An updated edition of a groundbreaking work on the global financial crisis from a postfordist perspective. The 2010 English-language edition of Christian Marazzi's The Violence of Financial Capitalism made a groundbreaking work on the global financial crisis available to an expanded readership. This new edition has been updated to reflect recent events, up to and including the G20 summit in July 2010 and the broad consensus to reduce government spending that emerged from it. Marazzi, a leading figure in (...) the European postfordist movement, argues that the processes of financialization are not simply irregularities between the traditional categories of wages, rent, and profit, but rather a new type of accumulation adapted to the processes of social and cognitive production today. The financial crisis, he contends, is a fundamental component of contemporary accumulation and not a classic lack of economic growth. Marazzi shows that individual debt and the management of financial markets are actually techniques for governing the transformations of immaterial labor, general intellect, and social cooperation. The financial crisis has radically undermined the very concept of unilateral and multilateral economico-political hegemony, and Marazzi discusses efforts toward a new geomonetary order that have emerged around the globe in response. Offering a radically new understanding of the current stage of international economics as well as crucial post-Marxist guidance for confronting capitalism in its newest form, The Violence of Financial Capitalism is a valuable addition to the contemporary arsenal of postfordist thought. This edition includes the glossary of the esoteric neolanguage of financial capitalism—”Words in Crisis,” from “AAA” to “toxic asset”—written for the first English-language edition, and offers a new afterword by Marazzi. (shrink)

From philosophy to theology -- Structure -- Mystery -- Power.

Between 1934 and 1937 Maurice Blondel, the French Roman Catholic philosopher best known for his 1893 work, Action, published a trilogy of writings. Out of these writings came a theological ontology of tremendous force, creativity, and coherence. The purpose of the present dissertation is to reassess the viability of Blondel's ontology for contemporary theology. The retrieval begins with John Milbank's 1990 investigation of Blondel's early philosophy. While Milbank focuses on the strengths of Blondel, he also highlights some critical weaknesses. The (...) dissertation argues that Blondel later came to recognize and correct these weaknesses in his trilogy. ;La pensee, the first volume of the trilogy, discusses the nature and development of thought. Recognizing the ontological structure of thought leads Blondel to present his doctrine of the transnatural elan for assimilation to God. The transnatural desire for God is compared with Henri de Lubac's notion of naturae desiderium and then applied to the modern problem of the relationship between nature and supernature. ;The second installment of the trilogy, L'etre et les etres , explores the mysterious relation of Being and beings. Blondel situates the discussion within the language of creation, identifying Being as Creator and beings as creatures. The analogy of creation allows him to forge the proper relationship between Being and beings. After Blondel's death, two different schools of thought emerged on the mystery of being: Karl Rahner's Thomism and Jean-Luc Marion's new phenomenology. Each school is reviewed and critiqued from a Blondelian perspective. ;The trilogy concludes with a long-awaited revision of L'action . It begins by distinguishing the idea of action from action itself and establishing the ontological difference of action. Action is presented ontologically as enacted power, which is investigated in its individual, social, and metaphysical forms. Individual action is identified as making, practicing, and contemplating. Social action is studied next, with the conclusion that the social being of enacted power is determined by either a philosophy of peace or violence. Finally, divine action is evaluated with regards to the language of causality and absolute power. Blondel proposes instead to describe God's activity in terms of pure action. (shrink)

This paper investigates a manner for taking a stand against the current naturalistic tendencies within the current form of globalized capitalism that see it merely as the logical expression of triumphant market forces working upon productive assets. Taking a cue from the French concept of alter-mondalisme, as opposed to the English syntagma anti-globalism, this paper argues that our current form of globalised capitalism is simply a form having no specific ontological necessity – i.e., globalism as it now is, is (...) not the inevitable result of natural forces, but is rather a complex emergent entity. Cosmopolitical citizenship, characterized by critical global citizens, means principled refusal to accept this entity as determining the possible and the impossible. Instead of being the creature of simply naturalistic, neo-liberal economics, capital is a cultural system, a social relationship based on a particular political power structure. Thinking otherwise makes issues of social justice meaningless within capitalism. The current concentration of economic power tends to spread certain behavioral norms that sustain it, which is a systemic phenomenon that can be called the cultural system of capitalism, a shared ideology.Viewing it such, we can move from an ethical study of the rational foundations of moral norms to a political reflection on the democratic construction of social norms. Hence, democratic experimentalism can arise, in which various possibilities and norms of one subset or region of capitalist interaction are played off against each other subset or region in a subversive attempt at forming new possibilities for organizing economic and political processes. This will also protect the plurality of ways of life from overweening global capitalism: another world is possible. (shrink)

Christian Marazzi's first book: a post-Fordist classic on the roots to economic crises in the contemporary age. Communication as work: we have recently experienced a profound transformation in the processes of production. While the assembly line excluded any form of linguistic productivity, today, there is no production without communication. The new technologies are linguistic machines. This revolution has produced a new kind of worker who is not a specialist but is versatile and infinitely adaptable. If standardized mass production was (...) dominant in the past, today we produce an array of different goods corresponding to specific consumer niches. This is the post-Fordist model described by Christian Marazzi in Capital and Affects. Tracing the development of this new model of labor from Toyota plants in Japan to the most recent innovations, Marazzi's critique goes beyond political economy to encompass issues related to social life, political engagement, democratic institutions, interpersonal relations, and the role of language in liberal democracies. This translation at long last makes Marazzi's first book available to English readers. Capital and Affects stands not only as the foundation to Marazzi's subsequent work, but as foundational work in post-Fordist literature, with an analysis startlingly relevant to today's troubled economic times. This Semiotext edition includes the afterword Marazzi wrote for the 1999 Italian edition. (shrink)

This study represents a comparison between two radical gestures of literary self-reflexivity: romantic irony and postmodernist metafiction. It examines the impact of early German romantic theory and its central concept of irony on German and English romantic narrative fiction and relates the same to postmodernist self-reflexive novels, including its British and American variants. A primary objective of this comparison is to account for the radical skepticism that postmodernist metafiction voices with respect to the paramount philosophical question of truth and (...) reality. The immanent tension between an absolute idealistic and a radically skeptic position which romantic irony articulates and enacts is conceived of as an important and instructive link to the understanding of postmodernism. (shrink)

English summary: During his time inWurzburg from 1803 to 1806 Schelling read his lectures on the System der gesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere several times. They are the only complete exposition of Schellings identity philosophy, which comprises the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of mind. The articles discuss the Wurzburger System in the context of problem history and in light of the history of Schellings works and of the history of debates concerning them. With contributions by Christopher (...) Arnold, Ulrich Barth, Christoph Binkelmann, Christian Danz, Georg Essen, Michael Hackl, Patrick Leistner, Jan Rohls, Alexander Schuhbach, Sebastian Schwenzfeuer, Clemens Tangerding and Paul Ziche. German description: In seiner Wurzburger Zeit von 1803 bis 1806 hat Schelling mehrfach sein System der gesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere vorgetragen. Hierbei handelt es sich um die einzige Gesamtdarstellung der identitatsphilosophischen Konzeption, welche sowohl Natur- als auch Geistphilosophie umfasst. Die Beitrage des Bandes thematisieren das Wurzburger System vor seinem werk- und problemgeschichtlichen Hintergrund sowie in seinem debattengeschichtlichen Kontext. Mit Beitragen von Christopher Arnold, Ulrich Barth, Christoph Binkelmann, Christian Danz, Georg Essen, Michael Hackl, Patrick Leistner, Jan Rohls, Alexander Schubach, Sebastian Schwenzfeuer, Clemens Tangerding und Paul Ziche.Mit Beitragen von Christopher Arnold, Ulrich Barth, Christoph Binkelmann, Christian Danz, Georg Essen, Michael Hackl, Patrick Leistner, Jan Rohls, Alexander Schuhbach, Sebastian Schwenzfeuer, Clemens Tangerding und Paul Ziche. (shrink)

English summary: In this volume, the Munich and Vienna-based theologian Falk Wagner's work in the fields of philosophical theology, sociology and lived religion is taken up for the first time against the backdrop of current theological and philosophical controversies. The essays integrate Wagner's thinking into the history of theology and philosophy in the twentieth century, reconstruct fundamental elements of his philosophical theology between the poles of speculative theology and lived religion, while also highlighting the constellations and context wherein his (...) theology is situated. The authors explore from a work- and problem-historical perspective the contribution of the systematic theologian to the relevant twenty first century debates. German description: Der vorliegende Band thematisiert erstmals vor dem Hintergrund der gegenwartigen theologischen und philosophischen Kontroversen das Gesamtwerk des Munchener und Wiener Theologen Falk Wagner im Spannungsfeld von philosophischer Theologie, Sozialwissenschaften und gelebter Religion. Die einzelnen Beitrage ordnen dessen Denken in die theologie- und philosophiegeschichtliche Entwicklung des 20. Jahrhunderts ein, rekonstruieren grundlegende Aufbauelemente seiner philosophischen Theologie und beleuchten die Konstellationen, in denen seine Theologie steht. Dabei loten die Autoren sowohl in werkgeschichtlicher als auch in problemgeschichtlicher Perspektive den Beitrag des systematischen Theologen fur die theologischen Debatten im 21. Jahrhundert aus. Mit Beitragen von: Christine Axt-Piscalar, Ulrich Barth, Christian Danz, Wilhelm Grab, Kathrin Mette, Michael Murrmann-Kahl, Jan Rohls, Ewald Stubinger, Folkart Wittekind, Kurt Walter Zeidler, Manuel Zelger. (shrink)

English summary: This volume looks at the so far little studied connections between the philosophy of Schelling and the historiographic waves in theological, philosophical and historical discourse during the first half of the 19th century. The reception of Schelling in theology, philosophy and history relates primarily to his writings around 1800. The essays in this volume firstly analyze the considerable impact that these texts had on the structure of contemporary debate. Secondly, they analyze the interdependence of the historical theology (...) that was beginning to take root and Schelling's emerging later philosophy. Thirdly, they examine the reception of Schelling's philosophy of history from the perspective of Friedrich Schleiermacher and historical academic discourse, as well as David Friedrich Strauss, Ferdinand Christian Baur and the Landhut Romantics. German description: Der vorliegende Band thematisiert die bislang nur wenig erforschten Zusammenhange zwischen der Philosophie Schellings und den Historisierungsschuben in den theologischen, philosophischen und geschichtswissenschaftlichen Diskursen der ersten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Rezeption Schellings in Theologie, Philosophie und Geschichtswissenschaft bezieht sich vor allem auf dessen Schriften um 1800. Die Beitrage des Bandes untersuchen sowohl die breite Wirkung dieser Texte in den zeitgenossischen Debattenkonstellationen sowie die Wechselwirkungen zwischen der sich etablierenden historischen Theologie und der Herausbildung von Schellings Spatphilosophie als auch die Rezeption der Geschichtsphilosophie Schellings bei Friedrich Schleiermacher sowie in den geschichtswissenschaftlichen Diskursen, bei David Friedrich Strauss, Ferdinand Christian Baur sowie in der Landshuter Romantik. Mit Beitragen von: Christopher Arnold, Ulrich Barth, Christian Danz, Georg Essen, Malte Dominik Kruger, Christof Landmesser, Michael Murrmann-Kahl, Georg Neugebauer, Jan Rohls, Oliver Wintzek, Johannes Zachhuber. (shrink)

Originally published as a French edition in 1991, and first translated into English for this Cambridge edition in 2004, in this exhaustive study Christian Bidard develops a theory of prices of production. This theory breaks down the symmetry between producers and consumers and gives more importance to reproduction rather than scarcity. In his analysis of multiple-product systems, Bidard focuses on the notion of an all-engaging system which elucidates the link with von Neumann's theory; examines the notions of sector (...) and vertical integration which make possible an elegant treatment of fixed capital; clarifies the status of the internal rate of return; proposes a general theory of rent. In the discussion of capital theory and marginal equalities or, more specifically, the treatment of exhaustible resources, Bidard compares different readings of Sraffa's work and revisits the question of relationships between classical theory and the general equilibrium theory. (shrink)

In _An Introduction to Kant’s Aesthetics_, Christian Wenzel discusses and demystifies Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, guiding the reader each step of the way and placing key points of discussion in the context of Kant’s other work. Explains difficult concepts in plain language, using numerous examples and a helpful glossary. Proceeds in the same order as Kant’s text for ease of reference and comprehension. Includes an illuminating foreword by Henry E. Allison. Offers twenty-six further-reading sections, commenting briefly (...) on books and articles from the English, German, and French, that are relevant for each topic Provides an extensive bibliography and a chapter summarizing Kant's main points. (shrink)

English summary: While he was a student in Tubingen, the young Schelling wrote his own commentaries on the biblical scriptures and developed a historical hermeneutics which drew on contemporary concepts and took these concepts further. In this volume, the contributors provide the first study of these new sources in the context of the complex hermeneutical and exegetical debates in late Enlightenment theology. In doing so, they use an interdisciplinary approach to show the connections between theological problems at the end (...) of the 18th century and the development of German idealism, connections on which previously little research had been done. German description: Der junge Schelling hat wahrend seiner Tubinger Studienzeit eigene Kommentare zu biblischen Schriften verfasst und eine historische Hermeneutik ausgearbeitet, welche an die zeitgenossischen Konzeptionen anknupft und diese weiterfuhrt. Die Beitrage in diesem Band thematisieren erstmals diese neuen Quellen im Kontext der komplexen hermeneutischen und exegetischen Debattenlagen der spaten Aufklarungstheologie. Dadurch werden die bislang nur wenig erforschten Zusammenhange von theologischen Fragestellungen am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts und der Herausbildung des Deutschen Idealismus auf eine interdisziplinare Weise erschlossen. (shrink)

The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah: First English Translation Compared with the Masoretic Version. Edited by Benyamim Tsedaka and Sharon Sullivan. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013. Pp. xxxvii + 522, illus. $26.

The present collection of essays is devoted to the Christian philosophy of the most prolific and most speculatively ambitious of the Cambridge Origenists, Henry More. Not only did More revere Origen, whom he extolled as a "holy sage" and "that miracle of the Christian world", but he also developed a philosophical system which hinged upon the Origenian notions of universal divine goodness and libertarian human freedom. Throughout his life, More subscribed to the ancient theology of the pre-existence of (...) souls and took issue with the early modern philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes and Baruch de Spinoza. His vision of God's goodness, experienced in his early school years at Eton, became the cornerstone of an Origenist rationalism which envisaged an extended world animated by divine thought and inhabited by self-moving rational agents. More's philosophy is the crowning attainment of the early modern rediscovery of Origen as well as a neglected major rationalist system in its own right which went on to exert decisive influence upon all subsequent western metaphysics. The essays collected in the first part provide a detailed introduction to More's voluminous writings. After a comprehensive general overview of his metaphysical and ethical system, the essays expound More's historical context and his philosophical development from his early poetry in the 1640s to his mature philosophical and theological prose works of the 50s, 60s and 70s. In addition, the reception of More and Origen in the later Cambridge Origenists and in Isaac Newton is outlined. The second part contains several excerpts from More's influential Latin works first translated into English by the editor. (shrink)

From 1968 to 1991 the acclaimed film theorist Christian Metz wrote several remarkable books on film theory. These books set the agenda of academic film studies during its formative period. Metz's ideas were taken up, digested, refined, reinterpreted, criticized and sometimes dismissed, but rarely ignored. This volume collects and translates into English a series of interviews with Metz, who offers readable summaries, elaborations, and explanations of his sometimes complex and demanding theories of film. We also discover the contents (...) of his unpublished manuscript on jokes, his relation to Roland Barthes, and the social networks operative in the French intellectual community during the 1970s and 1980s."--Back cover. (shrink)

This article presents two cases of women doing development work for civil society organizations in the Global South. The author uses the cases to explicate the relationship of global civil society, development work, feminism, and Christianity. The case studies were collected through life history interviews with the participants. The cases, interpreted in light of the ‘third space’ cultural theory of Homi Bhabha, destabilize the fixed identity of these women as ‘development workers’, ‘feminists’, ‘Western’, and ‘Christian’.

The ArgumentThis essay describes the emergence and stabilization in French and English experimental accounts, in second half of the seventeenth century, of the narrative sequence: X did (some process in the laboratory) and X saw (something happen), where X stands for a pronoun, I or we in English,je, nousoronin French. Focussing on the French case, it shows how the use of the collective pronounonin the experimental accounts registered in the files of the Académie des Sciences is directly related (...) to the will of this newly created institution to assert a collective authority on the production and legitimization of experimental matters-of-fact produced in the laboratory. It is argued, through the case of the discovery of the blind spot in the eye by Mariotte, that this new narrative form imbeds a construal of the experiment as a public spectacle, and of the proof as a witnessing event, which eludes the Academy's attempts to monopolize the process of fact validation and favors the diffusion and display of experiments in front of larger audiences. The question of whether a privileged witness such as the King of France who patronized the Academy could not have constituted by himself a suitable audience to ensure a full legitimization of experimental matters-of-fact while remaning within the bounds of academic practices is addressed. It is answered in the negative by providing evidence for the lack of interest of the absolute monarch in experiments. On the other hand, the outdoor practices of observation and measurement are shown to interfere in a constructive manner with the absolutist power and to capture the attention of the absolutist monarch, where laboratory experiments had failed. It is proposed that natural philosophers in the early modern period bear the burden of proof in buying credibility for the phenomena they try, by paying a tribute to the standing of the patrician elites that witness their experiments. This makes sense in a straightforward manner of the lack of interest of the King of France in a practice which exalts the power of the very group he is trying hard to control through the absolutist structure of power. (shrink)

The present article is an edition of the Pathologia (1706), a Latin manuscript on the passions by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713). There are two parts, i) an introduction with commentary (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.679795), and ii) an edition of the Latin text with an English translation (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.679796) . The Pathologia treats of a series of topics concerning moral psychology, ethics and philology, presenting a reconstruction of the Stoic theory of the emotions that is closely modelled on Cicero (...) and Diogenes Lærtius. It contains a most detailed typology of the passions and affections as well as an analysis of a series of psychological connections, for example between admiration and pride. On the basis of his reconstruction of Stoic moral psychology and ethics, Shaftesbury argues that in one of his phases, Horace should be interpreted as a Stoic rather than as an Epicurean. The translation and the commentary draw attention to the relations between the Pathologia and Shaftesbury's English writings, most importantly Miscellaneous Reflections and the Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit, which sheds light on several features of Shaftesbury's relation to Stoicism. (shrink)

Abstract“The singular state of the ice”. The Cartographic Knowledge of the Whaler William Scoresby. The English whaler William Scoresby, Jr. (1790–1857) made use of his annual voyages to the Greenland Sea for distinguished scientific work, detailed records and the production of amazing maps. Due to his intensive contacts to scientists as Robert Jameson and politicians as Joseph Banks and John Barrow his research achieved a great deal of attention and set a benchmark for at least half a century. Scoresby (...) combined the adventurous world of Arctic fishery with academic sciences. He attained the northernmost point anybody reached in his time, he extended the cartographic knowledge and forced the conquest and utilisation of the oceans for commercial fishing. But his biography enquires also about who got an opportunity for research and for what. Especially it demonstrates the strong impact practical knowledge of a whaler could have on geographic research and Arctic cartography. (shrink)

The following interview was conducted by Christian Diehm in the home of Arne Naess near Oslo, Norway, in December of 2001. At eighty-nine years of age, Naess was preparing for the English-language release of his latest book, Life’s Philosophy. We are pleased to provide a transcript of a large part of the conversations that spanned two afternoon dialogues.

This article focuses on the development of argumentation studies in France and their complex relations with discourse analysis. First, the meanings of the basic word `argument' in French and in American English are discussed and contrasted. Second, a brief historical section summarizes the complex history of rhetorical argumentation in France up until the late 1980s and the Perelmanian revival. Third, Grize `natural logic' and Anscombre and Ducrot `argumentation within language' are briefly discussed from the discourse analysis point of view. (...) These programmes have restored argumentation study to favour in France, where it is currently the research paradigm most referred to in recent work. The fourth section examines the present situation in France which is characterized by a strong new interest in argumentation in all disciplines; this is fuelling a tendency towards the use of argumentation theories — classical or modern — for practical, short-term analysis purposes. Fifth, a proposal is made for a better integration of argumentation studies in discourse analysis, based on the conception of argumentation as opposite points of view, either in face-to-face disputes or in written arguments, sometimes lasting for several centuries. This article is based on the premise that research into the history of rhetoric and argumentation, as well as in specific discourse analytic trends that emerged in France during the 1970s, has some permanent value in that a better understanding of an academic discipline's historical development can be a good introduction to its current problems. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001788511; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 292-317.; Language(s): English; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

Purpose of the article: Knowledge is increasingly importance for the economic well-being of businesses. Core competencies of management are the generation and processing of information, used to develop a competitive advantage. Information has become established as a commodity in its own right which can be bought and sold. Four out of five goods traded on the market now consist of services or relate to information in the broadest sense. Knowledge is created when different pieces of information are linked on the (...) basis of a particular intellectual background and meaningfully interpreted. Accordingly, knowledge incorporates not just information but also experience, - judgements, rules of thumb and worldviews. Knowledge is always associated with human beings. Methodology/methods: This article is based on literature research. The original article was written in German and translated into English, supported by a translation agency. Scientific aim: A questionnaire is being drawn up on the basis of the research results. This will allow the appraisal of these influencing factors and framework conditions by small and medium sized enterprises to be surveyed and evaluated. Findings: Social systems arise through and are sustained by communication. Actions of managers primarily consist of communication. For cognitive simplification, all humans repeat actions that have previously proved successful. Previously accumulated knowledge thus becomes a significant barrier to learning. An organisation’s ability to learn depends not only the general willingness of its workforce to learn but also on the newness and/or compatibility of knowledge acquired from a partner. Conclusions : Developing or acquiring competition-relevant knowledge is generally time-consuming and costly. As a complementary function to knowledge acquisition, the retention of knowledge carriers in the form of people and materials forms another component of knowledge management. It is important to recognise early on those knowledge carriers who promise high potential in the future. (shrink)

_The Lamp that Integrates the Practices_ is a systematic and comprehensive exposition of the most advanced yogas of the Esoteric Community Tantra as espoused by the Noble Tradition, an influential school of interpretation within the Mahayoga traditions of Indian Buddhist esoterism. Equal in authority to Nagarjuna's famous Five Stages, Aryadeva's work is perhaps the earliest prose example of the "stages of the mantra path" genre in Sanskrit. Its studied gradualism exerted immense influence on later Indian and Tibetan tradition, and it (...) is widely cited by masters from all four major lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. This volume presents the _Lamp_ in a tri-lingual format: its Sanskrit original critically-edited from recently-identified manuscripts, a critical edition of the eleventh-century Tibetan translation by Rin-chen Bzang-po, and a thoroughly-annotated English translation. Includes an introductory study discussing the history of the Guhyasamaja and its exegetical traditions, surveying the scriptural and commentarial sources of the Noble Tradition, and analyzing in detail the contents of the _Lamp_. Features a detailed, tri-lingual glossary. Published by American Institute of Buddhist Studies. (shrink)

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts holds the Upper Midwest's most significant permanent collection of fine photographs. Covering the entire history of the medium, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. This beautiful book opens with an 1845 salt print by the English inventor William Henry Fox Talbot and closes with a 2002 color portrait by Alec Soth from his series Sleeping by the Mississippi. In between, selected images represent the genres of documentary photography, photojournalism, and street photography. Included (...) are Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" and Arthur Rothstein's "Dust Storm," as well as Edward Weston's "Pepper No. 30" and Ansel Adams's "Moonrise, Hernandez." Commemorating the collecting legacy of Carroll T. Hartwell, the founding curator of the museum's department of photographs, this book reveals Hartwell's critical eye for singular historical photographs and his belief in the influence and vitality of accomplished contemporary photographers. In an introductory essay, Christian A. Peterson recounts the history of the museum's photography collection and Hartwell's indelible imprint on the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. (shrink)

Book synopsis: This key collection of essays sheds new light on long-debated controversies surrounding Kant’s doctrine of idealism and is the first book in the English language that is exclusively dedicated to the subject. Well-known Kantians Karl Ameriks and Manfred Baum present their considered views on this most topical aspect of Kant's thought. Several essays by acclaimed Kant scholars broach a vastly neglected problem in discussions of Kant's idealism, namely the relation between his conception of logic and idealism: The (...) standard view that Kant's logic and idealism are wholly separable comes under scrutiny in these essays. A further set of articles addresses multiple facets of the notorious notion of the thing in itself, which continues to hold the attention of Kant scholars. The volume also contains an extensive discussion of the often overlooked chapter in the Critique of Pure Reason on the Transcendental Ideal. Together, the essays provide a whole new outlook on Kantian idealism. No one with a serious interest in Kant's idealism can afford to ignore this important book. (shrink)

Categories, as mental structures, are more than simply sums of property frequencies. A number of recent studies have supported the view that the properties of categories may be organised along functional lines and possibly dependency structures more generally. The study presented here investigates whether earlier findings reflect something unique in the English language/North American culture or whether the functional structuring of categories is a more universal phenomenon. A population of English-speaking Americans was compared to a population of Cantonese-speaking (...) Hong Kong Chinese. The findings clearly support the view that functional influences on category centrality are universal (or at least common to Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong Chinese and English-speaking Americans), albeit with specific cross-cultural/cross-linguistic group differences in the particular properties that are considered central to categories. (shrink)

This paper aims at discussing the relations between religion and revolution according to Edmund Burke’s and Alexis de Tocqueville’s considerations on the unleashment of the French Revolution. There is a rare dialog between both authors made by the French thinker, mainly in his book The Old Regime and the Revolution. Nonetheless, I intend to deepen this dialog. This procedure will make it possible to review the comparisons – between the English and the French Revolutions – made by both authors (...) and the distinct role played by religion in each process. Finally, I try to identify the main proximities and distances in the analysis of both authors on the theme. (shrink)

It is rare for a translation to be reviewed as a translation in a theoretical journal. It is even rarer, perhaps unprecedented, for a translator to reply to his reviewer. But Hullot-Kentor is only the immediate cause of my going public. The deeper and more remote cause will become clear shortly. Before doing so, however, I want to comment on what I regard as two serious omissions in Hullot-Kentor's criticism. Words From Foreign LandsWhile Hullot-Kentor seems to know Adorno's German intimately, (...) he may not be as familiar with modern German in general, or else he would not have chastized me for failing to put quotation marks around pin-ups so as to identify it as an English phrase in the original. (shrink)

Nagarjuna and Quantum physics. Eastern and Western Modes of Thought. Summary. The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Emptiness’. The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That (...) nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. Reality is without foundation. Or: Reality has the wide open space as foundation. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realised that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalisation. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalisation might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. -/-. (shrink)

Rudyard Kipling, the famous english author of « The Jungle Book », born in India, wrote one day these words: « Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet ». In my paper I show that Kipling was not completely right. I try to show the common ground between buddhist philosophy and quantum physics. There is a surprising parallelism between the philosophical concept of reality articulated by Nagarjuna and the physical concept of reality (...) implied by quantum physics. For neither is there a fundamental core to reality, rather reality consists of systems of interacting objects. Such concepts of reality cannot be reconciled with the substantial, subjective, holistic or instrumentalistic concepts of reality which underlie modern modes of thought. (shrink)

Friedrich Albert Lange (1828-1875) author of a famous History of Materialism and Critique of Its Present Significance (1866, English transI. 1877-79, repr. 1925 with introduction by Bertrand Russell), was also interested in the epistemological foundations of formal logic. Part I of his intended two-volume Logische Studien was published posthumously in 1877 by Hermann Cohen, head of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. Lange, departing from Kant, claims that spatial intuition is the source of the apodeictic character not only of the (...) truths of mathematics, but also of the truths of logic. He aims at showing this by basing validity and invalidity of syllogistic inferences on an interpretation of the standard forms (of proposition in assertoric syllogistic) with the help of the five kinds of possible relations (in fact what is known today as the Gergonne-Euler relations) between extensions of concepts given to us as areas in a plane, i.e.in space. Generality is achieved by considering all possible variations within each type of spatial relation, exhibiting a connection between concept and intuition reminding Lange of the Kantian "schema". Lange is well aware of the contemporary English "algebraic" logic, but he considers its approach as the appropriate one for a logic of content (Inhaltslogik) and not for a logic of extension (Umfangslogik). Lange did not live to enjoy the recognition by some leading logicians (amongst them John Venn, to whose reference in 1881 to Lange's "admirable Logische Studien" the present paper owes it title), nor could he respond to the many critics of his proposed foundation of logic. Its radicality as well as its broad reception (and discussion up to at least 1959) seem to entitle Lange's Logische Studien to an, if modest, place in the history of logic in the 19th century. (shrink)

Friedrich Albert Lange author of a famous History of Materialism and Critique of Its Present Significance, was also interested in the epistemological foundations of formal logic.Part I of his intended two‐volume Logische Studienwas published posthumously in 1877 by Hermann Cohen“head”of the Marburg school of neo‐Kantianism.Lange, departing from Kant, claims that spatial intuition is the source of the apodeictic character not only of the truths of mathematics, but also of the truths of logic.He aims at showing this by basing validity and (...) invalidity of syllogistic inferences on an interpretation of the standard forms with the help of the five kinds of possible relations between extensions of concepts given to us as areas in a plane, i.e.in space.Generality is achieved by considering all possible variations within each type of spatial relation, exhibiting a connection between concept and intuition reminding Lange of the Kantian “schema”. Lange is well aware of the contemporary English “algebraic” logic, but he considers its approach as the appropriate one for a logic of content and not for a logic of extension Lange did not live to enjoy the recognition by some leading logicians, nor could he respond to the many critics of his proposed foundation of logic.Its radicality as well as its broad reception seem to entitle Lange’s Logische Studiento an, if modest, place in the history of logic in the 19th century. (shrink)

Rudyard Kipling, the famous english author of « The Jungle Book », born in India, wrote one day these words: « Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet ». In my paper I show that Kipling was not completely right. I try to show the common ground between buddhist philosophy and quantum physics. There is a surprising parallelism between the philosophical concept of reality articulated by Nagarjuna and the physical concept of reality (...) implied by quantum physics. For neither is there a fundamental core to reality, rather reality consists of systems of interacting objects. Such concepts of reality cannot be reconciled with the substantial, subjective, holistic or instrumentalistic concepts of reality which underlie modern modes of thought. (shrink)

English summary: Was Paul of Tarsus a philosopher? Does he even rank amongst those philosophers who influenced occidental live and thought? The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben says, that the Epistle to the Romans is the fundamental messianic text of the western culture. The Jewish scholars Jacob Taubes and Daniel Boyarin insist on the philosophical and political Force of Pauline thinking. Long before that, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger dealt intently with the Epistle. Was Paul a Philosopher? In any case (...) he received a lot of attention from the modern philosophers. The collection of contributions by theologians and philosophers gives profound insights into his thinking. German description: War Paulus aus Tarsus ein Philosoph? Zahlt er gar zu jenen bedeutenden Philosophen, die das abendlandische Leben und Denken massgeblich mit pragten? Der italienische Philosoph Giorgio Agamben bezeichnet jedenfalls den Romerbrief des Apostels als "grundlegenden messianischen Text der westlichen Kultur". Nachdrucklich weisen auch judische Gelehrte wie Jacob Taubes und Daniel Boyarin auf die philosophisch-politische Sprengkraft paulinischen Denkens hin. Lange zuvor setzten sich bereits Friedrich Nietzsche und Martin Heidegger intensiv mit den Briefen des Apostels auseinander. War Paulus ein Philosoph? In jedem Fall geniesst er unter den Philosophen der Moderne und Spatmoderne eine bemerkenswert grosse Aufmerksamkeit. Die hier versammelten Beitrage von Philosophen und Theologen geben einen profunden Einblick in sein denkerisches Potential. (shrink)

Trucage then exists when there is deceit. We may agree to use this term when the spectator ascribes to the diegesis the totality of the visual elements furnished him. In films of the fantastic, the impression of unreality is convincing only if the public has the feeling of partaking, not of some plausible illustration of a process obeying a nonhuman logic, but of a series of disquieting or "impossible" events which nevertheless unfold before him in the guise of eventlike appearances. (...) In the opposite case, the spectator undertakes a type of spontaneous sorting out of the visible material of which the filmic text is composed and ascribes only a portion of it to the diegesis. The services of the department of agriculture have worked more quickly because they were approached in an appropriate manner: this amounts to the diegesis. The film makes light of this sudden rapidity; ironically, it exaggerates it: here is the intention, which amounts to the enunciation. In the exact degree to which this perceptible bifurcation is maintained, the connotated will be unable to pass for denotated, and there is no trucage. The optical effect has not merged with the usual game of the photograms, the entire visual material has not been mistaken for the photographic, the diegetization has not been total. Christian Metz, one of the foremost French theorists of the cinema, is the author of Essais sur le signification au cinéma, Propositions méthodologiques pour l'analyse du film, and Langage et cinéma. He is Sous-Directeur d'Etudes Suppléant à l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris. This is the first English translation of "Trucage et cinéma," which appeared in Essais sur la signification au cinéma . Francoise Meltzer [the translator of this essay] is a professor of French literature and of comparative literature at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Trial of Psychoanalysis, Salome and the Dance of Writing, and Hot Property: The Stakes and Claims of Literary Originality. Her essay, "Color as Cognition in Symbolist Verse," is published in Critical Inquiry in the Winter 1978 issue. (shrink)

ExcerptCarl Schmitt's recently translated Constitutional Theory (Verfassungslehre), first published in 1928 at the end of a period of relative stability in Weimar Germany, is a strangely timely work—both with regard to the continued relevance of the themes and problems it discusses and with regard to the current state of scholarship about Weimar constitutionalism. But, first things first, as befits what was originally intended as a short review article: The translation is accurate, even though it was occasionally necessary to break down (...) Schmitt's legal Germanicisms into more manageable English syntax. The long introduction, jointly written by Jeffrey Seitzer and Christopher Thornhill,…. (shrink)

Rudyard Kipling, the famous english author of « The Jungle Book », born in India, wrote one day these words: « Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet ». In my paper I show that Kipling was not completely right. I try to show the common ground between buddhist philosophy and quantum physics. There is a surprising parallelism between the philosophical concept of reality articulated by Nagarjuna and the physical concept of reality (...) implied by quantum physics. For neither is there a fundamental core to reality, rather reality consists of systems of interacting objects. Such concepts of reality cannot be reconciled with the substantial, subjective, holistic or instrumentalistic concepts of reality which underlie modern modes of thought. (shrink)

Em Suplicantes, uma das mais políticas tragédias de Eurípides, é produzida uma aproximação surpreendente entre o mundo do mito e o do espectador. Embora Teseu, seu protagonista, seja representado como um “rei democrático”, nela não está presente uma cena que possa ser equiparada à experiência da mais típica instituição da democracia ateniense, a deliberação coletiva definidora da assembleia aberta a todos os cidadãos. Todavia, em diferentes momentos do primeiro episódio, chega-se bastante perto. Assim, o objetivo deste texto é discutir como (...) essa tragédia representa formas de deliberação e consenso, para o que se investiga os meandros de dois cenários que levam a uma política de guerra de ataque desenvolvidos no drama, um em Argos, outro, em Atenas. (shrink)

This is the first collection of essays devoted to the thought of Anselm W. Müller. It brings to the attention of the English-speaking world an influential and highly regarded philosopher who has made important contributions to a wide range of philosophical debates. The volume begins with a biographical sketch of Müller. Arguably, Müller's most important contributions are to the philosophy of action and virtue ethics. The contributors, which include friends, colleagues, and former students, engage with different aspects of Müller's (...) thought in these areas. Subjects include his interpretation of Aristotle and Wittgenstein, the teleology of thought and action, the Aristotelian distinction between poiesis and praxis and its application to ethical upbringing, and the possibility of practical knowledge and practical truth. Teleological Structures in Human Life will be of interest to researches and advanced students working on virtue ethics, philosophy of action, and practical reasoning. (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna (...) denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. -/- 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.] -/- « Wenn du gerade das, wodurch auch immer du gefesselt bist, erkennst, wirst du zur Freiheit gelangen. Wenn du diesen speziellen Pfad verwirklichst, gelangst du in einem Leben zur Buddhaschaft. Deswegen verhält es sich folgendermaßen : Wenn plötzlich die Geistesregung « Begierde » enststeht, dann betrachte, ohne ihr zu folgen, direkt ihre Essenz und verweile in dieser Betrachtung, ohne Ablenkungen zuzulassen. Auf diese Weise reinigt Begierde sich selbst, ohne aufgegeben zu werden, da sie ohne Grundlage und Ursprung entsteht. Das wird « Befreiung in sich selbst », « unterscheidende ursprüngliche Weisheit » oder Buddha Amitabha » genannt ». Jigden Sumgön, Licht, das die Dunkelheit durchbricht, Otter Verlag, München 2006, Seite 47, 48 . (shrink)