Revisiting the influence of Hans Kelsen in Mexico requires a revision not only of his visits to Mexico and of the Mexicans to him, but also the different accounts of his thought that exist in Mexico. Hence, we commence by remembering his visits to Mexico —from the cancelled to the consummated, including a endless lists of invitations to visit the country; we continue with the visits of the Mexicans to Kelsen; and we conclude with a visit to Kelsen in Mexico, (...) where we proceed to review the bibliography published both of and on him in Mexico or of Mexican authors. For that purpose, I will do a brief recount of his published works and of the existing debates regarding the extent of influence of his thought —or the fidelity of both kelsenians and antikelsenians. Finally, we include a final consideration on the trascendence of his workResumen:Reflexionar sobre la influencia de Hans Kelsen en México obliga a recordar no solamente las visitas a México y de los mexicanos que fueron en su búsqueda, sino además las diferentes visiones que existen sobre él en México. Así, comenzamos con los viajes de Kelsen a México —desde el cancelado hasta el concretado, sin olvidar una infinidad de invitaciones para visitar el país; continuamos con las visitas de los mexicanos a Kelsen; y concluimos con una visita a Kelsen en México, donde revisamos la bibliohemerografía publicada de y sobre él en México o de autores mexicanos. Para tal efecto me permito hacer un breve recuento de las obras publicadas y de las polémicas que existen en torno al grado de in- fluencia de su pensamiento —o fidelidad de los discípulos kelsenianos y hasta de los antikelsenianos respecto al mismo. Finalmente, incluimos una reflexión final sobre la trascendencia de su obra a partir de un par de anécdotas. (shrink)

Recent histories of American jurisprudence tend to ignore the fact that ideas that appeared in the United States often appeared simultaneously in Europe. Even those works that do not ignore the European context are content with tracing the influence or reception of European thought in America. This article suggests that another possible approach is to compare jurisprudential developments in the United States, Europe, and other places in order to reach more general, sociology-of-knowledge-like insights into the reasons why certain (...) ideas appear at certain times and places. One concrete example is discussed: the rise of an interest in the distinction between formal and "living" law in American and European jurisprudence in the first decade of the twentieth century. This distinction was central to the work of Roscoe Pound in the United States and the work of the Austro-Hungarian legal thinker Eugen Ehrlich. Pound and Ehrlich shared similar personal backgrounds. When they began advocating the study of informal law, both Pound and Ehrlich were teaching law in provincial towns situated on the frontiers of empires. Both towns were marginal places where different cultures clashed and where the legal culture of the center of the empire had only a tenuous hold. Scholars working in such an environment, it is argued, would tend to be more aware of the gap between formal state law and the actual norms governing the daily lives of people than scholars working at the center of an empire. The article offers additional support for this argument by looking at the scholarship of Guido Tedeschi, an Italian-Israeli legal scholar who taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 1940s. The article concludes by calling for the study of the history of American jurisprudence from a comparative perspective, taking into account such issues as the interaction between center and periphery and between empire and provinces in more than one national context. (shrink)

The nature of the relation between jurisprudential theories and first-order legal judgments is a strangely uncontroversial matter in contemporary legal philosophy. There is one dominant conception of the relation according to which jurisprudential theories are second-order or meta-legal theories that specify the ultimate grounds of first-order legal judgments. According to this conception, difficult first-order legal disputes are to be resolved by jurisprudential theorizing. According to an alternative conception that Ronald Dworkin has influentially advocated, jurisprudential theories are (...) not second-order theories about the nature of law, but instead covert first-order legal theories. These two conceptions of the relation between jurisprudential theories and first-order legal judgments dominate the contemporary legal philosophical scene and crowd out other possible conceptions. This article scrutinizes the two conceptions, and in the process raises the possibility of a different and arguably more credible conception. According to this new conception, our first-order legal views and a jurisprudential theory that we accept are supposed to form a mutually disciplining and supporting set of views that we accept in our pursuit of the epistemic ideal of wide reflective equilibrium. The two sets of views are supposed to constrain and discipline each other; but neither is meant to underwrite, certify, or ultimately determine the contents of the other. This new conception, which allows the relation between jurisprudential theories and first-order legal judgments to be much looser, untidier, and more complex than what the two dominant conceptions imply, should facilitate progress in legal philosophy and in first-order legal thinking. (shrink)

Authored by an interdisciplinary team of experts, including historians, classicists, philosophers and theologians, this original collection of essays offers the first authoritative analysis of the multifaceted reception of Greek ethics in late antiquity and Byzantium, opening up a hitherto under-explored topic in the history of Greek philosophy. The essays discuss the sophisticated ways in which moral themes and controversies from antiquity were reinvigorated and transformed by later authors to align with their philosophical and religious outlook in each period. Topics (...) examined range from ethics and politics in Neoplatonism and ethos in the context of rhetorical theory and performance to textual exegesis on Aristotelian ethics. The volume will appeal to scholars and students in philosophy, classics, patristic theology, and those working on the history of education and the development of Greek ethics. (shrink)

This paper argues that jurisprudential inquiries can be profitably analysed as oriented towards either the explanatory paradigm of discourse or the explanatory paradigm of tradition. The first part of the paper offers a map of the discipline of jurisprudence in accordance with the above two different explanatory orientations. It does so at two levels: 1) ontological ; and 2) epistemological. In the second part the paper, the tension and interaction between the explanatory paradigms of discourse and tradition in the (...) work of five different theorists is considered: 1) Elizabeth Mertz's anthropological linguistics; 2) Nicola Lacey's revision of the relationship between analytical jurisprudence and descriptive sociology; 3) Roger Cotterrell's call for a sociology of legal ideas; 4) Neil MacCormick's concept of law as institutionalised normative order; and 5) Patrick Glenn's notion of a legal tradition. Finally, in the third part, the paper addresses certain implications of the analysis of jurisprudential inquiries by reference to the above two explanatory orientations for comparative and international legal scholarship. The two explanatory orientations are offered as one of many paradigms thanks to which one can recognise the limitations of any one picture of law or legal work. At the metaphilosophical level, the analysis of the paper indicates that there are three options available to jurisprudence, i.e., 1) seek to provide a picture of law or legal work on the basis of one explanatory orientation; 2) maintain pluralism about concepts of law or legal work given their limitations in light of their explanatory orientations; or 3) attempt to combine the elements of both explanatory paradigms in a unified account. The paper argues that insofar as jurisprudence seeks to provide normative resources for responses to certain challenges in the public sphere, it ought to go for option two, namely, for maintaining pluralism about concepts of law and legal work. (shrink)

Making a first sketch of philosophical issues arising from European Community law I want to present a series of more or less obvious, and more or less interrelated dilemmas, or even 'double binds'. Deepening the community becomes incompatible with widening membership. National states seem both necessary for and obstructive in articulating transnational problems. The more democracy is needed as a warrant for the public exercise of political power in Europe, the more the very concept of democracy on a European scale (...) evades understanding. European unity presupposes a unifying rule of law, while member states have radically different conceptions of this principle. Even the very core of European integration, the common market, is subject to two conflicting and, indeed, incompatible doctrines of competition. In explaining the nature of each dilemma I will try to take my cue from the Maastricht Treaty wherever this seems suitable. Then I will elaborate on the jurisprudential problems involved in it. Finally, each section will be closed by an attempt to state the nature of these problems in philosophical terms. (shrink)

Making a first sketch of philosophical issues arising from European Community law I want to present a series of more or less obvious, and more or less interrelated dilemmas, or even ‘double binds’. (i) Deepening the community becomes incompatible with widening membership. (ii) National states seem both necessary for and obstructive in articulating transnational problems. (iii) The more democracy is needed as a warrant for the public exercise of political power in Europe, the more the very concept of democracy on (...) a European scale evades understanding. (iv) European unity presupposes a unifying rule of law, while member states have radically different conceptions of this principle. (v) Even the very core of European integration, the common market, is subject to two conflicting and, indeed, incompatible doctrines of competition. In explaining the nature of each dilemma I will try to take my cue from the Maastricht Treaty wherever this seems suitable. Then I will elaborate on the jurisprudential problems involved in it. Finally, each section will be closed by an attempt to state the nature of these problems in philosophical terms. (shrink)

This article attempts to demonstrate, via the famous Hart‐Dworkin debate on the nature and functions of judicial discretion, that substantial jurisprudential disputes as well as theories can, and do, arise from misconceived critiques, whether intended or otherwise. It also seeks to show that, whilst Dworkin's initial critique of Hart was misconceived, his theory of adjudication that arose as a result of responses to his initial views is a positive contribution to learning, although 1 argue that Dworkin's views are not, (...) in the final analysis, sufficiently persuasive to constitute a radical departure from Hart's own views. (shrink)

This collection, first published in 2000, brings together essays by some of the most prominent scholars currently writing in commercial law theory. The essays address the foundations of efficiency analysis as the dominant theoretical paradigm in contemporary corporate and commercial law scholarship. Some of the questions addressed in the volume are: What are the historical roots of efficiency analysis in contract, sales, and corporate law? Is moral theory irrelevant to efficiency analysis in these areas; if relevant, are morality and efficiency (...) compatible? Even if efficiency is otherwise reasonable as a normative goal in corporate and commercial law, does the complexity of efficiency make it practical to administer in adjudication? What is the best way of pursuing efficiency in corporate and commercial law? The volume reflects the most exciting work being done in contemporary legal theory. It will be of interest to professionals and students in law and philosophy of law. (shrink)

I argue that psychopathy undermines three common assumptions typically invoked in favor of moderate reasons responsive theories of moral responsibility. First, I propose a theory of psychopathic agency and claim that psychopathic agency suggests that the systems underlying receptivity to reason bifurcate into at least two sub-systems of receptivity. Next, I claim that the bifurcation of systems for receptivity suggests that reactivity is not “all of a piece” but that it too decomposes into at least two subsystems. Lastly, I argue (...) that prior attempts by Fischer and Ravizza to address these concerns contain an appeal to internalism. Since Fischer and Ravizza want their theory to remain agnostic about the nature of reasons for action, this appeal to internalism is problematic for their view. I close by suggesting that if we are to make sense of when and why psychopaths are responsible then a mechanism-based theory of responsibility must be able to explain how different systems of receptivity and reactivity come together to constitute a single mechanism that grounds responsibility ascriptions for action and they must do so without tacitly appealing to implausible forms of internalism about reasons for action. (shrink)

The reaction to Darwin's Origin of Species varied in many countries according to the roles played by national scientific institutions and traditions and the attitudes of religious and political groups. The contributors to this volume, including M. J. S. Hodge, David Hull, and Roberto Moreno, gathered in 1972 at an international conference on the comparative reception of Darwinism. Their essays look at early pro- and anti-Darwinism arguments, and three additional comparative essays and appendices add a larger perspective. For this (...) paperback edition, Thomas F. Glick has added a new preface commenting on recent research. (shrink)

Investigation into the theme of receptions and influences is one of traditional topics in the historiography of national philosophies. This article analyses the models of reception and influence used by Ukrainian historians of philosophy: the model of “influence without reception” (А. Tykholaz), the model of “studying philosophy” (D. Tschižewskij) and the model of “reception without influence” (V. Horskyi). Resting upon works by J.-L. Viellard-Baron and P. Hadot, the author tried to argue that: а) the place that (...) class='Hi'>reception studies occupies in historiography as well as understanding of its phenomenon is traditionally dictated by the perception of the historic-philosophical process, the genre of the historiography of philosophy and specific historiographic attitudes; b) reception is a complex phenomenon, which has totally different configurations and meanings in different periods of the history of philosophy and cannot be put into one formula; c) the application of obvious formulas from the contemporary vision of receptions in separate historical contexts can verify or objection of the originality or even the existence of separate philosophical traditions; d) through the reflection on the phenomenon of reception in all of its complexity it possible to reveal some aspects, research into which notably corrects our perception of the history of philosophy; e) the popular over the past decades idea of the history of philosophy as dialogue among philosophers is a challenge for the historiography, though it can have a positive effect on historic-philosophical research as well as on historic-philosophical discourse in general. Particularly, the research into reception and using dialogue as a regulatory idea can influence the international circulation of ideas and contribute to turning it into “rational dialogue”, promoted by P. Bourdieu. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that public discourse as we know it is less than ideal from an epistemological point of view. In this paper, we develop an underappreciated aspect of the trouble with public discourse: what we call the Listening Problem. The listening problem is the problem that public discourse has in giving appropriate uptake and reception to ideas and concepts from oppressed groups. Drawing on the work of Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser, we develop an institutional response to (...) the listening problem: the establishment of what we call Receptive Publics, discursive spaces designed to improve listening skills and to give space for counterhegemonic ideas. (shrink)

The author analyzes the role and significance of the new scientific area within the Ancient philosophy studies, named Classical Reception Studies. This area manifests itself as a reconceptualization of Antic Studies and therefore is as an interdisciplinary field, which focuses on the study of the receptions of Antiquity. This area is specific in its sphere of interest – not only philosophical heritage of a certain period, but also literary, historical and other sources. Such aspect of classical reception studies (...) are important as it contributes to thorough and fundamental studies of the history of Ukrainian philosophy because the ancient philosophical heritage was at the center of reflections on Ukrainian philosophy from Kievan Rus' to the present day. Therefore, we see the importance of domestic scientific studies devoted to the study of the receptions of antiquity in general and in the history of Ukrainian philosophy in particular. The latter can help to more understand the specifics of the formation and development of the philosophical tradition in Ukraine. Classical reception studies can be a specific historical and philosophical method of research of ancient philosophical heritage, along with other methods such as doxography, rational and historical reconstruction, etc. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that it can incorporate elements of doxography, as well as rational reconstruction or other historical and philosophical methods alone or together The author argues that in the context of classical reception studies, ancient philosophical texts can become a basis for solving contemporary global or local problems and issues of humanity (political, social, cultural, etc.). The potential of ancient texts and fragments (including philosophical ones) is important not only for understanding the past, but also in relation to the developments of society in the present. (shrink)

This book presents a historiographical and theorical analysis of how Husserlian Phenomenology arrived and developed in North America. The chapters analyze the different phases of the reception of Edmund Husserl’s thought in the USA and Canada. The volume discusses the authors and universities that played a fundamental role in promoting Husserlian Phenomenology and clarifies their connection with American Philosophy, Pragmatism, and with Analytic Philosophy. Starting from the analysis of how the first American Scholars of Edmund Husserl's thought opened the (...) door to the reception of his texts, the book explores the first encounters between Pragmatism and Husserlian Phenomenology in American Universities. The study focuses, then, on those Scholars who fled from Europe to America, from 1933 onwards, to escape Nazism - Felix Kaufmann, Alfred Schutz, Aron Gurwitsch, Herbert Spiegelberg, Fritz Kaufmann, among the most notable - and illustrates how their teaching provided the very basis for the spreading of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America. The volume examines, then, the action of the 20th Century North-American Husserl Scholars, together with those places, societies, centers, and journals, specifically created to represent the development of the studies devoted to Husserlian Phenomenology in the U.S., with a focus of the Regional Phenomenological Schools. (shrink)

A natural way to think of epistemic virtue is by analogy with an archer. Just as a skilled archer is able to take aim and hit a target, a skilled epistemic agent will aim at truth and, if things go well, get things right. Here we highlight aspects of epistemic virtue that do not fit this model, particularly ways in which epistemic virtues can be non-voluntary and not goal-directed. In doing so, we draw on two important figures in the history (...) of philosophy: the 6th-century Indian Buddhist Buddhaghosa and the 20th-century French philosopher Simone Weil. Despite many differences, both thinkers emphasize the importance of attention in moral and epistemic virtue. Their work highlights ways in which attention that is neither voluntary nor goal-directed can nevertheless play an important role in moral and epistemic life. (shrink)

Usually thoughts are not in isolation but in varing degrees have interrelations with each other. With regard to this historical fact as a classist want to explore the reception of a few medieval Arabic texts and writers of Socrates available teachings about politics.

Although the works of the authors of the Golden Age of Latin Literature play an important formative role for Early Modern philosophers, their influence in Early Modern thought is, nowadays, rarely studied. Trying to bring this topic to light once again and following the seminal works of Kajanto (1979), Proietti (1985) and Akkerman (1985), I will target Spinoza’s Latin sources in order to analyze their place in his philosophy. On those grounds, I will offer an overview of the problems of (...) the reception of classical literature in Early Modernity and then dwell on the particular case of Ovid and Spinoza. The present paper will argue that although Spinoza’s references to Ovid fill a rhetorical purpose as suggested by the existing literature, these mentions have a prior philosophical motivation. That is, the references in the Ethics are not merely illustrative; instead, they indicate that Spinoza acknowledges Ovid’s beliefs about human experiences and deliberately elaborates on Ovid’s view to construct and defend his own theses. To this end, the paper will analyze some citations mapped by Proietti (1985) and add a new one in an attempt to enlarge the list of places and topics that merit further investigation. To conclude, I will point out how the references to Ovid are part of Spinoza’s own defense of the powers of imagination. (shrink)

Developed from a one-day symposium at the University of Tilburg, this collection of papers explores the semiotic foundations of legislation as viewed from jurisprudential, institutional and sociological perspectives. They pose such questions as: the audience of legislation; the relations between legislative and judicial discourse; the contributions of speech act theory; the effectiveness of legislation and its meaning in non-legal discourse; and the creation of a supra-national form of constitutional discourse, that of Europe.

Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac emphasizes values of receptivity and perceptivity that appear to be mutually reinforcing, critical to an ecological conscience, and cultivatable through concrete and embodied experience. His priorities bear striking similarities to elements of the ethics of care elaborated by feminist philosophers, especially Nel Noddings, who notably recommended receptivity, direct and personal experience, and even shared Leopold’s attentiveness to joy and play as sources of moral motivation. These commonalities are so fundamental that ecofeminists can and should (...) see Leopold as a philosophical ally. The three ecofeminist scholars who have devoted the most concerted attention to Leopold’s work argue that his Land Ethic is not, and does not provide a basis for, an ecofeminist ethic. I dispute the main criticisms of these scholars, and conclude that ecofeminists should attend more often to Leopold’s work, which extends possibilities for excellent praxis. (shrink)

Open Access: I rely on Nel Noddings’ analysis of receptivity as "an essential component of intellectual work," to argue that receptivity is a virtue of argumentation, practicing the principle of charity excellently for the sake of an author and their philosophical community. The deficiency of receptivity is epitomized by the philosopher who listens to attack. The excess of receptivity is the vice of insufficiently critical acceptance of an author regardless of the merits of an argument.

Nous retraçons la réception de Dingler et les transformations qu’a vues son approche dans l’École d’Erlangen autour de Paul Lorenzen où l’on a cherché à faire ressortir et à développer la partie défendable du pragmatisme de Dingler. Le programme « purifié » de ce « constructivisme méthodique » consiste à reconstruire les connaissances scientifiques à partir du savoir-faire sur lequel repose la construction des instruments de mesure.

The cultivation of receptivity to the mystery of reality is a central feature of many religious and philosophical traditions, both Western and Asian. This paper considers two contemporary accounts of receptivity to mystery – those of David E. Cooper and John Cottingham – and considers them in light of the problem of loss of receptivity. I argue that a person may lose their receptivity to mystery by embracing what I call a scientistic stance, and the paper concludes by offering two (...) possible responses to combating that stance and restoring the receptivity to mystery that it occludes. (shrink)

In this paper I present a model of receptivity that is composed of ontological and normative dimensions, which I argue answer to the critical-diagnostic and to the possibility-disclosing needs of democratic politics. I distinguish between ‘pre-reflective receptivity,’ understood ontologically as a condition of intelligibility, and ‘reflective receptivity,’ understood normatively as a condition of disclosing new possibilities. Keywords: receptivity; change; possibility; critique; reflective disclosure (Published: 23 December 2011) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 4 , No. 4, 2011, pp. 255-272. DOI: (...) 10.3402/egp.v4i4.14829. (shrink)

Possible measures to mitigate climate change require global collective actions whose impacts will be felt by many, if not all. Implementing such actions requires successful communication of the reasons for them, and hence the underlying climate science, to a degree that far exceeds typical scientific issues which do not require large-scale societal response. Empirical studies have identified factors, such as the perceived level of consensus in scientific opinion and the perceived reliability of scientists, that can limit people's trust in science (...) communicators and their subsequent acceptance of climate change claims. Little consideration has been given, however, to recent formal results within philosophy concerning the relationship between truth, the reliability of evidence sources, the coherence of multiple pieces of evidence/testimonies, and the impact of independence between sources of evidence. This study draws on these results to evaluate exactly what has been established in the empirical literature about the factors that bias the public's reception of scientific communications about climate change. (shrink)

This paper reads Foucault’s 1975-6 lecture series Society Must Be Defended. It argues that the notion of counter-history developed in these lectures depends on a particular construction of Rome, as that which counter-history counters. Foucault’s version of Rome in turn depends on a surprisingly conventional reading of two monumental histories as ‘the praise of Rome’. Reading Foucault’s work instead with Lucan’s Pharsalia renders visible a counter-history within Rome itself. This reading demonstrates the ways in which reception theory can usefully (...) illuminate and supplement Foucauldian genealogy as a critical-historical method. (shrink)

I rely on Nel Noddings’ analysis of receptivity as "an essential component of intellectual work," to argue that receptivity is a virtue of argumentation, practicing the principle of charity excellently for the sake of an author and their philosophical community. The deficiency of receptivity is epitomized by the philosopher who listens to attack. The excess of receptivity is the vice of insufficiently critical acceptance of an author regardless of the merits of an argument.

It has been remarked that the ‘rupture thesis’ prevails within the Anglo-American legal academy in its understanding of the legal system in Nazi Germany. This article explores the existence and origins of this idea—that ‘Nazi law’ represented an aberration from normal legal-historical development with a point of rupture persisting between it and the ‘normal’ or central concept of law—within jurisprudential discourse in order to illustrate the prevalence of a distorted representation of Nazi law and how this distortion is manifested (...) within the discourse today. An analysis of the treatment of Nazi law in two major 50th anniversary publications about the 1958 Hart–Fuller debate, and a review of representations of the Third Reich within literature from the current discourse, demonstrates that the rupture thesis continues to be reproduced within jurisprudence. An examination of the role of Nazi law in the Hart–Fuller debate itself shows that it can be traced back to the debate, where it was constructed through a combination of conceptual determinism and historical omission. It concludes that the historical Nazi law has great significance for the concept of law, but neither positivism nor natural law has properly theorised the nature of the real Nazi legal system. (shrink)

This chapter will explore the reception of Condillac in Argentina from the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, focusing on two cases. First, the reception by nineteenth-century professors of idéologie (Juan Crisóstomo Lafinur, Juan Manuel Fernández de Agüero, Luis José de la Peña, and Diego Alcorta) that was mediated by the interpretations of Antoine Destutt de Tracy, Pierre Jean Cabanis, and Pierre Laromiguière. Second, the reception in the early twentieth century by José Ingenieros, whose narrative was (...) conditioned by his own political and philosophical agenda. In each case, we can identify different receptions that must be interpreted not only in light of the philosophical concerns of the authors who made them but also in light of the wider cultural and political context in which they emerged. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Condillac was received as a philosopher who integrated the new philosophical canon that would replace the Scholastic canon that had been imposed by the colonial regime. In the early twentieth century, Ingenieros inserted Condillac into a narrative that, starting with Bacon and Locke, culminated in positivism, a current that, in his view, offered the best framework to make Argentina shine in the concert of civilized nations. (shrink)

The period from Kant to Hegel is one of the most intense and rigorous in modern philosophy. The central problem at the heart of it was the development of a new standard of theoretical reflection and of the principle of rationality itself. The essays in this volume, published in 2000, consider both the development of Kant's system of transcendental idealism in the three Critiques, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and the Opus Postumum, as well as the reception and (...) transformation of that idealism in the work of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. (shrink)

According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, our potential intellect is a purely receptive capacity. Alexander also claims that, in order for us to actualise our intellectual potentiality, the intellect needs to abstract what is intelligible from enmattered perceptible objects. Now a problem emerges: How is it possible for a purely receptive capacity to perform such an abstraction? It will be argued that even though Alexander's reaction to this question causes some tension in his theory, the philosophical motivation for it is a (...) sound one. Rather than a calculation of actualities and potentialities, the doctrine of receptivity is supposed to explain how human beings come to grasp universal aspects of reality in an accurate manner. (shrink)

The legal-ethical dynamism in Islamic law which allows it to respond to the challenges of modernity is said to reside in the institution of ijtihād (independent legal thinking and hermeneutics). However, jurists like Mohsen Kadivar and Ayatollah Faḍlalla have argued that the “traditional ijtihād” paradigm has reached its limits of flexibility as it allows for only minor adaptations and lacks a rigorous methodology because of its reliance on vague and highly subjective juridical devices such as public welfare (maṣlaḥa), imperative necessity (...) (ḍarūra), emergency (iḍtirār), need (ḥāja), averting difficulty (‘usr) and distress (ḥaraj), hardship (mashaqqa), and harm (ḍarar) without interrogating the fundamentals (uṣūl) of ijtihād. In contrast, in the “foundational ijtihād” model theology, ethics, intellect, epistemology, linguistics, hermeneutics, modern sciences, history, cosmology, anthropology, and the sources of Islamic legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) interact with one another to obtain resolutions that are just and non-discriminatory. (shrink)

According to several commentators, Kurt Godel's incompleteness discoveries were assimilated promptly and almost without objection by his contemporaries - - a circumstance remarkable enough to call for explanation. Careful examination reveals, however, that there were doubters and critics, as well as defenders and rival claimants to priority. In particular, the reactions of Carnap, Bernays, Zermelo, Post, Finsler, and Russell, among others, are considered in detail. Documentary sources include unpublished correspondence from Godel's Nachlass.

The Medieval Reception of the Shāhnāma as a Mirror for Princes. By Nasrin Askari. Studies in Persian Cultural History, vol. 9. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. xi + 398. $189, €136.

Nous retraçons la réception de Dingler et les transformations qu’a vues son approche dans l’École d’Erlangen autour de Paul Lorenzen où l’on a cherché à faire ressortir et à développer la partie défendable du pragmatisme de Dingler. Le programme « purifié » de ce « constructivisme méthodique » consiste à reconstruire les connaissances scientifiques à partir du savoir-faire (technique et linguistique) sur lequel repose la construction des instruments de mesure.

This paper is about the reception of Ernst Mach by Brentano and his students in Austria. I shall outline the main elements of this reception, starting with Brentano’s evaluation, in his lectures on positivism, of Mach’s theory of sensations. Secondly, I shall comment the early reception of Mach by Brentano’s pupils in Prague. The third part bears on the close relationship that Husserl established between his phenomenology and Mach’s descriptivism. I will then briefly examine Mach’s contribution to (...) the controversy on gestalt qualities. The fifth part bears on Stumpf’s debate with Mach on psychophysical relations and I shall conclude on Husserl’s criticism of Mach’s alleged logical psychologism. (shrink)

La philosophie d'Henri Bergson fait l'objet d'une réception passionnée au Japon au début des années 1910, mais, étant donné un contexte spiritualiste critiquant la raison, elle est généralement interprétée comme un irrationalisme opposant l'intuition à l'intelligence. Le principal problème de la réception de 1941, à l'occasion de la mort de Bergson, est alors de montrer comment l'intuition en réalité collabore avec l'intelligence. Par l'examen de la notion d' « empirisme intégral », Miki Kiyoshi, qui a développé une philosophie dialectique influencée (...) par Karl Marx et Martin Heidegger, tente d'y apporter une solution en rapprochant l'intuition bergsonienne de l'imagination kantienne. In Japan, Henri Bergson's philosophy was received with passion in the early 1910's, but, given a spiritualist context criticizing reason, it was generally interpreted as an irrationalism opposing intuition and intelligence. The main problem concerning how Bergson's philosophy was received on the occasion of his death in 1941 was therefore to show how in reality intuition collaborates with intelligence. By examining the notion of « integral empiricism », Miki Kiyoshi, who developed a dialectical philosophy influenced by Karl Marx and Martin Heidegger, attempted to solve this problem by showing a close relationship between Bergsonian intuition and Kantian imagination. (shrink)

Erasmus was one of the most widely read and controversial authors of the early modern period, inspiring a broad range of reader reactions. The present volume addresses various aspects of Erasmus's reception, including how the author's name was sometimes used to bolster decidedly "un-Erasmian" ideals.