Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 - March 27, 1918) was an American historian and member of the Adams political family, being descended from two U.S. Presidents.As a young Harvard graduate, he was secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, Abraham Lincoln's ambassador in London, a posting that had much influence on the younger man, both through experience of wartime diplomacy and absorption in English culture, especially the works of John Stuart Mill. After the American Civil War, he became (...) a noted political journalist who entertained America's foremost intellectuals at his homes in Washington and Boston.In his lifetime, he was best known for his History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, a 9-volume work, praised for its literary style.His posthumously published memoirs, The Education of Henry Adams, won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to be named by the Modern Library as the top English-language nonfiction book of the 20th century.A LETTER TO AMERICAN TEACHERS OF HISTORY. It proposes a "theory of history" based on the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of entropy, which essentially states that all energy dissipates, order becomes disorder, and the earth will eventually become uninhabitable. He applied the physics of dynamical systems of Rudolf Clausius, Hermann von Helmholtz, and William Thomson to the modeling of human history. (shrink)

Comparison of the preliminary objection to Haskar's and Adams's critiques of Molinism. The difficulty with Haskar's 'Power Inference Principle;' Adams's "New Anti-Molinist Argument;" William Lane Craig's recent response to Adams; Craig's defense of the 'emphemeral' Molinist logical possibility of doing otherwise; the two stages of the Existentialist's alternative strategy against Molinism.

So much for the Aesthetic. We can now proceed to the Analytic, the philosophical importance of which is much greater. Kant's main contentions in this part of his work can be summed up in; two propositions: human understanding contains certain a priori concepts, and on these are based certain non-empirical principles; these concepts are only general concepts of a phenomenal object, and therefore the principles in question are only prescriptive to sense-experience. As has already been said, interest in the first (...) proposition has distracted attention from the fact that the important thing Kant has to say is contained in the second. (shrink)

Henricus Regius ou Henri LeRoy, outrora amigo e divulgador da filosofia de Descartes, agora escrevendo como adversário de seu antigo mestre, publica em Utrecht um panfleto anônimo sobre a natureza da mente humana. No intuito de evitar que as teses apresentadas por seu ex-discípulo fossem tomadas como suas, Descartes decide, então, refutar as opiniões defendidas no panfleto de Regius. É precisamente o texto produzido por Descartes nessa ocasião que é traduzido a seguir. Esse texto, aparentemente impresso sem o consentimento de (...) seu autor em dezembro de 1647, marca o ponto final da relação entre o filósofo francês e o professor de medicina. O texto latino aqui traduzido foi extraído da edição realizada por Charles Adam e Paul Tannery das Oeuvres complètes de Descartes, Paris, Vrin, tomo VIII, pp. 341-369. (shrink)

Published in 1935, George Santayana's The Last Puritan was the American philosopher's only novel. It became an instant best-seller, immediately linked in its painful voyage of self discovery to The Education of Henry Adams. It is essentially a novel of ideas, expressed in the birth, life, and early death of Oliver Alden.The Last Puritan is volume four in a new critical edition of The Works of George Santayana that restores Santayana's original text and provides important new scholarly information. Books (...) in this series - the first complete publication of Santayana's works - include an editorial apparatus with notes to the text, textual commentary, discussions of adopted readings, lists of variants and emendations, and line-end hyphenations. Irving Singer's new introduction to this edition takes up Santayana's philosophical and artistic concerns, including issues of homosexuality raised by the depiction of the novel's two protagonists, Oliver and Mario, and of the relationship between Oliver and the rogue character Jim Darnley. In his thoughtful analysis Singer finds the term "homosexual novel" too reductionist and imprecise for what Santayana is trying to achieve. Singer brings to light the author's skillful and inventive methods for perceiving and interpreting reality, including ideal forms of friendship, and his success in exploring the pervasive moral problems that people face throughout their existence. (shrink)

Once we realize that the indivisible and infinitely repeatable One of the arithmetic lesson in Republic7 is generated by διάνοια at Parmenides 143a6-9, it becomes possible to revisit the Divided Line’s Second Part and see that Aristotle’s error was not to claim that Plato placed Intermediates between the Ideas and sensible things but to restrict that class to the mathematical objects Socrates used to explain it. All of the One-Over-Many Forms of Republic10 that Aristotle, following Plato, attacked with the Third (...) Man, are equally dependent on Images and above all on the Hypothesis of the One. (shrink)

This massive study makes an important contribution to the history of philosophy for two reasons. First of all, it stands as the most complete and careful philosophical analysis of Ockham's thought to date. Adams's expositions and analyses will become the gloss which generations of students will have to reckon with as they confront the text of Ockham. Secondly, this work represents an exemplary method of philosophical commentary, one that proves to be a remarkably illuminating way into the mind of a (...) medieval scholastic disputant. Because Ockham's thought is intensely dialectical and argumentative, Adams appropriately exposes his doctrines through an exacting recovery of his argument within its dialogical context. For example, in the crucial chapter 2, "Universals Are Not Things other than Names," we come to understand Ockham's nominalism as it emerges from his rejection of moderate realism; Adams presents this rejection through a reconstruction of Ockham's encounter with the living tradition of Aquinas, Scotus, Walter Burleigh, William of Alnwick, Nervaeus Natalis, and Henry of Harclay. As the dialectic proceeds from figure to figure, the issue of the universal reshapes itself with great sophistication. Adams's formidable analytic powers and her sharp focus on the key philosophical issue enable her to succeed in this method. The reader also gets the sense that Adams herself believes one can come to truth through philosophical argument, and not just the truth of what Ockham taught but the truth of what he sought. This earnestness enables her to keep a fix on the dialectic's "emerging rule" which becomes the source of unity in what could otherwise degenerate into a bewildering complexity of historical detail or the vanity of analytic logic-chopping. (shrink)

In a 1985 article entitled “The Art of Glaukos,” Diskin Clay suggested that the enigmatic passage at the beginning of the geological myth in Phaedoreferred toRepublic10, where the soul is likened to the sea-creature Glaucus whose true nature, like the soul’s, is obscured by the distortions imposed by underwater life. Starting with a defense of Clay’s ingenious suggestion, my purpose is to compare Phaedoto Glaucus, with its true nature obscured by traditional assumptions about the order in which Plato composed his (...) dialogues, and thus how they should be read. At least part of the reason that Clay’s thesis has not been embraced is because it clashes with the dogma that Phaedocannot refer back to Republic; I want to challenge that dogma. Borrowing from Catherine Zuckert the notion that, since Phaedocomes at the end of Socrates’ story, it can usefully be read as the culmination of the Platonic dialogues, I will show how a “late” Phaedo—i.e., a reading of the dialogue that is open to the possibility that it refers to more than one dialogue generally considered to be later than it with respect to composition—recovers its true nature, presently encrusted with the oysters and seaweed of an outdated developmentalism that has obscured this culminating masterpiece of Plato’s dramatic and philosophical art. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 1, Page 180-189, February 2022.

Ion -- Meno (Menon) -- Symposium (The banquet) -- The republic -- The apology (The defence of Socrates) -- Crito (Criton) -- Phaedo (Phaidon) -- The Greek alphabet -- Pronouncing index.

Since the Great Recession of 2008–2009, practitioners of the liberal arts and sciences have experienced increasing pressure to demonstrate the relevance and value of liberal learning to working lives and careers. The economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to increase that pressure. In this environment, how should defenders of the liberal arts and sciences be thinking about work and working lives? This essay attempts to answer that question by exploring broad trends in work and workplaces and (...) connecting those trends back to the traditional concerns of liberal learning. The essay also discusses some of the changes that will be necessary in the ways academic departments and college and university administrators think about the undergraduate curriculum. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty spent the summer of 1960 in the small French village of Le Tholonet writing Eye and Mind. His choice of location was no accident. Le Tholonet was the physical and emotional epicenter of Paul Cezanne’s late painting, the ultimate proving ground of his relentless quest to reveal the truth of landscape in art.It makes perfect sense that Merleau-Ponty wrote Eye and Mind in Le Tholonet. The essay is a philosophical meditation on vision and painting. But it also is a (...) meditation on place, in the deeply saturated sense that encompasses the landscape, its natural and human history, and the history of the painter who brought this part of Provence to universal visibility in his art. Le Tholonet is the terroir of Eye and Mind, the site and soil of this final, extraordinary expression of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. Merleau-Ponty passa l’été 1960 dans le petit village français de Le Tholonet en écrivant L’OEil et l’Esprit. Le choix de ce lieu n’est pas accidentel. Le Tholonet était l’épicentre physique et émotionnel de la dernière peinture de Paul Cézanne, le terrain d’essai final de sa quête incessante pour arriver à révéler la vérité du paysage dans l’art. C’est tout à fait sensé que Merleau-Ponty ait écrit L’OEil et l’Esprit à Le Tholonet. L’essai est une méditation philosophique sur la vision et sur la peinture. Mais c’est aussi une méditation sur le lieu, sur le sens profondément saturé qui entoure le paysage, sur son histoire naturelle et humaine, et sur l’histoire du peintre qui porta, par son art, ce coin de la Provence à la visibilité universelle. On pourrait alors dire que Le Tholonet est le terroir de L’OEil et l’Esprit, le site et le sol de cette expression finale et extraordinaire de la réflexion de Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty trascorse l’estate del 1960 nel piccolo villaggio francese di Le Tholonet, dedicandosi alla scrittura de L’occhio e lo spirito. La scelta di questo luogo non fu casuale. Le Tholonet fu infatti l’epicentro fisico ed emotivo della pittura dell’ultimo Cézanne, il campo di prova finale del suo tentativo instancabile di rivelare la verità del paesaggio nell’arte. È del tutto coerente che Merleau-Ponty abbia scritto L’occhio e lo spirito a Le Tholonet. Il saggio costituisce una riflessione filosofica sulla visione e sulla pittura, ma rappresenta anche una meditazione sul senso di un luogo, secondo un’accezione densa che comprende il paesaggio, la sua storia naturale e umana, e la storia del pittore che attraverso la sua arte ha portato questa parte della Provenza a una visibilità universale. Le Tholonet è il terroir de L’occhio e lo spirito, il sito che ospita e il terreno che nutre quest’ultima straordinaria espressione del pensiero di Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

This early work by William Henry Hudson was originally published in 1894 and we are now republishing it. 'An Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer' is a book that examines Spencer's ethics, sociology, and synthetic philosophy. Herbert Spencer was born on 27th April 1820, in Derby, England. In 1851 he published 'Social Statics' to great acclaim and his quietly influential 'Principles of Psychology' in 1955. These were followed by numerous works of sociology, psychology, and philosophy, which led (...) him to become a prominent intellectual of his day. He also wrote 'The Developmental Hypothesis' (1852) which described the theory of evolution seven years before Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species'. He even popularised the term "Evolution" and coined the phrase "Survival of the fittest," but his works did not contain the comprehensive theoretical system that Darwin's did, which is why his theory was not taken seriously at the time. Spencer's most famous idea was that of "Social Darwinism." He saw the process of organic evolution as being analogous to that of society, an idea influenced many intellectuals of the day. (shrink)

William Beveridge was a key figure in the modernization of British economic and social policy who published widely on unemployment and social security. Among his most notable works and reprinted in this set are, _Full Employment in a Free Society _, and _Pillars of Security_. Beveridge’s Report on social insurance was published in 1942. It proposed that all people of working age should pay a weekly national insurance contribution. In return, benefits would be paid to people who were sick, (...) unemployed, retired or widowed. Beveridge included as one of three fundamental assumptions the fact that there would be a National Health Service of some sort. Beveridge's arguments were widely accepted. He argued that welfare institutions would increase the competitiveness of British industry in the post-war period, not only by shifting labour costs like healthcare and pensions onto the public account but also by producing healthier, wealthier and more productive workers. Beveridge saw full employment as the pivot of the social welfare programme he expressed in the 1942 report. As well as making available some of Beveridge’s key, and in some case, lesser known works, this set includes as its final volume an indispensable overview of Beveridge and his prolific work. (shrink)

Palaestra Logica William Henry Forbes,..

As a young man Bill Adams travelled the world teaching US citizens abroad on behalf of a large state university on the East Coast. Back home he reflected that if there were answers to the great questions of life, then he’d not found them — not in India, in Europe, in China, or Japan. In time he came to see that his lifelong interest in how the mind works could be the clue to the meaning of life. Socrates had been (...) right all along: Know thyself. Adams now sets out a new reasoned argument, based on his experience as a cognitive psychologist and as a human being, to show why Socrates was right: the purpose of life is to recognize ourselves — in each other and in all things. The mind is looking for itself: that is how it works, that is what it does for a living. (shrink)

I found the JCS issue on Machine Consciousness, Volume 10, No. 4-5 , frustrating and alienating. There seems to be a consensus building that consciousness is accessible to scientific scrutiny, so much so that it is already understood well enough to be modeled and even synthesized. I'm not so sure. It could be instead that the vocabulary of consciousness is being subtly redefined to be amenable to scientific investigation and explicit modeling. Such semantic revisionism is confusing and often misleading. Whatever (...) else consciousness is, it is at least a certain quality of life apparent from personal reflection. Introspection is, after all, the only way we know that consciousness even exists. Scientific and technical redefinitions that fail to account for its phenomenal quality are at best incomplete. In my view, all but one of the ten articles in the JCS volume on Machine Consciousness commit various degrees of Protean distortion. (shrink)

Anthony Freeman's article on transpersonal psychology cited Jorge Ferrer's criticism that while the field claims to be non-dualistic or 'post-Cartesian' (no subject -object or mind-body split), it is nevertheless hopelessly dualistic. . .Freeman proposes a way of salvation for transpersonal psychology by invoking Daniel Dennettapos;s concept of heterophenomenology, which is a third-person investigation of someone elseapos;s first-person experience (as reported). . .Freeman's proposal is a fine demonstration of lateral thinking, calling upon atheist Dennett in support of transpersonal and religious inquiry. (...) Unfortunately, it is a solution analogous to searching for lost keys under the lamppost where the light is better. (shrink)