Το παρόν κείμενο φιλοδοξεί να εξετάσει φιλοσοφικά το ζήτημα της φύσης του ανθρώπου, βλέποντάς το από την άποψη ενός εκ των μεγαλυτέρων και σίγουρα του περισσότερο γνωστού φιλοσόφου της Κίνας, που συνέχισε τη διδασκαλία του Κομφούκιου, του Μένκιου. Αν και ο Μένκιος από την άποψη αυτή νοείται ως ένας Κινέζος Σωκράτης, επιχειρείται επιπλέον μια ακροθιγής αναφορά στις απόψεις των Προσωκρατικών επί του ζητήματος. Ωστόσο δεν πρόκειται για μια συγκριτική εξέταση, αλλά για μια μελέτη πάνω στη βάση της σκέψης του Μένκιου, (...) όπως αυτή έγινε γνωστή μέσα από το κείμενο, που είναι γνωστό ως Το βιβλίο του Μένκιου και που περιέχει κατά πάσα πιθανότατα διαλέξεις του, τις οποίες οι μαθητές του αποφάσισαν να καταγράψουν. Η ανθρώπινη φύση κατά τον Μένκιο είναι αλληλένδετη με τέσσερις ηθικές αξίες, στη βάση των οποίων ο άνθρωπος χτίζει την ηθική του σε σχέση προς τον εαυτό του και προς τους άλλους. Οπωσδήποτε ο Μένκιος δεν αρκείται σε αυτές, αλλά στην ηθική διάπλαση του ανθρώπου διά των κομφουκιανών πρακτικών, των τελετών, της μουσικής και της μάθησης. Επίσης το ζήτημα της ανθρώπινης φύσης δεν είναι γνωστικό και συνεπώς εξετάζεται από ανθρωπιστική άποψη. Σε γενικές γραμμές θεωρείται ως ένα κατεξοχήν φιλοσοφικό ζήτημα, που άπτεται ιστορικά της κομφουκιανής παράδοσης, και θεματικά τόσο μιας ηθικής όσο και μιας φιλοσοφικής ανθρωπολογίας. (shrink)

To παρόν άρθρο επιχειρεί να συσχετίσει την αισθητική αξιολό­γηση και τον σχεδιασμό του τοπίου, με το ευρύτερο θεωρητικό πεδίο των νεό­τερων Δυτικών κοινωνιών, με περιοχή αρχικής αναφοράς τον 18ο αιώνα. Κατά την περίοδο αυτή ένα ήδη συγκροτημένο ευρωπαϊκό παρελθόν παραστάσεων και διαμορφώσεων τοπίου, προσφέρεται ως πεδίο εποπτείας στη φιλοσοφική θεωρία. Ταυτόχρονα συγκροτείται η θεωρητική πρόταση του Σχηματισμού η οποία εξετάζει τους όρους νοητικού ελέγχου επί της εξωτερικής πραγματι­κότητας. Η εξέλιξη της αρχικής προσέγγισης του Σχηματισμού υποδεικνύει, στις περιόδους που ακολουθούν, ανάλογες (...) μεταβολές στους όρους ελέγχου που αναπτύσσονται επί του φυσικού περιβάλλοντος, παρεμβαίνοντας σε αυτό είτε μέσω νοητικών είτε μέσω υλικών κατασκευών, όπως στις θεωρήσεις, πα­ραστάσεις και διαμορφώσεις των πολιτισμικά καθορισμένων τόπων που συ­νιστούν το τοπίο. Η μετάβαση από την ευκλείδεια στατική σχηματοποίηση, στην αλγεβρική περιγραφή ή στη σχηματοποίηση όρων μεταβολής, όπως αυ­τοί που περιγράφονται από την τοπολογική ή την παραμετρική προσέγγιση, μπορεί να θεωρηθεί ως ανάλογη με μεταβολές οι οποίες αναπτύσσονται στην περιοχή των θεωρήσεων, των παραστάσεων και των διαμορφώσεων του το­πίου και, πολύ ευρύτερα, ως ανάλογη με μεταβολές που αναπτύσσονται, στη γενικότερη ερμηνεία του περιβάλλοντα χώρου, φυσικού ή κατασκευασμένου, από το νεότερο πολιτισμό γενικότερα. (shrink)

This essay argues that in linguistic communication, nothing corresponds to a linguistic competence as summarized by the three principles of first meaning in language: that first meaning is systematic, first meanings are shared, and first meanings are governed by learned conventions or regularities. There is no such a thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language users (...) acquire and then apply to cases, as well as the attempt to illuminate how we communicate by appeal to conventions. (shrink)

PHYSICAL MEANING OF GEOMETRICAL PROPOSITIONS IN your schooldays most of you who read this book made acquaintance with the noble building of Euclid's ...

Gathers fragments of the writings of early Greek philosophers, including Hesiod, Anaximander, Pythagoras, and Zeno.

Cavalli-Sforza was among the first to ask whether the genes of modern populations contain a historical record of the human species. In answering to the affirmative, this title comprises five lectures that serve as a summation of the author's work in tracking a hundred thousand years of human evolution. Maps.

Fractals are characterized by the repetition of similar patterns at ever-diminishing scales. Fractal geometry has emerged as one of the most exciting frontiers on the border between mathematics and information technology and can be seen in many of the swirling patterns produced by computer graphics. It has become a new tool for modeling in biology, geology, and other natural sciences. Anthropologists have observed that the patterns produced in different cultures can be characterized by specific design themes. In Europe and America, (...) we often see cities laid out in a grid pattern of straight streets and right-angle corners. In contrast, traditional African settlements tend to use fractal structures-circles of circles of circular dwellings, rectangular walls enclosing ever-smaller rectangles, and streets in which broad avenues branch down to tiny footpaths with striking geometric repetition. These indigenous fractals are not limited to architecture; their recursive patterns echo throughout many disparate African designs and knowledge systems. Drawing on interviews with African designers, artists, and scientists, Ron Eglash investigates fractals in African architecture, traditional hairstyling, textiles, sculpture, painting, carving, metalwork, religion, games, practical craft, quantitative techniques, and symbolic systems. He also examines the political and social implications of the existence of African fractal geometry. His book makes a unique contribution to the study of mathematics, African culture, anthropology, and computer simulations. (shrink)

In this incisive book, Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

In the fiftieth anniversary of this book’s first release, Winch’s argument remains as crucial as ever. Originally published in 1958, _The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy_ was a landmark exploration of the social sciences, written at a time when that field was still young and had not yet joined the Humanities and the Natural Sciences as the third great domain of the Academy. A passionate defender of the importance of philosophy to a full understanding of (...) 'society' against those who would deem it an irrelevant 'ivory towers' pursuit, Winch draws from the works of such thinkers as Ludwig Wittgenstein, J.S. Mill and Max Weber to make his case. In so doing he addresses the possibility and practice of a comprehensive 'science of society'. (shrink)

There are two possible positions with regard to the Mycenaean hegemony: that it existed or that it did not. Modern scholars who accept its existence appear to be more vocal in arguing their position than are those who question the existence of Mycenaean unity. Desborough, for example, states forcibly:I am firmly convinced that there was one ruler over the whole Mycenaean territory, with his capital at Mycenae, although the tablets are of no assistance one way or the other in this (...) matter, and although the overlordship of Agamemnon clearly envisaged by Homer can perhaps be explained simply as a military leadership for the purpose of waging war against Troy. The burden of proof must therefore depend on other evidence, the archaeological material taken in conjunction with the fairly frequent mention by the Hittites, in the fourteenth and much of the thirteenth centuries, of the king of a land called Ahhiyawa, which I believe to represent the entire Mycenaean orbit.The opposite position is represented largely through hints given in a larger context. Stubbings, for example, writes of ‘the Mycenaean Greeks of the mainland and the Mycenaean rulers of Cnossus’ and of ‘the mainland kingdoms’. Catling speaks of ‘metropolitan Greeks grown jealous of the wealth and power which their Knossian relatives had built up’. This emphasis on plurality, it seems to me, is the best way not only to view the events of the Mycenaean Greek world but also to understand the nature and degree of change in Greece during the Dark Age period. (shrink)

Discusses contemporary notions of the self, and examines their origins, development, and effects.

This chapter aims to resolve some of Nathan Salmon's puzzlement by clarifying the relationship between theses and questions about reference and theses and questions about necessity and possibility. It argues that while Saul Kripke defends metaphysical theses about the descriptive semantics of names, the way the reference relation is determined, and the capacities and dispositions of human beings and physical objects, his most important philosophical accomplishment is in the way he posed and clarified the questions, and not in the particular (...) answers that he gave to them. In response to the question about the capacities and potentialities of the things that peoples commonly refer to with names, Kripke defends the thesis that it makes sense to talk about the logical potential of an individual thing independently of how it is referred to, and that this potential is greater in certain ways, and less great in others, than some philosophers have supposed. (shrink)

1 The logic of the situation1 What do the social sciences explain? It is a mistake, to which careless expressions by social scientists often give ...

SummaryIn Davidson's Theory of radical interpretation the principle of charity plays a crucial role. However the principle is the subject of widespread misunderstanding. The author attempts to provide an overall account of the principle and in doing so details some aspects of the holism which characterises the Davidsonian approach to interpretation. Charity is shown as inseparable from that holism. Two aspects of the principle are distinguished and some objections to the principle are also considered.

What follows is a discussion, in three parts, of the African concept of ubuntu and related issues. In the first part of the discussion J.A.I. Bewaji assesses an essay by W.M.J. van Binsbergen on Ubuntu and the Globalisation of Southern African Thought and Society (2001). In the second part Bewaji reviews M.B. Ramose's African Philosophy through Ubuntu (2002). And in the third part Ramose responds to both Bewaji and Van Binsbergen. Although Ramose disagrees with some of Bewaji's comments and interpretations (...) – especially with regard to the thesis on which ubuntu is, according to the former, founded (i.e. “that ontology proper is a rheology”) – both Bewaji and Ramose agree that Van Binsbergen's critique of ubuntu philosophy, and specifically of Ramose's explication thereof, is untenable. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.22(4) 2003: 378-414. (shrink)

Abusua do funu. The matriclan loves a corpse. AKAN PROVERB My father died, as I say, while I was trying to finish this book. His funeral was an occasion for strengthening and reaffirming the ties that bind me to Ghana and “my father's house' ...

'Most of us are still groping for answers about what makes life worth living, or what confers meaning on individual lives', writes Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self. 'This is an essentially modern predicament.' Charles Taylor's latest book sets out to define the modern identity by tracing its genesis, analysing the writings of such thinkers as Augustine, Descartes, Montaigne, Luther, and many others. This then serves as a starting point for a renewed understanding of modernity. Taylor argues that modern (...) subjectivity has its roots in ideas of human good, and is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and attain the good. The modern turn inwards is far from being a disastrous rejection of rationality, as its critics contend, but has at its heart what Taylor calls the affirmation of ordinary life. He concludes that the modern identity, and its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, is far richer in moral sources that its detractors allow. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defence of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics. (shrink)

In his classic work, _Wholeness and the Implicate Order_, David Bohm develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence, including matter and consciousness, as an unbroken whole. David Bohm presents a rational and scientific theory which explains cosmology and the nature of reality; written clearly, and without the use of technical jargon, it is essential reading for those interested in physics, philosophy, psychology and the connection between consciousness and matter. David Bohm was one of the foremost (...) scientific thinkers and distinguished theoretical physicists of his generation. His best-known works include: _Quantum Theory_,_Causality and Chance in Modern Physics_ and _The Undivided Universe_. (shrink)

David Bohm was one of the foremost scientific thinkers and philosophers of our time. Although deeply influenced by Einstein, he was also, more unusually for a scientist, inspired by mysticism. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s he made contact with both J. Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama whose teachings helped shape his work. In both science and philosophy, Bohm's main concern was with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular. In this classic work he develops (...) a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole. Writing clearly and without technical jargon, he makes complex ideas accessible to anyone interested in the nature of reality. (shrink)

Time magazine's "Man of the Century", Albert Einstein is the founder of modern physics and his theory of relativity is the most important scientific idea of the modern era. In this short book, Einstein explains, using the minimum of mathematical terms, the basic ideas and principles of the theory that has shaped the world we live in today. Unsurpassed by any subsequent books on relativity, this remains the most popular and useful exposition of Einstein's immense contribution to human knowledge. With (...) a new foreword by Derek Raine. (shrink)

_Time_'s 'Man of the Century', Albert Einstein is the unquestioned founder of modern physics. His theory of relativity is the most important scientific idea of the modern era. In this short book Einstein explains, using the minimum of mathematical terms, the basic ideas and principles of the theory which has shaped the world we live in today. Unsurpassed by any subsequent books on relativity, this remains the most popular and useful exposition of Einstein's immense contribution to human knowledge.

While ethnicity has become a blunt and overused concept in the anthropological vocabulary it is finding increasing currency in public language and thought. The author does not attempt to define the term but rather to understand its public life.