Love and Saint Augustine. By Hannah Arendt. Edited and with an interpretative essay by Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), xx + 233 pages. Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self‐Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation. By Brian Stock (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 463 pages.

In this paper, I explore a possible interpretation of Heidegger’s Nazism, viz., that Heidegger read or interpreted Nazism’s program in terms of the program Fichte expressed in Addresses to the German Nation. I regard Fichte as a Fürsprecher for Heidegger’s politics, and claim that Heidegger appropriated Fichte’s thought in a similar manner to the way that he appropriated Kant’s thought in Kant and theProblem of Metaphysics. In this sense, what we may have is a retrieval of Fichte’s political and educational (...) suggestions for Heidegger’s political views.Dans cet article j’explore une interprétation possible de l’adhésion heideggérienne au nazisme, en prétendant que Heidegger aborde le programme nazi à partir du programme fichtéen, tel que présenté dans les Discours à la nation allemande. Je considère Fichte comme le Fürsprecher, le porte-parole, de la politique heideggérienne, et soutiens que Heidegger se serait approprié la pensée de Fichte, dela même façon qu’il s’est approprié la pensée de Kant dans Kant et le problème de la métaphysique. En ce sens, l’on pourrait reconnaître que Heidegger a puisé à même la philosophie fichtéenne de la politique et de l’education afin de nourrir ses positions politiques. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a possible interpretation of Heidegger’s Nazism, viz., that Heidegger read or interpreted Nazism’s program in terms of the program Fichte expressed in Addresses to the German Nation. I regard Fichte as a Fürsprecher for Heidegger’s politics, and claim that Heidegger appropriated Fichte’s thought in a similar manner to the way that he appropriated Kant’s thought in Kant and theProblem of Metaphysics. In this sense, what we may have is a retrieval of Fichte’s political and educational (...) suggestions for Heidegger’s political views.Dans cet article j’explore une interprétation possible de l’adhésion heideggérienne au nazisme, en prétendant que Heidegger aborde le programme nazi à partir du programme fichtéen, tel que présenté dans les Discours à la nation allemande. Je considère Fichte comme le Fürsprecher, le porte-parole, de la politique heideggérienne, et soutiens que Heidegger se serait approprié la pensée de Fichte, dela même façon qu’il s’est approprié la pensée de Kant dans Kant et le problème de la métaphysique. En ce sens, l’on pourrait reconnaître que Heidegger a puisé à même la philosophie fichtéenne de la politique et de l’education afin de nourrir ses positions politiques. (shrink)

In a brief section of The Characteristics of the Present Age, Fichte presents one of the strangest ideas to have arisen in transcendental thought: that wit is related to what Fichte calls the highest idea and to truth. The concept of wit does not arise anywhere else in Fichte's philosophy, and he does not analyze it completely in either The Characteristics of the Present Age or his philosophical texts. I contend that Fichte does not expand upon his idea because his (...) understanding of wit arises out of the Kantian analysis of wit, even though Fichte gives his own spin to Kant's view. What I show in this paper is how Fichte both appropriates and alters Kant's understanding of wit, and how wit serves a social/political function in Fichte's thought. (shrink)

This dissertation is an investigation into the mode of self-understanding that arises once the conception of subjectivity is displaced from its foundational position in metaphysics. I examine the problem of the displacement of the subject by focusing on the philosophy of Kant and Heidegger. I choose Kant and Heidegger for two reasons: first, Kant's Copernican Revolution places the subject at the ground of metaphysics and defines the place of the subject in philosophy up to the contemporary period; second, Heidegger's investigation (...) of Kant displaces the metaphysical conception of the subject and gives rise to other possible understandings of the self. ;The dissertation consists of four chapters. First, I develop the problem of displacement, place my dissertation within the context of contemporary thought, and discuss three modes of reading the history of philosophy. Of the three readings, I choose to conduct both a destructive and a deconstructive reading of the history of philosophy. Second, I explain the Kantian conception of subjectivity in terms of the Copernican Revolution and introduce the Kantian conception of the imagination. Third, I examine the relationship between the imagination and subjectivity as it emerges in the two transcendental deductions of the Critique of Pure Reason. In this chapter, I show the ontological priority of the imagination in Kant's thought. Contrary to the 'orthodox' body of Kantian interpretation, I argue that Kant retrieves the findings of the A deduction within the B deduction and that the imagination maintains its place of importance in Kant's thought. Fourth, I examine Heidegger's understanding of the imagination in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. I show how the temporal character of the imagination displaces the conception of a self-grounding subject and replaces the subject with an understanding of ourselves as the questioner. After discussing this mode of the self, I show how the imagination deconstructs subjectivity and the metaphysical project. The deconstructive reading leads to a discussion of the self within a Derridean and Nietzschean context. (shrink)

The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens. By Philip Brook Manville (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), xiv + 265 pp., $17.95/£14.95 paper. Fathers and Sons in Athens: Ideology and Society in the Era of the Peloponnesian War. By Barry S. Strauss (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), xv + 283 pp., $16.95/ £12.95 paper.

The human science or qualitative approaches to research have always argued that methodology must be determined by the subject matter under study. Yet the same approaches to data collection (i.e., the qualitative interview) and data analysis have been utilized by these approaches since their inception. The most essential lesson of van den Berg's metabletics is that no phenomenon is static or absolute. If human phenomena are ever-changing then the methodologies we use to study them must also change and adapt, so (...) that we can more fully and authentically capture their meaning structures. This paper will develop this argument, and demonstrate the limitation of interviews for the study of the changing nature of human phenomena, utilizing psychotherapy research as an example. (shrink)

Taking Isaac Newton at his own word, historians have long agreed that the decade of the 1660s, when Newton was a young man in his twenties, was the critical period in his scientific career. In the years 1665 and 1666, he has told us, he hit on the ideas of cosmic gravitation, the composition of white light, and the fluxional calculus. The elaboration of these basic ideas constituted his scientific achievement. Nevertheless, the decade of the 1660s has remained a virtual (...) blank in our knowledge of Newton. It need not remain so always. His papers contain a wealth of manuscripts from his undergraduate years and the period immediately following. The first volume of his mathematical papers, which will soon be published, will demonstrate how extensive the information on his early mathematical development is. The development of his non-mathematical studies, especially of what I shall call his scientific studies to distinguish them from the mathematical, can be followed as well—in his reading notes, in his notebooks, above all in the passage in his philosophical notebook labelled Quaestiones quaedam Philosophicae. In this passage we see emerging into consciousness for the first time the questions on which Newton's philosophy of nature was built. (shrink)

Isaac Newton was indisputably one of the greatest scientists in history. His achievements in mathematics and physics marked the culmination of the movement that brought modern science into being. Richard Westfall's biography captures in engaging detail both his private life and scientific career, presenting a complex picture of Newton the man, and as scientist, philosopher, theologian, alchemist, public figure, President of the Royal Society, and Warden of the Royal Mint. An abridged version of his magisterial study Never at Rest, (...) this concise biography makes Westfall's highly acclaimed portrait of Newton newly accessible to general readers. (shrink)

From the very day in 1686 when Edmond Halley placed Book I of the Principia before the Royal Society, Robert Hooke's claim to prior discovery has been associated with the law of universal gravitation. If the seventeenth century rejected Hooke's claim summarily, historians of science have not forgotten it, and a steady stream of articles continues the discussion. In our own day particularly, when some of the glitter has worn off, not from the scientific achievement, but from the character of (...) Newton, there has been a tendency vicariously to atone for the treatment Hooke received. The judgement Lohne cites with approval from Vavilov appears to summarize the current estimate of the issue—in the seventeenth century only Newton could have written the Principia; nevertheless Hooke first sketched out its programme. What with all the knocks he has received both alive and dead, one feels guilty in assuming the role of “debunker” at this late date. Apologetically draped in sackcloth then, head covered with ashes I venture softly to suggest that Hooke has received more than his due. There is no question here of justifying Newton's behaviour toward Hooke. Wholly lacking in generosity as it appears to me, Newton's behaviour neither deserves nor can receive justification. The question turns rather on Hooke's scientific theories. Granting always his lack of demonstrations, historians have been prone to interpret his words in the light of Newton's demonstrations. A close examination of Hooke's writings does not sustain the interpretation. Contrary to what is generally asserted, he did not hold a conception of universal gravitation. And if he announced the inverse square relation, he derived it from such a medley of confusion as will not allow his claim to priority. (shrink)

How do we know and understand who we really are as human beings? The concept of 'the self' is central to many strands of psychology and philosophy. This book tackles the problem of how to define persons and selves and discusses the ways in which different disciplines, such as biology, sociology and philosophy, have dealt with this topic. Richard S. Hallam examines the notion that the idea of the self as some sort of entity is a human construction and, (...) in effect, a virtual reality. At the same time, this virtual self is intimately related to the reality of ourselves as biological organisms. Aiming to integrate a constructionist understanding of self with the universalizing assumptions that are needed in natural science approaches, this text is unique in its attempt to create a dialogue across academic disciplines, while retaining a consistent perspective on the problem of relating nature to culture. (shrink)

Conflicts of interest have been reduced to financial conflicts. The National Institutes of Health’s new rules for managing conflicts of interest in medical research, the first major change to the regulations in over 15 years, address only financial ties. Although several commentators urged that the regulations also cover non-financial interests, the Department of Health and Human Services declined to do so. Similarly, the Institute of Medicine’s influential 2009 Conflict of Interest Report focuses almost exclusively on financial conflicts. Institutional policies at (...) academic medical centers and guidance from professional bodies and medical journals also primarily emphasize financial ties. Even broadly worded rules are applied more readily to financial ties than non-financial interests, such as the regulations that restrict institutional review board members with conflicting interests from participating in protocol reviews. (shrink)

How transcription factors achieve their in vivo specificities is a fundamental question in biology. For the Homeotic Complex (HOM/Hox) family of homeoproteins, specificity in vivo is likely to be in part determined by subtle differences in the DNA binding properties inherent in these proteins. Some of these differences in DNA binding are due to sequence differences in the N‐terminal arms of HOM/Hox homeodomains. Evidence also exists to suggest that cofactors can modify HOM/Hox function by cooperative DNA binding interactions. The Drosophila (...) homeoprotein extradenticle (exd) is likely to be one such cofactor. In HOM/Hox proteins, both the conserved ‘YPWM’ peptide motif and the homeodomain are important for interacting with exd. Although exd provides part of the answer as to how specificity is achieved, there may be additional cofactors and mechanisms that have yet to be identified. (shrink)