Der Aufsatz behandelt eingangs die lateinische Exempeltradition pseudoantiker Bildbeschreibungen im 14. Jh., exemplifiziert diese anhand von “römischen” Bildern des Todes, und interpretiert das “römische Bild des Todes” im Ackermann aus Böhmen im Kontext der lateinischen Exempelbilder sowie der zeitgenössischen Ikonographie. Die Todeskonzeption des ganzen Werks spiegelt sich deutlich in dieser Stelle. Das “römische Bild des Unglücks” im alttschechischen Tkadleček wird als Imitation des Todesbildes im Ackermann bei gleichzeitiger Rückbindung an die lateinische Tradition interpretiert.

Humans appear to be possible candidates for group selection because they are often said to live in bands, clans, and tribes. These terms, however, are only names for conceptual categories of people. They do not designate enduring bounded gatherings of people that might be “vehicles of selection.” Hence, group selection has probably not been a major force in human evolution.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

Recent research has pointed to the importance of the prenatal environment in the etiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but the biological mechanisms which mitigate these environmental factors are not clear. Mitochondrial metabolism abnormalities, inflammation and oxidative stress as common physiological disturbances associated with ASD. Network analysis of the scientific literature identified several leading prenatal environmental factors associated with ASD, particularly air pollution, pesticides, the microbiome and epigenetics. These leading prenatal environmental factors were found to be most associated with inflammation, (...) followed by oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. Other prenatal factors associated with ASD not identified by the network analysis were also found to be significantly associated with these common physiological disturbances. A better understanding of the biological mechanism which mediate the effect of prenatal environmental factors can lead to insights of how ASD develops and the development of targeted therapeutics to prevent ASD from occuring. (shrink)

By addressing specific global problems and placing them within an ethical context, "The Environment in Question" provides the reader with both a theoretical and practical understanding of environmental issues. The contributors are internationally known figures drawn from the various disciplines which bear upon these issues, such as geography, psychology, social policy, and philosophy. The contributions range from those tackling individual concrete issues (such as nuclear waste and the threat to the rain forest) to those addressing matters of policy, principle and (...) attitude (such as our obligations to future generations and the nature of technological risk). "The Environment in Question" is designed as a text for students of philosophy, environmental science, environmental education, ecology, and teacher education. It can be used as an inter-disciplinary, self-contained course book or in conjunction with relevant material. In addition, as the essays directly and controversially address current environmental debates in a non-technical manner, it is of great interest both to professionals in those areas and to readers who care about the planet's future. The substantial cross-section of concerns and approaches will enable all readers to develop the necessary level of understanding required to initiate and sustain debate on environmental issues. Contributors: Robert Allsion, David E. Cooper, Barry S. Gower, F. G. T. Holliday, C. A. Hooker, Mary Midgley, Philip Neal, Joy A. Palmer, Robert Prosser, Holmes Rolston III, Mark Sagoff, Vandana Shiva, Stephen Sterling, Rosemary J. Stevenson, Jennifer Trusted. (shrink)

Today’s film scholars draw from a dizzying range of theoretical perspectives—they’re just as likely to cite philosopher Gilles Deleuze as they are to quote classic film theorist André Bazin. To students first encountering them, these theoretical lenses for viewing film can seem exhilarating, but also overwhelming. _Thinking in the Dark _introduces readers to twenty-one key theorists whose work has made a great impact on film scholarship today, including Rudolf Arnheim, Sergei Eisenstein, Michel Foucault, Siegfried Kracauer, and Judith Butler. Rather than (...) just discussing each theorist’s ideas in the abstract, the book shows how those concepts might be applied when interpreting specific films by including an analysis of both a classic film and a contemporary one. It thus demonstrates how theory can help us better appreciate films from all eras and genres: from _Hugo _to_ Vertigo_, from _City Lights _to _Sunset Blvd._, and from _Young Mr. Lincoln_ to _A.I. _and _Wall-E_. The volume’s contributors are all experts on their chosen theorist’s work and, furthermore, are skilled at explaining that thinker’s key ideas and terms to readers who are not yet familiar with them. _Thinking in the Dark _is not only a valuable resource for teachers and students of film, it’s also a fun read, one that teaches us all how to view familiar films through new eyes. Theorists examined in this volume are: Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs, Roland Barthes, André Bazin, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Stanley Cavell, Michel Chion, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Douchet, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Epstein, Michel Foucault, Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Lacan, Vachel Lindsay, Christian Metz, Hugo Münsterberg, V. F. Perkins, Jacques Rancière, and Jean Rouch. (shrink)

Most psychology begins with a distinction between organism and environment, where the two are implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) conceptualized as flipsides of a skin-severed space. This paper examines that conceptualization. Dewey and Bentley's (1949) account of firm naming is used to show that psychologists have, in general, (1) employed the skin as a morphological criterion for distinguishing organisms from backgrounds, and (2) equated background with environment. This two-step procedure, which in this article is named the morphological conception of organism, is (...) shown to inform the writings of the well-known psychologist B. F. Skinner. A review of difficulties with the morphological conception is followed with a review and preliminary integration of four attempts at an alternative conception of organism, and thus environment. Together, these four attempts converge on an analysis of living systems as transdermal (through and across skin) processes only within which organism and environment are distinguishable as complementary phases. The notion of a biological total process, or bioprocess, is employed to clarify this alternative analysis, in which an organism is an ongoing organization rather than a skin-bound body. (shrink)

Invited contributions were asked for statements of how they came to be acquainted with Wittgenstein’s work, the influence it had on their own work, and how they see Wittgenstein in relation to prevalent trends in contemporary philosophy. The weight given to the various elements in the invitation was left to the discretion of the contributors. Contributions have also been included from the Rush Rhees and Peter Winch archives. Articles by: Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora Diamond, İlham Dilman, P.M.S. Hacker, B.F. (...) McGuinness, Anthony Palmer, D.Z. Phillips, Rush Rhees, Joachim Schulte, Eike von Savigny, Georg Henrik von Wright, and Peter Winch. (shrink)

The various attempts to make sense of ‘sequitur,’ e.g. Palmer ‘naturally follows,’ taking pudor as subject and amorem as object, seem to me most unsatisfactory. Sedlmayer reads ‘quitur’ which Palmer calls ‘mira coniectura.’ But it is obvious that as far as sense and transcriptional probability go the correction is excellent, and also that since a passive infinitive is understood, it is grammatically right or at least would be if we found it in Lucretius. The only, and it may (...) be thought fatal, objection is that this passive use of potestur, quitur, nequitur, etc., has not been found in any writ er later than Lucretius, with the possible and not very relevant exception of Apuleius. Birt, the original author of the conjecture, met this objection by adducing other archaisms in Ovid. My purpose here is not to discuss these, but to add to them the fact that Quintilian did not consider that quitur was obsolete. (shrink)

This bibliography, though not "complete," is nonetheless extensive. With respect to editions, translations and secondary literature appearing after 1900 it is virtually complete in several languages. It also includes the important editions and translations from the nineteenth century as well as a good deal of the philosophical and philological literature on the dialogue from that period. The works which have been cited fall into five main sections: I) Editions and Translations; II) Discussions devoted to a Comprehensive Interpretation of the Cratylus; (...) III) Special Topics; IV) Historical Sources; and V) Other Secondary Literature which discusses the Cratylus only in Passing. Section III, "Special Topics," includes these subsections: a) Names vis-a-vis Knowledge and Reality; b) Truth and Falsity; c) The Etymologies; d) The Alphabet, Orthography, Onomatopoeia and Mimesis; e) The Personae: Cratylus and Hermogenes; f) Date of the Cratylus; g) Other Philological and Textual Issues; h) Miscellaneous Topics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 (2002) 274-275 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Perspectives on Habermas Lewis Edwin Hahn, editor. Perspectives on Habermas. New York: Open Court, 2000. Pp. xiv + 586. Paper, $29.95. This collection of essays on the wide-ranging body of thought produced by Jürgen Habermas over the course of close to fifty years represents a significant lost opportunity. Although originally planned as a volume (...) in the Library of Living Philosophers series, in 1999 Habermas pulled out of the project because, as Hahn tells us, "of other events in his life" (ix). Volumes in this series have typically provided unique and valuable resources: not only quality secondary essays by leading contemporary philosophers, but essay-by-essay responses by the featured philosopher, as well as an intellectual autobiography, and a useful bibliography. Unfortunately, the present volume not only lacks Habermas's responses to the contributors, an intellectual autobiography, and a bibliography of his works, but is also comprised of essays whose collective quality can only be considered notably erose, containing essays of both significant and questionable value.First the bad news. Of the twenty-nine essays just over half are not worth reading for those either new to, or long familiar with, Habermas. The great majority of these present significantly distorted or confused accounts of different aspects of his work, often apparently based on little or no familiarity with the primary source material, and close to none with the significant body of secondary literature. Some authors seem not to have read anything published in English translation by Habermas past 1973 or so, even though his two most significant works--The Theory of Communicative Action (1984 and 1987) and Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (1996)--appeared later. Ignorance of the second of these is especially pronounced throughout and regrettable since many patently false claims about Habermas's positions on issues in political philosophy, legal theory, and social theory could have been avoided by consulting Between Facts and Norms, rather than deriving "Habermas's position" aprioristically from what one thinks he might say. Other essays present particularly nasty and personalized invective in the place of argument: one author for example, calls Habermas's political opinions "pathological," "inhumane," "exhibiting a seriously flawed sensitivity," and so "beastly" as to raise "profound questions about the writer's claims to superior rationality."The good news is that close to half of the volume contains important and stimulating work. Some of the best of this performs the crucial tasks of sensitively explicating Habermas's ideas, carefully critiquing them where needed, and finally extending the reformed ideas to new domains, new problems, and new issues. Exemplary in this way is James Bohman's [End Page 274] piece on reviving the project of ideology critique by using Robert Brandom's pragmatic inferentialism to cash out Habermas's notion of systematically distorted communication. Other useful articles on broadly epistemic themes include those by David Detmer, Richard Palmer, Carlos Pereda, and Beth Singer.Two essays--by Enrique Dussel and James Marsh--represent broad and incisive, yet sympathetic, critiques of Habermas for not sufficiently carrying through on the emancipatory promise of critical theory. Both point to a certain preoccupation in Habermas's work in moral and political theory with issues of rationality, proceduralism, and ideal justification that seems to have crowded out a practical focus on issues of poverty, inequality, and exploitation, especially as these are articulated through the emerging structures of global capitalism and along the fault lines separating West and East, North and South. Concurring in political upshot, but drawing on Habermas's new form of social contractarian argument, David Ingram argues provocatively that Habermas's ideals of social equality require much more radical forms of "market socialism" and direct democratic self-organization than Habermas himself is willing to endorse. Douglas Kellner's outstanding article gives a clear overview of Habermas's changing conception of the public sphere and its role in democracy, presents various criticisms of that, and argues for an account conceptually and evaluatively adequate to the emergence... (shrink)

This landmark work provides a systematic introduction to systems of modal logic and stands as the first presentation of what have become central ideas in philosophy of language and metaphysics, from the "new theory of reference" and non-linguistic necessity and essentialism to "Kripke semantics.".

This important textbook introduces the six great arguments for the existence of God, as found in a wealth of primary sources from classic and contemporary texts. It requires no specialist knowledge of philosophy, and is ideally suited to students and teachers at school or university level. Sections include: * The Ontological Argument * The Cosmological Argument * The Argument from Design * The Argument from Miracles * The Moral Argument * The Pragmatic Argument. Additional features include: * revision questions * (...) key reading for each chapter and an extensive bibliography * illustrated biographies of key thinkers and their works * marginal notes and summaries of arguments. (shrink)

During a clinical ethics fellow’s first week of independent supervised service, two unhoused patients on the same floor were resisting the medical team’s recommendations to discharge. In the team’s view, both were medically stable and no longer required hospitalization in an acute setting. The medical team suspected malingering for both. The social worker and case manager had employed their usual means of gentle persuasion and eliminating psychosocial barriers to no avail. Rather than call the police, the attending physician, social worker, (...) and case manager decided to call ethics. These cases lead the fledgling fellow to consider the appropriate role for ethicists in difficult discharge cases. The article analyzes each case, evaluates their similarities and differences in the context of suspected malingering, and comments on ethical issues surrounding cases of suspected malingering. Finally, I reflect on the value and importance of developing and maintaining epistemic and professional independence. (shrink)

There is increased recognition of a common suite of global challenges that hamper food system sustainability at the community scale. Food price volatility, shortages of basic commodities, increased global rates of obesity and non-communicable food-related diseases, and land grabbing are among the impediments to socially just, economically robust, ecologically regenerative and politically inclusive food systems. While international political initiatives taken in response to these challenges and the groundswell of local alternatives emerging in response to challenges are well documented, more attention (...) is needed to the analysis of similarities between community approaches to global pressures. While we are not suggesting the application of a template set of good practices, the research reported in this paper point to the benefits of both sharing good practices and enabling communities to adopt good practices that are suited to their place-based capacities. The work also suggests that sharing community-derived good practices can support and reinforce global networks of sustainable community food systems, foster knowledge co-creation and ultimately cement collective action to global pressures. In turn these networks could enhance the sustainability and resilience of community food systems and facilitate wide scale food system transformation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Motion and Mercutio in Romeo and JulietDaryl W. PalmerThere is nothing permanent that is not true, what can be true that is uncertaine? How can that be certaine, that stands upon uncertain grounds? 1It is by now a commonplace in modern scholarship that drama, particularly Tudor drama, poses questions, rehearses familiar debates, and even speculates about mere possibilities. 2 In 1954, Madeleine Doran spelled out some of the ways (...) in which debate "affected the structure of Elizabethan drama." 3 In turn, Joel B. Altman, having eloquently extended Doran's examination, concludes that "the plays functioned as media of intellectual and emotional exploration for minds that were accustomed to examine the many sides of a given theme, to entertain opposing ideals, and by so exercising the understanding, to move toward some fuller apprehension of truth that could be discerned only through the total action of the drama." 4 Altman points to Henry Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres (c. 1490) as an exemplar of this practice. Although the interlude instructs and entertains, "the center of interest has shifted from demonstration to inquiry. The action develops not from an abstract assertion, but from a specific question: who is the nobler man, Cornelius or Gaius?" 5 By the time William Shakespeare began to write his plays, inquiry was an essential part of dramatic construction. So Juliet asks, "What's in a name?" 6 Hamlet opens with the question: "Who's [End Page 540] there?" (1.1.1), and achieves a kind of apotheosis in the figure of its hero: "To be, or not to be, that is the question..." (3.1.55). Everyone recognizes these familiar questions, and we know (or think we know) how to describe the most viable answers. I want to suggest, however, that this familiarity has dulled our appreciation of the drama's interrogative range. As a way of resisting this tendency, I want to argue that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet takes up an ancient conversation about motion, a dialog that originates with the pre-Socratics. This is not to say that the play is ultimately about motion. It obviously engages a panoply of thematic materials. I have simply chosen, in this limited space, to concentrate on the way the playwright stages his questioning as a kind of fencing lesson. My goal is to produce neither a "reading" of the play nor an allegory of philosophy, but rather to recollect the ways in which Shakespeare's drama qualifies and extends an ancient interrogative tradition. In so doing, I follow Stanley Cavell who maintains "that Shakespeare could not be who he is—the burden of the name of the greatest writer in the language, the creature of the greatest ordering of English—unless his writing is engaging the depth of the philosophical preoccupations of his culture." 7Some of the most venerable documents of Western philosophy fix on the problem of motion. If we go back more than 2,300 years, we come upon Plato's Theaetetus, in which Socrates explains a "first principle" to the title character, namely that "the universe really is motion and nothing else." 8 A kind of history lesson in ontology and epistemology, this tentative explanation has its origins in Heraclitus or Empedocles or Protagoras or some combination of the aforementioned. Perhaps the most famous expression of this ideal comes from Heraclitus: "You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on." 9 More to the point is the following declaration from the same philosopher: "Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed." 10 In this spirit, Protagoras declares, "All matter is in a state of flux." 11 Such precedents provide the backdrop for Socrates in the Theaetetus as he summarizes: "The point is that all these things are, as we were saying, in motion, but there is a quickness or slowness in their motion" (Thea, 156c). In this historical spirit, he identifies "a tradition from the ancients, who hid their meaning from the common herd in poetical figures, that Oceanus and Tethys, the source of all things, are flowing streams and nothing is at rest" (Thea, 180d–e).To... (shrink)