Emmanuel Levinas asks, “In what meaning can community dress itself without reducing Difference?” (OB 154 / AE 197). Can there be a community that does not create its unity by erasing the differences between those whom it joins, a community that does not establish itself by imposing the Same? His answer is yes. Contrary to the thinkers of community in the philosophical tradition, thinkers like Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant, Levinas states, “between the one I am and theother for whom I (...) am responsible there gapes a difference, without a basis in community. The unity of the human race is in fact posterior to fraternity” (OB 166 / AE 211 ). “Community with him begins in my obligation to him” (OB 87 / AE 109–10) rather than in something that we share. It begins in hospitality, in which the Infinite is consummated (TI 27 / TeI xv) because obligation is infinite, because the third is revealed in the face of the Other. Hospitality is a welcome of not only the one who faces me, but the third implicated in that face, a face that “compels me to goodness, which is better than goods received... a he in the depth of the Thou.”1 This original relation of difference between oneself and the other person, an asymmetric relation that opens the possibility of equality, is the nonfoundational foundation, the original being-together in being-apart, on which the social and political community of law and equal rights can be built — and continually rebuiltin light of the goodness toward which I am compelled, in light of the eschatology of peace. (shrink)

Although Martin Heidegger is undeniably one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, among the philosophers who study his work we find considerable disagreement over what might seem to be basic issues: why is Heidegger important? What did his work do? This volume is an explicit response to these differences, and is unique in bringing together representatives of many different approaches to Heidegger's philosophy. Topics covered include Heidegger's place in the 'history of being', Heidegger and ethics, Heidegger and (...) theology, and Heidegger and Nazi concepts of race. More generally, the contributors also address their respective visions of the nature of philosophy and the presuppositions which guide their understanding of Heidegger. (shrink)

Contrary to common belief, acceptance of Newtonian causation does not commit one to a mechanistic, materialistic, or deterministic understanding of the world. I argue that the Newtonian view can be assimilated to contemporary theoretical alternatives in psychology. This means that, given the Newtonian understanding of causation, it is possible for such alternatives to be scientific - to treat of causes - without requiring either mechanism, materialism, or mathematical formalizations. I argue that we best understand Newtonian causation as formal causation. I (...) do this by discussing the history of Newton's theory of causation and comparing his theory to Bacon's. I also compare Newton's theory of causation to Aristotle's, arguing that when we speak of formal causes we speak of our descriptions rather than the nature of things. We may accurately impute various elements of our scientific descriptions to the nature of things, but when we speak of formal causes, we are speaking of the patterns we use to describe the changes we observe rather than the nature of things themselves. Since any science must use such patterns, even alternative psychologies use Newtonian causation - if they are genuinely scientific alternatives. However, mathematics is not the only discipline that offers such patterned explanations. Moral explanations offer an alternate model for causal explanation. (shrink)

For Husserl excess is a part of any phenomenon. For Heidegger the horizon of the phenomenon is also excessive. Levinas and Marion ask us to think about what exceeds the horizon. I focus on Marion’s fifth kind of saturated (transcendent) phenomenon, revelation. How are we to understand it? Marion says he argues only for the possibility of revelation, but only Jesus could be the revelation for which he argues. The excess of the divine cannot remain merely a metaphysical beyond. It (...) must reveal itself in the world as a possible phenomenon, as Flesh, for there is no excess without flesh, and no flesh without being. Excess is either enfleshed or thingly excess. For the Christian this being-together of flesh and word in God means the same being-together in us: Christian life is fully incarnate life, life as enspirited flesh rather than as dead body. Thus the being-together of flesh and word is “in the accusative”. Christian life is, prior to action, a life of submission. That, however, explicitly puts Christian belief and practice at odds with any unrecuperated, merely metaphysical metaphysics which undercuts not only the Christian dogma of Christ’s incarnation and incarnate resurrection, but also the Christian message that the divine life is found only in the life that bends its knee and seeks to bring about justice: dikaiosunae. (shrink)

Can transcendence be both philosophical and religious? Do philosophers and theologians conceive of the same thing when they think and talk about transcendence? Philosophy and religion have understood transcendence and other matters of faith differently, but both the language and concepts of religion, including transcendence, reside at the core of postmodern philosophy. Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion considers whether it is possible to analyze religious transcendence in a philosophical manner, and if so, whether there is a way for phenomenology to (...) think transcendence directly. Attention is devoted to the role of French philosophy, particularly the work of Levinas, Ricoeur, Derrida, and Marion, in defining recent debates in the philosophy of religion and posing new ways of thinking about religious experience in a postmodern world. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas asks, “In what meaning can community dress itself without reducing Difference?” (OB 154 / AE 197). Can there be a community that does not create its unity by erasing the differences between those whom it joins, a community that does not establish itself by imposing the Same? His answer is yes. Contrary to the thinkers of community in the philosophical tradition, thinkers like Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant, Levinas states, “between the one I am and theother for whom I (...) am responsible there gapes a difference, without a basis in community. The unity of the human race is in fact posterior to fraternity” (OB 166 / AE 211 ). “Community with him begins in my obligation to him” (OB 87 / AE 109–10) rather than in something that we share. It begins in hospitality, in which the Infinite is consummated (TI 27 / TeI xv) because obligation is infinite, because the third is revealed in the face of the Other. Hospitality is a welcome of not only the one who faces me, but the third implicated in that face, a face that “compels me to goodness, which is better than goods received... a he in the depth of the Thou.”1 This original relation of difference between oneself and the other person, an asymmetric relation that opens the possibility of equality, is the nonfoundational foundation, the original being-together in being-apart, on which the social and political community of law and equal rights can be built — and continually rebuiltin light of the goodness toward which I am compelled, in light of the eschatology of peace. (shrink)

Reviews the book, Aristotle's psychology by Daniel N. Robinson . Daniel Robinson has provided an excellent introduction to an overview of Aristotle's psychology, giving background necessary for understanding that psychology, teasing a psychology out the variety of Aristotle's work, and placing Aristotle's psychology sympathetically within the broader scope of his scientific inquiry. Robinson takes on difficult issues such as the relation between Plato and Aristotle, Aristotle's theory of causation, and what Aristotle meant by soul, and he deals with them lucidly (...) and deftly. His writing is clean and to the point, never requiring one to become a philologist or classicist, but at the same time dealing with the issues with sufficient depth and sophistication not to caricature Aristotle's work. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Aristotle's psychology by Daniel N. Robinson. Daniel Robinson has provided an excellent introduction to an overview of Aristotle's psychology, giving background necessary for understanding that psychology, teasing a psychology out the variety of Aristotle's work, and placing Aristotle's psychology sympathetically within the broader scope of his scientific inquiry. Robinson takes on difficult issues such as the relation between Plato and Aristotle, Aristotle's theory of causation, and what Aristotle meant by soul, and he deals with them lucidly and (...) deftly. His writing is clean and to the point, never requiring one to become a philologist or classicist, but at the same time dealing with the issues with sufficient depth and sophistication not to caricature Aristotle's work. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Much of the understanding of the nature of science in contemporary psychology is founded on a positivistic philosophy of science that cannot adequately account for meaning as experienced. The phenomenological tradition provides an alternative approach to science that is attentive to the inherent meaningfulness of human action in the world. Emmanuel Levinas argues, however, that phenomenology, at least as traditionally conceived, does not provide sufficient grounds for meaning. Levinas argues that meaning is grounded in the ethical encounter with the Other (...) such that meaning arises in rupture. For Levinas, the physical world and the I provide constraints on the meaning given by the Other, even as the Other is logically prior to all other experience. This Levinasian perspective advocates an epistemology that is open to the rupture of the Other as a way to knowledge. This emphasis on openness to rupture entails a methodology in which psychologists must allow the objects of study to guide their methods of research. Finally, the Levinasian perspective implies a scientific community that is sensitive to the rupture occasioned by the encounter with the Other. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Unchanging God -- Simple God -- Simple God lost -- Eternal creator -- One God, three persons.

This chapter contains sections titled: Hume's Problem of Induction Hume's Negative Argument concerning Induction.

Part I. Naturalistic ethics -- Part II. Law and behavioral morality -- Part III. Biopolitical science.

Introduction -- Interlude #1: Consider the oxen -- The agrarian ideals of Cerridwen farm -- Vine sanctuary responds -- Interlude #2: Moral syllogism 101 -- Green Mountain College students mount a defense -- Professors and administrators make their case -- Voices of dissent shatter the cocoon at GMC -- Interlude #3: President Fonteyn provides a reprieve -- A wise intervention, a suspicious death -- Conclusion -- About the author -- About the publisher.

Morality, ethics, and the law : an overview of the foundations of contemporary clinical ethical analysis -- Case studies : ethical and legal challenges in the care of the neurologically injured critically ill patient -- Civil law and liability : the law of medical malpractice -- Legal reasoning, legal process, legal proof, and why it is confusing to clinician scientists -- Regulatory law and the clinical practice of the neurosciences -- Digital medicine and the data revolution managing digital distraction and (...) EMR : liability while leveraging opportunities in teleneurology and telecritical care -- Developing and leading a sustainable high reliability high performing unit : theories of quality, teamwork, medical error, and patient safety -- Neurolaw and the integration of neuroscience, ethics, and the law : the new frontiers. (shrink)

One of the contemporary results of Germany’s memorial conundrum is the rise of its “counter-monuments”: brazen, painfully self-conscious memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premises of their being. On the former site of Hamburg’s greatest synagogue, at Bornplatz, Margrit Kahl has assembled an intricate mosaic tracing the complex lines of the synagogue’s roof construction: a palimpsest for a building and community that no longer exist. Norbert Radermacher bathes a guilty landscape in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood with the inscribed light of (...) its past. Alfred Hrdlicka began a monument in Hamburg to counter—and thereby neutralize—an indestructible Nazi monument nearby. In a suburb of Hamburg, Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz have erected a black pillar against fascism and for peace designed to disappear altogether over time. The very heart of Berlin, former site of the gestapo headquarters, remains a great, gaping wound as politicians, artists, and various committees forever debate the most appropriate memorial for this site.4 4. The long-burning debate surrounding projected memorials, to the Gestapo-Gelände in particular, continues to exemplify both the German memorial conundrum and the state’s painstaking attempts to articulate it. For an excellent documentation of the process, see Topographie des Terrors: Gestapo, SS und Reichssicherheitshauptamt auf dem “Prinz-Albrecht-Gelände,” ed. Reinhard Rürup . For a shorter account, see James E. Young, “The Topography of German Memory,” The Journal of Art 1 : 30. James E. Young is assistant professor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation and The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning in Europe, Israel, and America , from which this essay is drawn. He is also the curator of “The Art of Memory,” an exhibition at the Jewish Museum of New York. (shrink)

The contribution of this work is a classification of corporate social action underlying the Social Ratings Data compiled by Kinder Lydenburg Domini Analytics, Inc. We compare extant typologies of corporate social action to the results of our exploratory factor analysis. Our findings indicate four distinct latent constructs that bear resemblance to concepts discussed in prior literature. Akey finding of our research is that positive and negative social action are both empirically and conceptually distinct constructs and should not be combined in (...) future research. Additionally, we recommend that some prior research results be reconsidered to determine whether these newly derived measures might clarify some previous findings. (shrink)

A contribution to ongoing debates in the philosophy of science, aiming to reconceptualize the orientation of the subject. Mobilizing the literature, the authors seek to transform their insights into a new epistemological and ontological basis for studying the enterprise of science.

Current discussions of business ethics usually only consider deontological and utilitarian approaches. What is missing is a discussion of traditional teleology, often referred to as virtue ethics. While deontology and teleology are useful, they both suffer insufficiencies. Traditional teleology, while deontological in many respects, does not object to utilitarian style calculations as long as they are contained within a moral framework that is not utilitarian in its origin. It contains the best of both approaches and can be used to focus (...) on the individual''s role within an organization. More work is needed in exposing students and faculty to traditional teleology and its place in business ethic''s discussions. (shrink)

The Alexandrian emphasis on smallness, elegance, and slightness at the expense of grand themes in major poetic genres was not preciosity for its own sake: although the poetry was written by and for scholars, it had much larger sources than the bibliothecal context in which it was composed. Since the time of the classical poets, much had changed. Earlier Greek poetry was an intimate part of the life of the city-state, written for its religious occasions and performed by its citizens. (...) But eh conquests of Alexander had altered the structure and the boundaries of the Greek world to an astonishing degree. Alexandria, the center of the poetic culture of the new age, was a city that had not even existed at the time of Euripides; it was in Egypt, not in Greece, and was a huge, polyglot community. As immigrants immersed in a new, impersonal, and bureaucratic society, the poets not unreasonably sought out what was small, intimate, and personal in their verses. The heroes of early Greek poetry are larger than life; those of Alexandrian poetry are life-size. They are human, like us; they have a childhood and an old age; they are afraid or in love or caught in a rainstorm. It was simply one way of reducing the world to more manageable dimensions. At the same time, the new world of Alexandria needed a new poetry. To continue writing epics about a mythology that seemed very far away was senseless; it was impossible to recapture either the style or the immediacy of Homer, lyric poetry, or Attic tragedy. The scholar-poets of Alexandria admired the literature of classical Greece; for them Homer was incomparable and inimitable, to be studied—but not to be copied. Far better, then, to find a new voice on a more manageable scale: instead of oral epic, erudite epyllion; instead of lyric, epigram; instead of tragedy, mime. The poets of an urban and unheroic world might long for but could never re-create the grandeur of the past. James E. G. Zetzel is associate professor of classics at Princeton University and editor of the Transactions of the American Philological Association. He is the author of Latin Textual Criticism in Antiquity and, with Anthony T. Grafton and Glenn W. Most, has translated Friedrich August Wolf’s Prolegomena ad Homerum. (shrink)