing are the most oft-cited exemplar, but wartime Japanese physicians' human vivisection and other grotesque practices rivaled the Nazi medical horrors. Measured by these standards, Soviet psychiatrists' role in repressing dissent, Latin American and Turkish military doctors' complicity in torture, and even the South African medical profession's systematic involvement in apartheid may (...) seem, to some, almost prosaic. Yet these and other reported cases of medical complicity in human rights abuse compel an inquiry into medicine's vulnerability to becoming an adjunct to illicit state purposes. (shrink)

Olivier Bloch travaille sur l'histoire de la philosophie, et plus particulièrement sur l'histoire des doctrines, courants et traditions matérialistes, dans le domaine de la philosophie antique et dans celui de la philosophie de l'âge classique (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles), en particulier en France (Descartes, Gassendi et ses disciples, les philosophes matérialistes du XVIIIe siècle), et en Grande-Bretagne (Hobbes). Depuis le début des années 80, ses recherches portent principalement sur les traditions libertines et clandestines de l'âge classique et leur prolongement (...) dans le matérialisme des Lumières, et, dans cette perspective, sur les rapports entre matérialisme et littérature, avec un intérêt tout particulier pour Cyrano de Bergerac, puis Molière. Ses collègues ont voulu lui rendre hommage par ce recueil d'études sur ses domaines de prédilection. (shrink)

This commentary criticises Bering on two counts. First, because we do not know what he attributes to natural selection and what he sees as derived representations. Second, Bering's ethnography of religion is inadequate. People who practise ancestor worship are not concerned with their own survival but with that of others. Many supernatural beings are not thought of as morally motivated.

The role of competitive funds as a source of funding for academic research has increased in many countries. For the individual researcher, the receipt of a grant can influence both scientific production and career paths. This paper focuses on the importance of the receipt of a research grant for researchers’ academic career paths utilizing a mixed methods approach that combines econometric analysis with in-depth qualitative interviews. The analysis has novel elements both in terms of its subject (impact of funding grants (...) on individuals’ academic career paths) and approach. The results of this study indicate that while research grants have a positive impact on the research performed under the grant itself, there are very important secondary effects on research performance through positive effects on academic career advancement. The probability of obtaining a full professorship for grant recipients is almost double that for rejected applicants, 16 percent compared to 9 percent. The probability for career advancement in general is about 9 percentage points higher for grant recipients. Qualitative interviews support these quantitative results by providing insights into how grants impact research careers, through heightened status, recognition, networking and other factors. (shrink)

This study critically assesses recent debates about the colonial construction of Hinduism. Written by experts in their field, the chapters present historical and empirical arguments as well as theoretical reflections on the topic, offering new insights into the nature of the construction of religion in India.

Reinicke, H. Einleitung, abenteuerliches Philosophieren für die Revolution.--Bloch, E. Vom Anbruch gemeinsamer Meinungen.--Bloch, E. Briefe an Joachim Schumacher.--Adorno, T. W. Für Ernst Bloch.--Bloch, E. Friedrich Engels als Polyhistor.--Bloch, E., Reinicke, H. Gespräch, Sokratisches zu Berufsverbot und Studentenbewegung.--Bloch, E. Offener Brief.--Schumacher, J. Erlebtes, Gespräche, das Unvergessliche (1932-77).--Schmidt, B. Über die Grundfrage Blochschen Philosophierens.

Nous ne sommes pas encore nés. Pris dans l'obscur de ce qui n'est qu'une préhistoire, nul d'entre nous ne peut prétendre être l'héritier du passé, nul ne peut y chercher la lumière. Livre de rupture et de passion écrit tout au long des années de guerre, d'avril 1913 à mai 1917, L'esprit de l'utopie, première, œuvre provocante plus que démonstrative d'Ernst Bloch, est animé d'un double mouvement de révolte et d'espérance. Sa révolte s'élève contre un univers qui a perdu (...) le sens du Nous, de la communauté, qui a réifié l'être, qui a réduit Dieu à un simple fait, lui qui est une " question inconstructible ". La musique, objet central du livre, est la voix privilégiée de cette révolte, car elle fait exploser la distinction entre le sujet et l'objet, entre l'âme et le monde. Sans conclure aucune paix avec le monde, Bloch veut nous apprendre à espérer à partir de notre ici-bas. Il déchiffre comme autant de signes tangibles de noter réalité encore à naître, comme autant de traces de la venue de la " vraie patrie ", comme autant d'utopies concrètes et agissantes, l'œuvre la plus humble d'un potier inconnu, l'audace plastique du cubisme et du futurisme, le mystère de la musique - le plus utopique de trous les arts -, enfin la grande voix libératrice d'un marxisme réconcilié avec son essence prophétique. Car ces chemins expriment tous l'effervescence du réel, sa tendance utopique interne. En pleine Apocalypse donc, Bloch découvre l'" esprit de l'utopie ", le génie paraclétique de la culture et les racines métaphysiques de toute espérance révolutionnaire. Il renoue ainsi avec la tradition millénariste. Depuis, ce livre n'a cessé de représenter une véritable force de vie et de combat qui animera Ernst Bloch tout au long de son œuvre, jusqu'au Principe Espérance et aux derniers textes du solitaire de Tübingen. (shrink)

actes de la table ronde des 6 et 7 juin 1980 Olivier Bloch. MANUSCRITS ET ÉDITIONS DE UEXAME1V DE LA RELIGION L'ouvrage, dont le titre complet est en général l'Examen de la Religion dont on cherche l'éclaircissement de bonne foi, ...

" Se moquer de la philosophie, c'est vraiment philosopher. " Ce propos de Pascal, Olivier Bloch l'illustre et le confirme par le présent ouvrage, en s'attachant à démontrer la part de philosophie inhérente au texte de Molière et le jeu théâtral auquel elle renvoie. La philosophie, dont le terme et le concept courent tout au long de l'œuvre de Molière, c'est celle de son temps, au premier chef celle de Descartes, mais aussi les philosophies antagonistes comme celle de Gassendi. (...) L'étude d'Olivier Bloch nous montre que les pièces les plus célèbres de Molière - Dom Juan, Les Femmes Savantes, Tartuffe... comme d'autres moins connues - Amphitryon, Les Amants magnifiques... - mettent littéralement en scène des propos, des débats et des concepts caractéristiques de ces philosophies. Ce constat n'a rien d'anecdotique : nous découvrons ainsi que Molière avait une connaissance et une compréhension des problèmes philosophiques de son époque qui dépassent ce que l'on avait soupçonné jusqu'alors. Sur le registre de l'humour, il détourne à travers ses pièces les thèmes philosophiques majeurs de l'époque classique (Dieu et les preuves de son existence, l'âme et le corps, le Moi, etc.) et fait écho à leur mise en cause dans la Culture du XVIIe siècle. Lecture originale et subtile de Molière, cet essai éclaire son œuvre, les débats de son époque et les rapports qu'entretiennent la littérature, le théâtre, la comédie, le rire et la philosophie. (shrink)

National Priority Regions (NPRs) are one of Israel’s most robust tools for redistribution: a resource allocation governmental plan that favors some regions over others, mostly according to their socioeconomic status and peripherality. Drawing on archival research, this article is the first to focus on this topic and provide a detailed description and analysis of this measure. It provides historical and theoretical accounts of NPRs, tracing their history, starting in the 1970s, over three periods and showing how they have been used (...) and abused. This allows for some important observations about the stakes of using a "color-blind" place-based distributive mechanism, and about the complex relationship between redistribution, development, and settlement. At the national level, this article shows how NPRs changed over the years from a discriminatory tool that excluded almost all Palestinian-Arab localities into a more inclusionary mechanism, but one that also works to support and incentivize Jewish settlement in the Occupied West Bank. At the theoretical level, this article lends itself to and supports a ‘region-skeptic’ approach that sees the regional scale, much like other seemingly “race-neutral” criteria, mostly as an elusive exercise of power that often deepens inequality. However, drawing on Israel’s experience with NPRs, this article provides some more specific cautionary tales that can, I suggest, work to improve the regional scale rather than eliminate it altogether. (shrink)

The impact of the Holocaust on the descendants of survivors and the ways in which they embrace, embody and memorialise their family histories is the subject of this paper. The paper explores intergenerational storytelling and silences about the Holocaust through the lens of the number that was tattooed on the bodies of inmates in the Auschwitz complex and has been replicated on the bodies of some survivor descendants. The number has become a symbol of the crimes of the Holocaust though (...) its meaning has changed during different periods of Holocaust remembrance. Using the genealogy of the tattoo, this paper explores its meaning in relation to private and public memorialisation for the descendants of survivors living in Israel who have replicated the number on their own body. An earlier version of this paper was presented in December 2020 at La Trobe University’s Agnes Heller Annual Sociology Lecture. (shrink)