In this paper I claim that the metaphysical concept of culture has come to an end. Among the European authors Georg Simmel is the foremost who has deconstructed the myth of culture as a substantial totality beyond relations or prior to them. Two tenets of research have prepared the end of all-inclusive culture: First, Simmel's formal access that considers society as the modality of interactions and relations between individuals, thus overcoming the social evolutionism of Auguste Comte; second, his critical exegesis (...) of idealistic philosophy of history, thus leaving behind the Hegelian tradition. Although Simmel adheres in some statements to the outdated idea of morphological unity, his sociological and epistemological thinking paved the way for the concept of social identity as a network of series connected loosely by contiguity. This type of connection is confirmed by the present feeling of life as individual self-invention according to changing situations. (shrink)

Auguste Comte! Ce nom ne dit plus rien à personne. Ceux qui le connaissent encore parlent de lui comme d'un grand philosophe : concepteur de la sociologie, du positivisme et de la théorie des trois états. On oublie cependant qu'il fut aussi à l'origine d'une religion personnelle, un culte des morts destiné à relier et rallier l'Humanité tout entière. Mais au fond, que reste-t-il de son oeuvre? Un vestige lointain d'un cours de philosophie? Une rue connue des seuls Parisiens du (...) Quartier latin?... Voilà un bien maigre héritage pour ce curieux prophète de l'ère contemporaine! Si l'influence quasi mondiale de la philosophie positive n'est plus à démontrer, comment expliquer l'échec de sa religion? Cette question, longtemps boudée par l'historiographie, trouve ici sa réponse, notamment grâce aux diverses références que l'auteur convoque tout au long de son enquête. Parmi elles : Régis Debray, Don Quichotte, Milan Kundera, Philip Roth, Dante, Marcel Jousse, Salvador Dali, Joseph Campbell, Homère, saint Paul, Michel Onfray, Marcel Proust, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Anatole France ou encore Star Wars... (shrink)

Résumé En taxant le travail apologétique de Ferdinand Brunetière d’« accueillant et généreux», le théologien Edgar Janssens reprenait, en des termes moins dévalorisants, l’idée développée par Charles Maurras selon laquelle les constructions théoriques du directeur de la Revue des Deux Mondes étaient intellectuellement des plus fragiles. Du reste, la grande majorité des philosophes et théologiens qui évaluèrent l’apologétique de Brunetière restèrent dubitatifs devant cette tentative de convoquer la philosophie d’Auguste Comte pour la défense du catholicisme. Pourtant, Brunetière s’insérait dans (...) un mouvement plus vaste de rapprochement de certains courants intellectuels catholiques avec le positivisme dans les années 1890-1900. Des deux aspects essentiels de cette apologétique, l’un épistémologique et l’autre sociologique, c’est le premier qui suscita pour l’essentiel les réserves des intellectuels catholiques. En effet, en pleine crise moderniste, il était difficile, comme le faisait Brunetière, de mettre en avant une théorie relativiste de la connaissance et de baser les conditions de possibilité de la science sur l’Inconnaissable de Spencer. Mais la logique de Brunetière n’était pas celle des théologiens. Sa stratégie d’occupation de l’espace public, les modalités de sa gestion des polémiques ne pouvaient s’éloigner d’un certain nombre de références communes avec ceux-là mêmes qu’il entendait combattre. (shrink)

Max Ferdinand Scheler was born in Munich on August 22, 1874 and brought up in an orthodox Jewish household.1 Aft er completing high school in 1894, he started to study medicine, philosophy, and psychology. He studied with Th eodor Lipps in Munich, with Georg Simmel and Wilhelm Dilthey in Berlin, and with Rudolf Eucken in Jena,2 where he received his doctorate in 1897 with a thesis entitled Beiträge zur Feststellung der Beziehungen zwischen den logischen und ethischen Prinzipien. Two (...) years later this was followed by his habilitation thesis on Die transzendentale und die psychologische Methode. In 1902, Scheler met Edmund Husserl for the fi rst time at a reception in Halle given by Hans Vaihinger, the editor of Kant-Studien. Th. (shrink)

Un siècle avant la parution posthume du Cours de linguistique générale de Ferdinand de Saussure, la linguistique moderne a émergé en Allemagne avec les études de Wilhelm von Humboldt pour la linguistique générale et (entre autres) de Franz Bopp, Jacob Grimm, August Schleicher et Karl Brugmann pour la grammaire historico-comparative des langues indo-européennes. Dès les années 1830, les instituts allemands de philologie et de linguistique ont attiré nombre de jeunes chercheurs de Scandinavie, de France, de Suisse, de Pologne, (...) des USA, etc. Et avec la diffusion de la nouvelle "Science allemande" à l'étranger des échanges intenses se sont épanouis tout au long du XIXe siècle. Ce volume collectif, riche de neuf contributions d'historiens de la linguistique de France, d'Allemagne, de Suisse et des Pays-Bas, vise à retracer certains de ces échanges parmi les plus instructifs, notamment entre Franz Bopp et Michel Bréal, Max Müller et William Whitney, le psychologue Wilhelm Wundt et Albert Sechehaye ou Georg von der Gabelentz et Antoine Meillet. Des voies fécondes étaient ainsi ouvertes à la linguistique du XXe siècle en Europe et en Amérique. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:174 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (960-1279) was in many aspects one of the most brilliant eras in Chinese history. One sees in this period the improvement of the bureaucratic system, the flourishing of a new poetic genre, the tz'u, a fresh approach to the study of Confucian cla~ics, the advancement of historiography and the rise of Neo-Confucianism. Ou-yang Hsiu (1907-1072) pioneered in all these magnificent political, cultural, and literary achievements. (...) Inevitably, he became a controversial figure to his contemporaries, and to later generations as well. There has not been a complete and balanced study, however, of this well-known and well-remembered man. Perhaps he was too broad and diverse a historical figure to be approached and studied easily. Professor Liu's book deserves our congratulations not merely for its well organized and scholarly presentation, but also for its successful approach to the subject from various angles. Ou-yang Hsiu was an official, a classicist, a political theorist, a historian, an essayist, and a poet. Accordingly this book gives separate chapters on Ou-yang Hsiu the classicist, the his= torian, the political theorist, the master of Sung literature, etc. With profound knowledge and sure control, the author organizes his materials so that the reader will not lose sight of the main points of the study. The best feature of this book (this reviewer feels) is that the author gives equal recognition to Ou-yang Hsiu the man and to the period in which he lived. Professor Liu ably and thoughtfully presents the historical characteristics of the Sung dynasty through Ou-yang Hsiu, and evaluates the merits and shortcomings, accomplishments and hmitations of Ouyang Hsiu against the peculiarity of his time. The subtitle of this book, An Eleventh=Century Neo=Con]ucianist, is most suitable. NeoConfucianism has always been studied abstractly as a philosophy, but Professor Liu's book shows us how this philosophy has been embodied in, substantialized, and practiced by "a key historical figure" who "gives us a finer perspective of his whole era." CONSTAN~II~.TUNG Pomona College Oeuvres philosophiques. u II (1638-1642). By Ren~ Descartes. Textes ~tablis, pr~sent~s et annot~s par Ferdinand Alqui~. ]~dition illustr~e. (Paris: Gamier Fr~res, 1967. [Classiques Gamier.] Pp. 1148.12 plates. Fr 29.-) Opere scientifiehe di Ren$ Descartes. A cura di Gianni Micheli. Vol. I: La Biologia. (Torino: Unione Tipographico-Editrice Torinese, 1966. Pp. 520. 6 plates.-Classici della scienza, ed. Ludovico Geymonat, No. 6/I. L 6,000.) The second volume of the Edition Alqui~ confirms what was said here when Volume I appeared (JHP, II [1964], 260f.): this edition supersedes all currently available study editions. Volume II continues the rigorously chronological arrangement which singularly suits the philosophical writings of Descartes' "metaphysical period." Like no other edition, this one illuminates the often forgotten character of Descartes' philosophizing as an interaction between an ongoing dialogue (correspondence and replies to critics) and rigorously systematic thought. Imbedded in the stream of letters we find the Meditations not as a monolithic block, but as a sequence of three publications: the Latin text inserted at the time-point of its completion, April 1640; the French text with the first six Objections and Responses, August 1641; and at the end of the volume, the Seventh Objections and Responses and the letter to Diner. Only the Objections of Gassendi and Bourdin have been slightly cut. The volume concludes with the Recherche de la v~rit~ of unascertainable date (Aliqui~ thinks that it fits best into the 1641-42 context, without insisting on his conjecture). We thus have an edition that allows us to read the Meditations as Descartes' contemporaries---friends and adversaries --did. Once again the editor's notes are admirable, and there are brief but important critiques of the revised AT volume containing the Meditations, based on source studies by the editor, Henri Gouhier, and by Leslie J. Beck. Since the Edition Alqui$ covers only the philosophical works, it is a pleasure to report a new Italian collection and translation of Descartes' scientific works by Professor Gianni BOOK REVIEWS 175 Micheli of the Institute of History of Philosophy at the University of Milan. The first volume contains... (shrink)

The ratio bias––according to which individuals prefer to bet on probabilities expressed as a ratio of large numbers to normatively equivalent or superior probabilities expressed as a ratio of small numbers––has recently gained momentum, with researchers especially in health economics emphasizing the policy importance of the phenomenon. Although the bias has been replicated several times, some doubts remain about its economic significance. Our two experiments show that the bias disappears once order effects are excluded, and once salient and dominant incentives (...) are provided. This holds true for both choice and valuation tasks. Also, adding context to the decision problem does not change this outcome. No ratio bias could be found in between-subject tests either, which leads us to the conclusion that the policy relevance of the phenomenon is doubtful at best. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 17-35 [Access article in PDF] Late Antiquity and the Florentine Renaissance: Historiographical Parallels Christopher S. Celenza Aulus Gellius, at the end of the second century, shows us the type of writer who was destined to prevail, the compiler. In his Noctes Atticae he compiles without method or even without any definite end in view.... After him there is only barrenness. The (...) third century is a literary Sahara.... Thoughtless admiration for mathematics keeps up or reintroduces the mentality of magic.... In the fourth century ad Iamblichus had his brain almost turned by the science of numbers. 1 --Ferdinand Lot The rapid progress of humanism after the year 1400 paralyzed native impulses. Henceforth men looked only to antiquity for the solution of every problem, and consequently allowed literature to sink into mere quotation. 2 --Jacob Burckhardt Various aspects of late antiquity in western Europe and the Florentine Renaissance bear certain similarities which, if properly examined and contextualized, can lead to a deeper understanding of both periods--of their social as well as intellectual significance, of the manner in which politics relates to culture, and [End Page 17] of the relationship between urban life in a specific sort of milieu to the mechanisms of religious and philosophical dynamism. 3 The parallels are not always exact, but various underlying patterns are present. Here the main line of argument will be that a number of aspects of late ancient thought and of Renaissance thought (especially Renaissance Latin literature of all genres) went ignored by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars, thanks to certain underlying assumptions concerning what was appropriate to investigate. These assumptions were themselves related to the combination of two major factors: romantic essentializing ideas about the nature of language, inherited from the Enlightenment, and the development in the nineteenth century of nationalist, evolutionary historiographies. The results of these developments persisted into the twentieth century and can be seen to an extent even today. Nationalist Historiographies and the Problem of Language "Gentlemen, nations are thoughts of God." So Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) used to begin his history courses in Berlin, as Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) later remembered. 4 While Ranke himself was concerned primarily with documentary history and the evolution of the modern state, he was also part of a larger trend in the German speaking world which sought to identify, in the study of the past, the spirit, or Geist, of a given era or people, a project which had been theorized by Hegel. Ranke and others, like Johann Gustav Droysen and August Böckh, taking their point of departure from Barthold Niebuhr and, more immediately, from Wilhelm von Humboldt, saw themselves as self-consciously transcending Hegel, basing their ideas on documentary sources as opposed to a priori theorizing. 5 But certain assumptions were similar, none more so than presuppositions relating to the Volksgeist. It is not that Ranke was relentlessly teleological; [End Page 18] history was made in the process of the unfolding of events. His primary mission was the documenting and understanding of modernity, a task which, despite their later divergences in practice, Burckhardt shared. 6 The goal was, following Niebuhr's approach in classical studies, to present history in an appealing way and in a manner useful to modernity. 7 This was bound up with a larger set of movements, encompassing the search for national identity and a tendency toward locating essential characteristics of a "people." 8 One of these characteristics was language, and a central preoccupation of scholars became the manner in which culture expressed itself through language, even as philology was becoming "the first historical discipline, the model for all other historical sciences" and the general view of scholarly fields as separate, specialized entities was growing. 9In their concern with language as a vehicle for cultural transmission and as a defining characteristic of a people, nineteenth-century scholars were the heirs of the Enlightenment. Ideas of a plurality of cultures had flourished; as it was put in the Encyclopédie, language expressed the "genius of a people." If... (shrink)

Over the years, companies have adopted hiring algorithms because they promise wider job candidate pools, lower recruitment costs and less human bias. Despite these promises, they also bring perils. Using them can inflict unintentional harms on individual human rights. These include the five human rights to work, equality and nondiscrimination, privacy, free expression and free association. Despite the human rights harms of hiring algorithms, the AI ethics literature has predominantly focused on abstract ethical principles. This is problematic for two reasons. (...) First, AI principles have been criticized for being vague and not actionable. Second, the use of vague ethical principles to discuss algorithmic risks does not provide any accountability. This lack of accountability creates an algorithmic accountability gap. Closing this gap is crucial because, without accountability, the use of hiring algorithms can lead to discrimination and unequal access to employment opportunities. This paper makes two contributions to the AI ethics literature. First, it frames the ethical risks of hiring algorithms using international human rights law as a universal standard for determining algorithmic accountability. Second, it evaluates four types of algorithmic impact assessments in terms of how effectively they address the five human rights of job applicants implicated in hiring algorithms. It determines which of the assessments can help companies audit their hiring algorithms and close the algorithmic accountability gap. (shrink)

This paper argues that the question, ‘where are virtues?’ demands a response from virtue theorists. Despite the polarizing nature of debates about the relevance of empirical work in psychology for virtue theory, I first show that there is widespread agreement about the underlying structure of virtue. Namely, that virtues are comprised of cognitive and affective processes. Next, I show that there are well-developed arguments that cognitive processes can extend beyond the agent. Then, I show that there are similarly well-developed arguments (...) that affective processes can extend beyond the agent. I then introduce three cases to establish that these cognitive and affective processes are relevantly similar to the cognitive and affective processes countenanced by plausible theories of virtue. Finally, I conclude that virtue theorists must abandon default internalism, the view that the cognitive and affective processes comprising virtues are internal to the agent. (shrink)

This paper aims to expand the range of empirical work relevant to the extended cognition debates. First, I trace the historical development of the person-situation debate in social and personality psychology and the extended cognition debate in the philosophy of mind. Next, I highlight some instructive similarities between the two and consider possible objections to my comparison. I then argue that the resolution of the person-situation debate in terms of interactionism lends support for an analogously interactionist conception of extended cognition. (...) I argue that this interactionism might necessitate a shift away from the dominant agent-artifact paradigm toward an agent–agent paradigm. If this is right, then social and personality psychology—the discipline(s) that developed from the person-situation debate—opens a whole new range of empirical considerations for extended cognition theorists which align with Clark & Chalmers original vision of agents themselves as spread into the world. (shrink)

Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, proponents of digital psychiatry were touting the promise of various digital tools and techniques to revolutionize mental healthcare. As social distancing and its knock-on effects have strained existing mental health infrastructures, calls have grown louder for implementing various digital mental health solutions at scale. Decisions made today will shape the future of mental healthcare for the foreseeable future. We argue that bioethicists are uniquely positioned to cut through the hype surrounding digital mental health, which can (...) obscure crucial ethical and epistemic gaps that ought to be considered by policymakers before committing to a digital psychiatric future. Here, we describe four such gaps: The evidence gap, the inequality gap, the prediction-intervention gap, and the safety gap. (shrink)

The term theodicy was coined by the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and is inherent in the question of how evil can exist if an intrinsically good God guides everything. The publication of this oeuvre initiated intense philosophical and theological discourse in the subsequent centuries, during which many issues that bare upon human well-being were articulated. Also, Leibniz’s rational approach to the relationship between God and evil raised a number of issues related to the topic of belief. This topic has (...) entangled discourses on theodicy with a long-lasting debate on beliefs, which goes back to Antiquity. Recently, a paradigm-shift shed new light on the understanding of belief. Science has begun to address the neurophysiological mechanisms of the processes that underpin belief formation, modulation, and change. The term credition was coined in order to capture and reflect this new and innovative understanding of the fluidity of beliefs and believing. This paper presents various features of a pattern of interrelationships between well-being, theodicy, and credition. (shrink)

Excerpt from Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum Valckemrius Diatrib. In Eur. Fragm. P. 282; Wyltenbaehius Epist. Ad Heusd. Opuse. II p. 38, alii. Mms. Cue. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, (...) such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Zunächst Pfarrer in Berlin-Charlottenburg, dann Professor für Philosophie in Halle, repräsentiert Eberhard die nachwolffianische deutsche Popularphilosophie, der an praktisch und pädagogisch wirksamer Aufklärung im Zusammenspiel mit den fortschrittlichen politischen und religiösen Kräften lag. In diesen Lehrbüchern repräsentiert Eberhard sich als Aufklärer auf dem philosophischen Niveau der ästhetischen, hermeneutischen und historischen Modifikation des Wolffschen Systems und der neuerlichen Rezeption der Philosophie Leibniz’, zumal der Erkenntnistheorie der 1765 erschienenen „Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain“. Eberhard wurde aufgrund seiner Theorie des Denkens und Empfindens (...) als Schüler Leibniz’ bezeichnet; und er verfasste denn auch eine Leibniz-Biographie. Er hielt zeitlebens an den wolffianischen Standards von Rationalität fest und widersetzte sich nicht nur dem normativen Rekurs auf „Empfindsamkeit“ in Literatur und Religion, sondern auch der sog. Glaubensphilosophie Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis, erst recht der zeitgenössischen Wiederkehr von Okkultismus und Esoterik. Johann August Eberhard, professor of philosophy in Halle, is one of the foremost exponents of the Popularphilosophie of the German Enlightenment. He was a major contributor to Friedrich Nicolai’s "Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek", and advanced unorthodox opinions on religious and political issues. (shrink)

Truth is no longer based on reason What we feel is now the truest reality Yet despite our obsession with the emotive and the experiential we still face anxiety despair and purposelessness Tracing trends in twentieth century thought Francis ...