Die Unterscheidung von Körper und Seele war wohl einer der bedeutendsten Einschnitte in der Geschichte der Ideen. Wie sich dies in Abhängigkeit von den sozialen Strukturen entwickelte, wird hier für verschiedene Kulturen (u. a. "primitive" Gesellschaften, Alter Orient, Indien, die klassische Antike, Christentum) gezeigt. In vielen "einfachen" Gesellschaften ohne ausgeprägtes Zentrum werden dem Menschen mehrere Seelen zugeschrieben, die auf verschiedene Weise entstehen und beim Tod an verschiedene Orte gehen. In seinen Seelenreisen handelt der Schamane z. B. für die Jagd den (...) Seelentausch zwischen Mensch und Tier aus und holt die Seelen der Kinder aus dem Jenseits. Die Hochkulturen schreiben dem Menschen oft nur eine Seele zu, die das ihn steuernde Zentrum bildet. Sie wird -- entsprechend der Schichtung der Gesellschaft -- als hierarchisch geordnetes System begriffen -- mit der Vernunft oben, den Emotionen und Trieben unten. Die Seelenreise wird vorrangig für die nachtodliche Vergeltung genutzt. Strafe und Belohnung sind affirmativ auf die soziale Schichtung bezogen (z. B. im vedischen Reinkarnationsglauben) oder ein Protest dagegen (im frühen Christentum). Wenn sich dies in Weltablehnung manifestiert, gerät die Seele in Gegensatz zum Körper, der u. U. sogar aus der Definition des Menschen ausgeschlossen wird. Zeugung, Embryonalentwicklung und Geburt werden nun nicht selten als schwierige, ja sogar gewaltsame Zusammenfügung gegensätzlicher Bestandteile verstanden. Unter dieser Fragestellung werden die Theorien zur Entstehung der Seele in Schöpfung und Zeugung in ihren Widersprüchen zwischen religiösem Dogma und philosophischer Logik dargestellt."-- Back cover. (shrink)

William Norris Clarke, S.J., one of the leading Thomist scholars in the United States, came to the Philippines recently and delivered a series of lectures in the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of Santo Tomas on various philosophical topics inspired by the thought of St. Thomas. Fr. Clarke is now a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy in Fordham University. He was co-founder and editor (l961-85) of the International Philosophical Quarterly and is the author of some 60 articles, plus the (...) following books: The Philosophical Approach to God, The Universe as Journey, Person and Being, Explorations in Metaphysics: Being—God—Person, and The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Fall, 2000).He continues to fulfill his mission of propagating the thoughts of St. Thomas—-the “creative retrieval of St. Thomas,” as he puts it—-in and out of the U.S.An brief excerpt from this interview was originally published in Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture1/3, 1997. (shrink)

On the text and translation of the De mysteriis -- Iamblichus the man -- The De mysteriis : a defence of theurgy, and an answer to Porphyry's letter to Anebo -- Iamblichus's knowledge of Egyptian religion and mythology -- The nature and contents of De mysteriis -- Iamblichus, De mysteriis : text and translation.

Hans Reichenbach, a philosopher of science who was one of five students in Einstein's first seminar on the general theory of relativity, became Einstein's bulldog, defending the theory against criticism from philosophers, physicists, and popular commentators. This book chronicles the development of Reichenbach's reconstruction of Einstein's theory in a way that clearly sets out all of its philosophical commitments and its physical predictions as well as the battles that Reichenbach fought on its behalf, in both the academic and popular press. (...) The essays include reviews and responses to philosophical colleagues; polemical discussions with physicists Max Born and D. C. Miller; as well as popular articles meant for the layperson. At a time when physics and philosophy were both undergoing revolutionary changes in content and method, this book is a window into the development of scientific philosophy and the role of the philosopher. (shrink)

_Ways of Being in the World_ is an anthology of the Indigenous philosophical thought of communities across Turtle Island, offering readings on a variety of topics spanning many times and geographic locations. It was created especially to meet the needs of instructors who want to add Indigenous philosophy to their courses but are unsure where to begin—as well as for students, Indigenous or otherwise, who wish to broaden their horizons with materials not found in the typical philosophy course. This collection (...) is an invitation to embark on a relationship with Indigenous peoples through the introduction of their unique philosophies. (shrink)

This collection emphasizes a cross-disciplinary approach to the problem of scale, with essays ranging in subject matter from literature to film, architecture, the plastic arts, philosophy, and scientific and political writing. Its contributors consider a variety of issues provoked by the sudden and pressing shifts in scale brought on by globalization and the era of the Anthropocene, including: the difficulties of defining the concept of scale; the challenges that shifts in scale pose to knowledge formation; the role of scale in (...) mediating individual subjectivity and agency; the barriers to understanding objects existing in scalar realms different from our own; the role of scale in mediating the relationship between humans and the environment; and the nature of power, authority, and democracy at different social scales. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that the intelligibility of modal metaphysics has been vindicated. Quine's arguments to the contrary supposedly confused analyticity with metaphysical necessity, and rigid with non-rigid designators.2 But even if modal metaphysics is intelligible, it could be misconceived. It could be that metaphysical necessity is not absolute necessity – the strictest real notion of necessity – and that no proposition of traditional metaphysical interest is necessary in every real sense. If there were nothing otherwise “uniquely metaphysically significant” about (...) metaphysical necessity, then paradigmatic metaphysical necessities would be necessary in one sense of “necessary”, not necessary in another, and that would be it. The question of whether they were necessary simpliciter would be like the question of whether the Parallel Postulate is true simpliciter – understood as a pure mathematical conjecture, rather than as a hypothesis about physical spacetime. In a sense, the latter question has no objective answer. In this article, I argue that paradigmatic questions of modal metaphysics are like the Parallel Postulate question. I then discuss the deflationary ramifications of this argument. I conclude with an alternative conception of the space of possibility. According to this conception, there is no objective boundary between possibility and impossibility. Along the way, I sketch an analogy between modal metaphysics and set theory. (shrink)

The Description for this book, Theory and Evidence, will be forthcoming.

Is there more to Buddhism than sitting in silent meditation? Is modern Buddhism relevant to the problems of daily life? Does it empower individuals to transform their lives? Or has Buddhism become too detached, so still and quiet that the Buddha has fallen asleep? Waking the Buddha tells the story of the Soka Gakkai International, the largest, most dynamic Buddhist movement in the world today--and one that is waking up and shaking up Buddhism so it can truly work in ordinary (...) people's lives. Drawing on his long personal experience as a Buddhist teacher, journalist, and editor, Clark Strand offers broad insight into how and why the Soka Gakkai, with its commitment to social justice and its egalitarian approach, has become a role model, not only for other schools of Buddhism, but for other religions as well. Readers will be inspired by the struggles and triumphs of the Soka Gakkai's three founding presidents--individuals who staked their lives on the teachings of the Lotus Sutra and the extraordinary power of those teachings to help people become happy. (shrink)

John Dupr argues that 'scientific imperialism' can result in 'misguided' science being considered acceptable. 'Misguided' is an explicitly normative term and the use of the pejorative 'imperialistic' is implicitly normative. However, Dupr has not justified the normative dimension of his critique. We identify two ways in which it might be justified. It might be justified if colonisation prevents a discipline from progressing in ways that it might otherwise progress. It might also be justified if colonisation prevents the expression of important (...) values in the colonised discipline. This second concern seems most pressing in the human sciences. (shrink)

We seem, or so it seems to some theorists, to experience a rich stream of highly detailed information concerning an extensive part of our current visual surroundings. But this appearance, it has been suggested, is in some way illusory. Our brains do not command richly detailed internal models of the current scene. Our seeings, it seems, are not all that they seem. This, then, is the Grand Illusion. We think we see much more than we actually do. In this paper (...) I shall (briefly) rehearse the empirical evidence for this rather startling claim, and then critically examine a variety of responses. One especially interesting response is a development of the so-called ‘skill theory’, according to which there is no illusion after all. Instead, so the theory goes, we establish the required visual contact with our world by an ongoing process of active exploration, in which the world acts as a kind of reliable, interrogable, external memory (Noe, Pessoa and. (shrink)

This volume argues that Bonhoeffer's early work, particularly his Christocentric anthropology, grounds his later expressed commitments to responsibility and faithfulness in a ""world come of age."" Ellison suggests, in fact, that a concern for otherness permeates all of Bonhoeffer's work: a Christian self-defined by its orientation towards otherness.

Written by five scholars whose expertise extends across the disciplines of biblical, historical, systematic, and philosophical theology, this is a careful and ...

Scanlon’s Being Realistic about Reasons (BRR) is a beautiful book – sleek, sophisticated, and programmatic. One of its key aims is to demystify knowledge of normative and mathematical truths. In this article, I develop an epistemological problem that Scanlon fails to explicitly address. I argue that his “metaphysical pluralism” can be understood as a response to that problem. However, it resolves the problem only if it undercuts the objectivity of normative and mathematical inquiry.

Aristotle begins "On Interpretation" with an analysis of the existence of linguistic entities as both physical and meaningful. Two things have been lacking for a full appreciation of this analysis: a more literal translation of the passage and an ample understanding of the distinction between symbols and signs. In this article, therefore, I first offer a translation of this opening passage (16a1-9) that allows the import of Aristotle's thinking to strike the reader. Then I articulate the distinction between symbol and (...) sign so crucial to understanding this passage. Aristotle employs this distinction, I argue, in order to show how the linguistic entities he defines later in "On Interpretation" (that is, name, verb, denial, affirmation, declaration, and articulation) are both conventional and natural, owing to their being both symbols and signs, respectively. Finally, I suggest why Aristotle's analysis of how linguistic entities exist as both physical and meaningful is fitting, since man himself, "the animal that has speech," lives at the boundary between nature and intelligence. (shrink)

Clark Glymour, Richard Scheines, Peter Spirtes and Kevin Kelly. Discovering Causal Structure: Artifical Intelligence, Philosophy of Science and Statistical Modeling.

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show in a new (...) way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)

In the Preface of his 'Proslogion', Anselm narrates its origin in a particular event in his life and delineates the argument of the work as a whole. In chapter 1, Anselm enacts a meditation that attempts to resolve the puzzle of his fallen-but-striving human existence. This paper argues that these opening sections of the 'Proslogion' are an indispensable preparation for understanding Anselm’s famous argument in chapters 2-4 as well as the remainder of the work, especially insofar as these sections establish (...) the crucial pattern of thinking—the “logic” of faith seeking understanding—that Anselm employs in his treatment of God. (shrink)