The value of up-hill skiing is double, it is first a sport and artistic expression, second it incorporates functional dependencies related to the natural obstacles which the individual aims to overcome. On the artistic side, M. Dufrenne shows the importance of living movement in dance, and we can compare puppets with dancers in order to grasp the lack of intentional spiritual qualities in the former. The expressivity of dance, as for, Chi Gong, ice skating or ski mountaineering is a particular (...) innocence and lightness which is called grace. It is life without the burden of worries. Grace, in slow progression uphill on snow, is as dance for Dufrenne, it has the most central and specific aesthetical quality of life. Others compared dance to a landscape, a landscape is for the sight, what dance is for life, a symbolical space, different from a usual space, where utility and dependency are present. A mountain can be a space of experience of natural beauty. Aesthetical qualities can be closely related to function related qualities as when a climber needs to adjust his movements to the natural convex inclination of the rocks, and avoid slippery forms of inclination, present on the other side of the mountain. The natural object, the quality of the snow or the rock differ from the aesthetical quality of the style of ascent by the absence of neutralization of the object, in case of a purely instrumental approach. On the contrary, grace in the rhythm of the progression of ski climbers needs a difference of attitude, which is not only proper to the playing, and delimited by the conditions of that play, but as a contingency driven attitude, without signification as radical alterity, without any finality. First ascent of the Matterhorn succeeded from the Swiss side, and not from the Italian side because of the different inclination of the rock on both sides. Grace in dance as in martial art or mountaineering is allowing to perceive an autonomy of the expression, as the truth of the perceived object, it puts away a cognitive and practical orientation and replaces it by a new meaning as movement in the whole set of movements done by the climber. This replacement of the functional expression resembles that operated by the painter who chooses a color in the whole set of colors in a painting, or a shape in the whole set of possible existing shapes. -/- Ref. Dufrenne, Mikel, (1989): The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience. Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, trans. by Edward S. Casey, 1st publ. in 1953, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (shrink)

What is truth? What role does truth play in the connections between language and the world? What is the relationship between truth and being? Douglas Edwards tackles these questions and develops a distinctive metaphysical worldview. He argues that in some domains language responds to the world, whereas in others language generates the world.

Trailblazing marine biologist, visionary conservationist, deep ecology philosopher, Edward F. Ricketts has reached legendary status in the California mythos. A true polymath and a thinker ahead of his time, Ricketts was a scientist who worked in passionate collaboration with many of his friends—artists, writers, and influential intellectual figures—including, perhaps most famously, John Steinbeck, who once said that Ricketts's mind “had no horizons.” This unprecedented collection, featuring previously unpublished pieces as well as others available for the first time in their (...) original form, reflects the wide scope of Ricketts’s scientific, philosophical, and literary interests during the years he lived and worked on Cannery Row in Monterey, California. These writings, which together illuminate the evolution of Ricketts’s unique, holistic approach to science, include “Verbatim transcription of notes on the Gulf of California trip,” the basic manuscript for Steinbeck’s and Ricketts’s _Log from the Sea of Cortez;_ the essays “The Philosophy of Breaking Through” and “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry;” several shorter pieces on topics including collecting invertebrates and the impact of modernization on Mexican village life; and more. An engaging critical biography and a number of rare photographs offer a new and richly detailed view of Ricketts’s life. (shrink)

The Nature of God explores a perennial problem in the philosophy of religion. Drawing upon developments in philosophy, most notably those in philosophical logic, Edward R. Wierenga examines the traditional divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, timelessness, immutability, and goodness. His philosophically defensible formulations of the nature of God are in accord with the views of classical theists. The author provides an account of each of the divine attributes by stating in contemporary terms what such classical theists as Augustine, (...) Anselm, and Aquinas wrote about the nature of God; he then seeks to determine whether one can defend the ascription of traditional divine attributes to God against philosophical objections. Clearly written and comprehensive, The Nature of God contains a wealth of illuminating and original material on a central topic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In Morals By Agreement, David Gauthier concludes that under certain conditions it is rational for an agent to be disposed to choose in accordance with a fair cooperative scheme rather than to choose the course of action that maximizes his utility. This is only one of a number of important claims advanced in that book. In particular, he also propounds a distinctive view concerning what counts as a fair cooperative arrangement. The thesis concerning the rationality of adopting a cooperative disposition (...) is, however, logically independent of his substantive view of a fair cooperative scheme and is itself central to the project as a whole. Gauthier's concern is to establish that certain moral principles are those that fully rational, self-interested persons would agree to take as regulative of their dealings with one another – that a contractarian approach, in this sense, can provide an adequate basis for a theory of morality. (shrink)

The paper offers a theoretical investigation into the sources of normativity in practical argumentation. The chief question is: Do we need objectively-minded, unbiased arguers or can we count on “good” argumentative processes in which individual biases cancel each other out? I address this question by analysing a detailed structure of practical argument and its varieties, and by discussing the tenets of a comparative approach to practical reason. I argue that given the comparative structure proposed, reasoned advocacy in argumentative activity upholds (...) reasonableness whenever that activity is adequately designed. I propose some basic rules for such a design of practical argumentation. (shrink)

The eminent biologist reflects on his own response to nature and the aesthetic aspects of his exploration of natural systems in an intensely personal essay that examines the essential links between mankind and the rest of the living world.

Butler refused to be satisfied with just one leading principle, or rational basis for human action, but in the end settled for three: self-love, to provide for our ‘own private good’; benevolence, to consider ‘the good of our fellow creatures’ ; and conscience, ‘to preside and govern’ over our lives as a whole . By so doing he hoped to ensure a completeness to our ethical scheme, so that nothing would be omitted from our moral deliberations. Yet by so doing (...) he also exposed himself to severe criticism. For any such appeal to a plurality of principles, as Green remarked, is ‘repugnant both to the philosophic craving for unity, and to that ideal of “singleness of heart” which we have been accustomed to associate with the highest virtue’. More specifically, by appealing to a plurality of principles Butler faced the charges of circularity, where the principles come to define and defend each other; inconsistency, where the principles ‘take turns’ at being primary and hence render each other superfluous; and incompleteness, where the ‘primary principle’ is itself undefined or undefended. As the tale has been told Butler stands accused of all three of these errors. (shrink)

Are humans rational? Various experiments performed over the last several decades have been interpreted as showing that humans are irrational we make significant and consistent errors in logical reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, similarity judgements, and risk-assessment, to name a few areas. But can these experiments establish human irrationality, or is it a conceptual truth that humans must be rational, as various philosophers have argued? In this book, Edward Stein offers a clear critical account of this debate about rationality in philosophy (...) and cognitive science. He discusses concepts of rationality - the pictures of rationality that the debate centres on - and assesses the empirical evidence used to argue that humans are irrational. He concludes that the question of human rationality must be answered not conceptually but empirically, using the full resources of an advanced cognitive science. Furthermore, he extends this conclusion to argue that empirical considerations are also relevant to the theory of knowedge - in other words, that epistemology should be naturalized. from the reviews: 'Stein has done a great service in bringing together all of the important arguments in the human rationality debate and providing a measured critical assessment of them.... This will be an important book and is essential reading for epistemologists, philosophers of mind, and cognitive and evolutionary psychologists.' Choice 'very considerable value... for professionals' Times Higher Education Supplement. (shrink)

welcomed by a new generation of students and scholars in all branches of learning.

Since neither of these two inordinately long responses deals seriously with what I said in “An Ideology of Difference” , both the Boyarins and Griffin are made even more absurd by actual events occurring as they wrote. The Israeli army has by now been in direct and brutal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza for twenty-one years; the intifadah, surely the most impressive and disciplined anticolonial insurrection in this century, is now in its eleventh month. The daily killings (...) of unarmed Palestinians by armed Israelis, soldiers and settlers, numbers several hundred; yesterday two more Palestinians were killed, the day before four were killed. The beatings, expulsions, wholesale collective punishments, the closure of schools and universities, as well as the imprisonment of dozens of thousands in places like Ansar III, a concentration camp, continue. A V sign flashed by a young Palestinian carries with six months in jail; a Palestinian flag can get you up to ten years; you risk burial alive by zealous Israel Defense Forces soldiers; if you are a member of a popular committee you are liable to arrest, and all professional, syndical, or community associations are now illegal. Any Palestinian can be put in jail without charge or trial for up to six months, renewable, for any offense, which needn’t be revealed to him or her. For non-Jews, approximately 1.5 million people on the West Bank and Gaza, there are thus no rights whatever. On the other hand, Jews are protected by Israeli law on the Occupied Territories. In such a state of apartheid—so named by most honest Israelis—the intifadah continues, as does the ideology of difference vainly attempting to repress and willfully misinterpret its significance. Edward W. Said is Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His most recent contribution to Critical Inquiry is “Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors”. (shrink)

Presents an analysis of Jonathan Edwards' theological position. This book includes a study of his life and the intellectual issues in the America of his time, and examines the problem of free will in connection with Leibniz, Locke, and Hume.

This volume examines the role and influence of multiculturalism in general theories of international law; in the composition and functioning of international ...

Three of the most venerable objections to anthropomorphic conceptions of the divine are traceable to Xenophanes and his critique of the early Greek gods. Though suitably revised, these ancient criticisms have persisted over the centuries, plaguing various religious communities, particularly those of classical Christian commitment. Xenophanes complained that anthropomorphism leads to unseemly characterizations, noting that both over the ages, the list of unseemly characteristics has expanded somewhat.

In the middle decades of the twentieth century phenomenology grew from a local philosophy in a few German towns into a movement that spanned Europe. In Converts to the Real, Edward Baring uncovers an unexpected force behind this prodigious growth: Catholicism. Participating in a tightly-knit transnational community, Catholics helped shuttle ideas between national traditions that were otherwise inward-looking and parochial. In the first half of the twentieth century, they wrote many of the first articles and books introducing phenomenological ideas (...) to new contexts. They even organized the rescue of Edmund Husserl's manuscripts out of Nazi Germany in 1938. But the Catholic fascination with phenomenology was intermixed with a profound anxiety. Catholics worried that phenomenological ideas might prove dangerous to the faith, a possibility exemplified by the intellectual trajectory of Martin Heidegger, whose movement away from the Church was facilitated by his reading of Husserl. Converts to the Real uncovers a surprising genealogy for post-war European thought, with important implications for our understanding of the process of secularization and for the set of schools and ideas we now call "continental philosophy."--. (shrink)

Mind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as a radical "holistic" other, which saw no qualitative difference between mind and body. Drawing on knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Edward Slingerland demonstrates that seeing a difference between mind and body is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. This book has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities (...) integration. (shrink)

v. 1. Freedom of the will -- v. 2. Religious affections -- v. 3. Original sin -- v. 4. The Great Awakening -- v. 5. Apocalyptic writings -- v. 6. Scientific and philosophical writings -- v. 7. The life of David Brainerd -- v. 8. Ethical writings -- v. 9. A history of the work of redemption -- v. 10. Sermons and discourses, 1720-1723 -- v. 13. The "miscellanies" (entry nos. a-z, aa-zz, 1-500) -- v. 15. Notes on Scripture -- (...) v. 17. Sermons and discourses, 1730-1733 -- v. 18. The "miscellanies" (entry nos. 501-832) -- v. 19. Sermons and discourses, 1734-1738 -- v. 20. The miscellanies -- v. 22. Sermons and discourses, 1739-1742 -- v. 24. The "blank Bible" (2 v.). (shrink)

Sixteen centuries ago the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia was murdered by a mob of Christians. Ever since, she has been remembered in poems, plays, paintings, and films as a victim of religious intolerance whose death symbolized the end of the classical world. But before she was a symbol Hypatia was a person. As one of antiquity's best-known female scholars, Hypatia's immense skills as a philosopher and mathematician redefined the intellectual life of her home city of Alexandria. Her talent as a teacher (...) enabled her to assemble a circle of dedicated male students. Her devotion to public service made her a force for peace and good government in a city that struggled to maintain trust and cooperation between pagans and Christians. These intellectual and political triumphs were all the more astonishing for being accomplished in a climate of gossip, scrutiny, and misogyny.Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher is a major new account of this remarkable woman and the culturally rich and turbulent context in which she lived. Utilizing new techniques for reading ancient letters and mathematical and philosophical commentaries-as well as a number of previously unnoticed early modern sources-Edward J. Watts provides a revelatory narrative of Hypatia's life, her formidable achievements, the tragic story of the events that led to her murder, and the rich legacy of her life and death. (shrink)

How well do we understand our own societies? In this paper, I raise quite obvious puzzles for Diego Gambetta and Gloria Origgi’s depiction of Italy as a kakonomy and Kathleen Stock’s depiction of ordinary people.

This article addresses the question whether skiing as a nature sport enables practitioners to develop a rapport with nature, or rather estranges and insulates them from their mountainous ambiance. To address this question, I analyse a recent skiing movie from a psychoanalytical perspective and from a neuro-scientific perspective. I conclude that Jean-Paul Sartre’s classical but egocentric account of his skiing experiences disavows the technicity involved in contemporary skiing as a sportive practice for the affluent masses, which actually represents an urbanisation (...) of the sublime, symptomatic for the current era. (shrink)

This paper responds to an essay by Elena Ferrante on male literary figures acknowledging the influence of female ones. She poses a question about her reception by males which I address.

Exploring the power of spontaneity, an ancient Chinese virtue, this book, based on new research in psychology and neuroscience, reveals why it is essential to individual and societal well-being.