The point of departure of this essay is a paradox in traditional conceptions of historical objectivity. This paradox can best be analyzed in terms of the notion of the “double bind”: the requirement of historical objectivity is formulated in such a way that it is impossible to satisfy the requirement. The substance of this essay is an investigation of how J. M. Coetzee deals with the moral impasses of this double bind in his most recent novel, Elizabeth Costello . In (...) essence Coetzee forces his way through the double bind by an appeal to a direct experience of the world. The Spinozism implied by this strategy is indicated at the end of the essay. The analysis of Coetzee’s novel is preceded by a discussion of Kafka’s “Before the Law,” since the relevant part of Coetzee’s novel clearly is a paraphrase of the Kafka parable. Moreover, insight into the textual double binds in the Kafka parable contributes to an understanding of the moral double binds that are addressed in Elizabeth Costello. (shrink)

_Offering a new edition of Dewey’s 1916 collection of essays_ This critical edition of John Dewey’s 1916 collection of writings on logic, _Essays in Experimental Logic—_in which Dewey presents his concept of logic as the theory of inquiry and his unique and innovative development of the relationship of inquiry to experience—is the first scholarly reprint of the work in one volume since 1954. _Essays in Experimental Logic, _edited by D. Micah Hester and Robert B. Talisse, uses the authoritative texts from (...) the _Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953_ and includes as well articles from leading journals representing various contemporary schools of philosophy that criticized Dewey’s experimentalism. Culling materials from six volumes of the chronologically arranged _Collected Works_, this single-volume edition of _Essays_ marks a crucial point in Dewey’s intellectual development: one in which Dewey critically engages idealistic and intuitionist theorists and lays the groundwork for his mature theory of inquiry. The text includes a new introduction by renowned Dewey scholar Tom Burke that places _Essays_ in philosophical and historical context. In addition to the original essays, _Essays in Experimental Logic_ also features five critical essays by Dewey’s contemporaries, including Bertrand Russell, Wendell T. Bush, R. F. Alfred Hoernlé, H. T. Costello, and C. S. Peirce. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Further ReflectionsCharles AltieriI see now that I was wrong in lumping Robert B. Pippin with other philosophers who adapt literary experience to philosophical purposes.1 And I was probably too taken with Walter Benjamin to appreciate fully Pippin's version of Proustian sensibility. I can invoke no authority to explain why I did not see adequately that tone is so central to J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello. So I am very (...) grateful to Pippin not only for pointing out my inadequate reading but also showing how, as critics, we both—for the most part—emphasize conditions of experience rendered by great literary texts. But I cannot apologize for some features of my argument, so I hope to refine them in this response.Pippin is not interested in providing explanations for texts or even, at his best, in using philosophy to extract "meaning." He limits himself to a subset of literary texts that engage philosophical thinking. Within these limits he proposes to do philosophy by literary means. That is, he wants to develop philosophically the particular situations eliciting philosophical concerns. His goal is not to stabilize the arguments underlying the text but to make more fully articulate the particular line of reflection carried out by the text and projected as a means of engaging thought on the part of the audience. Philosophy by other means becomes an engagement with literary practices concentrating on how the ways that thinking is handled in the text can take on a kind of concrete universality. This move toward generalizability does not depend on universals provided by argument (since, if one follows Ludwig Wittgenstein's On Certainty, the fictive cannot be said to provide any knowledge of objective conditions, despite Pippin's wavering on this point; see p. 240). Rather, [End Page 260] generalization occurs by fleshing out dramatic particular occasions that establish significant perspectives on cultural problems, especially those involving transformations in cultural life, like understandings of self-knowledge, the consequences of imperialism, and the ways language becomes increasingly difficult to trust for communicative purposes.The philosophical task for Pippin is to provide a language for why the situation in a literary text might matter beyond the details that give it much of its power. G. W. F. Hegel showed how works of art can embody modes of thinking that provide articulate moments shaping what before them had been isolated undercurrents marking fissures in cultural life. Pippin wants to revive this ambition to produce philosophically articulate moments that bring out cultural and ideological tensions formative for modern reflective lives. This desire, I think, springs largely from Pippin's commitment to preserve Hegel's way of reading literature so that he can provide an alternative to Hegel's argument that once the universals established in an Absolute become increasingly visible, the significance of art for understanding culture will diminish substantially.Pippin has explored two alternatives for defending a Hegelian approach capable of preserving the cultural importance of the arts: in visual arts by providing languages for social critique, and in literature by actually dramatizing the significance of how texts can engage and establish processes of thinking that address pressing philosophical concerns. In effect, only by showing how Hegel was wrong that philosophy could establish a possibility of knowing an Absolute that would render art a minor player in civilization's capacity for self-awareness could criticism show how art becomes possibly the only vehicle we have to honor the spiritual complexities experience can make manifest.But even when I am led to agree for the most part with Pippin's claims about literature as philosophy, his focus on cultural relevance bothers me because that focus provides constant temptations to minimize the complex experiences works produce. So I think I have to try again to articulate what I think I can save of my efforts to distinguish literary experience from Pippin's enlightened philosophical ways of engaging literary texts. Let me propose three features of my original argument that seem still worth considering. First, I will simply assert that Pippin's theorizing of two factors necessary for interpreting intentions—as authorial purposiveness and as historically based recontextualizations of the work—makes it very difficult... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE MUNUS OF TRANSMITTING HUMAN LIFE: A NEW APPROACH TO I-IUMANAE VITAE JANET E. SMITH University of Dallas Irving, Texas 'TIRE ONLY ACQUAINTANCE 1bhat most rea;ders have with the Latin of Humanae Vitae is the tit1le. It is likey that fow laymen and perhaps eV'en fow schofars make ire:ferenoe to the Latin text; indeed, it is ireported that I-Iumanae Vitae was originally composed in ltalian, and it seems that (...) aH available translations of the text al'e based primarily on the Italian V'ersion. But since the official text of Humanae Vitae is in Latin and since translations are necessa11ily deficient, we shouild not be surprised that the ava:ilahle translations fail to convey a:M the nuances of the official text. (Latin, of course, is tihe langua:ge in which all official documents of the Church are written.) This study seeks to show that attenti¥eness to certain words fa the Latin text, most particularly the word munus, uncovers important eonnections between Humanae Vitae and pe['spect[ves of the Church, perspectives particularly highlighted in the documents of Vatican II. It also seeks to show that the La.tin provides greater philosophical precision for certain key teaohings of the text, most particularly section 11: "each and every maritail act must remain open to proc11eation." It is ii.mportant to note that some of the crucial Latin words of the document cal'ry connotations tihat cannot possibly be captured ihy 1any one English word. Indeed, some of the words convey concepts and attitudes that are quite foreign to speak:iers of modern English; to convey the meaning of some terms requires a. fairly lengthy expl,ication of notions not immed :iate1ly and directly graspaible hy ail readers. Even to the reade[' of Latin, the text does not 'easily ~eld its secrets. The 385 386 JANET E. SMITH Latin of the document has no identifiahle souTee of reliabJe deoipherment; it is a kind of " modern " 0 1 r " Church " Latin, which is an odd comhinat~on of elassical Latin and the lang1uage the Ohurch ha:s deve1oped oveil.' the centuries. The method of translation employed here has invo1 lved consultation of classical and medieval dictionaries, reference to arguably rep-!l1esentative classical and medieval 1 authors, tracing of the word 'being ioonsidered through t1he documents of Vatican II, con- 'sideration of 1appearance of the word in other Church documents, cross-reference to other uses of the word within Huma,nae Vitae itself, and reference to the Italian" 1 original." 1 l In preparation for this article reference was made to six English translations : (a) the translation done by the NC News Service, made widely available by the Daughters of Saint Paul, Of Human Life (Boston, Mass.: Daughters of St. Paul, 1968), hereafter referred to as the "usual translation" and designated by HY; (b) the translation by the Catholic Truth Society printed in John Horgan, Humanae Vitae and the Bishops (Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1972), 33-53; this translation was modified and reprinted in (c) The Pope Speaks 13 (1969): 329-346, and in (d) the Vatican Press Office translation, " Encyclical Letter on the Regulation of Births " in Vatican II: More Post-Conciliar Doauments, ed. Austin Flannery, O.P. (Northport, N. Y.: Costello Publishing Company, 1982), 397-416; (e) the translation by Rev. Marc Calegari, S.J., Humanae Vitae (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1978), which has undergone a further, as of yet unpublished, revision. 'There is one translation (f) that was made entirely from the Latin, by Rev. A. J. Durand, Humanae Vitae: A New Translation (Bethlehem, Pa.: Catechetical Communications; no date given); it is, though, not widely available. Rev. Calegari, in private communication with this author, noted that the document was originally written in Italian, though the Latin text is the official text. He also stated that the modern language versions were made from the Italian text. My comparisons of the translations of Humanae Vitae with the Italian and the Latin versions indicate that Rev. Calegari is correct in saying that most modern versions are based on the Italian, though a few, most notably that by the Catholic Truth Society, have clearly made reference to the... (shrink)

The ability of the mind to conceptualize what is not present is essential. It allows us to reason counterfactually about what might have happened had events unfolded differently or had another course of action been taken. It allows us to think about what might happen – to perform 'Gedankenexperimente' (thought experiments) – before we act. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms mediating this ability are poorly understood. We suggest that the frontopolar cortex (FPC) keeps track of and evaluates alternative choices (...) (what we might have done), whereas the anterior lateral prefrontal cortex (alPFC) compares simulations of possible future scenarios (what we might do) and evaluates their reward values. Together, these brain regions support the construction of suppositional scenarios. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche war kein Anarchist. Trotzdem weckten seine Ideen ein starkes Interesse bei Schlusselfiguren der anarchistischen Bewegung ab den 1890er-Jahren. Gustav Landauer, Emma Goldman und andere reflektierten uber die Chancen und die Gefahren, die jene Ideen fur ihre Politik enthalten. Hitzige Deutungskampfe, etwa uber den Willen zur Macht oder den Status von Frauen in Nietzsches Werken, entlockten selbst den vehementesten Kritikern wie Peter Kropotkin noch produktive Impulse zur Weiterentwicklung der eigenen Theorien. In jungerer Zeit hat sich eine neuere Stromung, der (...) "Postanarchismus", auf Nietzsche berufen, ohne allerdings die historischen Varianten des "nietzscheanischen Anarchismus" zu berucksichtigen. Dies stellt das Innovationspotenzial des Postanarchismus infrage. Das Buch nimmt eine transnationale Perspektive ein und dokumentiert erstmalig die anarchistische Rezeption Nietzsches in Deutschland, Grossbritannien und den USA innerhalb ihrer jeweiligen historischen Kontexte. (shrink)

Offering a new edition of Dewey's 1916 collection of essays This critical edition of John Dewey's 1916 collection of writings on logic, Essays in Experimental Logic—in which Dewey presents his concept of logic as the theory of inquiry and his unique and innovative development of the relationship of inquiry to experience—is the first scholarly reprint of the work in one volume since 1954. Essays in Experimental Logic, edited by D. Micah Hester and Robert B. Talisse, uses the authoritative texts from (...) the Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953 and includes as well articles from leading journals representing various contemporary schools of philosophy that criticized Dewey's experimentalism. Culling materials from six volumes of the chronologically arranged Collected Works, this single-volume edition of Essays marks a crucial point in Dewey's intellectual development: one in which Dewey critically engages idealistic and intuitionist theorists and lays the groundwork for his mature theory of inquiry. The text includes a new introduction by renowned Dewey scholar Tom Burke that places Essays in philosophical and historical context. In addition to the original essays, Essays in Experimental Logic also features five critical essays by Dewey's contemporaries, including Bertrand Russell, Wendell T. Bush, R. F. Alfred Hoernlé, H. T. Costello, and C. S. Peirce. (shrink)

The enormous impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused Indonesian Christian leaders and theologians to become preoccupied with theodicy-humanistic questions rather than considering the rights of life for biodiversity. This is unacceptable because humans are not the only living things with the right to life and are entitled to God’s justice in all-natural disasters. According to biologists and epidemiologists, the pandemic sends a message of ecological injustice. Therefore, by using a method of reading with a perspective of (...) biological diversity, this research argues that humans and other living things have a right to God’s justice amid disasters. The Indonesian spirituality of biological diversity, which is in line with the gratitude of Francis of Assisi and Calvin’s idea of living in a church that considers God’s justice for all creation, can serve as an epistemological foundation for developing theodicy-ecological ecclesiology. Contribution: Considering the spirituality of biodiversity enables churches in Indonesia to embrace biodiversity as fellow creatures of God post-pandemic. In this way, they can affirm their ecclesiastical identity as the ecological body of Christ amid ecological injustice. (shrink)

Physical and biological measurements might display range values extending towards infinite. The occurrence of infinity in equations, such as the black hole singularities, is a troublesome issue that causes many theories to break down when assessing extreme events. Different methods, such as re-normalization, have been proposed to avoid detrimental infinity. Here a novel technique is proposed, based on geometrical considerations and the Alexander Horned sphere, that permits to undermine infinity in physical and biophysical equations. In this unconventional approach, a continuous (...) monodimensional line becomes an assembly of countless bidimensional lines that superimpose in quantifiable knots and bifurcations. In other words, we may state that Achilles leaves the straight line and overtakes the turtle. (shrink)

Intro -- Title -- Contents -- Publisher's Acknowledgment -- Introduction -- Madhyamaka's Promise as Philosophy -- 1. Trying to Be Fair -- 2. How Far Can a Mādhyamika Reform Customary Truth? Dismal Relativism, Fictionalism, Easy-Easy Truth, and the Alternatives -- Logic and Semantics -- 3. How Do Mādhyamikas Think? Notes on Jay Garfield, Graham Priest, and Paraconsistency -- 4. "How Do Mādhyamikas Think?" Revisited -- 5. Prasaṅga and Proof by Contradiction in Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti, and Dharmakīrti -- 6. Apoha Semantics: What (...) Did Bhāviveka Have to Do with It? -- 7. What Happened to the Third and Fourth Lemmas in the Tibetan Madhyamaka? -- Ethics and the Spiritual Path -- 8. Madhyamaka Buddhist Ethics -- 9. Reason, Irrationality, and Akrasia (Weakness of the Will) in Buddhism: Reflections upon Śāntideva's Arguments with Himself -- 10. Yogic Perception, Meditation, and Enlightenment: The Epistemological Issues in a Key Debate between Madhyamaka and Chan -- Madhyamaka in Contemporary Debates -- 11. On Minds, Dharmakīrti, and Madhyamaka -- 12. Serious, Lightweight, or Neither: Should Madhyamaka Go to Canberra? -- Notes on the Articles -- Abbreviations -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author -- Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism Titles Previously Published -- About Wisdom Publications -- Copyright. (shrink)

We applaud Ray and Cooper (2024) for emphasizing environmental health as a bioethics issue. As a team of interdisciplinary pediatric researchers and providers who are part of an institutional clima...

We maximally extend the quantum‐mechanical results of Muller and Saunders ( 2008 ) establishing the ‘weak discernibility’ of an arbitrary number of similar fermions in finite‐dimensional Hilbert spaces. This confutes the currently dominant view that ( A ) the quantum‐mechanical description of similar particles conflicts with Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII); and that ( B ) the only way to save PII is by adopting some heavy metaphysical notion such as Scotusian haecceitas or Adamsian primitive thisness. We (...) take sides with Muller and Saunders ( 2008 ) against this currently dominant view, which has been expounded and defended by many. *Received July 2008; revised May 2009. †To contact the authors, please write to: F. A. Muller, Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burg. Oudlaan 50, H5–16, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected] , and Institute for the History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 6, IGG–3.08, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected] . M. P. Seevinck, Institute for the History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 6, IGG–3.08, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Wie können wir uns in der Welt ohne Selbstverlust orientieren, wie unsere rationalen Fähigkeiten und Vermögen erhalten? Kant ist der Philosoph der reinen Vernunft und des kategorischen Imperativs. Aber mit seinen Überlegungen zur Selbsterhaltung der Vernunft erweist er sich zugleich als ein Philosoph mit einem klaren Bewusstsein davon, worauf es in unserem Leben ankommt: auf Selbstbilligung und Selbstständigkeit, auf Selbstdenken und Kritik, auf Aufklärung und Humanität, auf Recht und Freiheit, auf die Überwindung unserer Unmündigkeit und auf den Austausch von Argumenten (...) und Perspektiven. Mit seinem Fokus auf die Selbsterhaltung der Vernunft bietet das Buch einen neuen Zugang zu Kants Werk und leistet zugleich einen Beitrag zur Debatte über die Modernität seines Denkens. (shrink)

Among Thomists the standard practice is to show the openness of human nature to beatitude from the speculative side. The intellectual desire to know the richness of the notion of being, the ratio entis, becomes the desire to know the creator who as esse subsistens embodies the intelligible heart of being. I want to try the same strategy but from the practical side. I believe that more people experience a desire to love than a desire to know. Few have noticed (...) that Aquinas’s first practical principle “Good ought to be done” is, as I will explain, a call to be respectful and solicitous of ourselves and others as intellectors of being. Hence, fidelity to this principle illustrates a connection between being and love so that the greater is the concentration of being, then the greater is the concentration of love. A subsistent instance of being should be a subsistent instance of love. In his metaphysics Aquinas attains the creator as subsistent being. Hence, contact with that instance would strengthen in an unparalleled way the human’s fidelity to the first practical principle. Does this contact in fact occur? That philosophical question raises the religious possibility. In its parade of saints, Christianity provides tantalizing evidence that that contact is realized. (shrink)

This article focusses on the generality of the entities involved in a geometric proof of the kind found in ancient Greek treatises: it shows that the standard modern translation of Greek mathematical propositions falsifies crucial syntactical elements, and employs an incorrect conception of the denotative letters in a Greek geometric proof; epigraphic evidence is adduced to show that these denotative letters are ‘letter-labels’. On this basis, the article explores the consequences of seeing that a Greek mathematical proposition is fully general, (...) and the ontological commitments underlying the stylistic practice. (shrink)

The absence of ethics at American universities -- Ethics -- How the literature on the university is moving slowly but surely toward university ethics -- A first case for university ethics: the adjunct faculty -- The cultural landscape of the university without ethics -- Cheating -- Undergraduates behaving badly -- Gender -- Diversity and race -- Commodification -- A conclusion : class, athletics, and other university matters.