Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus.

Émile Durkheim remains one of the most controversial, and deeply misunderstood, classics of social theory. His work differs from the dominant version of sociology that has essentially accepted the modernist self-description of contemporary societies; and it contradicts the individualism that has come to dominate the social sciences. For everybody who is interested in constructing theoretical alternatives to this individualism, Durkheim's sociology can be a useful inspiration - not only because of the solutions it suggests, but already because of the questions (...) it asks. Making use of the theoretical possibilities offered by the Durkheimian tradition, however, requires going beyond the familiar appropriations. The Oxford Handbook of Émile Durkheim takes stock of the different recent debates on Durkheimian sociology, and makes them accessible to a wide audience spanning various disciplines; this includes crucial debates that, due to language barriers, are not easily accessible for an English-reading public. The handbook's chapters elucidate the controversial key concepts of Durkheimian sociology; situate them within the contemporary political and theoretical debates they were originally responding to; offer surveys of empirical research that uses Durkheimian concepts (on topics that were already central for Durkheim's own work as well as on topics that Durkheim hardly touched upon), thus demonstrating the possibilities of a Durkheimian sociology; bring out the divergent, and competing, ways in which Durkheim's ideas have been appropriated and reformulated within more recent theoretical developments in the social sciences. In doing so, this volume is an important resource for all scholars and students looking to understand Durkheimian sociology. (shrink)

Blighted and accursed families are an inescapable feature of Greek tragedy. N.J. Sewell-Rutter gives the familiar issues of inherited guilt, curses, and divine causation a fresh appraisal, with particular reference to Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes and the Phoenician Women of Euripides. All Greek quotations are translated.

Social epistemologists should be well-equipped to explain and evaluate the growing vulnerabilities associated with filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization in social media. However, almost all social epistemology has been built for social contexts that involve merely a speaker-hearer dyad. Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization all presuppose much larger and more complex network structures. In this paper, we lay the groundwork for a properly social epistemology that gives the role and structure of networks their due. In particular, (...) we formally define epistemic constructs that quantify the structural epistemic position of each node within an interconnected network. We argue for the epistemic value of a structure that we call the (m,k)-observer. We then present empirical evidence that (m,k)-observers are rare in social media discussions of controversial topics, which suggests that people suffer from serious problems of epistemic vulnerability. We conclude by arguing that social epistemologists and computer scientists should work together to develop minimal interventions that improve the structure of epistemic networks. (shrink)

In this paper, we explain and showcase the promising methodology of testimonial network analysis and visualization for experimental epistemology, arguing that it can be used to gain insights and answer philosophical questions in social epistemology. Our use case is the epistemic community that discusses vaccine safety primarily in English on Twitter. In two studies, we show, using both statistical analysis and exploratory data visualization, that there is almost no neutral or ambivalent discussion of vaccine safety on Twitter. Roughly half the (...) accounts engaging with this topic are pro-vaccine, while the other half are con-vaccine. We also show that these two camps rarely engage with one another, and that the con-vaccine camp has greater epistemic reach and receptivity than the pro-vaccine camp. In light of these findings, we question whether testimonial networks as they are currently constituted on popular fora such as Twitter are living up to their promise of delivering the wisdom of crowds. We conclude by pointing to directions for further research in digital social epistemology. (shrink)

This book builds on the vast clinical experience of Joseph L. Henderson, who became interested in initiatory symbolism when he began his analysis with Jung in 1929. Henderson studied this symbolism in patients' dreams, fantasies, and active imagination, and demonstrated the archetype of initiation in both men and women's psychology. After Henderson’s book was republished in 2005 Kirsch, Beane Rutter and Singer brought together this collection of essays to allow a new generation to explore the archetype of initiation. _Initiation: The (...) Living Reality of an Archetype_ demonstrates how the archetype of initiation is seen clinically today. Divided into distinct parts, the book explores the archetype of initiation in Dr Henderson’s own life, as well as suggesting its importance in: clinical practice culture aging and death. The chapters in this book amplify and extend the archetype of initiation from the earliest historical periods up to the present day. The editors argue that initiation symbolism often underlies contemporary phenomena, but is rarely recognized; _Initiation _helps to bring a new understanding to these experiences. This book will be of interest to psychotherapists with an interest in psychoanalysis and analytical psychology, as well as those training at analytic institutes. (shrink)

In 1890 C. S. Peirce wrote a review of A. C. Fraser’s recent book on Locke, published to coincide with the bicentennial of Locke’s Essay. Peirce remarked that “Locke’s grand work was substantially this: Men must think for themselves, and genuine thought is an act of perception…. We cannot fail to acknowledge a superior element of truth in the practicality of Locke’s thought, which on the whole should place him nearly upon a level with Descartes.” This estimate of Locke was (...) not the common opinion in England during the nineteenth century. This opinion was reflected in Fraser’s book which, Peirce remarked, could not “be said to be a sympathetic account of [Locke]. The biographer seems to see no charm in his hero, and is perpetually speaking of his want of imagination; which only means he was not given to unpractical dreaming.” Locke had his knowledgeable critics and defenders—for instance Dugald Stewart and John Stuart Mill—but the common opinion ranged from extreme hostility and contempt to condescending criticism of isolated minor points. His style was deplored, his philosophy was called unoriginal and a mere unacknowledged plagiarism of Gassendi and Hobbes; he was said to have so thoroughly misunderstood Descartes that he had merely repeated him with new errors; he was said to owe his philosophical reputation entirely to his advocacy of the popular argument for political freedom or merely to the intellectual circumstances of his time; he was held accountable for Condillac’s rejection of reflection and reason; he was knocked down with a few bare sentences loosely drawn from Leibniz; he was said to have made the mind a puny, passive, mechanical thing. He was called a sensualist, a materialist, a sceptic, an atheist, and a utilitarian though at the same time—and not without contradiction—he was generally, especially by his critics, styled a “great lover of truth,” a plain and simple, well-meaning and religious man. To the nineteenth century Locke meant the Essay, and the history of the Essay was in large measure the history of modern thought, of the eighteenth century. Precisely for this reason there was something nearly sinister about him, in spite of his good personal character. “Locke, himself a clear, humble-minded, patient, reverent, nay, religious man,” said Carlyle, “had paved the way for banishing religion from the world.”. (shrink)

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus. Looking behind the self-consciousness of science, he discusses the tense relationship between truth and methodology. In examining the different experiences of truth, he aims to "present the hermeneutic phenomenon in its fullest extent.

This essay argues that Pufendorf conceived the principles of natural law against the rationalism and innatism of the 17th century, and that Condillac similarly formulated a conception of the human origin of language, both of them thus securing open and human foundations for the two primal institutions of law and language, and also making all citizens free agents in the ordering of communal living.

Debates over the 'end of art' have tended to obscure Hegel's work on the arts themselves. Benjamin Rutter opens this study with a defence of art's indispensability to Hegel's conception of modernity; he then seeks to reorient discussion toward the distinctive values of painting, poetry, and the novel. Working carefully through Hegel's four lecture series on aesthetics, he identifies the expressive possibilities particular to each medium. Thus, Dutch genre scenes animate the everyday with an appearance of vitality; metaphor frees language (...) from prose; and Goethe's lyrics revive the banal routines of love with imagination and wit. Rutter's important study reconstructs Hegel's view not only of modern art but of modern life and will appeal to philosophers, literary theorists, and art historians alike. (shrink)

Exploring all of the central themes of Wittgenstein's "oeuvre," this volume includes discussion of core topics such as meaning and use, rule following, the ...

What is justice? -- The idea of justice in the Holy Scriptures -- Platonic justice -- Aristotle's doctrine of justice -- The natural-law doctrine before the tribunal of science -- A "dynamic" theory of natural law -- Absolutism and relativism in philosophy and politics -- Value judgments in the science of law -- The law as a specific social technique -- Why should the law be obeyed? -- The pure theory of the law and analytical jurisprudence -- Law, state, and (...) justice in the pure theory of law -- Causality and retribution -- Causality and imputation -- Science and politics. (shrink)

Dass Edmund Husserl am Problem der Intersubjektivität gescheitert ist, gilt als ausgemacht - und ebenso, welche Konsequenzen daraus zu ziehen sind. Entgegen dem allenthalben pauschal erklärten `Abschied vom Subjekt' spricht aber vieles dafür, dass es in der gegenwärtigen Sozialtheorie eher um eine Reformulierung transzendentaler Subjektivität geht. Diese Interpretationsthese wirft ein neues Licht auf den sozialtheoretischen Diskurs, der im deutschen Sprachraum in den vergangenen dreissig Jahren vom Gegensatz von Jürgen Habermas' und Niklas Luhmanns Theorien bestimmt war: `Diskurs' und `System' erscheinen als (...) gegensätzliche Versuche, `Subjektivität' und `Interität' in ein theoretisch befriedigendes Verhältnis zu setzen. Wenn aber - so die kritische These dieses Buches - weder die Reformulierung von Subjektivität als `Interität' noch die Reformulierung von Subjektivität ohne `Interität' das Problem der Intersubjektivität überzeugend löst, ist dies ein Grund, neuerlich in eine direkte Auseinandersetzung mit Husserls Theorie transzendentaler Subjektivität einzutreten. Dabei stellt sich heraus, dass Husserls vielkritisierter und -skandalisierter Versuch, den Sinn `Anderer' im `Eigenen' zu fundieren, in der transzendentalphänomenologischen Subjekttheorie durch ein umgekehrtes Begründungsverhältnis konterkariert wird. Bei aller Problematik dieser Theorieanlage - welche nur in Gegenwendung zu den Gewohnheiten der Husserl-Interpretation, vor allem aber auch zu Husserls Selbstinterpretation in den Blick kommt - zeigt sich, dass der phänomenologische Begriff des transzendentalen Subjekts seinen Reformulierungen als Diskurs und als System in mancher Hinsicht überlegen ist. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the idea of collective epistemic commonality suggested by Charles Taylor's example, and contrasts it with a distributive notion of epistemic commonality. It describes a number of accounts of collective epistemic commonality, and then argues that, contrary to what Taylor suggests, conversation is not constitutive of collective epistemic commonality as such, but rather presupposes basic forms of collective epistemic commonality. Taylor's remarks indicate that understanding the consensus is insufficient as whatever proposition people rationally and openly accept in conversation. (...) It is suggested that joint attitudes are irreducible, relational, and pre-reflective, and that such attitudes are joint, in the respect that the participants are aware of themselves as a ‘we’. Highly inferential beliefs need some form of communication, and are probably really some form of joint commitment. (shrink)

Albert approaches critical rationalism as an alternative to other philosophical standpoints dominant in Germany: the conceptions of the Frankfurt School, hermeneutical thinking as represented by Gadamer, analytic philosophy, and logical empiricism. The author's purpose is to find a way out of the foundationalism of classical philosophy without falling back on the skeptical views so prevalent in today's philosophical thinking. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the (...) distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Kagan successfully forces us to re-examine our assumptions and concepts regarding the broad field of “emotion.” His postulated four phases start with the brain state provoked by some stimulus. While that constitutes a reasonable starting point, the specificity of the brain qualities provoked by different types of stimuli remains uncertain. The recommendations on the way forward are the least satisfying aspects of this article. Integration would have been helped by some consideration of the role of animal models, of the ways (...) in which genes operate, and of the multiple varieties of gene—environment interplay. (shrink)

Skills cannot be divided into the innate and the acquired. Also, genetic effects may not come into play until well after early childhood, and evocative gene-environment correlations are to be expected. Special talents are common in autism and warrant more detailed study, but whether they have the same meaning as talents in nonautistic individuals is not known.

Introduces contemporary American philosophy of technology through six of its leading figures. The six American philosophers of technology whose work is profiled in this clear and concise introduction to the field—Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, and Langdon Winner—represent a new, empirical direction in the philosophical study of technology that has developed mainly in North America. In place of the grand philosophical schemes of the classical generation of European philosophers of technology, the contemporary American generation addresses (...) concrete technological practices and the co-evolution of technology and society in modern culture. Six Dutch philosophers associated with Twente University survey and critique the full scope and development of their American colleagues’ work, often illustrating shifts from earlier to more recent interests. Individual chapters focus on Borgmann’s engagement with technology and everyday life; Dreyfus’s work on the limits of artificial intelligence; Feenberg’s perspectives on the cultural and social possibilities opened by technologies; Haraway’s conception of the cyborg and its attendant blurring of boundaries; Ihde’s explorations of the place of technology in the lifeworld; and Winner’s fascination with the moral and political implications of modern technologies. American Philosophy of Technology offers an insightful and readable introduction to this new and distinctly American philosophical turn. Contributors are Hans Achterhuis, Philip Brey, René Munnik, Martijntje Smits, Pieter Tijmes, and Peter-Paul Verbeek. (shrink)

The origins of ‘alternative comedy’ are difficult to pinpoint, though it coincided with the rise of Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979 – that year saw the appearance of something called ‘alternative cabaret’, a term usually associated with Tony Allen, who combined activism and comedy. The acts this article will focus on are those which took a critical approach to comedy and/or politics – ‘alternative’ comedy, therefore, as seeming to promise change through critical awareness. This paper will discuss parody as (...) a means of critical engagement and transformation, in relation to context, and to influences such as punk. Altcom demonstrates an apparent eschewal of approaches which rely on irony and ambiguity, in favour of more ‘direct’ political engagement. It will be argued however that such ‘direct’ approach does not cancel out critical distance, but rather seeks alternative routes to establish it – namely comic and parodic overstatement, and the problematisation of ‘trust’. This entails the key questions of whether parody may take up critical distance without irony, as well as of the political implications of an approach which seeks to eliminate ambiguity. This more ‘direct’ approach however still depends on a balance of engagement and disengagement, requiring distancing from pre-established codes. (shrink)

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, such as Moritz Schlick and Hugo Dingler; polemical discussions with physicists Max Born and D. C. Miller; as well as popular articles meant to clarify aspects of Einstein's theories and set out their philosophical ramifications 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)

Radical democratic thinking is becoming intrigued by the material situatedness of its political agents and by the role of nonhuman participants in political interaction. At stake here is the displacement of narrow anthropocentrism that currently guides democratic theory and practice, and its repositioning into what we call ‘the nonhuman condition’. This Critical Exchange explores the nonhuman condition. It asks: What are the implications of decentering the human subject via a new materialist reading of radical democracy? Does this reading dilute political (...) agency? Or should this be seen, on the contrary, as an invitation for new voices and demands to enter into democratic assemblages? How might engagement with the more-than-human disrupt or extend theories of radical democracy? Hans Asenbaum and Amanda Machin discuss the human democratic subject both through radical democratic and new materialist lenses. They suggest that a new materialist decentred subject does not lose agency but further gains political responsibility in radical democracy. Jean-Paul Gagnon highlights the possibility of becoming through loss. In losing our anthropocentric arrogance—our understanding of being other and better than animal—we become more connected and discover our place in human-nonhuman assemblages. Melissa Orlie agrees that something can be gained through renouncing dominant human fantasies and presents a ‘radical democratic naturalism’. By renouncing land violence and acknowledging nature’s subjectivity, we can further nonexploitative radical democratic politics. This is where the notion of ‘tidalectic’ processes introduced by James L. Smith is helpful. Focusing on water and the Indigenous knowledges around rivers, he considers how democracy and community can be reimagined as plural, cyclical and attentive to the nonhuman with which the human is inevitably entangled. Diana Leong offers a different approach. Considering the nonhuman from the perspective of Black Studies demands an awareness to how blackness has long been constituted as non- or partially human. (shrink)

We claim that adjustable parameters play a crucial role in building and applying simulation models. We analyze that role and illustrate our findings using examples from equations of state in thermodynamics. In building simulation models, two types of experiments, namely, simulation and classical experiments, interact in a feedback loop, in which model parameters are adjusted. A critical discussion of how adjustable parameters function shows that they are boon and bane of simulation. They help to enlarge the scope of simulation far (...) beyond what can be determined by theoretical knowledge, but at the same time undercut the epistemic value of simulation models. (shrink)

Current radical democratic politics is characterized by new participatory spaces for citizens’ engagement, which aim at facilitating the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. These spaces are, however, situated in the context of deep societal inequalities. Modes of discrimination are carried over into participatory interaction. The democratic subject is judged by its physically embodied appearance, which replicates external hierarchies and impedes the freedom of self-expression. To tackle this problem, this article seeks to identify ways to increase the freedom of the (...) subject to explore its multiple self. Understanding the self as inherently fugitive, the article investigates participatory, deliberative and agonistic concepts of self-transformation. As all of them appear limited, it introduces a transformative perspective in democratic thought. Enriching the transformative perspective with queer and gender theory, the article generates the concept of a politics of becoming, which, through radical democratic practices of disidentification, advances the freedom of the subject to change. (shrink)

In this book Han Thomas Adriaenssen offers the first comparative exploration of the sceptical reception of representationalism in medieval and early modern philosophy. Descartes is traditionally credited with inaugurating a new kind of scepticism by saying that the direct objects of perception are images in the mind, not external objects, but Adriaenssen shows that as early as the thirteenth century, critics had already found similar problems in Aquinas's theory of representation. He charts the attempts of philosophers in both periods to (...) grapple with these problems, and shows how in order to address the challenges of scepticism and representation, modern philosophers in the wake of Descartes often breathed new life into old ideas, remoulding them in ways that we are just beginning to understand. His book will be valuable for historians interested in the medieval background to early modern thought, and to medievalists looking at continuity with the early modern period. -/- . (shrink)

Profielen van 59 denkers die filosofie en wetenschap van de twintigste eeuw beslissend beïnvloed hebben.

In der Antisemitismuskritik insbesondere nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wird Fichte vielfach eine zentrale Rolle zugedacht: nämlich als dem Angelpunkt des Umschlags vom religiösen Antijudaismus zur politischen Judenfeindlichkeit. Diese Sicht, die sich im Wesentlichen auf eine Äußerung in einer Frühschrift des Philosophen von 1793 stützt, hat — so die These des Buches — dessen weitere Entwicklung, wenn überhaupt, dann nur völlig unzureichend zur Kenntnis genommen. Für überraschend viele jüdische Zeitgenossen, seine jüdischen Studenten voran, ist Fichte der wegweisende Philosoph der Epoche gewesen. (...) Die weitere, gerade jüdische Rezeptionsgeschichte seines Werkes belegt bis ins Dritte Reich hinein eine erstaunliche, bislang in diesem Umfang nicht zur Kenntnis genommene Affinität des Judentums zu Fichte. Dabei erweisen sich Fichtes Reden an die deutsche Nation — für viele sicherlich überraschend — gerade für den Zionismus als beispielhaft für jedes Volk im Werden und für das jüdische allemal. Auch die französische Fichte-Rezeption — ebenfals dort ist die jüdische prominent vertreten — hat, die Zeit des Grande Guerre ausgenommen, bis zu Beginn des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Fichte vor allem den Erben der Freiheitsversprechen von Aufklärung und Revolution in Frankreich gesehen. (shrink)

English summary: Thinking about God is theology's main task and the philosophy of religion's most noble. Like almost no other theologian and philosopher of religion, Ingolf U. Dalferth's devotion to it has made the paradigms of current philosophical and theological theory construction fruitful. God, in whom people believe and place their trust, is revealed as the First and the Last, as the beginning without end, and the end that renews everything. This Festschrift's twenty-four studies pick up from Dalferth's work by (...) thinking about God in their own way. The richness of the questions they pose, the plurality of the answers, and the diversity of the religious-philosophical and theological perspectives affirm the worthiness of thinking God. German description: Gott zu denken, ist die zentrale Aufgabe der Theologie und die vornehmste der Religionsphilosophie. Wie kaum ein anderer Theologe und Religionsphilosoph hat sich Ingolf U. Dalferth dieser Aufgabe gewidmet und dafur die aktuellen Paradigmen philosophischer und theologischer Theoriebildung fruchtbar gemacht. Gott, an den Menschen glauben und auf den sie ihre Hoffnung setzen, kommt dem Denken als Erstes und Letztes in den Blick, als Anfang, der noch kein Ende gefunden hat, und als Ende, das alles neu macht.Die vierundzwanzig Studien dieser Festschrift nehmen Dalferths Beitrage auf, indem sie je auf ihre Weise Gott nachdenken. Der Reichtum der von ihnen diskutierten Fragestellungen, die Pluralitat der Antworten und die Vielfalt der religionsphilosophischen und theologischen Perspektiven bekraftigen die Denkwurdigkeit Gottes. (shrink)