This volume focuses on cosmological and cosmogonical concepts in hermetic writings and studies their syncretistic origins, subject matter and impact from an interdisciplinary perspective. In doing so, it incorporates articles from various fields of research and academic disciplines.

Drawing on philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, biology, and theology, Stevenson introduces readers to the endlessly fascinating subject of human nature. He outlines background theories of the universe, basic approaches to human nature, diagnoses of what is wrong with humankind and prescriptions for putting it right while offering clear, critical analyses of the ideas of Plato, Christianity, Karl Marx, Freud, Sartre, Skinner, and Lorenz. Including completely revised and updated bibliographies, the second edition also provides a new interdisciplinary final chapter suggesting areas (...) of further inquiry. (shrink)

In this book, leading Christian political thinkers and practitioners critique the Rawlsian concepts of “justice as fairness” and “public reason” from the perspective of Christian political theory and practice. It provides a new level of analysis from Christian perspectives, including implications for such hot topics as the culture war.

Lucid and accessible, Twelve Theories of Human Nature compresses into a manageable space the essence of religious traditions such as Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Jewish Scriptures, the Christian New Testament, and Islam, as well as the philosophical theories of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Sartre, and the would-be scientific accounts of human nature by Marx, Freud, and Darwin and his successors.

The second edition of this exceptional anthology provides an introduction to a wide variety of views on human nature. Drawing from diverse cultures over three millennia, Leslie Stevenson has chosen selections ranging from ancient religious texts to contemporary theories based on evolutionary science. An ideal companion to the editor's recent book, Ten Theories of Human Nature, 3/e (OUP, 1998), this interdisciplinary reader can also be used independently. The Study of Human Nature, 2/e offers substantial selections illustrating the ten perspectives discussed (...) in Ten Theories of Human Nature, 3/e--The Bible, Hinduism, Confucianism, Plato, Kant, Marx, Freud, Sartre, B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, and Konrad Lorenz's ethological diagnosis of human aggression. The Islamic tradition is represented by a selection from the 20th-century Iranian philosopher Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari. The 17th- and 18th-century philosophers Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant are also represented. Selections from Rousseau, J.S. Mill, and Nancy Holmstrom discuss alleged differences between women and men, and a paper by Henry Bracken deals with racial issues. Examples from E.O. Wilson's sociobiology and his critics are also included, together with material from Chomsky and from recent evolutionary psychology. This new edition includes more substantial selections from the Hindu, Confucian, and Christian traditions and provides more accessible extracts from Marx, Sartre, and Lorenz. An excellent reader for introductory courses in philosophy, religious studies, human nature, and intellectual history, The Study of Human Nature, 2/e, is also an essential resource for anyone interested in ancient, modern, and contemporary perspectives on human nature. (shrink)

For the purpose of this article, "hermeneutics" means the theory of interpretation, i.e. the theory of achieving an understanding of texts, utterances, and so on (it does not mean a certain twentieth-century philosophical movement). Hermeneutics in this sense has a long history, reaching back at least as far as ancient Greece. However, new focus was brought to bear on it in the modern period, in the wake of the Reformation with its displacement of responsibility for interpreting the Bible from the (...) Church to individual Christians generally. This new focus on hermeneutics occurred especially in Germany.1.. (shrink)

This article argues for a rediscovery of a theology of work in South Africa that is based on the Protestant notion of calling and vocation. Such a view has the primary intention of emphasising obedience and faithfulness to God rather than self-fulfilment or achievement as the intentions of work. Such an approach can empower and equip the church and individual Christians for effective and faithful living in all spheres of life – both private and public. The article shows that the (...) influences of theological dualism, an unbalanced view of the clergy as primary agents of ministry and mission, and a structures-centred view of ministry and mission detracted from the importance of the church’s ministry in numerous spheres of society. A consequence of this was the introduction of a subtle dualism between faith and work. In response to this, the article considers how the church could become an agent of mission and transformation in the world of work. The conclusion of this article is that the South African church could benefit from revisiting and rediscovering a theology of work that is based on the Protestant emphasis of calling and vocation in the public sphere.Contribution: While this article engages the traditional protestant theological notions of calling and vocation, it argues that reconsidering these notions in relation to the contemporary world of work can renew a theology of work and ministry for South African churches to serve their members in achieving God’s will in society. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 43 Heft: 1 Seiten: 152-171.

A poset is well‐partially ordered (WPO) if all its linear extensions are well orders; the supremum of ordered types of these linear extensions is the length, of p. We prove that if the vertex set X is infinite, of cardinality κ, and the ordering ⩽ is the intersection of finitely many well partial orderings of X,, then, letting, with, denote the euclidian division by κ (seen as an initial ordinal) of the length of each corresponding poset: where denotes the least (...) initial ordinal greater than the ordinal. This inequality is optimal. This result answers questions of Forster. (shrink)

Throughout his theological career Stanley Hauerwas has struggled to maintain a demarcation between liberal and Christian ethics. Is such a separation theologically defensible? In an effort to deconstruct Hauerwas’s hostility to liberalism through Hauerwasian categories, the following article examines areas of resemblance between liberal and Hauerwasian ethics. Through a comparative reading of the liberalisms of J. S. Mill and E. M. Forster, the following argument retrieves a neglected form of liberal politics which in many respects conforms to the structure (...) of Hauerwas’s radical description of Christian discipleship. Instead of understanding the Church as an isolated colony embattled against non-Christian culture, Mill and Forster challenge Hauerwas to consider the liberal polity as both the child and responsibility of the Church. (shrink)

Forster demonstrates that Hegel did not in fact ignore epistemology, but on the contrary he fought a tireless and subtle campaign to defeat the threat of skepticism. Forster's work should dispel once and for all the view that Hegel was naive or careless in epistemological matters. Along the way, Forster makes much that has hither to remained obscure in Hegel's texts intelligible for the first time.

This book not only sets the historical record straight but also champions the Herderian tradition for its philosophical depth and breadth.

Du gehst zu Frauen? Vergiss die Peitsche nicht!" Kaum ein Zitat aus Friedrich Nietzsches Gesamtwerk durfte bekannter sein - und lange Zeit fur viele die Grundlage, den grossen Philosophen als Frauenhasser zu deklarieren. Nietzsches Schwester Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche nutzt dieses Werk, um mit dem Vorurteil aufzuraumen. Sie berichtet von Nietzsches Verhaltnis zu Frauen seit der Kindheit. Freundschafts- und Liebesbeziehungen sind ebenso Thema wie auch weibliche Einflusse auf Nietzsches Personlichkeit und schliesslich auch sein Werk. Forster-Nietzsche erzahlt von Frauen wie Cosima Wagner, Lou (...) Andreas-Salome, Malwida von Meysenbug und vielen anderen. In Erinnerungen, Texten und Briefen entwirft sie so ein besonders personliches Bild des Genies, wie ihn nur wenige erleben durften und vermittelt eine weitere entscheidende Dimension zum Verstandnis seines Werks. Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche (1846-1935) war bereits von Kindesbeinen an eine grosse Bewunderin ihres alteren Bruders, mit dem sie schon fruh ein besonders inniges Verhaltnis verband. Nach Nietzsches Tode alleinige Nachlassverwalterin, begann Forster-Nietzsche, das Bild ihres Bruders in deutsch-nationale und antisemitische Interessen einzupassen und nahm dazu u. a. auch Anderungen an seinen Texten vor, wofur sie spater scharf kritisiert wu. (shrink)

Leitfaden zu einer künftigen Geschichte der Menschheit.--Über die Humanität des Künstlers.--Über historische Glaubwürdigkeit.--Über den gelehrten Zunftzwang.--Fragment einer Rede, gehalten in Mainzer Jakobiner klub.--Anrede an die Gesellschaft der Freunde der Freiheit und Gleichheit am Neujahrstage 1793.--Parisische Umrísse.

Scientific discovery is often regarded as romantic and creative - and hence unanalyzable - whereas the everyday process of verifying discoveries is sober and more suited to analysis. Yet this fascinating exploration of how scientific work proceeds argues that however sudden the moment of discovery may seem, the discovery process can be described and modeled. Using the methods and concepts of contemporary information-processing psychology (or cognitive science) the authors develop a series of artificial-intelligence programs that can simulate the human thought (...) processes used to discover scientific laws. The programs - BACON, DALTON, GLAUBER, and STAHL - are all largely data-driven, that is, when presented with series of chemical or physical measurements they search for uniformities and linking elements, generating and checking hypotheses and creating new concepts as they go along. "Scientific Discovery examines the nature of scientific research and reviews the arguments for and against a normative theory of discovery; describes the evolution of the BACON programs, which discover quantitative empirical laws and invent new concepts; presents programs that discover laws in qualitative and quantitative data; and ties the results together, suggesting how a combined and extended program might find research problems, invent new instruments, and invent appropriate problem representations. Numerous prominent historical examples of discoveries from physics and chemistry are used as tests for the programs and anchor the discussion concretely in the history of science. Pat Langley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine.Herbert Simon is a Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Computer Science, and Philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University. Gary L. Bradshaw is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Jan M. Zytkow is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Wichita State University. (shrink)

Many mathematical objects arise from equivalence classes and invite implementation as those classes. Set-existence principles that would enable this are incompatible with ZFC's unrestricted aussonderung but there are set theories which admit more instances than does ZF. NF provides equivalence classes for stratified relations only. Church's construction provides equivalence classes for “low” sets, and thus, for example, a set of all ordinals. However, that set has an ordinal in turn which is not a member of the set constructed; so no (...) set of all ordinals is obtained thereby. This “recurrence problem” is discussed. (shrink)

Many mathematical objects arise from equivalence classes and invite implementation as those classes. Set-existence principles that would enable this are incompatible with ZFC's unrestricted _aussonderung_ but there are set theories which admit more instances than does ZF. NF provides equivalence classes for stratified relations only. Church's construction provides equivalence classes for "low" sets, and thus, for example, a set of all ordinals. However, that set has an ordinal in turn which is not a member of the set constructed; so no (...) set of _all_ ordinals is obtained thereby. This "recurrence problem" is discussed. (shrink)

Der Band "Idealismus und Romantik in Jena" nimmt die Jenaer Blütezeit zwischen 1794 und 1807 in den Blick und interpretiert sie als ein Neben- und Gegeneinander der beiden einflussreichsten Geistesströmungen um 1800. In Jena entstehen zwischen 1794 und 1807 zwei geistesgeschichtliche Strömungen von Weltgeltung: der Idealismus und die Romantik. Die rasante Entwicklung immer neuer Ideen ist durch eine beträchtliche Anzahl junger, kreativer Geister geprägt, die in fruchtbarem Austausch und gegenseitiger Kritik um ein neues, angemessenes Verständnis der Moderne ringen. Im Fokus (...) des Bandes stehen Fragen zu einzelnen Autoren genauso wie zum Verhältnis beider Strömungen zueinander. The volume Idealism and Romanticism in Jena focuses on the period between 1794 and 1807 in which creative and original minds developed new ideas for understanding the modern world. The contributions examine the relationship between German Idealism and Early Romanticism: What distinguishes/combines Idealism and Romanticism? What common aspects, synergies and goals arise? And what does the opposition between the two movements means for the question of modernity? (shrink)

It is shown that, according to NF, many of the assertions of ordinal arithmetic involving the T-function which is peculiar to NF turn out to be equivalent to the truth-in-certain-permutation-models of assertions which have perfectly sensible ZF-style meanings, such as: the existence of wellfounded sets of great size or rank, or the nonexistence of small counterexamples to the wellfoundedness of ∈. Everything here holds also for NFU if the permutations are taken to fix all urelemente.

ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL is a unique attempt to examine the novel afresh, rejecting the traditional methods of classification by chronology or subject-matter. Forster pares down the novel to its essential elements as he sees them: story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern and rhythm. He illustrates each aspect with examples from their greatest exponents, not hesitating as he does so to pass controversial judgement on the works of, among others, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens and Henry James. Full of Forster's (...) renowned wit and perceptiveness, ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL offers a rare insight into the art of fiction from one of our greatest novelists. 'His is a book to encourage dreaming.' Virginia Woolf. (shrink)

A version of the Erdös-Rado theorem on partitions of the unordered n-tuples from uncountable sets is proved, without using the axiom of choice. The case with exponent 1 is just the Sierpinski-Hartogs' result that $\aleph (\alpha)\leq 2^{2^{2^{\alpha}}}$.