Traces the development of the famous theologian's philosophy as he faced the challenges of the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, and prewar Palestine.

This article shows buber's dialogue with taoism, Hinduism, And buddhism, How they influenced him, And how this dialogue entered into the progressive stages of his thought. Neither hinduism nor buddhism remains a central part of buber's later thought as do taoism, Hasidism, And zen, But they do play an important part in his early developmental thinking. When he reached his mature philosophy of dialogue, He transcended his early partiality for non-Dualistic vedanta. But taoism, And especially wu-Wei, Action of the whole (...) being, Remained central to the i-Thou relationship, As did buber's affinity for the other "mysticisms of the particular," zen buddhism and hasidism. (shrink)

Beginning with the similarities between Buber and Levinas-both twentieth-century Jewish philosophers, each in his own way dialogica-this essay proceeds to their differences. From there the essay discusses Levinas's critiques of Buber's philosophy, the extent to which they were based on misunderstanding, and Buber's own replies to Levinas. This foundation provides a springboard for discussion of the source of the moral ought in both Buber and Levinas-Buber's emphasis on the "between" and Levinas's emphasis on the "face"-and raises a serious ethical question (...) concerning Levinas's argument against Buber's discussion of "Samuel and Aging" from the Hebrew Bible. (shrink)

Martin Buber was close to sociology and sociologists from his university years on and in 1938 was head of the new Department of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although influenced by Ferdinand Toennies, and George Simmel, he went beyond them in his philosophy of the “interhuman” from which standpoint he also criticized Max Scheler. Focal social concepts of Buber's are “the interhuman”_the dialogical relationship between persons that entails “inclusion,” or “imagining the real,” making present, and confirmation ; the (...) “essential We” or common cosmos that each helps to build by speech-with-meaning from his or her unique stance; the distinction between the “political principle” of government and the “social principle” of fellowship and social spontaneity; and the philosophy of community that led Buber to a federalistic socialism and the vision of restructuring society into a “community of communities”. (shrink)

This reassessment of the long debate about Friedman's thesis on the pointlessness of testing assumptions in economics shows that Friedman's three famous examples, on which a large part of the credit given to this thesis is based, far from substantiating it, can be used to establish radically opposite conclusions. Furthermore, it is shown that this so-called “instrumentalist” thesis, when applied by Friedman to economics, is of a quite different nature and raises much more serious problems than the standard instrumentalist thesis (...) devised by some methodologists of physics. To disentangle these ambiguities concerning realism and instrumentalism applied to physics or to economics, this paper refers to Van Fraassen's “constructive empiricism”, which is helpful in reformulating, in a more satisfactory way, the essentials of Friedman's considerations about empiricism and anti-realism. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Depuis la parution, en 1950, du célèbre article d'Armen Alchian, il est devenu assez fréquent d'invoquer la sélection naturelle pour appuyer certaines conclusions de l'économie néoclassique. Toute sélection n'étant toutefois pas de type « darwinien », il importe de bien distinguer les arguments qui invoquent la sélection naturelle au sens strict et les arguments crypto-téléologiques qui s'apparenteraientplutôt à un évolutionnisme de type lamarckien. A l'aide de quelques exemples fictifs, dont deux sont empruntés à un essai méthodologique de Milton Friedman de (...) 1953, il est soutenu que les économistes doivent choisir entre des explications prétendument fondées sur la sélection naturelle et des explications fondées sur le principe de rationalité. Plus généralement, il est montré en conclusion, à l'aide de deux exemples supplémentaires, que les explications reposant sur des mécanismes impersonnels et celles reposant sur des activités intentionnelles ne peuvent être invoquées concurremment.Since the publication of Alchian's famous article of 1950, it has become relatively common to invoke natural selection as a justification of various conclusions in neoclassical economics. But because selection is not always of a "Darwinian" type, it is important to distinguish clearly between arguments which invoke natural selection in the strict sense of the word from crypto-teleological arguments which are rather more closely related to a Lamarkian evolutionary approach. With the help of fictional examples, two of which have been borrowed from Milton Friedman's 1953 essay on methodology, it is argued that economists mast choose between explanations supposedly based on natural selection and ones that are based on the principle of rationality. More generally, and with the help of two further examples, it is concluded that explanations based on a anonymous mechanism and those based on intentional activities can not be invoked concurrently. (shrink)

Genealogies in philosophy can be tricky and even a little dangerous. Lines of influence and inheritance run much more linearly on paper than in reality. I am often reminded of Robert Frost's "Mending Walls" and the attention that must be paid to what is being walled in and what is being walled out. In other words, William James and Emmanuel Levinas are not natural conversation partners. I have always read James as a fellow traveler of Edmund Husserl, and placed both (...) in a line of thought that might share Franz Brentano and Wilhelm Dilthey as forebears. In this genealogy, Levinas appears with an asterisk, or after one. Maurice Natanson described Husserlian phenomenology as an elderly grandparent who comes down to dinner just a little bit too early, making everyone uncomfortable. Seating Levinas next to James brings to mind some similar scene. What basic premises or positions do James and Levinas share? Is Levinas a Jamesian pragmatist? Is he a radical empiricist? Does James offer an ethics that parallels or even complements Levinas's rigorous ethical phenomenology? (shrink)

Martin Buber (1878–1965) is best known for his philosophy of dialogue, or the “I‐Thou relationship,” especially as expressed in his classic I and Thou (Buber 1958). He is also known as a philosopher of religion, but he is not a theologian. Perhaps above all he is a philosophical anthropologist – one concerned for the wholeness and uniqueness of the human. Certainly his two basic words – I‐Thou (the relationship of mutuality, directness, presence, and openness) and I‐It (the subject‐object relation of (...) knowing and using) – provide us with no metaphysics or world‐view that can be understood apart from philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

Examining the literature of slavery and race before the Civil War, Maurice Lee demonstrates for the first time exactly how the slavery crisis became a crisis of philosophy that exposed the breakdown of national consensus and the limits of rational authority. Poe, Stowe, Douglass, Melville, and Emerson were among the antebellum authors who tried - and failed - to find rational solutions to the slavery conflict. Unable to mediate the slavery controversy as the nation moved toward war, their writings (...) form an uneasy transition between the confident rationalism of the American Enlightenment and the more skeptical thought of the pragmatists. Lee draws on antebellum moral philosophy, political theory, and metaphysics, bringing a fresh perspective to the literature of slavery - one that synthesizes cultural studies and intellectual history to argue that romantic, sentimental, and black Atlantic writers all struggled with modernity when facing the slavery crisis. (shrink)

A beneficial effect of gesture on learning has been demonstrated in multiple domains, including mathematics, science, and foreign language vocabulary. However, because gesture is known to co‐vary with other non‐verbal behaviors, including eye gaze and prosody along with face, lip, and body movements, it is possible the beneficial effect of gesture is instead attributable to these other behaviors. We used a computer‐generated animated pedagogical agent to control both verbal and non‐verbal behavior. Children viewed lessons on mathematical equivalence in which an (...) avatar either gestured or did not gesture, while eye gaze, head position, and lip movements remained identical across gesture conditions. Children who observed the gesturing avatar learned more, and they solved problems more quickly. Moreover, those children who learned were more likely to transfer and generalize their knowledge. These findings provide converging evidence that gesture facilitates math learning, and they reveal the potential for using technology to study non‐verbal behavior in controlled experiments. (shrink)

A beneficial effect of gesture on learning has been demonstrated in multiple domains, including mathematics, science, and foreign language vocabulary. However, because gesture is known to co-vary with other non-verbal behaviors, including eye gaze and prosody along with face, lip, and body movements, it is possible the beneficial effect of gesture is instead attributable to these other behaviors. We used a computer-generated animated pedagogical agent to control both verbal and non-verbal behavior. Children viewed lessons on mathematical equivalence in which an (...) avatar either gestured or did not gesture, while eye gaze, head position, and lip movements remained identical across gesture conditions. Children who observed the gesturing avatar learned more, and they solved problems more quickly. Moreover, those children who learned were more likely to transfer and generalize their knowledge. These findings provide converging evidence that gesture facilitates math learning, and they reveal the potential for using technology to study non-verbal behavior in controlled experiments. (shrink)

Sandplay is one of the fastest growing therapies. What are its origins, who were it pioneers, and how have they influenced the current practice of sandplay? What does the future hold? Rie Rogers Mitchell and Harriet S. Friedman have written a unique book that answers all these questions and many more. They give an overview of the historical origins of sandplay, including biographical profiles of the innovators together with discussions of their seminal writings. The five main therapeutic trends are explored, (...) and in a final chapter the future of sandplay is discussed through addressing emerging issues and concerns. A special feature is a comprehensive international bibliography as well as a listing of sandtray videotapes and audiotapes. (shrink)

_Supervision of Sandplay Therapy_, the first book on this subject, is an internationally-based volume that describes the state of the art in supervision of sandplay therapy. Recognizing that practitioners are eager to incorporate sandplay therapy into their practice, Harriet Friedman and Rie Rogers Mitchell respond to the need for new information, and successfully translate the theories of sandplay therapy into supervision practice. The book provides a meaningful connection and balance between theoretical principles, practical application, and ongoing therapeutic encounter involved in (...) sandplay. Divided into six sections, contributors cover: original supervision models contemporary supervision models special challenges in supervision international sandplay supervision supervision of special groups connections with other arts therapies. _Supervision of Sandplay Therapy _expands the vision of what is possible in supervision and will be vital reading for those studying supervision and sandplay therapy, as well as for those wanting to provide a depth-oriented approach during supervision. (shrink)

The book attempts to develop an account of simplicity in terms of testability, and to use this account to provide an adequate characterization of induction, one immune to the class of problems suggested by Nelson Goodman. It is then shown that the past success of induction, thus characterized, constitutes evidence for its future success. A qualitative measure of confirmation is developed, and this measure - along with the considerations of simplicity - is used to provide an account of the consilience (...) of inductions, and also an inductivist account of the structure and progress of scientific theory. An appendix extends the treatment of simplicity to statistical distributions and provides a reasonable interpretation of the maximum entropy principle. Thus, this book is an attempt to characterize induction in terms of a well-defined notion of simplicity and to use that characterization as a basis of an account of empirical, and in particular, scientific reasoning. (shrink)

E. T. Jaynes' resolution of Bertrand's paradox in terms of invariance principles is criticized. An experimental setup is considered which generates general solutions to Bertrand's problem by rotating a line around a point a distancer+d from a circle of radiusr. The general solution obtained is neither translationally nor scale invariant, but depends on the value ofr/d. Only in the limitr/d » 0, when the line is just translating across the circle, is the distribution translationally invariant and scale invariant. In this (...) limiting case the distribution found is just that obtained by Jaynes. (shrink)

Kant’s concept of the highest good proportionately unites virtue and happiness—the supreme goods of, respectively, the systems of freedom and of nature. A middle path between theological and secular interpretations of Kant’s highest good is possible if we disentangle two distinct roles played by God: a causal role in promoting the real unity of the highest good, i.e., its actualization; and a conceptual role in modeling its conceptual unity. The highest good is theological in the first case, but neutral—neither directly (...) theological nor secular—in the second. Reconstructing how Kant envisioned the conceptual unity of the highest good requires taking seriously his repeated reference to God as the highest original good, and to the best world as the highest derived good. If, as Kant thought, a moral God forms a triadic unity comprised of holiness, goodness, and divine justice, perhaps he assumed that the conceptual unity of the derived good is likewise triadic, comprised of virtue, happiness, and a form of justice that is not directly divine but “systemic,” designating the unity of the systems of nature and of freedom. Divine justice, in contrast, constitutes the real unity of the highest good. (shrink)

On the three most widely discussed contemporary justifications of induction, the inductive justification, the pragmatic justification, and the analytic justification (or dissolution of the problem), none has received widespread acceptance. There are specific problems with each of these approaches and a general problem that affects all three. The purpose of this paper is to provide a fourth justification of induction which is less problematic than or at least problematic in different ways from-the three traditional justifications.