This volume brings together a number of new essays by leading Nietzsche scholars to examine the philosopher's famous critique of morality and his emphasis on life-affirming values.

Nietzsche had a particular interest in the relationship between art and life, and in art's contribution to his philosophical aims--to identify the conditions of the affirmation of life, cultural renewal, and exemplary human living. These new essays demonstrate that understanding his engagement with art is essential for understanding his philosophy.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Schopenhauerian Challenge “Justification” The Extension of “Aesthetic Phenomenon” The Aestheticization of Suffering Concluding Remarks: The Ethics of Aesthetic Justification.

The main theme of Nietzsche’s first published work, The Birth of Tragedy, is that the affirmation of life requires ‘illusion’ which allows us to cope with the ‘insight into the horrible truth’ of our condition. This article argues that Nietzsche held the same position in his later works: that illusion is a necessary to affirm life. The discussion is organized as follows. Section 1 sets out the core thesis of BT vis-à-vis the relationship between affirmation and illusion. Section 2 examines (...) the role of illusion in one of Nietzsche’s litmus tests of affirmation found in The Gay Science of 1882, ‘amor fati’—that is, the ability ‘to see as beautiful what is necessary in things’. Sections 3, 4, and 5 consider Nietzsche’s understanding of ‘self-creation’ and how, through the employment of ‘distance’ and ‘pretence’, it engenders an affirmation of existence. Finally, Section 6 attempts a provisional assessment of Nietzsche’s conception of affirmation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Background: Schopenhauer's Methodological Presuppositions Empirical Consciousness Aesthetic Consciousness Moral Consciousness and the Path to Salvation Concluding Remarks Notes References Further Reading.

I argue that there could not be grounds on which to introduce God into our ontology. My argument presupposes two doctrines. First, we should allow into our ontology only what figures in the best explanation of an event or fact. Second, explanation is contrastive by nature, in that the explanandum always consists in a contrast between a fact and a foil. I argue that God could not figure in true contrastive explanatory statements, because the omnipotence of God guarantees that for (...) any true proposition p, God could have made it the case that ~p just as much as He could have made it the case that p. (shrink)

Daniel Came boldly argues that given certain assumptions, no omnipotent being can even in principle be the best explanation for some contingent state of affairs S. In this paper, I argue that even given Came’s assumptions, his argument rests crucially on a non sequitur, that he just assumes that the prior probability of God’s existence is very low, and that his conclusions entail propositions that are very probably false.

Daniel C. Dennett is a brilliant polemicist, famous for challenging unexamined orthodoxies. Over the last thirty years, he has played a major role in expanding our understanding of consciousness, developmental psychology, and evolutionary theory. And with such groundbreaking, critically acclaimed books as Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist), he has reached a huge general and professional audience. In this new book, Dennett shows that evolution is the key to resolving the ancient (...) problems of moral and political freedom. Like the planet's atmosphere on which life depends, the conditions on which our freedom depends had to evolve, and like the atmosphere, they continue to evolve-and could be extinguished. According to Dennett, biology provides the perspective from which we can distinguish the varieties of freedom that matter. Throughout the history of life on this planet, an interacting web and internal and external conditions have provided the frameworks for the design of agents that are more free than their parts-from the unwitting gropings of the simplest life forms to the more informed activities of animals to the moral dilemmas that confront human beings living in societies. As in his previous books, Dennett weaves a richly detailed narrative enlivened by analogies as entertaining as they are challenging. Here is the story of how we came to be different from all other creatures, how our early ancestors mindlessly created human culture, and then, how culture gave us our minds, our visions, our moral problems-in a nutshell, our freedom. (shrink)

ArgumentThe Greenwich Prime Meridian is one of the iconic features of the Royal Museums Greenwich. Visitors to the Museum even queue up to pose with one leg on either side of the Line. Yet, the Airy Transit Circle, the instrument that defined the meridian, is almost always excluded from these photographs. This paper examines how the instrument has become hidden in plain sight within the stories of Greenwich Time and Greenwich Meridian, as well as within the public imagination, by providing (...) an analysis of the instrument’s transformation from a working astronomical instrument to a museum object. The paper highlights the gradual decoupling of the instrument from narratives of Time and Longitude, which resulted in the Line’s popularity overshadowing the instrument that defined it. By doing so, the paper aims at showing the symbiotic relationship between the materiality of the instrument and the meridian line that it defined. Approaching the instrument through the lenses of object biographies, the paper raises the question of whether the life of the instrument came to an end once operations with it were terminated. The analysis of the Transit Circle’s life reveals that it reached its end multiple times, which shifts the emphasis away from a single and ultimate end of scientific objects to a process of gradual downfall, during which they can “end” several times. In addition, through the object biography approach, the Transit Circle no longer appears as a dead object reaching an afterlife within a museum setting. Instead, the approach demonstrates that, though the instrument can still be restored to an operational order, doubts about its accuracy, and its relevancy to today’s astronomical methods, have led the instrument to be considered obsolete, transforming it into a museum object on display. (shrink)

The twelfth-century narrative Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān by Ibn Ṭufayl recounts the life of Ḥayy, a feral man who teaches himself philosophy while living on a desert island. Ibn Ṭufayl gives two explanations of how Ḥayy came to the island. In one version, Ḥayy generates spontaneously on the island; in another, he washes up on the island as an infant. This paper attempts to resolve these contradictory narratives by appealing to a previously unexplored source text for Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, Sarāʾir (...) al-nutaqāʾ by Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman. Sarāʾir is an esoteric Ismāʿīlī text in which the author uses stories about Adam and other prophets to elaborate a Neoplatonist-inspired theology. Jaʿfar distinguishes between Adam as a symbol of the atemporal origination (ibdāʿ) of all natural forms, and the corporeal Adam of Ismāʿīlī history. Due to narrative and conceptual similarities between Jaʿfar’s and Ibn Ṭufayl’s treatment of their protagonists, I argue that the two versions of Ḥayy’s nativity allegorize the duality of Neoplatonic cosmology. Spontaneous generation dramatizes the atemporal creation of the human form, whereas the infant Ḥayy’s landing on the island reinforces the philosophical belief in the eternity of species. Both Jaʿfar and Ibn Ṭufayl appeal to the Neoplatonic doctrine of emanation to reconcile the eternity of the physical world with belief in God’s creative agency. The resemblance of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān to Sarāʾir prompts broader reconsidera­tion of Ismāʿīlī influence on non-Ismāʿīlī intellectual culture. (shrink)

We ended 1982 by setting a new record for individual contributions to the Center, both in terms of the number of contributors (1100) and the amount ($102,000). Dare we hope to do as well or better this year? Well, hope we must. The financial pressures continue to be powerful, and if there is a whiff of an upturn in the economy in general, there is little evidence of it in our corner of the world. Through the end of April, contributions (...) under the Friends program came to $36,350. That is a most encouraging figure. We now need to continue doing as well through the remainder of the year to equal our 1982 figures. Please do what you can to help. Our 1982 audited financial statement is available on request. Those listed below made contributions to the Friends of the Center program between January 1, 1983 and April 30, 1983. (shrink)

We ended 1982 by setting a new record for individual contributions to the Center, both in terms of the number of contributors (1100) and the amount ($102,000). Dare we hope to do as well or better this year? Well, hope we must. The financial pressures continue to be powerful, and if there is a whiff of an upturn in the economy in general, there is little evidence of it in our corner of the world. Through the end of April, contributions (...) under the Friends program came to $36,350. That is a most encouraging figure. We now need to continue doing as well through the remainder of the year to equal our 1982 figures. Please do what you can to help. Our 1982 audited financial statement is available on request.Those listed below made contributions to the Friends of the Center program between January 1, 1983 and April 30, 1983. (shrink)

“New ideas and innovations” are constituted in relation to the status quo: what had been new becomes old when something yet newer appears. This truism draws attention to the necessity of thinking about the new in relation to what came before. In reproductive ethics, this means, in part, that mitochondrial donation, for example, must be understood in reference to “old” IVF. It also means that we must understand this and every other technique for manipulating, facilitating, or preventing conception in (...) relation to the natural way or ways in which human beings come to be. The temporal and conceptual priority of nature to our technical, moral, and political innovations is inescapable, and yet we do not seem to have a clear understanding of what we presuppose nature to be when, for example, we approve of three-parent babies and disapprove of reproductive cloning. The prospects of a child arising from a single “parent” or from three parents shed fresh light on what it means for human beings to arise naturally from two. Thesis: Even if human sexuality is an evolutionary accident and provides no standard to which we should defer, it remains the reference point for thinking about all “new ideas and innovations” by which we strive to bring nature under our control and eliminate chance. (shrink)

This paper aims to position the birth of the Medical Humanities movement in a greater historical context of twentieth century American medical education and to paint a picture of the current landscape of the Medical Humanities in medical training. It first sheds light on the model of medical education put forth by Abraham Flexner through the publishing of the 1910 Flexner Report, which set the stage for defining physicians as experimentalists and rooting the profession in research institutions. While this paved (...) the way for medical advancements, it came at the cost of producing a patriarchal approach to medical practice. By the late 1960s, the public persona of the profession was thus devoid of humanism. This catalyzed the birth of the Medical Humanities movement that helped lay the framework for what has perpetuated as the ongoing incorporation of humanistic subjects into medical training. As we enter a time in medicine in which rates of burnout are ever-increasing and there are growing concerns about a concomitant reduction in empathy among trainees, the need for instilling humanism remains important. We must consequently continue to consider how to ensure the place of the Medical Humanities in medical education moving forward. (shrink)

There is no clear consensus among scholars about the authenticity of the Magna Moralia. Here I present a new case for thinking that the work was composed by a later Peripatetic, and is not, either directly or indirectly, the work of Aristotle. My argument rests on an analysis of the author’s usage of ἐνέργεια, which is a fruitful way to investigate the date of the work: the term was apparently coined by Aristotle but in later antiquity came to be (...) used in ways inconsistent with Aristotle’s own usage. I argue that in several passages from the Magna Moralia the term is used in this distinctively late sense and that it is not plausible to think that this innovation could have occured in Aristotle’s own lifetime or shortly thereafter. (shrink)

Pragmatism has been rediscovered in recent years and presented as emblematic of modern thinking. At the center of this worldwide interest in late‐nineteenth century Pragmatism stood, first, a rejection of the traditional dualistic construction of the world in philosophy and psychology; second, a distinguishing of the findings of learning theory from those of evolutionary theory; and, third, a consideration of industrial democracy as the context of modern thinking and action. In this essay Daniel Tröhler shows that these innovations were (...) far less secular than has generally been assumed. Underlying early Chicago Pragmatism is a reformed Protestant mentality that was shaped by a vision of a common mission: realizing the “kingdom of God on earth”— a mentality that responded critically to the provocations of modernity and, through this response, developed a distinctive discourse that came to be called “Pragmatism.”. (shrink)

The _Analects_ is a compendium of the sayings of Confucius (551-479 b.c.e.), transcribed and passed down by his disciples. How it came to be transformed by Zhu Xi (1130-1200) into one of the most philosophically significant texts in the Confucian tradition is the subject of this book. Scholarly attention in China had long been devoted to the _Analects._ By the time of Zhu Xi, a rich history of commentary had grown up around it. But Zhu, claiming that the _Analects_ (...) was one of the authoritative texts in the canon and should be read before all others, gave it a still more privileged status in the tradition. He spent decades preparing an extended interlinear commentary on it. Sustained by a newer, more elaborate language of metaphysics, Zhu's commentary on the _Analects_ marked a significant shift in the philosophical orientation of Confucianism--a shift that redefined the Confucian tradition for the next eight centuries, not only in China, but in Japan and Korea well. Gardner's translations and analysis of Zhu Xi's commentary on the _Analects_ show one of China's great thinkers in an interesting and complex act of philosophical negotiation. Through an interlinear, line-by-line "dialogue" with Confucius, Zhu effected a reconciliation of the teachings of the Master, commentary by later exegetes, and contemporary philosophical concerns of Song-dynasty scholars. By comparing Zhu's reading of the _Analects_ with the earlier standard reading by He Yan (190-249), Gardner illuminates what is dramatically new in Zhu Xi's interpretation of the _Analects._ A pioneering study of Zhu Xi's reading of the _Analects,_ this book demonstrates how commentary is both informed by a text and informs future readings, and highlights the importance of interlinear commentary as a genre in Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

Graham Priest proposed an argument for the conclusion that ‘nothing’ occurs as a singular term and not as a quantifier in a sentence like (1) ‘The cosmos came into existence out of nothing’. Priest's point is that, intuitively, (1) entails (C) ‘The cosmos came into existence at some time’, but this entailment relation is left unexplained if ‘nothing’ is treated as a quantifier. If Priest is right, the paradoxical notion of an object that is nothing plays a role (...) in our very understanding of reality. In this note, we argue that Priest's argument is unsound: the intuitive entailment relation between (1) and (C) does not offer convincing evidence that ‘nothing’ occurs as a term in (1). Moreover, we provide an explanation of why (1) is naturally taken to entail (C), which is both plausible and consistent with the standard, quantificational treatment of ‘nothing’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper offers an opportunity to ponder the way the Catholic Church and its methods of information control reshaped, and paradoxically even enabled, the dissemination and practice of science in early modern Italy. Focusing on the activities of Newtonian scholars operating in Rome in the First half of the eighteenth century – especially the Celestine monk Celestino Galiani and prelate Francesco Bianchini – I will argue that major contributions to the spread of Newtonianism in Italy came from individuals operating (...) within the Church, acting more-or-less independently from the Church’s oversight. These scholars realized they were witnessing an inexorable transition and that the medieval scholastic cosmology and physics could not survive. In order to rescue the Church – and to avoid further embarrassment, especially after the Galileo Affair – renewal was needed. Counterintuitively, the dissemination of Italian Newtonianism was largely a Catholic effort. (shrink)

_Content and Consciousness_ is an original and ground-breaking attempt to elucidate a problem integral to the history of Western philosophical thought: the relationship of the mind and body. In this formative work, Dennett sought to develop a theory of the human mind and consciousness based on new and challenging advances in the field that came to be known as cognitive science. This important and illuminating work is widely-regarded as the book from which all of Dennett’s future ideas developed. It (...) is his first explosive rebuttal of Cartesian dualism and one of the founding texts of philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche on Morality and the Affirmation of Life ed. by Daniel CameJames A. MollisonDaniel Came, ed., Nietzsche on Morality and the Affirmation of Life Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. 220 pp. isbn: 978-0-198-72889-4. Hardback, $70.00Daniel Came's most recent edited collection features original essays from leading figures in the field. As most of its chapters are well-written and well-argued, it will interest Nietzsche scholars generally. It's (...) difficult to narrow the volume's intended audience much further than this, however. The source of this difficulty is not merely titular, though one wonders what aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy could not plausibly be yoked under the dual headings of "morality" and "life affirmation." Rather, the difficulty stems from a shortcoming of Nietzsche's. As Came puts the point in his introduction, "Nietzsche is greatly more forthcoming in his diagnosis of the life-denying nature of morality than he is about what should replace morality and in particular the type of life-affirming attitude which might then ensue" (7). The underdeveloped character of Nietzsche's positive [End Page 110] pronouncements about life affirmation leaves many questions unanswered, the most basic of which might be, "What exactly is it to affirm life?" (7). This collection admirably attempts to tackle such questions head-on by foregrounding Nietzsche's "practical-existential concern with the value of existence" (4)—even if, in resisting the temptation to delve ever deeper into the complexities of Nietzsche's critical enterprise, this approach risks leaving some specialist concerns aside.In light of the inchoate nature of Nietzsche's remedy for life denial, a volume taking life affirmation as its starting point can be forgiven if its contributions are somewhat scattered. Four chapters in this collection—authored by Gemes, Hassan, Huddleston, and Janaway—identify distinct obstacles to Nietzsche's project of life affirmation and explain how Nietzsche might overcome them. Three others—written by Came, Stern, and Kanterian—overlap in arguing that Nietzsche's notion of life affirmation is deeply confused at best and fatally flawed at worst. Two remaining chapters, by Reginster and Clark, are functionally close readings of GM. Below, I discuss the standout essays by Gemes, Came, Huddleston, and Stern, which straightforwardly interact with one another. I then comment on the volume's remaining essays.In his chapter, Gemes suggests that Nietzsche's concern with nihilism emerges after HH, whereas his earlier works express a Romantic preoccupation with cultural renewal. While Reginster analyzes nihilism as a cognitive state of disorientation or despair (The Affirmation of Life [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006]) and Pippin analyzes nihilism as a waning of erotic desire (Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010]), Gemes contends that these forms of nihilism are downstream from a more fundamental condition of affective nihilism that becomes fully manifest with the advent of Christian morality. (Kaitlyn Creasy's work on affective nihilism goes unmentioned.) Gemes then rightly observes that nihilism does not merely subtend overt expressions of life denial, as Nietzsche also "characterizes the need to ask reflective questions about the value of existence as a pathological symptom" of nihilism (29, emphasis added; see also GS P:2; TI "Socrates" 2; TI "Morality" 5). This presents a problem for Nietzsche's life-affirming ambitions. For, even if the ancient Greeks and GM's nobles can accomplish "naïve affirmation," which is "more an affective state than a consciously avowed cognitive belief" (28–29), it is unclear whether we late moderns can do the same. Moreover, Nietzsche's [End Page 111] challenge of affirming the eternal recurrence (GS 341) seems to require the sort of reflective, cognitive assessment of life that Nietzsche diagnoses as nihilistic. I would have liked for Gemes to have examined Nietzsche's indictment of judgments about life in more detail, as this seems crucial for delimiting Nietzsche's project of life affirmation. In any case, Gemes concludes by suggesting that Z might strive to incite "deep poetic inspiration […] among those who [can] hear rightly" (35), thereby helping these select few overcome affective nihilism. This might be Nietzsche's best strategy for facilitating life affirmation.Came is less confident... (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The purpose of this thesis is to study the account given by Thomas Aquinas of prudentia or right practical reasoning. While there is no doubt that Aristotle's ethical doctrine was the source for St.Thomas, it is commonly thought that the spirit if not the substance of Aristotelian phronesis is altered by the Christian concepts of law, obedience to God, free will and sin. ;To assess the influence of the (...) Christian theological tradition, a short survey is made of the history of the notion of liberum arbitrium. A tendency emerges to equate free choice with 'free will', identifying the element of freedom with the will and not with the intellect. Much of the reason for this is the need to explain the psychology of sin. ;With the infusion of Aristotelian philosophy in the twelfth century, many theologians began to develop a more balanced philosophy of human action, but the voluntarist view of freedom, sin and grace was strongly defended and came to dominate, in spite of Thomas' profound explanation. ;A new account is given of the stages of the process of human action, reducing the steps from twelve to four. The basis for this is to combine cognition and volition in each stage, so that Thomas can be seen to have given more precise names to a basically Aristotelian account, although Thomas' stage of execution is a genuine contribution adding more possibilities for an explanation of akrasia. ;The heart of practical reasoning is the process of decision, and this thesis looks at all of Thomas' examples of the 'practical syllogism' to show the development of his views from his early works to the Summa Theologiae. ;Having shown how the intellect and will are closely related in each stage of practical reasoning, prudence emerges clearly as the right disposition of the intellect for deliberating, deciding and executing action. A firm basis for a new view of freedom, law and the possibilities for error is provided by Aquinas' psychology of action. (shrink)

During its first four congresses, held annually under Lenin, the Communist International went through two distinct phases: while the first two congresses focused on programmatic and organisational aspects of the break with Social-Democratic parties, the third congress, meeting after the putsch known as the ‘March Action’ of 1921 in Germany, adopted the slogan ‘To the masses!’, while the fourth codified this new line in the ‘Theses on the Unity of the Proletarian Front’. The arguments put forward by the first two (...) congresses were originally drafted by leaders of the Russian Communist Party, but the initiative for the adoption of the united-front policy came from the German Communist Party under the leadership of Paul Levi. This article explores the historical circumstances that turned the German Communists into the pioneers of the united-front tactic. In the documentary appendix we add English versions of two documents drafted by Levi: the ‘Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany’ on the Kapp Putsch, dated 16 March 1920, and thekpd’s ‘Open Letter’ of 8 January 1921, which gave rise to the united-front tactic. (shrink)

_Content and Consciousness_ is an original and ground-breaking attempt to elucidate a problem integral to the history of Western philosophical thought: the relationship of the mind and body. In this formative work, Dennett sought to develop a theory of the human mind and consciousness based on new and challenging advances in the field that came to be known as cognitive science. This important and illuminating work is widely-regarded as the book from which all of Dennett’s future ideas developed. It (...) is his first explosive rebuttal of Cartesian dualism and one of the founding texts of philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The present article was partly inspired by G. Pollack’s book, and also Dadoloff, Saxena & Jensen (2010). As a senior physicist colleague and our friend, Robert N. Boyd, wrote in a journal (JCFA, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2022), for example, things and Beings can travel between Universes, intentionally or unintentionally [4]. In this short remark, we revisit and offer short remark to Neil Boyd’s ideas and trying to connect them with geometry of musical chords as presented by D. Tymoczko and (...) others, then to Escherian staircase and then to Jacob’s ladder which seems to pointto possibility to interpret Jacob’s vision as described in the ancient book of Genesis as interdimensional staircase, e.g. an interdimensional bridge between heaven and earth (cf. classic book: Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach). Jacob’s vision of angels going down to earth from that staircase has been depicted for instance in William Blake art etc. In our communication with others via physics literature and discussions etc, we came to several conclusions as follows: Firstly, possibility of wormhole effect to mirror particle universe, which sometimes it is termed non-orientable wormhole. While such mirror particles effect have been more than 50 years predicted with the so-called parity violation (cf. Lee & Yang, 1950s), and that is called symmetry breaking. Secondly, a series of extended experiments on laser irradiated cold water may suggest possible transition from a phase of water to be at least partially fourth phase of water, which may be composed of crystalline water (see e.g. Gerald Pollack, and also Harold Aspden on liquid crystalline). If we can imagine laser cooling effect can be done in protracted time, then we can achieve a physical representation of Aspden‘s liquid crystalline. Therefore, in this article we outline a series of simple experiments of laser irradiated iced-water along with beryl and selenite crystals in order to see possibility of such a quantum tunneling via quantum liquid crystalline Universe hypothesis, which may likely be modeled with iced-water. It is interesting to remark here that certain experiments by Stockholm University scientists have shown that X-ray triggered water can exhibit properties just like liquid crystal (cf. PRL, 2020). That is why we consider it possible that there can be quantum phase transition where liquid water (comprised of iced cubes and water) can exhibit effects such as tunneling in quantum liquid crystalline Universe. Last but not least, we admit that what we outlined here is just aninitial phase; and if you wish, perhaps we can call such experiments as “wormhole-at-lab” experiments (abbreviated: WHALE). (shrink)

Soon after modern spiritualism announced itself with the “Rochester knockings” of 1848, tables took on a new and controversial life. No longer were they content to live out their days impassively upholding dishes and glasses and silverware, vases, papers and books, bibelots, elbows, or weary heads. They were changed: they began to move. Tables all over the United States and then in England, France, and other countries commenced rapping, knocking, tilting, turning, tapping, dancing, levitating, and even “thrilling”—though this last was (...) uncommon. So Mrs. Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan said in her discussion of Daniel Dunglas Home, probably the most famous nineteenth-century medium:It is only in Mr. Home’s presence that I have witnessed that very curious appearance, or process, the thrilling of the table. This takes place for some seconds, perhaps more, before it rises from the floor. The last time I witnessed this phenomenon, an acute surgeon present said that this thrilling, the genuineness of which was unmistakable, was exactly like what takes place in that affection of the muscles called subsultus tendinum.2And the tables did still more. Their actions were a language; and so they came to symbolize “the ‘movement,’ as it has been called,”3 of modern spiritualism. Spirits had chosen the table as an organ of speech.Tables were customarily viewed as objects of economics, aesthetics, utility, diversion, tradition, even theology . Now, though, as Professor De Morgan jokes, “London and Paris were running after tables in a new sense.”4 Tables had become a different kind of thing. Whatever one might think about reports of spiritual communications, the conception of tables had changed. They had become moral objects. 2. C. D. [Mrs. Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan], From Matter to Spirit. The Result of Ten Years’ Experience in Spirit Manifestations, with a preface by A. B. [Augustus De Morgan] , p. 27. Daniel Cottom is an associate professor of English at the University of Florida. His most recent books are Social Figures: George Eliot, Social History, and Literary Representation and Text and Culture: The Politics of Interpretation . This essay is adapted from a work in progress on spiritualism and surrealism. (shrink)

Once an artist imagined how he would look if he plucked out an offending eye. He painted a self-portrait in which the orbit on the right side of his face was gaping, dolorous. Seven years passed, and then there came a day when the artist tried to break up a fight among his friends. In the ensuing melee he lost his left eye—the one he must have painted out all those years before, when working on the self-portrait, if he (...) based his image on the sight of himself in a mirror. Mirrors, of course, reverse the images before them.If we could forget niggling qualifications, epistemological hedges, all the huffing and puffing of the sense of responsibility that distinguishes intellectuals from assassins, then this story might be frightening, uncanny. As it is, I suspect most of my readers would find it terrible only in the derogatory sense. Although it has a certain primitive simplicity, it seems facile, as if it might have served for one of the weaker episodes in Walter Scott’s Waverley novels or Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone.” Even if it were presented by a master of simple plots, I can imagine it succeeding only as an occasion for metaphysical conjectures, glistening thorns and blossoms of irony, and the like. And even if I were to say that this is a true story, that Victor Brauner painted this Autoportrait in 1931 and suffered this injury in 1938, it seems unlikely that it would be more affecting. How could such a corny plot raise a shiver from anyone past the age of reason? If this story is true, so much the worse for truth. It ought to know better than to seek us out with such shopworn devices. Daniel Cottom is a professor in the English department at the University of Florida. His most recent book is Text and Culture: The Politics of Interpretation . He is currently completing a book on spiritualism and surrealism. (shrink)

This article examines the way advertising was rationalized in the early twentieth-century United States. Drawing on a targeted archival comparison with the United Kingdom, I show how the extensive mobilization undertaken to legitimate and rationalize advertising, rather than changes in the techniques employed in the content of ads themselves, were seen by actors in the mid-1920s to explain most of the extraordinary advances made by American advertising. Building on that comparison, I show how American advertising was transformed, particularly around World (...) War I, into a legitimate profession situated at the center of a network of expertise about consumers and their media. Under the banner of “truth in advertising” ads came to be regarded as a legitimate, rational, and sustained business investment, leading to an enormous increase in aggregate expenditures. I argue that future research should examine how this process fuelled mass media and contributed to the conditions for modern consumerism. (shrink)

On 15 April 1630, in a letter to Mersenne, Descartes announced that on his view God creates the truths of mathematics. Descartes returned to the theme in subsequent letters and some of his Replies but nowhere is the view systematically developed and defended. It is not clear why Descartes came to espouse the creation doctrine, nor even what exactly it is. Some have argued that his motivation was theological, that God creates the eternal truths, including the truths of logic, (...) because and insofar as God is omnipotent andthe creator of all things. I develop and defend a different reading according to which Descartes was led to espouse the creation doctrine by a fundamental shift in his understanding of the correct mode of inquiry in metaphysics and mathematics: by 1630, the God-created truths came to play the role in inquiry that until then, in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, had been played by images. (shrink)

Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection unifies the world of physics with the world of meaning and purpose by proposing a deeply counterintuitive ‘‘inversion of reasoning’’ (according to a 19th century critic): ‘‘to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it’’ [MacKenzie RB (1868) (Nisbet & Co., London)]. Turing proposed a similar inversion: to be a perfect and beautiful computing machine, it is not requisite to know what arithmetic is. Together, these (...) ideas help to explain how we human intelligences came to be able to discern the reasons for all of the adaptations of life, including our own. (shrink)

As a senior physicist colleague and our friend, Robert N. Boyd, wrote in a journal (JCFA, Vol. 1,. 2, 2022), Our universe is but one page in a large book [4]. For example, things and Beings can travel between Universes, intentionally or unintentionally. In this short remark, we revisit and offer short remark to Neil’s ideas and trying to connect them with geometrization of musical chords as presented by D. Tymoczko and others, then to Escher staircase and then to Jacob’s (...) ladder which seems to point to possibility to interpret Jacob’s vision as described in the ancient book of Genesis as inter dimensional or heavenly staircase, e.g. an inter dimensional bridge between heaven and earth (see also classic book: Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach). Jacob’s vision of angels going down to earth from that staircase has been depicted for instance in William Blake art etc. In our communication with others via physics literature and discussions etc, we came to several conclusions as follows: Firstly, possibility of quantum wormhole effect to mirror particle universe, which sometimes it is termed non-orientable wormhole. While such mirror particles effect have been more than 50 years predicted with the so-called parity violation (cf. Lee & Yang, 1950s), and that is called symmetry breaking. Secondly, a series of extended experiments on laser irradiated cold water may suggest possible transition from a phase of water to be at least partially fourth phase of water, which may be composed of crystalline water (see e.g. Gerald Pollack, and also Harold Aspden on liquid crystalline). If we can imagine laser cooling effect can be done in protracted time, then we can achieve a physical representation of Aspden’s liquid crystalline. Therefore, in subsequent article (Part II) we outlined simple model of such an effect of tunneling via quantum liquid crystalline Universe, which may likely be modeled with iced-water. It is interesting to remark here that certain experiments by Stockholm University scientists have shown that X-ray triggered water can exhibit properties just like liquid crystal (cf. PRL, 2020). That is why we consider it possible that there can be quantum phase transition where liquid water (comprised of iced cubes and water) can exhibit effects such as tunneling in quantum liquid crystalline Universe. Last but not least, we admit that what we outlined here is just an initial phase; and if you wish, perhaps we can call such experiments as “wormhole-at-lab” experiments (abbreviated: WHALE). (shrink)

On 19 June 2019, Victoria's 'Voluntary Assisted Dying' Act came into effect. The Act makes legal two interventions at the end of life. In most cases, it allows a doctor to prescribe a patient who meets certain criteria with a lethal substance, which it is supposed a patient will take at a time and place of their choosing to end their life. In rarer cases, where a patient is unable to ingest the lethal substance, it also allows for a (...) doctor to administer such a substance to the same end. In the Victorian legislation these interventions have been given the umbrella term of 'Voluntary Assisted Dying'. In Catholic ethics, as in most bioethical frameworks, these acts are referred to as physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 3, pp 413 - 432 This essay provides an extended commentary on Richard Evans’ book _Altered Pasts_ from the perspective of a historian of a much earlier period, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The essay considers much of the literature discussed by Evans, explores the “scope” and “range” of counterfactual arguments, and offers suggestions as to how and when legitimate counterfactual historical thinking itself came into being. The essay also argues that the problems inherent (...) in counterfactual history lie less in the logic of their arguments than in the use that is made of them: specifically that a device useful, heuristically, in evaluating the impact of certain factors on events has been stretched by some historians beyond the weight it will bear. In the final section, the relation between fictional and nonfictional counterfactuals is explored. (shrink)

The ArgumentDagognet's work shows that making algorithmic compressions seems to be one of the major targets of scientific progress. This effort has been so successful that until recently one might have thought everything could be algorithmically compressed. Indeed, this statement, which might be seen as a scientific translation of the Hegelian thesis in its strong form, admits to some objective limits in computer science. Though a lot of algorithms are successful, there exist today, and perhaps forever, logical and physical limits (...) that cannot allow us to cherish the dream of a “theory of everything.” Moreover, a complete mastery of complexity does not seem possible — because some domains of reality are too complicated to be computable, because the human brain is too limited, because computers cannot do that much better than the human brain, and because, ultimately, there are some kinds of things it would make no sense to compress. This paper shows that Dagognet's work came to recognize what a glance at the history of algorithmics has made evident. (shrink)

On Domination and its Denial This article explains how corporate management and shareholders gradually succeeded in introducing new modes of domination designed to counter the wave of worker insubordination in the post-1968 period. It shows how the systematic individualisation of the management of wage-earners, placed in a situation of mutual competition, the pressures exerted on them through the procedures of individualised objectives and permanent evaluation, and the orchestration of the objective and subjective contingency of workers, transformed the conditions of wage-employment. (...) From a condition which could be inscribed by those subjected to it within a horizon of collective resistance, domination came to be experienced as a plight of personal suffering. Such trends are not however irreversible, insofar as the logic of individualisation and contingency now tends to come into conflict with other factors, such as the attachment of wage-earners to their work. (shrink)

This study focuses upon two competing visions of wealth and work among Baptists in America and how these different visions have shaped Baptist business ethics. Russell H. Conwell reflected the Reformed tradition's inclination toward what came to be called the Protestant work ethic and its defense of capitalism. He contended that American capitalism presented an open door for any diligent worker to achieve deserved riches. Walter Rauschenbusch reflected the Anabaptist heritage in the stream of Baptist history. He challenged the (...) dominant ethos of the industrial revolution in America and its preference for the interests of management; he called instead for the protection of the worker from the monopolistic power of the capitalists. These two contrasting postures influenced the response of Baptists to the labor-management struggle. (shrink)

The last decade of the Qing dynasty and Republican period saw intensive efforts to revise the Qing Code, promulgate modern legal codes based on Japanese and German law, establish a modern system of courts, and develop a professional corps of lawyers and jurists. These institutional reforms were implemented as part of the drive to have extraterritoriality rescinded and safeguard the sovereignty of the Qing dynasty and then Republic of China. The reforms were accompanied by new categories within civil and criminal (...) law, new conceptions of legal knowledge and expertise, and rich discussions over sources of law which took place within the legal realm as well as the readership of Republican newspapers and journals. If, as Roger Berkowitz writes in his study of scientific codification in continental Europe, “in a legal system, there must be some way that the law comes to be known,” how did ways of knowing law change during this period of legal reform and broader intellectual change? Through a survey of jurisprudence textbooks and other legal publications, this paper argues that writers in early 20th-century China came to define jurisprudence in positivistic terms, ultimately using new conceptions of science and social science to identify its place within a new ordering of modern knowledge. (shrink)

A persistent feature in Jesuit reports about the late Ming and early Qing was the notion that an enduring peace and concord pervaded the Chinese political system. Although the Jesuits did not invent this association, which was rooted in Greco-Roman historiography, the Jesuit encyclopaedist Antonio Possevino was the first to link the ‘perpetual peace’ and ‘supreme concord’ of the Chinese state to the Confucian intellectual tradition. As the Jesuits’ missionary strategy developed under the tutelage of Matteo Ricci, ‘public peace’ and (...) ‘the calm of the Republic’ came to be perceived as the ultimate purpose of the Confucian precepts and one of the hinges on which the aims of Christianity, Confucianism and natural law can be reconciled. The supreme expression of the link between Confucianism and peace can be found in the Confucius Sinarum philosophus, which presented for the first time an accessible translation of three of the four Confucian classics. Yet while retaining the view that pre-Qin Confucianism espoused peace as a central political aim, the Confucius Sinarum philosophus challenged the view that contemporary China could be regarded as a utopic actualization of Confucian peace. This paper will discuss this shift as an attempt to coopt the Chinese political experience as an argument against the pragmatic political philosophy known as ‘reason of state’, which was perceived by Jesuit thinkers as atheistic and immoral. (shrink)

In the years following the death of Bernardino of Siena Giovanni of Capestrano was intensely involved with the tasks of his role as the main supporter of the cause of canonization. This project, which finally came to be realized in the Jubilee year of 1450, was close to his heart for both personal reasons and for the legitimating power that a Bernardino who had been proclaimed a saint would have for advancing the interests of the Observant movement. Along with (...) a feverish diplomatic activity carried out by Giovanni in the triangle of Siena-Aquila-Rome, he developed a role in the construction of the written memory of his Franciscan brother.1 He promoted the registration of miracles both before and after the... (shrink)