Jan Westerhoff unfolds the story of one of the richest episodes in the history of Indian thought, the development of Buddhist philosophy during the first millennium CE. He aims to offer the reader a systematic grasp of key Buddhist concepts such as non-self, suffering, reincarnation, karma, and nirvana.

Preview: /Review: Timothy Morton, All Art is Ecological, (London: Penguin Books, 2021), 105 pages./ The book All Art is Ecological provides a provocative and entertaining, but no less concise and instructive study into the nature of the relationship between art and ecological awareness – from the perspective of one of the leading object-oriented ontologists of our time. In that sense, this book can also be read as a short introduction to Morton’s philosophy, which judging by his other books, provides solid (...) theoretical foundations for a critical reflection on the contemporary human condition. (shrink)

More than a century after the first appearance of Norden’s classic commentary on Aeneid VI in 1903 the time has come to see to what extent the new discoveries of Orphic materials and new insights in the ways Virgil worked enrich and/or correct our understanding of that text. We will therefore take a fresh look at Virgil’s underworld, but limit our comments to those passages where perhaps something new can be contributed. This means that we will especially concentrate on the (...) Orphic, the Eleusinian, and the, if usually neglected, Hellenistic-Jewish backgrounds of Aeneas’s descent. Yet a Roman poet hardly could totally avoid his own Roman tradition or the contemporary world, and, in a few instances, we will comment on these aspects as well. As Norden observed, Virgil had divided his picture of the underworld into six parts, and we will follow these in our argument.Plus d’un siècle après la publication, en 1903, du commentaire classique de Norden sur le livre six de l’Énéide, il est temps de considérer à quel point les nouvelles découvertes de matériel orphique et les nouvelles idées sur la manière de travailler de Virgile enrichissent et/ou corrigent la compréhension de ce texte. Il s’agit dès lors de porter un regard neuf sur l’au-delà de Virgile, mais en limitant nos commentaires aux passages sur lesquels il est possible d’apporter quelque chose de nouveau. Ce sont les éléments orphiques et éleusiniens, tout autant que l’arrière-plan hellénistique juif – souvent négligé – sur lesquels l’analyse se concentre. En outre, un poète romain pouvait difficilement négliger totalement sa propre tradition romaine ou le monde contemporain, et, à quelques reprises, ces aspects seront également commentés. Comme Norden l’a observé, Virgile a réparti l’image de l’au-delà en six parties, et c’est son parcours que notre analyse épouse. (shrink)

Journal of Mathematical Logic, Ahead of Print. We construct bounded degree acyclic Borel graphs with large Borel chromatic number using a graph arising from Ramsey theory and limits of expander sequences.

We prove that any left-ordered inp-minimal group is abelian and we provide an example of a non-abelian left-ordered group of dp-rank 2. Furthermore, we establish a necessary condition for a group to have finite burden involving normalizers of definable sets, reminiscent of other chain conditions for stable groups.

Christianity has contributed to the development of a strong anthropocentric ethic. Christian theologians have developed new ways of thinking about the place of humans in nature, often by focussing on the Godhumanity relationship. Thinking about the third component of the metaphysical trinity, nature, has largely remained unchanged. Christian theology needs to make an ontological detour or tour de force to overcome lingering materialist and dualist conceptions of nature, and to embrace key aspects of process thought, most notably panexperientialism. This will (...) pave the way for the required weak anthropocentric ethic. (shrink)

Physics textbooks from ca 1800 are on the one hand self reflective texts that consider the then emerging discipline ‚physics’︁, and serve on the other hand as the bread and butter for the day to day work of teachers and students of physics. The two parts of this paper explore this twofold nature. First, those textbooks written and used by professors in Jena, Halle and Göttingen are used in order to identify a typical textbook. This relies on a close examination (...) of the respective introductory chapter and the one on electricity. The result is used in the second part to provide the background for the reconstruction of the use of physics textbooks in Jena. It is shown when and, as far as possible, why each particular textbook was chosen, withdrawn, neglected, changed or written in the course of physics teaching from 1780 to 1820. Some conclusions are drawn with regard to Jena's position in physics at that time. (shrink)

In order to discuss our problem I propose to adopt a definition of art as an ensemble of man-made objects of specific character, of materials, tools and institutions, of people—those who produce and those who commission or look at works of art—and of techniques and skills mastered by the artists. Art—so broadly understood—has no sharp limits, it is an area connected by hundreds of links with the whole of social, economic, intellectual and spiritual life. It is exposed to various disturbances (...) since any one occurring in those other areas with which art is connected must of necessity affect art and its development to a greater or smaller degree. Lack of demand for some kind of artistic products must lead to the extinction of the corresponding kind of production. For instance, images of saints disappeared in those parts of Germany which adopted the Reformation. One can say in general, that, since various factors of social and economic character influence the life of art, it must reflect the results of those crises which affect social, political or economic life, although the way art reacts on various disturbances may be varied. It may seem natural that in a period of unemployment and of high prices society cannot afford to devote as much money to invest in the goods of culture as it does in times of prosperity, and often it is so indeed. (shrink)

The article investigates characteristics of legal concepts as found in academic articles, focusing upon the knowledge base of legal experts. It is a cognitively oriented study of one of the semiotic basics of communication for academic legal purposes. The purpose is to study the structure of knowledge elements connected to the concept of “Criminal liability of corporations” from US law in and across individual experts in order to look for individual differences and similarities. The central concern is to investigate the (...) conditions for the observable efficiency of semiosis in academic discourse. In a first basic section I discuss aspects relevant for a cognitively oriented study of academic discourse. The empirical part of the article consists of an analysis of text passages from two articles in American law journals. The results of the study support the assumption that high efficiency and precision of semiosis is due rather to the use of specific cognitive processing skills than to total identity of cognitive structures across individual experts. (shrink)

γατομέοντες at Apoll. Rhod. 2,1005 does not adequately describe the mining activities of the Chalybes and is incompatible with the fact that elsewhere Apollonius only employs compounds with γειο-, γεω-, γη- and γαιη-. Moreover, the use of a Doric form lacks a convincing parallel in the “Argonautika”. Contrary to what has been claimed in the past, Apollonius does not use Doric forms to render his language more artificial, but only employs seemingly Doric forms that have a precedent in the Homeric (...) epics. In view of these semantic and morphological problems, it is well to revive O. Schneider’s conjecture λατομέοντες. (shrink)

Der Mythos von der Sintflut wird erstmals im mesopotamischen Atrachasis-Epos im frühen 2. Jahrtausend literarisch greifbar. Das Epos bietet ein fein austariertes Stück Theodizee unter den Bedingungen des Polytheismus: Menschliche Kontingenzerfahrung wird auf die in sich widersprüchlichen Willensentscheidungen innerhalb der Götterversammlung bezogen. Die alttestamentliche Nacherzählung verlagert die widersprüchlichen Gottesbilder in die eine, höchst spannungsvolle Gottheit Jahwe und erzählt im Mythos des sich wandelnden Gottes die Geburt des prophetischen Gottesbildes.

We apply a paraconsistent strategy to reasoning about fractions.

Short-circuit evaluation denotes the semantics of propositional connectives in which the second argument is evaluated only if the first is insufficient to determine the value of the expression. Com...

This paper aims to explore whether there are any legal limits to the use of force, in particular when force is used for political reasons. How plausible is it to expect people to limit their options when they feel that what they’re doing paves the way towards paradise? In this light, much of the law of armed conflict would seem to be inadequate, based as much of it is on the premise that force is non-political. To the extent then that (...) limits are conceivable, these may stem from the individual morality of those engaged in battle rather than from any grand legal designs. (shrink)

We give a novel proof that primitive recursive functions are closed under nested simple recursion. This new presentation is supplied with a detailed proof which can be easily formalized in small fragments of Peano Arithmetic.

This chapter contains sections titled: History of Technology Technology and Science Technology and Philosophy Technology and Environment Technology and Politics Technology and Ethics Technology and the Future.

Review of Martijn Konings Capital and Time: For a New Critique of Neoliberal Reason. Stanford: Stanford University Press.