I argue that changes in the numerical identity of groups do not necessarily speak in favour of the supersession of some historical injustice. I contend that the correlativity between the perpetrator and the victim of injustices is not broken when the identity of groups changes. I develop this argument by considering indigenous people's claims in Argentina for the injustices suffered during the Conquest of the Desert. I argue that present claimants do not need to be part of the same (...) entity whose members suffered injustices many years ago. For identifying the proper recipients of reparation, all that is necessary is that the group who suffered the historical injustice under consideration has survived into the present. I also support a view upon which present living members of a certain group have reasons to redress those injustices perpetrated by their predecessors if they are relevantly connected with each other. In particular, by relying on the notion of collective inheritance, I argue that if present-day members of a certain group claim that they are the continuation of the group whose past members bequeathed them certain goods, they cannot consistently reject such a membership when the very same people legated them certain evils. (shrink)

Contemporary East Asian societies are still struggling with complex legacies of colonialism, war and domination. Years of Japanese imperial occupation followed by the Cold War have entrenched competing historical understandings of responsibility for past crimes in Korea, China, Japan and elsewhere in the region. In this context, even the impressive economic and cultural networks that have developed over the past sixty years have failed to secure peaceful coexistence and overcome lingering attitudes of distrust and misunderstanding in the region. -/- (...) This book examines the challenges of historical reconciliation in East Asia, and, in doing so, calls for a reimagining of how we understand both historical identity and responsibility. It suggests that by adopting a ‘forward-looking’ approach that eschews obsession with the past, in favour of a reflective and deliberative engagement with history, real progress can be made towards peaceful coexistence in East Asia. With chapters that focus on select experiences from East Asia, while simultaneously situating them within a wider comparative perspective, the contributors to this volume focus on the close relationship between reconciliation and ‘inherited responsibility’ and reveal the contested nature of both concepts. Finally, this volume suggests that historical reconciliation is essential for strengthening mutual trust between the states and people of East Asia, and suggests ways in which such divisive legacies of conflict can be overcome. -/- Providing both an overview of the theoretical arguments surrounding reconciliation and inherited responsibility, alongside examples of these concepts from across East Asia, this book will be valuable to students and scholars interested in Asian politics, Asian history and international relations more broadly. (shrink)

In 1894, William Bateson objected to the terms “heredity” and “inheritance” in biology, on grounds of contamination with misleading notions from the everyday world. Yet after the rediscovery of Mendel's work in the spring of 1900, Bateson promoted that work as disclosing the “principles of heredity.” For historians of science, Bateson's change of mind provides a new angle on these terms at a crucial moment in their history. For philosophers of science, the case can serve as a reminder of (...) the potential of Putnam's hypothesis of a division of linguistic labor for analyzing the semantic lives of scientific kind terms. (shrink)

By following the arguments developed by Vygotsky and employing the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) in addition to dialectical logic, this paper attempts to investigate the interaction between psychology and artificial intelligence (AI) to confront the epistemological and methodological challenges encountered in AI research. The paper proposes that AI is facing an epistemological and methodological crisis inherited from psychology based on dualist ontology. The roots of this crisis lie in the duality between rationalism and objectivism or in the mind-body rupture (...) that has governed the production of scientific thought and the proliferation of approaches. In addition, by highlighting the sociohistorical conditions of AI, this paper investigates the historical characteristics of the shift of the crisis from psychology to AI. Additionally, we examine the epistemological and methodological roots of the main challenges encountered in AI research by noting that empiricism is the dominant tendency in the field. Empiricism gives rise to methodological and practical challenges, including challenges related to the emergence of meaning, abstraction, generalization, the emergence of symbols, concept formation, functional reflection of reality, and the emergence of higher psychological functions. Furthermore, through discussing attempts to formalize dialectical logic, the paper, based on contradiction formation, proposes a qualitative epistemological, methodological, and formal alternative by using a preliminary algorithmic model that grasps the formation of meaning as an essential ability for the qualitative reflection of reality and the emergence of other mental functions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SENECA FALLS INHERITANCE: DISENTANGLING WOMEN, LEGISLATION AND VIOLENCE IN MONFREDO'S HISTORICAL CRIME FICTION Rosemary Erickson Johnsen National Coalition ofIndependent Scholars That men were not prevented by courts or clergy from mistreating their wives meant that, to society's institutions, women had no value. A man could be jailed, even hanged, for stealing another man's horse, but not even reproached for beating his wife. (Miriam Grace Monfredo, Through a (...) Gold Eagle) Miriam Grace Monfredo's feminist genre fiction, her "historymystery " series featuring nineteenth-century librarian Glynis Tryon, offers an opportunity to find a way ofreading literary texts that is not only feminist, but also Girardian. Girard's work provides two clear ways to construct feminist readings directly, without the mediation of overtly feminist theory. First ofthese is Girard's respect for the "quasi-theoretical" potential of literary texts, especially some of those which attend to apparently trivial matters. In Deceit, Desire and the Novel, Girard argues that (male) novelists offer insights unavailable elsewhere, including those scientific fields that claim to know more than everyone else. In its valuing of questions about snobbism, for example, Deceit, Desire and the Novel offers a woman-friendly model. The (male) novelist's question about snobbism is "too frivolous" for (men of) science, but Girard argues that "in his probe of snobbism the novelist is asking himself in his own way just what Rosemary Erickson Johnsen59 might be the hidden springs that make the social mechanism tick" (220). While I regret the fact that Girard's examples and language often ignore women, I believe his conviction that attention to matters socially coded as superficial and frivolous can produce great insight is one feminist critics can appreciate. The second Girardian tool feminists can rely upon is the method of reading texts of persecution described in The Scapegoat. Girard suggests how we might read texts ofpersecution written by naive persecutors in ways that identify with the persecuted and gather the information unintentionally supplied by the authors: "I call those persecutors naive who are still convinced that they are right and who are not so mistrustful as to cover up or censor the fundamental characteristics of their persecution. Such characteristics are either clearly apparent in the text and are directly revealing or they remain hidden and reveal indirectly" (8). Monfredo's crime novels, set in the mid-nineteenth century and focusing on such disenfranchised groups of citizens as women, slaves, Native Americans, and free African-Americans, depend for their verisimilitude on her ability to read historical sources and literary predecessors in just such a way. Accuracy requires that Monfredo's works be categorized as feminist historical crime novels, however awkward such a lengthy description may be. Her novels observe the principles not only of both genres—historical fiction and detective fiction—but also the political position offeminism, and they meet these multiple demands with considerable skill. Furthermore, resolution in crime fiction depends upon the law; working within that tradition, Monfredo is called upon to seek solutions within the system, to look for justice as the result ofa proper functioning ofthe legal and social systems. Information gathered, whether by the official representatives ofthe law or by amateurs, is turned over to the authorities. While her novels clearly respect that tradition, they also point out some limits to the judicial system's ability to contain violence. Girard's model ofits functioning, as described in Violence and the Sacred, depends upon an equality that whole segments of the society Monfredo is depicting do not in fact enjoy: "The judicial authority is beholden to no one. It is thus at the disposal ofeveryone" (23). Ifwomen cannot own property, enter into contracts or sit on juries, in what sense is the law at their disposal? Monfredo's exploration ofthis question takes its place alongside Girard's explanation of the legal system's proper functioning; ifhis theory reveals how it works when all are enfranchised, her fiction suggests some ofthe consequences that result from the existence of disenfranchised subjects. 60'Seneca Falls Inheritance' Our Seneca Falls Inheritance In her first book, Seneca Falls Inheritance (1992), Monfredo offers a theory for the reduction of violence against women: provide women with complete legal equality. The... (shrink)

This article addresses the question of whether present day individuals can inherit rights to compensation from their ancestors. It argues that contemporary writing on compensatory justice in general, and on the inheritability of rights to compensation in particular, has mischaracterized what is at stake in contexts where those responsible for wrongdoing continually refuse to make reparation for their unjust actions, and has subsequently misunderstood how later generations can advance claims rooted in the past mistreatment of their forebears. In particular, a (...) full consideration of the wrongful character of non-rectification needs to take account of the multiplicity of temporal points at which compensation could have been, but was not, paid, each with potentially significant consequences for the victims of injustice. This has relevance for what is owed to those who have been wrongfully denied compensation for wrongs that caused them direct harm, and can be extended to others, such as their direct heirs, who are likewise affected by non-rectification. This opens the door to the endorsement of potentially extensive contemporary claims on behalf of the heirs of victims of wrongdoing. (shrink)

Slavery harmed the slaves but not their descendants since slavery brought about their existence. The descendants gain the slaves’ claims via inheritance. However, collecting the inheritance-based claim runs into a number of difficulties. First, every descendant usually has no more than a portion of the slave’s claim because the claim is often divided over generations. Second, there are epistemic difficulties involving the ownership of the claim since it is unlikely that a descendant of a slave several generations removed (...) would have retained the claim of inheritance given the loss of wealth and disinheritance that often characterizes families. There are also problems in determining the amount of inheritance. This is in part because of the problems of calculating in the effects of offsets, especially crime-related offsets, which are owed by a significant portion of the descendants. Even if this inheritance claim can be established with sufficient confidence certain entities may not be asked to pay it. The federal government does not owe compensation since as a historical matter it permitted but did not cause enslavement. The beneficiaries of slavery do not owe compensation since merely receiving the benefit of an unjust activity does not by itself generate a debt of compensation. When combined these problems constitute an overwhelming case against reparations. (shrink)

Societies have always used their heritage to remain resilient and to express their cultural identities. Today, all the still-available experiences accrued by human societies over time and across space are, in principle, essential in coping with the twenty-first century grand challenges of humanity. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can assist the next generation of historians, heritage stakeholders, and decision-makers in decoding unstructured knowledge and wisdom embedded in selected cultural artefacts and social rituals, encoding data in machine-readable systems, aggregating information (...) according to the user’s needs in real time, and simulating the consequences of either erasing, neglecting, putting in latency, or preserving and sharing specific human experiences. What our global society needs is a multilingual and transcultural approach to decode-encode the treasure of human experience and transmit it to the next generation of world citizens. This approach can be the pathway to work on a new science of heritage, its ethics, and empathy. (shrink)

Those who believe that they have special obligations to their community — to their family, state or nation, clan, tribe, or cultural group — often insist that they have duties not merely to present and future members. They also claim to have responsibilities to, or in respect to, their predecessors. David Miller, in his defence of ‘nationality,’ claims that the existence of a nation as a historical community is one of the features which make it ‘a community of obligation.’ (...) ‘“Because our forebears have toiled and spilt their blood to build and defend the nation, we who are born into it inherit an obligation to continue their work….’” Being a member of a nation, says Yael Tamir, requires individuals to keep faith with its history. Annette Baier thinks that if we fail to pass on our inherited public goods to our descendants we can be blamed not only for harming their interests but also for not carrying out the intentions of our forebears. (shrink)

The sizeable theoretical and empirical literature on corporate social responsibility and business ethics in Western, developed economies indicates that the topic has attracted significant interest from academics and practitioners. There is, however, less evidence of the practice of CSR and business ethics in non-Western, transition economies, as insufficient attention is paid to the contextual specifications and underlying processes that may lead to different versions of CSR. Therefore, this paper examines the practice and sense-making of CSR and business ethics from the (...) perspective of the fertile and under researched post-communist context of Central and Eastern Europe, to join the growing academic debate about the impact of cultural and historical traditions on the practice and sense-making of CSR and business ethics in non-Western contexts. The study adopts a particular focus on the post-communist and under researched context of Bulgaria where CSR is still a relatively new phenomenon. By following an exploratory research design and by collecting qualitative data from 34 executives employed by public and private sector organisations in Bulgaria, the study finds that the local business environment is composed of a complex mix of various institutionalised pressures and challenges that predispose organisations to adopt a particular approach to CSR, ethical misconduct and CSR-washing. Apart from the significant contributions related to the practice, understanding and contextualisation of CSR in non-Western countries, the study also identifies challenges of business ethics in transition economies and adds depth to the emerging literature on CSR-washing by proposing a model for neo-communist CSR-washing. The study also offers contributions for practitioners and policy-makers. (shrink)

Those who believe that they have special obligations to their community — to their family, state or nation, clan, tribe, or cultural group — often insist that they have duties not merely to present and future members. They also claim to have responsibilities to, or in respect to, their predecessors. David Miller, in his defence of ‘nationality,’ claims that the existence of a nation as a historical community is one of the features which make it ‘a community of obligation.’ (...) ‘“Because our forebears have toiled and spilt their blood to build and defend the nation, we who are born into it inherit an obligation to continue their work….’” Being a member of a nation, says Yael Tamir, requires individuals to keep faith with its history. Annette Baier thinks that if we fail to pass on our inherited public goods to our descendants we can be blamed not only for harming their interests but also for not carrying out the intentions of our forebears. (shrink)

This essay traces a Marxist notion of cultural heritage drawing on the work of twentieth-century thinkers Daniel Bensaïd and Ernst Bloch. Both authors, indeed, address the act of inheriting as a way of rethinking Marxism beyond determinist and teleological concepts of history. In particular, Bensaïd’s 1995 Marx for Our Times and a 1972 essay on cultural heritage by Ernst Bloch reimagine the handing-on of cultural inheritance as the political reactivation of untimely and non-synchronous survivals of past social formations. For (...) this reason, the heritage of Marx conveyed by these authors does not result in a nostalgic preservation of the past but in reviving unrealised possibilities of social transformation. In a comparative reading of Bensaïd and Bloch, the act of ‘inheriting Marx’ analysed in this essay hence formulates a de-commodifying conception of cultural heritage set against the violence of capital. (shrink)

An important historical relation that has hardly been addressed is the influence of Prosper Lucas's Treatise on Natural Inheritance on the development of Charles Darwin's concepts related to inheritance. In this article we trace this historical connection. Darwin read Lucas's Treatise in 1856. His reading coincided with many changes concerning his prior ideas on the transmission and expression of characters. We consider that this reading led him to propose a group of principles regarding prepotency, hereditary diseases, (...) morbid tendencies and atavism; following Lucas, he called these principles: laws of inheritance. (shrink)

The Beatitudes have long functioned as a cornerstone for spiritualities of nonviolence. In that tradition, this essay explores how active nonviolence, rooted in the hope of the third Matthean beatitude—“Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth”—can be understood as a response to the interrelated cries of the earth and the oppressed within history. To concretize the demands of a political ecology of nonviolence, the essay then examines how the legacies of Western extractive colonialism have shaped the contours (...) of the contemporary planetary emergency, an emergency that is social, cultural, economic, and ecological in nature. The essay concludes by considering how the practice of meekness, in response to the interrelated cries of the earth and the oppressed, might be lived out within the contemporary historical moment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How to Inherit a Kingdom:Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought*Russell Hittinger and Scott RonigerPrudenceIn 1890, in his Sapientiae Christianae, Pope Leo XIII wrote: "The political prudence of the Pontiff embraces diverse and multiform things, for it is his charge not only to rule the Church, but generally so to regulate the actions of Christian citizens that these may be in apt conformity to their hope of gaining (...) eternal salvation" (§37). The title of the encyclical means on principles of Christian practical wisdom, the truths concerning the pursuit in this life of our supernatural end. Leo was also referring to the regnative prudence of the pontifical office, directing citizens qua baptized. Even if the direction is about political morality, the prudential directives presuppose sanctifying grace and a supernatural end. In other words, such prudence is here proffered under the formality of the New Law.1In the concrete, directing those who have sanctifying grace to right [End Page 971] judgment and action regarding what belongs or does not belong to Caesar is not easily given or received. The lines and entanglements are contingent and fluid. At a consistory immediately after World War II, Pope Pius XII remarked that the triumph of democratic forms of government has at least one advantage: "The distinction between the Church and even the democratic State becomes increasingly clear."2 Divine providence includes two comprehensive communities, polity and ecclesia, which differ in their respective origin and end. In the thick of events, they are not always so clear. For the better part of two millennia, ecclesial and civil governments look very much alike from an institutional and sociological point of view. They share families, languages, costumes, arts and sciences, banks, moral principles, the same contemporary media—indeed, even sharing the same laws and international protocols. More than half of the European Union countries are under at least one concordat with the Holy See. Yet when we casually speak of "Church and state," it is easy to imagine two teams in the same order of things. Even so, Pius XII acknowledged that democratic government makes clear(er) that the first subject of the polity is the populus, the people, whereas the first subject of the ecclesia is the Holy Spirit.Beginning with Leo (1878–1903), pontifical prudence had to reckon with the benefits and challenges of representative governments. Whenever public responsibility is vested in the citizens, the baptized citizens bear a greater burden of distinguishing what properly belongs to the Church and to civil government. For in representative governments the citizens are not vassals or retainers of the king and his court. Therefore it falls more directly upon the people to understand the difference between Church and civil government.3Leo understood the world he inhabited. In Rerum Novarum (1891), he mused, "Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is" (§18). This marks an important change in papal letters after 1789. Christian wisdom has to be communicated not merely to Catholics who are subjects but also to Catholics who are citizens: in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, [End Page 972] and so on. Thus, Leo observed in an allocution two years after Sapientiae Christianae: "Faith embodied in the conscience of peoples rather than restoration of medieval institutions is the way to final victory."4As it turned out, Leo's greatest problem was the French Church and the Third Republic, which became more aggressively laicist with every passing decade, even though it was still under the 1801 concordat signed by Napoleon and Pius VII. For Leo, much was at stake, chiefly the law of divorce, which had been excised from the Napoleonic Code. Born in 1810, Leo had seen the historical events: the captivity of Pope Pius VII and then his release by the French, the demise of Napoleon, the loss of the papal states (the longest continuous temporal government in western Europe, until the summer of 1870), and Otto von Bismarck's Kulturkampf. He possessed those chief parts of prudence: memory, foresight, circumspection, and above all caution!Writing to the French Church in 1892, he observed that:Founded by Him who was, who is, and who... (shrink)

At least since the seventeenth century, the strange combination of epistemological certainty and ontological power that characterizes mathematics has made it a major focus of philosophical, social, and cultural negotiation. In the eighteenth century, all of these factors were at play as mathematical thinkers struggled to assimilate and extend the analysis they had inherited from the seventeenth century. A combination of educational convictions and historical assumptions supported a humanistic mathematics essentially defined by its flexibility and breadth. This mathematics was (...) an expression of l’esprit humain, which was unfolding in a progressive historical narrative. The French Revolution dramatically altered the historical and educational landscapes that had supported this eighteenth‐century approach, and within thirty years Augustin Louis Cauchy had radically reconceptualized and restructured mathematics to be rigorous rather than narrative. (shrink)

Science’s theory of evolution purports to explain life and its historical dynamics in a physics/material-only fashion. But this entails a broad reliance on DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) for inheritance (and thus blueprints), which appears to be implausible for a number of unusual innate behaviors. The immediate unfolding challenge, though, is that the inheritance role is conveniently testable via searches for the DNA origins of a number of human behavioral and health tendencies, and despite enormous efforts those searches have (...) thus far largely failed (i.e., the “absolutely beyond belief” missing heritability problem). This existing case for DNA’s inadequacies will be briefly reviewed herein. The subsequent main analysis considers some big challenges facing DNA associated with some evolutionary dynamics—the acquisition of color vision in primates; instinctive behaviors including the egg-laying practices of emerald jewel wasps; kin selection; and our natural religious beliefs. Together these challenges strongly suggest that the acceptance of DNA as the (complete) language of life was premature. The haphazard and ambiguous nature of DNA/genetic specifications is very unlikely to have provided a vehicle for the exacting blueprints required for the many instinctive behaviors or capacities. Life appears to be more complex than biologists believe. Two possible alternative explanations are briefly considered in the wake of these discussions. Finally, does anyone—beginning with academics—care about this unfolding foundational failure? (shrink)

Proponents of precision medicine envision that digital phenotyping can enable more individualized strategies to manage current and future health conditions. We problematize the interpretation of digital phenotypes as straightforward representations of individuals through examples of what we call data inheritance. Rather than being a digital copy of a presumed original, digital phenotypes are shaped by larger data collectives that precede and continuously change how the individual is represented. We contend that looking beyond the individual is crucial for understanding the (...) factors that can ‘bend’ digital mirrors in specific directions. Since algorithms used for digital profiling are based on historical data, their predictions often inherit and increase the values and perspectives of past data practices. Moreover, the data legacies we leave behind today may return as so-called ‘data phantoms’ that conflict with the interests of the individual and contest who and what the ‘original’ is. (shrink)

Historically, it is safe to say that very few laws did as much to stoke inequality as laws touching descents and hereditary transmissions. This paper attempts to see if the classical liberal tradition can endorse inheritance taxation so as to further fair equality of opportunity, as well as to lessen inequality of undeserved wealth. It argues that fair equality of opportunity is a necessary feature of market societies to make sure that they remain competitive. Hence, inheritance taxation is (...) most likely necessary from a classical liberal point of view as an instrument of social mobility to counter notable problems of social immobility, say hereditary vocational stratification, which a system of private property rights creates. (shrink)

The article analyses, in a comparative perspective, the phenomenon of the evolution of the protection of surviving spouse’s inheritance rights in France and Lithuania, the two legal systems historically having some points of interaction. The protection of the surviving spouse is one of the major preoccupations of married couples of today, the couple occupying a central role within the contemporary family. Comparative analysis reveals certain points of convergence between these two legal systems inasmuch the surviving spouse is considered by (...) both legislations as an heir ab intestat and whose protection over the years has been considerably strengthened. The surviving spouse is called to inherit alongside with the heirs of the first or second order and is entitled to the proportions in assets that have not ceased to increase. Lithuanian law seems to have been innovative at an earlier stage than French law, as it is only in the beginning of the 21st century that significant reforms were carried out in this area of law in France. Analysis has also revealed apparent differences in the scope of protection of the surviving spouse, both in regards to the protection provided by law (statutory protection), as well as protection organised by the will of the spouses (voluntary protection). In some respects the statutory protection is more extensive in France (for example, complementary statutory rights of the spouse in regards to the dwelling place or the quality of héritier réservataire) and the instruments of this protection seem to be more varied (for example, the possibility for the spouses to organise their matrimonial regime by inserting specific clauses into the nuptial contract, mechanisms outside the nuptial contracts, such as donations, wills or life insurance contracts). However, this protection might appear to be more extensive under Lithuanian law as far as the voluntary protection is concerned taking into account the introduction, by the new Lithuanian Civil Code of 2000, of the joint will of spouses under which the whole property of the deceased spouse shall be inherited by the surviving spouse (except the mandatory share of succession). The article raises some doubts as to the desirability or even feasibility of aligning the two models of protection given the fact that each of the two countries has its own history and traditions. Nevertheless, a proposition resurges from the analysis in regard to the possible improvement of the protection of the rights to the dwelling place of the surviving spouse under Lithuanian law. Some elements from the existing French model could be transposed given that the dwelling place is an essential family element providing some stability for the surviving spouse. (shrink)

The career-texts of Kant, Schelling, and Peirce unfolded in historical sequence to form a paradigm progression in philosophical modernity. To wit, Kant’s third Critique’s reflective synthesis of foundational concepts of nature and freedom opened a speculative path for a landmark line of development in Schelling’s later-phase metaphysical empiricism which, in turn, conveyed a decisive provenance for Peirce’s articulation of indecomposable categories of epistemology, cosmology, and ontological semeiosis. Peirce’s categoriology reconfigured certain theoretical implications of Schelling’s Investigation into the Essence of (...) Human Freedom and The Grounding of the Positive Philosophy in his later-phase trajectory of postulating an energetic reasonableness in the nature of things. (shrink)

Historically, it is safe to say that very few laws did as much to stoke inequality as laws touching descents and hereditary transmissions. This paper attempts to see if the classical liberal tradition can endorse inheritance taxation so as to further fair equality of opportunity, as well as to lessen inequality of undeserved wealth. It argues that fair equality of opportunity is a necessary feature of market societies to make sure that they remain competitive. Hence, inheritance taxation is (...) most likely necessary from a classical liberal point of view as an instrument of social mobility to counter notable problems of social immobility, say hereditary vocational stratification, which a system of private property rights creates. (shrink)

W. Dilthey’s program of “criticism of historical reason” was formed in a polemic with the legacy of I. Kant on the basis of transcendental reflection of the data of descriptive psychology. It was focused on understanding the radical difference between the sciences of the spirit and the sciences of nature. Starting from a critical rethinking of Kant's legacy within the boundaries of his own version of the academic philosophy of life, Dilthey began to talk about the fact that the (...) reason, directing the cognitive activity of the subject, is characterized, first of all, not by the theoretical “purity”, but by its involvement in the “open” flow of history, which it gives meaning and sense through language. It interacts with historical experience, which arises through the synthesis of actual events perception in the time flow and memory images with real categories and concepts constructed by the intellect of the human subject. The ability to judge what is happening in history, its assessment in a humanistic perspective, is also considered by Dilthey as inseparable from the work of historical reason. The reason involved in the flow of time and life cannot be a carrier of theoretical “purity” and acts as inherently hermeneutic in its nature. Dilthey presented an interesting analysis of the main levels of hermeneutical procedure - emotional perception, expression and understanding, aimed at comprehension of the diversity of spiritual and cultural worlds in synchrony and diachrony of their existence. Denying the possibility of comprehending the meaning and sense of history by constructing substantialist schemes, he asserted the importance of narrative representation of the past in the light of the present. Dilthey's project of “criticism of historical reason” was based on the idea of the “openness” of the meaning of the past, due to its rootedness in the very way of human existence in time. This idea was inherited and further developed in the horizon of the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger and other contemporary thinkers of hermeneutical orientation. (shrink)

Resumen: Durante la década del sesenta, la revista Movie hereda de Cahiers du cinéma las preferencias por la politique des auteurs y por cierto cine norteamericano. No obstante, sin abandonar esa predilección por un “cine de directores”, a lo largo de su trayectoria la revista británica intentará desarrollar un riguroso método de análisis formal a través de detallados close readings de los films. Algunos de sus integrantes buscan aplicar al cine los planteos de F. R. Leavis y la revista Scrutiny (...) a propósito de la crítica literaria. Es esta modulación analítica la que será puesta en cuestión con el auge del estructuralismo y el posestructurailsmo a los que se asocia la revista Screen en los años 70.: During the sixties, the journal Movie inherits from Cahiers du cinéma the preferencies for a politique des auteurs and for certain american films. However, never abandoning this tendency towards a “cinema of directors”, the british journal develops a rigorous method of formal analysis and detailed close readings. Some of its members try to apply to cinema the concepts elaborated by F. R. Leavis and the journal Scrutiny in reference to literary criticism. It is precisely this analytic method that will be questioned during the boom of structuralism and post structuralism to which the journal Screen will be asociated in the 70s. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the kind of historical understanding presupposed in the writing of classical Chinese Ch'an Buddhist "transmission" narratives and places this historical understanding into comparative juxtaposition with modern Western historiographic practice. It finds that fundamental to Chinese Ch'an historical awareness are genealogical metaphors structuring historical time and meaning in terms of generations of family relations and the practices of inheritance. These metaphors link the Ch'an historian to the texts of historical study in ways (...) that contrast with the posture of modern historians. The essay outlines four basic differences between the self-understanding presupposed in Ch'an Buddhist historical writing and that assumed in modern historical research and concludes by suggesting how contemporary historical thinking might benefit from reflection on these differences. (shrink)

Ours are Days of Decision and it's indispensable to transform our technics. For it, we must abandon the inherited conception of technics based on neutrality and autonomy. To this end, in this article we develop a socio-historical ontology for technics that argues: (a) To understand technics we have to take into consideration technical objects, handling, and the degree of guidance of the animal user. (b) Each technics is inseparable from its society. (c) The idea of a free use of (...) technics is illusory. There are always unexpected impacts and various uses of a given technics. (d) Technologies of the Capitalocene are imperial. (e) Technologies have acquired a destructive inertia and we have the obligation to understand technological development as a political phenomenon. (f) In order to go beyond the Capitalocene and advance towards Degrowth, we have to move from imperial technologies to humble technics. (shrink)

The paper proves that a historical method in Marxism is not identified to a dialectical method. The logic of history and the logic of its analysis in Marxism do not always coincide. The Logical coincides with the Historical only in eternity as it actually occurs in the works by G.V.F. Hegel. Eternity which has already witnessed everything does not know history any more. In the same way, history also begins there where the eternity comes to an end. Therefore, (...) artificial identification of the Logical with the Historical in Marxism led sometimes to actual mistakes. It is no wonder that it has always caused discussions in Marxism. They are mainly explained by the fact that the deductive, abstract-to-concrete method in which the “General” appears before the “Concrete” is an anti-historical method in its Nature. In real human history the “General” which is generalization of many “Concrete” could not appear before the latter in any way. For this reason, the real historical materialism needs an inductive method of knowledge. Only in that case historical materialism will cease to remain the soviet “histmat” and becomes the real form of a new world outlook. The author is of the opinion that the Party spirit of the Soviet philosophy promoted preservation of the anomalies mentioned in Marxism. The open discussion could help to find valid but not inherited from Hegel relation of historical and logical methods in Marxism. (shrink)

In the light of contemporary allelopathic research, the intuitively based statements of the early botanists stand up surprisingly well. The walnut tree is now understood to affect the growth of neighboring plants via juglone leached from the leaves, roots, and fruits.118 The replant or soil sickness problem of peach orchards has been related to the toxigenic breakdown of amygdalin, a constituent of peach roots.119 The declining yield of many crop species grown under continuous monoculture has been linked to the accumulation (...) of allelopathic substances in the soil, especially through the mediation of microorganisms.120 Numerous plants cited by de Candolle as being injurious, such as Erigeron,121 thistle (Cirsium),122 flax (Linum),123 and various crucifers (such as Brassica nigra),124 have been found to posses marked allelopathic activity. Over fifty years before the discovery of rhizobia, de Candolle considered the excretory material of legumes to be beneficial to cereals.125Modern reviews of allelopathy commonly credit de Candolle with an insight that was not equaled by the technology of his era.126 In fairness to his detractors, his toxin theory of plant interactions was largely the by-product of an outdated and misconstrued notion of plant nutrition. His critics and most earlier botanists had similarly erred in seeking a single factor responsible for plant growth, much as had the alchemists sought the legendary philosopher's stone. Taking all this into account and considering the forceful personality of Liebig, one can readily appreciate how, 130 years ago, Liebig's theories preempted and stifled those of de Candolle.Today, with modern techniques of plant physiology and soil biochemistry, allelopathy has been shown to be a real but subtle factor in the dynamics of natural and agricultural plant communities. It is unfortunate that the single-mindedness characteristic of previous centuries still persists. The dichotomy between allelopathy and competition is exacerbated by the inherited bias toward the nutritional model of plant interaction fostered by Liebig, and is accentuated in the fact that in modern nutritional studies it is still basically unnecessary to consider plant-plant chemical interactions and their concomitant effects, whereas in allelopathic investigations the converse is regarded as axiomatic.In summary, de Candolle should not be seen as “a prophet crying in the wilderness,” as Fisher would have it.127 The bases of de Candolle's concept of allelopathy were the dubious experiments of Macaire and his own obsolete theory of plant nutrition. Despite this, modern experimental work indicates that allelopathy is important in many plant interactions. De Candolle seems to have been right, at least in part—but for the wrong reasons. (shrink)

The comfort women case in South Korea has been a polemic issue in the context of inherited responsibility. The Japanese government who emphasizes on state as an agent for taking the responsibility tends either to deny collective responsibility of historic wrongdoings or to limit the scope of its roles to superficial ways such as reparation. Meanwhile South Korea demands not only reparation but official apology, emotional compassion, and material compensation on the ground that nation, not state, should be accountable for (...) historic injustice, but this claim still encounters a difficulty of application to cases originated in multinational countries. Based on these observations, I will develop two arguments: (1) that reciprocal nondomination conceptualized with civic responsibility will better the comfort women case in the context of inherited responsibility because this contains full ground of deliberation in which those who come from regardless of state or nation can participate; (2) that reciprocal nondomination embodied with civic responsibility can be operated as a regulative principle which prompts both victims and wrongdoers to have their deliberative stances and to reach an agreement conducive to transitional justice. (shrink)

Basic characteristic of Islamic heritage law, principally it has accepted the two-to-one ratio between the male and the female children/siblings in division of heritage. In Islamic inheritance law, the main/basic reason why the share of the male is twice the share of the female is no “value” judgments given to female/women in creation and gender in Islam, on the contrary, are real realities related with the roles and financial obligations that man and woman have undertaken, in other words, related (...) with “socio-economic structure/fact” in the family and society structure foreseen by Islam. As a matter of fact, “need principle” is based on in division and succession of heritageand a fair arrangement has been made in accordance with the rights and responsibilities of the husband and wife in Islamic Law. In some classical tafsīr books, the concept of “degree” in the verse “... Men have a degree (right) over women” (Al-Baqara 2/228) mentioning the mutual rights and responsibilities of women and men; and the expression of “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” in the verse –the inheritance of man is the share of two women– (Al-Nisā 4/11) mentioning the inheritance shares of boys and girls is interpreted against the woman by disregarding the intended purpose and socio-economic contexts of these verses. As a result of this interpretation, the share of men in inheritance is twice the share of women in Islamic law is ontologically (existential/creation) based on a justification that “man is superior to woman”. In this article/study, an analyticallook atthe interpretations in some classical tafsīr books on the axis of “daraja/degree” and “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” that today sheds light on the sociological-historical background of depriving the daughter from the heritage will be made. Summary: Just as there is no way to determine a person’s sex, it is not either possible by reason to have such an opportunity. - With the possibility of medical intervention nowadays - sex is determined by the discretion of the Supreme Creator rather than will. Indeed, it is mentioned in the Qur’ān: To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth; He creates what he wills. He gives to whom He wills female [children], and He gives to whom He wills males (Al-Shūrā 42/49.)In addition to human biological sex, there is also social gender. Indeed, the term “sex” refers to being biologically female or male, while the term "gender" refers to the social and cultural identity of a woman or man, or the social roles that occur in the historical process.Accordingly, while it is not possible to determine biological sex (in normal circumstances in advance), determining gender is shaped by the cultural will of individuals and societies. As a matter of fact, gender is shaped according to the religions, customs and cultures of the societies and it shows differences according to time, culture and family structure. In this context, in the pre-Islamic Arab society, the gender of the girl or the woman was shaped by the custom of the ritual and customs. Indeed, it is a known fact that during the period of Jahiliyyah, in terms of social gender, the girl/woman has been deprived of many social and economic rights, especially heritage. The Qur’ān has brought the girls who, in the period of Jahiliyyah, were oppressed in terms of gender, deprived of many social and economical rights, treated as second class human, embarrassed of themselves and buried alive, to the same position as man. In this context, as it is in every field in the direction of social structure and social conditions of that day, also in the field of inheritance law, a number of regulations were made in the Qur’ān and the Sunnah being the main sources of Islam. The divisions of the inheritance were connected with religious and legal rules and the shares of the inheritance of the sons and daughters were determined by naṣṣ (verses and hadiths).However, in Islamic inheritance law, as a requirement of the structure of family and society accepted by Islam, in principle, “two-to-one” measures have been adopted between male and female children. As a matter of fact, in this aspect, it is mentioned in the Qur’ān: Allah instructs you concerning your children: for the male, what is equal to the share of two females (Al-Nisā 4/11.)On one hand, the principle that Islamic law brings between boys and girls; Seems to be an inequality in terms of the arrangement in which "the inheritance share of the male child is twice the share of the female child", while on the other hand, within the border of in the family foreseen by Islam, this regulation has not been seen as an injustice and inequity by Muslim societies, because in Islamic family law, a man is obliged to ensure the livelihood of the family after marriage. He is also obliged to give his wife her mahr when marrying.In Islamic inheritance law, “necessity principle” is taken as the basis of responsibility that women and man have undertaken in family and society. Therefore, even though giving nothing at all to those who are not in need and giving less to those who are in less need, giving too much to those who are in much need might seem contrary to the principle of equality, it is a necessity of the principle of justice and fairness. As a matter of fact, while "law equality, necessity in sharing" principle, law is arranged according to people's qualifications, goods and wealth sharing is divided according to the needs of people. In this context, there has been a fair division in Islamic heritage law based on the necessity, (distributive) justice and fairness principle. Indeed, the French philosopher Roger Garaudy (1913-2012), who chose /converted to Islam, evaluates the following about the proportion of male child in the Qur'an to that of female child: “When we consider that in the Arab society all the obligations of the family and of the care of the parents and of all the things that we call ‘social security’ today are put on the shoulders of the husband, the hereditary male child's share must be twice as high as the female child’s is”.As Garaudy argues, the difference in the inheritance of women and men in Islamic inheritance law is not a legal discrimination/inequality, but a form of divisiveness stemming from a need based on the role and responsibility that women and men have undertaken in the family and society. Therefore, giving nothing to those who need nothing, giving little to those who need little, and giving a lot to those who need a lot,even though may seem contradictious to the principle of equality, it becomes a necessity of equity and (distributive) justice principle. In this case, in Islamic inheritance law, the basic reason why the share of the male child is twice the share of the female child, is social and economic reasons and it is possible to rank them as follows:1) According to Islamic law, women are not obliged to make their own economic livelihoods. The woman’s economic responsibility belongs to her father or brothers before marriage, and then to her husband after marriage. 2) When a woman is married she is not responsible for herself or other family members’ livelihood. The male is obliged to make a living for himself, his wife and his children.3) While married, the male is obliged to give the wife mahr. The woman has no such responsibility.As it is understood from the above explanations, in Islamic inheritance law, the basic reason why the share of the male child is twice the share of the female child is not about the ontologically “value” based on creation and sex given to the woman (girl child) in Islam. On the contrary, it is the real facts concerning the family and society structure that Islam predicts, the roles and financial obligations that man and woman have undertaken, namely “socio-economic structure/fact”.In some commentaries in classical commentary books, the rights and responsibilities of women and men are referred to, like: the word “degree” mentioned in: …but the men have a degree over them [in responsibility and authority (Al-Baqara 2/228), and the talk about the inheritance shares of boys and girls in: for the male, what is equal to the share of two females (Al-Nisā 4/11). Eventually, the concepts “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” have been associated with the gender of the woman/girl child ontologically (based on social fact) by ignoring the referent purpose and socio-economic contexts of these verses. As a result of these interpretations, it was desired that the Islamic law principle of inheritance share of male child being twice the share of female child, ontologically, should be based on a justification that “man is superior to woman”.In this study, some of the era’s dominant culture classical interpretations grounding women's inheritances share on her gender and based on the axis of the concepts of "degree" and “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” in the related verses of the Qur'ān will be elaborated. (shrink)

This book presents a study of the nature and conditions of historical knowledge, conducted through a study of the relevant theories of Hume, Hegel and Vico. It is usually thought that in order to establish historical facts, we have to have a theory of human nature to support our arguments. Hume, Hegel and Vico all subscribed to this view, and are therefore discussed in detail. Professor Pompa goes on to argue that there is in fact no way of (...) discovering anything about human nature except through historical investigation. It is necessary therefore to find a different way of thinking about how we discover historical facts. This is done in the last chapter where, in opposition to almost all present views, it is argued that we must have a framework of inherited knowledge before we can believe in anything which results from historical enquiry. (shrink)

Elsewhere I have argued that the most significant threat to scientific realism arises from what I call the problem of unconceived alternatives: the repeated failure of past scientists and scientific communities to even conceive of alternatives to extant scientific theories, even when such alternatives were both (1) well-confirmed by the evidence available at the time and (2) sufficiently scientifically serious as to be actually embraced in the course of further investigation. In this paper I explore Francis Galton’s development and defense (...) of his “stirp” theory of inheritance and conclude that this particular historical example offers impressive support for the challenge posed by the problem of unconceived alternatives while simultaneously showing how we can make that challenge deeper and sharper. (shrink)

To say Early Confucians advocated the possession of a sense of shame as a means to moral virtue underestimates the tact and forethought they used successfully to mold natural dispositions to experience shame into a system of self, familial, and social governance. Shame represents an adaptive system of emotion, cognition, perception, and behavior in social primates for measurement of social rank. Early Confucians understood the utility of the shame system for promotion of cooperation, and they build and deploy cultural modules (...) – e.g., rituals, titles, punishments – with this in mind. These policies result in subtle alterations to components of the evolved shame system that are detectable in data form contemporary cross-cultural psychology that show that populations in the Confucian diaspora have a unique shame profile compared to Western and non-Western populations. The status of Confucian diaspora populations as outliers in the context of shame is partially explained by appeal to the cultural transmission and historical endurance of relevant Early Confucian cultural modules. (shrink)

This study investigated how Paul’s Jewish background, including some elements of pre-rabbinical Jewish literature, influenced the letter to the Galatians with regard to the concept of adoption (υἱοθεσία) (Gl 4:1–7). As Paul was writing to a Gentile audience, wanting to persuade them to return to the true gospel, metaphors of adoption, embedded in the understanding of the Graeco-Roman household, became effective communication bridges to reach his audience. Within this framework, Israel’s God was depicted as the caring father of the household, (...) who through his son Jesus Christ redeems all human beings from the status of slaves to that of children with full rights of inheritance. Contribution: God’s redemption is not merely a forensic sense of justification but also the imagery of relationship in the household by which God does not merely set one free from sin by securing us through Jesus Christ into the society of the righteous, but also adopts us into his family. (shrink)

The article focuses on Kurt Vonnegut’s lesser-known and underappreciated 1987 novel Bluebeard, which is analyzed and interpreted in the light of Marianne Hirsch’s seminal theory of postmemory. Even though it was published prior to Hirsch’s formulation of the concept, Vonnegut’s novel intuitively anticipates it, problematizing the implications of inherited, second-hand memory. To further complicate matters, Rabo Karabekian, the protagonist-narrator of Bluebeard, a World War II veteran, amalgamates his direct, painful memories with those of his parents, survivors of the Armenian Genocide. (...) Both the novel and the theory applied to it centre on the problematics of historical and personal trauma, engendered by two genocides which are often the object of comparative analyses: the Armenian Genocide, also referred to as the Armenian Holocaust, and the Jewish Holocaust. The latter is central to Hirsch’s interdisciplinary work in the field of memory studies, encompassing literature, the visual arts and gender studies. In Bluebeard, Vonnegut holds to account a humanity responsible for the atrocities of twentieth-century history: two world wars and two genocides for which they respectively established the context. The article examines the American writer’s reflection on death and violence, man’s destructive impulse and annihilation. In a world overshadowed by memories of mass extermination, Vonnegut interrogates the possibility of a new beginning, pointing to women as agents of renewal and sociopolitical change. He also identifies the role that art plays in the process of potential reconstruction, the story of Karabekian, a failed artist and highly successful art collector, being a Künstlerroman with a feminist edge. (shrink)

Enlightenment thought and its contemporary followers usually support two contradictory principles simultaneously. The first is universality. Truth is universal because it is truth for all. Claims to universality are made in logic and science, but also in areas that are culturally or politically controversial. Recently, universalism has become a key term to express a fundamental critique of identity politics. For much of European history, Christianity provided such a universal truth. But with the decline of its cultural hegemony and the rise (...) of particular nation-states, conflicting truth claims became weapons in violent conflicts, leading Hobbes to argue that dangerous truth claims must be neutralized by robust political power. In the eighteenth century, rationalism became more optimistic, interpreting universalism as cosmopolitanism based on universal reason and progress through history. The second principle is historicism, which is the self-reflexive look at the historical origins of universal claims and theories. Historicism emerged in the nineteenth century as a response to the application of rationalism to history. It challenged the universal claims of the French Revolution, emphasizing instead the unique value of each historical entity. This revealed a fundamental paradox: when universalism becomes self-reflexive, it recognizes that it has non-universal historical origins, thereby undermining itself. After the devastation of World War II and the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) represented a significant effort toward a new universalism. It sought to establish human rights as universal principles for the emerging world order. But history repeated itself: Historicism once again weakened confidence in human rights. The enemies of human rights take advantage of this weakness. We therefore have to live with the paradox that universalism is necessary because humanity shares a single world, but that historical self-reflection is also unavoidable. In other words, the Enlightenment principle of universalism must accept historicism as an integral part of itself. (shrink)

This paper argues that a particular philosophical and historical understanding of Ancient Greek thought is used to establish a superior Western identity of universal prevalence. Starting with the terminological differences between ethnocentrism and Eurocentrism, I then reconstruct the rise of Eurocentrism by examining the changing conceptualizations of Greeks and Barbarians in Ancient texts from Homer to Aristotle. The third section explores how Western historians of philosophy and culture have used this Greek self-understanding to legitimate the view of Western cultural (...) superiority based on universalism. Finally, I discuss several possibilities to counter this form of Eurocentric Western identity-politics. (shrink)

Two welcome extensions of evolutionary thinking have come to prominence over the last thirty years: the so-called ’extended evolutionary synthesis’ (EES) and debate about biological kinds and individuals. These two agendas have, however, remained orthogonal to one another. The EES has mostly restricted itself to widening the explanations of adaptation offered by the preceding ’modern evolutionary synthesis’ by including additional mechanisms of inheritance and variation; while discussion of biological kinds has turned toward philosophical questions of essential vs. contingent properties (...) of life forms and realist vs. epistemological approaches to categorization and classification. Here we attempt to broaden the explanatory scope of evolutionary theory by linking these two agendas. We expand on the mechanistic orientation of the EES, using new understandings of networked systems of components in order to engage the distinct intellectual challenge of the origination of “historical kinds”. With this phrase we designate a subset of natural kinds that acquires, through evolutionary processes, a quasi-independent lineage-history. Such kinds emerge in both biology and culture, and we enlarge the limited number of historical kinds that have thus far been recognized in evolutionary biology in a series of paradigmatic exemplars, from genes and cell types to rituals and music. For each exemplar we discern specific mechanisms by which it arose and persists; comparing these, we suggest a general unity in the ways in which diverse historical kinds originate. (shrink)

Prior to the genomic sequencing era, the bible for those working in clinical genetics was McKusick’s Mendelian Inheritance in Man, which appeared in multiple editions between the 1960s and the late 1990s. This catalogue was organized according to general patterns of inheritance and focused on phenotypes. Beginning in the mid-1980s, it was replaced by Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, a continuously updated catalogue documenting molecular relationships between genetic variation and phenotypic expression. This paper explores this resource’s evolution (...) with attention to how disease is distinguished from clinically irrelevant variation and how phenotypic similarities are captured in cases where there is no obvious genotypic association. It is argued that hybrid compromises are encoded into OMIM®; in addition to serving its key original purpose of being a diagnostic catalogue, it also began to record detectable variations in the genome even if they were not known to be associated with phenotypically visible disorders or even phenotypic variations. Although the impacts of geneticization have been well recognized, particularly in popular media, this example allows exploration of some of the historic, epistemic, and methodological causes that underlie tendencies toward disease geneticization in contemporary medicine, while highlighting that such gene-focused strategies may in fact be warranted in some contexts. (shrink)

Language was at the heart of philosophical inquiry for Plato and Aristotle, and in contemporary discussion it is no less central. In addition to the history of philosophy’s extensive investigations of language, analytic and continental philosophy too have focused intensively on the matter. But since most inquiries into language remain enclosed in their own methodology, terminology, and tradition, the multiplicity of approaches is often accompanied by their mutual isolation. This book shows, however, that these traditions can speak meaningfully to each (...) other on language: rather than preventing dialogue, their differences provide opportunities for fruitful inquiry. -/- The essays in this volume each treat a central topic in the contemporary study of language. Part One addresses how expression determines thought according to Humboldt, the use of paraphrase in Quine’s semantic ascent, and the non-ambiguity of the Frege-Russell senses of ‘is.’ Part Two includes treatments of the possibility and impossibility of promising in Nietzsche, and Derrida’s re-working of Saussure’s distinction between language and world. Topics in Part Three include the origin and end of language for Heidegger and Foucault, and the mutual sharpening of logic and ordinary speech in Anselm. -/- This book fills a gap in current scholarship by bringing together nine essays that, through rejecting the debilitating yet often unquestioned divisions between disciplines, are able to illuminate the fundamental nature of language. -/- Contributors: Jaakko Hintikka, Jo-Jo Koo, Geoffrey Bennington, Sarah Hansen, JohnChristopher Adorno Keller, Vernon Cisney, Alina Beary, Jeffrey Golub, Eileen Sweeney -/- In each part of this thought-provoking volume on the nature of language, there are essays that demonstrate the immense intellectual potential of writing that refuses to see any decisive distinction between the present of philosophy and its history, or between the ways in which Kant’s work has been inherited in Anglo-American and Franco-German traditions. —Stephen Mulhall, New College, Oxford University -/- With its robust range of complementary topics, each subjected to penetrating examination, this collection of essays makes a welcome contribution to the philosophy of language, past and present. —Daniel Dahlstrom, Boston University -/- The contributions to this impressive volume ignore traditional divides between “analytic” and “continental,” historical and systematic philosophy. This enables the authors to put a number of key issues in the philosophy of language into a striking new light…. Fully accessible to the advanced undergraduate in philosophy, the book also contains many provocative ideas for the specialist. —Martin Kusch, University of Cambridge -/- TABLE OF CONTENTS | INTRODUCTION -/- On Speech and Language, Mark Sentesy, Boston College -/- Structure and Overview of This Volume, Jon Burmeister, Boston College -/- PART ONE: HOW DO WE THINK WHAT WE ARE SAYING? -/- The Expressivist Conception of Language and World: Humboldt and the Charge of Linguistic Idealism and Relativism, Jo-Jo Koo, University of Pittsburgh -/- What Can We Learn About Language From Thinking About Philosophy? JohnChristopher Adorno Keller, University of Notre Dame -/- It All Depends On What ‘Is’ Is: A Brief History (And Theory) Of Being, Jaakko Hintikka, Boston University -/- PART TWO: HOW DOES LANGUAGE WORK IN THE WORLD? -/- The Ironic Stance and the Limitations of Philosophy, Jeffrey A. Golub, New School for Social Research -/- Nietzsche’s Scandalous Body and the Promise of Metaphor, Sarah Hansen, Vanderbilt University -/- The Limits of My Language, Geoffrey Bennington, Emory University -/- PART THREE: CAN WE SPEAK ABOUT EVERYTHING? -/- Gathering and Contestation: The Place of Silence in Heidegger and Foucault, Vernon Cisney, Purdue University -/- Religious Language in Jacques Derrida, Alina Beary, Criswell College -/- The Asymmetry Between Language and Being: The Case of Anselm, Eileen Sweeney, Boston College . (shrink)

This book offers an interpretation of the rise of secular historical thought in nineteenth-century Europe. Instead of characterizing 'historicism' and 'secularization' as fundamental breaks with Europe's religious heritage, they are presented as complex cultural permutations with much continuity; for inherited theological patterns of interpreting experience determined to a large degree the conditions, possibilities, and limitations of the forms of historical imagination realizable by nineteenth-century secular intellectuals. This point is made by examining the thought of the German theologian W. (...) M. L. de Wette and that of the Swiss-German historian Jacob Burckhardt. Burckhardt's meeting with de Wette and his subsequent decision to study history over theology are interpreted as revealing moments in nineteenth-century intellectual history. By examining their encounter, its larger historical context, and the thought of both men, the book demonstrates the centrality of theological concerns and forms of knowledge in the emergence of modern, secular historical consciousness. (shrink)

A pesar de que los historiadores han considerado frecuentemente que el conocimiento histórico moderno surge como contraparte a la filosofía de la historia y el positivismo, en la idea tradicional de narración la herencia de la filosofía dialéctica de Hegel es recurrente: en ambos casos, el devenir de la auto-constitución del ser determina el método de conocimiento. Hegel afirma que las fases de la lógica no son solamente condiciones trascendentales que hacen posible la experiencia, sino etapas en la auto-determinación del (...) Espíritu. Ranke sostiene que la narración es el método histórico apropiado debido a que la historia misma posee una estructura narrativa. Desde la década de 1970, esta idea de narración experimenta una crisis. Nuestra hipótesis es que las perspectivas predominantes de este concepto utilizadas actualmente por historiadores y teóricos de la historia corresponden a las principales posturas del pensamiento filosófico contemporáneo: la narración como modelo analítico, la narración como competencias del discurso práctico, la narración como mecanismo de legitimación, la narración sin estructura y la narración como necesidad transcultural. Despite the fact that historians have often considered that modern historical knowledge originates in opposition to philosophy of history and positivism, in the traditional idea of narration the inheritance of Hegel's dialectical philosophy is recurrent: in both cases, the becoming of the self-constitution of the Being determines the knowledge method. Hegel asseverates that phases of logic are not only transcendental conditions that make possible the experience, but stages in the self-determination of Spirit. Ranke affirms that narration is the historical appropriate method due to the fact that the history itself possesses a narrative structure. Since 1970's, this idea of narration undergoes a crisis. Our hypothesis is that the prevalent perspectives of this concept, used at present by historians and theorists of history, correspond to the principal positions of contemporary philosophical thought: narration as an analytic model, narration as condition of practical discourse, narration as a function of legitimation, narration without structure. (shrink)

Building on the unpublished correspondence between Ludwig Wittgenstein's literary executors Rush Rhees, Elizabeth Anscombe and Georg Henrik von Wright, this paper sketches the historical development of different editorial approaches to Wittgenstein's Nachlass. Using the metaphor of a ladder, it is possible to distinguish seven significant “rungs” or “steps” in the history of editing Wittgenstein's writings. The paper focuses particularly on the first four rungs, elucidating how Rhees, Anscombe and von Wright developed different editorial approaches that resulted in significant differences (...) in their editions. The paper sheds light on how these editorial differences are grounded in the editors' divergent understandings of their task. It is suggested that future research may investigate the development of editorial approaches to Wittgenstein's Nachlass as a human story of philosophical inheritance. (shrink)