Ernst Cassirer Ernst Cassirer was the most prominent, and the last, Neo-Kantian philosopher of the twentieth century. His major philosophical contribution was the transformation of his teacher Hermann Cohen ’s mathematical-logical adaptation of Kant’s transcendental idealism into a comprehensive philosophy of symbolic forms intended to address all aspects of human cultural life and creativity. In … Continue reading Ernst Cassirer →.

Anthony K. Jensen - Nietzsche's Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 671-672 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Anthony K. Jensen Emory University Lawrence J. Hatab. Nietzsche's Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence. New York-London: Routledge, 2005. Pp. xix + 191. Paper, $24.95. In his latest book, Lawrence Hatab brings together several threads from his previous writing into (...) an elegant expression that examines a wide range of Nietzsche's thought through the single prism of his notoriously obscure conception of "Eternal Recurrence." The opening chapters establish the affirmation of becoming and the "tragic" view of the world (which Nietzsche had already articulated in his earliest.. (shrink)

K.J. Devlin has extended Jensen's construction of a model ofZFC andCH without Souslin trees to a model without Kurepa trees either. We modify the construction again to obtain a model with these properties, but in addition, without Kurepa trees inccc-generic extensions. We use a partially defined ◊-sequence, given by a fine structure lemma. We also show that the usual collapse ofκ Mahlo toω 2 will give a model without Kurepa trees not only in the model itself, but also inccc-extensions.

This essay provides a pastpostmodem phenomenological account of a good idea. It is a short experiment in what Foucault calls, “the unchanging pedagogical origins of dialectics.” The ‘ostensible’ question considered is: What follows in the wake of nihilism? Scribbling in the margins, a metaphor for the classical task of the public intellectual, is one way of nudging the reader into the periphery of writing.

With his _An Interpretation of Nietzsche’s "On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life_", Anthony K. Jensen shows how 'timely' Nietzsche’s second "Untimely Meditation" really is. This comprehensive and insightful study contextualizes and analyzes a wide range of Nietzsche’s earlier thoughts about history: teleology, typology, psychology, memory, classical philology, Hegelianism, and the role historiography plays in modern culture. _On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life_ is shown to be a ‘timely’ work, too, insofar as it weaves (...) together a number of Nietzsche's most important influences and thematic directions at that time: ancient culture, science, epistemology, and the thought of Schopenhauer and Burckhardt. Rather than dismiss it as a mere ‘early’ work, Jensen shows how the text resonates in Nietzsche’s later perspectivism, his theory of subjectivity, and Eternal Recurrence. And by using careful philological analysis of the text’s composition history, Jensen is in position to fully elucidate and evaluate Nietzsche’s arguments in their proper contexts. As such Jensen’s _Interpretation_ should restore Nietzsche’s second "Untimely Meditation" to a prominent place among 19 th Century philosophies of history. (shrink)

Nietzsche stands alone among the great nineteenth-century philosophers of history to have been trained and employed as an historian. As a classical philologist, he was trained not only in Ancient languages, but also in the methods of critical hermeneutics, textual genealogy, and cultural theory. Despite this there has been comparatively little scholarly attention paid to Nietzsche's most pointed reflection on history: _On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life _, the second of his _Untimely Meditations_. In this monograph, Anthony (...) K. Jensen demonstrates how ‘timely’ this work of Nietzsche’s is, revealing a text that offers insight into the most important aspects of Nietzsche’s then-contemporary philosophy of history, including teleological theories, Hegelianism, Positivism, romantic historiography, classical philology, and the role of history in education and politics. Using a straightforward and conversational approach, Jensen contextualizes the figures and movements that serve as Nietzsche’s interlocutors, and situates this text within Nietzsche’s larger philosophical project. Through an examination of Nietzsche's views, the author argues for the contemporary philosophical relevance of _On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life_, and advances the scholarly discussion of this oft-overlooked but nevertheless essential text. (shrink)

Resumo: A Segunda consideração extemporânea geralmente é tida em conta por filósofos e historiadores, em razão de sua crítica ao que Nietzsche classifica como “doença histórica”,. Isso por uma boa razão: a crítica de Nietzsche tem como alvo não apenas a famosa tríade composta por historiadores monumentais, antiquários e críticos, mas também suas modalidades contemporâneas em historiografia e teleologia científicas. O que frequentes vezes é desconsiderado é que o próprio Nietzsche expõe - ainda que numa retórica altamente estilizada - uma (...) concepção afirmativa da história. Essa concepção, como eu proponho, faz o leitor retornar ao enunciado que inaugura o livro, qual seja, o Ceterum Censeo, de Goethe. A demanda de Nietzsche de que a história serve à vida é uma nova aplicação da teoria de Goethe do crescimento morfológico como consequência de forças polares concorrentes para o reino da história. Uma vez que Goethe tinha os organismos vivos como a crescer por meio de forças em concorrência, também Nietzsche entendia que os indivíduos e culturas cresciam por meio de uma história considerada, acima de tudo, uma espécie de arena competitiva em que se expressam impulsos antagonistas.: The second Untimely Meditation is usually regarded by philosophers and historians for its critique of what Nietzsche labels ‘historische Krankheit’. This is for good reason, as Nietzsche’s critique not only targets the famous triad of Monumental, Antiquarian, and Critical historians, but also his contemporary fashions in scientific historiography and teleology as well. What is too often overlooked is that also Nietzsche exposits -- albeit in highly-stylized rhetoric -- an affirmative vision of history. This vision, I argue, returns the reader to the opening sentence of the book, namely, the Ceterum Censeo from Goethe. Nietzsche’s demand that history serve life is a novel application of Goethe’s theory of morphological growth as a consequence of polar competing forces to the realm of history. As Goethe thought living organisms grow by means of intrinsic competitive forces, so Nietzsche thought individuals and cultures grow by means of a history that is, above all, considered as a sort of competitive arena in which to express antagonistic drives. (shrink)

The Schopenhauer-Schule was a group of original and diverse thinkers working in the wake of a common inspiration. This paper elucidates Nietzsche’s relationship with these thinkers specifically as concerns their intertwined theories of will. It shows that despite his efforts to suppress and ridicule them, Nietzsche was influenced by the Schopenhauer-Schule and adopted several of their alterations to Schopenhauer. But it will also show that Nietzsche was a heretical member of this school in the sense that his theory of will (...) was not only different from theirs but also subversive. Whereas each member of the Schopenhauer-Schule posits a realist ontology of will, Nietzsche’s perspectivism undercuts the possibility of their ontological realism and puts in its place a semiotical system of expression. As a result of this contextualized framework, Nietzsche’s will to power is revealed, not as an intended reference to a real “thing” in the world, but as a symbol that expresses his perspective about an unknowable reality. (shrink)

Introduction: Schools have become a primary setting for providing mental health care to youths in the U.S. School-based interventions have proliferated, but their effects on mental health and academic outcomes remain understudied. In this study we will implement and evaluate the effects of a flexible multidiagnostic treatment called Modular Approach to Therapy for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, or Conduct Problems on students' mental health and academic outcomes.Methods and Analysis: This is an assessor-blind randomized controlled effectiveness trial conducted across five (...) school districts. School clinicians are randomized to either MATCH or usual care treatment conditions. The target sample includes 168 youths referred for mental health services and presenting with elevated symptoms of anxiety, depression, trauma, and/or conduct problems. Clinicians randomly assigned to MATCH or UC treat the youths who are assigned to them through normal school referral procedures. The project will evaluate the effectiveness of MATCH compared to UC on youths' mental health and school related outcomes and assess whether changes in school outcomes are mediated by changes in youth mental health.Ethics and Dissemination: This study was approved by the Harvard University Institutional Review Board. We plan to publish the findings in peer-reviewed journals and present them at academic conferences.Clinical Trial Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02877875. Registered on August 24, 2016. (shrink)

Organizational change surrounding the security of identifiable health information has become imperative. This is a significant challenge for managers who are held responsible for loss of privacy through faulty security procedures. Management cannot completely secure the organization and still provide employees and customers with the information and services they need. Organizations must decide how much and what type of security they need, how to assign priorities, and how to manage security as the organization evolves in a competitive environment.

In contrast to positivistic assignations of influence in Nietzsche-studies, this article considers the possibility of “conversational” reconstructions of contexts, where the focus is less on “whether” and “when” Nietzsche read a text, and concentrates instead on “how” and “why” he read it. This method is exemplified by the case of Philipp Mainländer, a contemporary about whom Nietzsche says almost nothing of philosophical importance. This article shows that six key leitmotifs of the Zarathustrazeit happen to form direct solutions to dangers entailed (...) by Mainländer’s system: the Death of God, the Übermensch, the Last Man, Will to Power, Eternal Return, and Amor Fati. That each of these tropes serves as a neat solution to Mainländer suggests that Nietzsche was engaged in a sort of competitive intellectual conversation with his philosophy. And as such, Mainländer’s influence on Nietzsche, even if mostly negative, should not continue to be neglected. (shrink)

Nietzsche, the so-called herald of the 'philosophy of the future', nevertheless dealt with the past on nearly every page of his writing. Not only was he concerned with how past values, cultural practices and institutions influence the present - he was plainly aware that any attempt to understand that influence encounters many meta-historical problems. This comprehensive and lucid exposition of the development of Nietzsche's philosophy of history explores how Nietzsche thought about history and historiography throughout his life and how it (...) affected his most fundamental ideas. Discussion of the whole span of Nietzsche's writings, from his earliest publications as a classical philologist to his later genealogical and autobiographical projects, is interwoven with careful analysis of his own forms of writing history, the nineteenth-century paradigms which he critiqued, and the twentieth-century views which he anticipated. The book will be of much interest to scholars of Nietzsche and of nineteenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

BackgroundThe increased risk of developing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in extremely preterm infants is well-documented. Better understanding of perinatal risk factors, particularly those that are modifiable, can inform prevention efforts.MethodsWe examined data from the Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborns (ELGAN) Study. Participants were screened for ADHD at age 10 with the Child Symptom Inventory-4 (N = 734) and assessed at age 15 with a structured diagnostic interview (MINI-KID) to evaluate for the diagnosis of ADHD (N = 575). We studied associations (...) of pre-pregnancy maternal body mass index (BMI), pregestational and/or gestational diabetes, maternal smoking during pregnancy (MSDP), and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) with 10-year and 15-year ADHD outcomes. Relative risks were calculated using Poisson regression models with robust error variance, adjusted for maternal age, maternal educational status, use of food stamps, public insurance status, marital status at birth, and family history of ADHD. We defined ADHD as a positive screen on the CSI-4 at age 10 and/or meeting DSM-5 criteria at age 15 on the MINI-KID. We evaluated the robustness of the associations to broadening or restricting the definition of ADHD. We limited the analysis to individuals with IQ ≥ 70 to decrease confounding by cognitive functioning. We evaluated interactions between maternal BMI and diabetes status. We assessed for mediation of risk increase by alterations in inflammatory or neurotrophic protein levels in the first week of life.ResultsElevated maternal BMI and maternal diabetes were each associated with a 55–65% increase in risk of ADHD, with evidence of both additive and multiplicative interactions between the two exposures. MSDP and HDP were not associated with the risk of ADHD outcomes. There was some evidence for association of ADHD outcomes with high levels of inflammatory proteins or moderate levels of neurotrophic proteins, but there was no evidence that these mediated the risk associated with maternal BMI or diabetes.ConclusionContrary to previous population-based studies, MSDP and HDP did not predict ADHD outcomes in this extremely preterm cohort, but elevated maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, maternal diabetes, and perinatal inflammatory markers were associated with increased risk of ADHD at age 10 and/or 15, with positive interaction between pre-pregnancy BMI and maternal diabetes. (shrink)

Nas universidades alemãs do período em que Nietzsche esteve intelectualmente ativo, a tradição kantiana foi amplamente substituída por duas escolas independentes e que, desde então, têm sido rotuladas de "neokantismo". Este artigo apresenta quatro teses principais da filosofia da história neokantiana, mostra como elas são uma decorrência de sua adaptação da tradição kantiana e como Nietzsche se envolve criticamente com os mesmos temas na formação de sua própria teoria histórica. Embora não haja uma influência muito direta entre estas escolas, o (...) contraste com a tradição neokantiana nos permite situar melhor a filosofia da história de Nietzsche em seu contexto apropriado. In the German academies of Nietzsche's period of writing, the Kantian tradition was largely displaced in favor of two independent schools that have since been labeled "Neo-Kantianism." This paper presents four key theses about philosophy of history from four Neo-Kantian thinkers, how they follow from their adaptation of the Kantian tradition, and how Nietzsche critically engaged the very same issues in the formation of his own historical theory. Although there is little direct influence between orthodox Neo-Kantianism and Nietzsche, their comparison on these points will illuminate their unique adaptations of the Kantian tradition. (shrink)

This article exams the philosophy of history of the now mostly-forgotten 19th Century philosopher, Eduard von Hartmann. Hartmann inverts Hegel’s rational teleology by his reliance on a notion of ‘unconscious ideas’. Purposes are a species of idea. All natural things, including unintelligent natural things, will purposes of which they are often not conscious. These unconscious ideas cannot be held by natural beings that lack intellect, so there must be some supra-naturalistic being, which Hartmann names the Metaphysical Unconscious, that imposes purposes (...) on unconsciously-acting agents. The course of human history is the gradual becoming-conscious of the ends posited by the Metaphysical Unconscious. Insofar as nature always achieves the purposes of the Metaphysical Unconscious this is the best of all possible worlds. Insofar as those purposes are realized irrespective of human happiness, historical progress becomes the gradual assurance of human misery. (shrink)

This essay provides a pastpostmodem phenomenological account of a good idea. It is a short experiment in what Foucault calls, “the unchanging pedagogical origins of dialectics.” The ‘ostensible’ question considered is: What follows in the wake of nihilism? Scribbling in the margins, a metaphor for the classical task of the public intellectual, is one way of nudging the reader into the periphery of writing.

This article traces the evolution of a single concept—Anschauung—in Nietzsche's thinking. It shows that Nietzsche relies to a great extent in his early epistemology on Schopenhauer's romantic notion of Anschauung as a way of apprehending timeless and universal ideas. After The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche begins to use the term to designate the mental process of transference by which stimulation becomes a choate representation. In a third phase of development, Nietzsche abandons any positive use of the term and employs Anschauung (...) instead as a sarcastic watchword for essentialist epistemologies generally. Although it has been nearly ignored in anglophone literature, the changing context of its employment is an essential aspect of Nietzsche's development as a thinker. (shrink)

The twelve contributors to this volume embody the best in ancient philosophical scholarship from America and Europe. Each author presents a carefully-wrought argument that adds substantially to the literature in their chosen topics.Carlo Natali’s “Socrates’ Dialectic in Xenophon’s Memorabilia” argues for the internal coherence of Xenophon’s conceptions of dialegesthai and dialektikos, and shows how Xenophon portrays elenchos as one method among several Socrates used to encourage his interlocutors to become better citizens. In the eclectic “If You Know What Is Best, (...) You Do It,” Gerhard Seel argues for a weak form of moral intellectualism, the possibility of a deontological Socratic ethics, and for the restriction of “Socratic” knowledge to meta-ethical claims. Charles H. Kahn briefly shows how Plato wrestled with the popular acceptance of hedonism. The strange acceptance of hedonism in the Protagoras is said to be neither straightforwardly ironical nor exactly a thesis Plato himself outright rejected at that time. Terrence Irwin, in “Socrates and Euthyphro,” examines the difference between “god-beloved” and “pious” in terms of a. (shrink)

The possibility of historical knowledge is a problem that occupied Nietzsche’s thought from beginning to end. Because the meanings of values, customs, and even truth itself are historically contingent phenomena, neither timeless nor unchanging, Nietzsche’s most fundamental statements about the character of the world and our place in it are typically framed within a historical account. Several scholars have recently suggested that his means of expositing history are consistent throughout his career. 1 From his early philological articles to his genealogical (...) method, Nietzsche is said to offer a consistent and sustained way of uncovering and evaluating the past. The studies of James I. Porter and Christian Benne are .. (shrink)

This paper aims to reexamine Nietzsche’s early interpretation of Heraclitus in an attempt to resolve some longstanding scholarly misconceptions. Rather than articulate similarities or delineate the lines of influence, this study engages Nietzsche’s interpretation itself in its historical setting, for the first time acknowledging the contextual framework in which he was working. This framework necessarily combines Nietzsche’s reading in philology, post-Kantian scientific naturalism, and of the romantic worldviews of Schopenhauer and Wagner. What emerges is not the acceptance of the metaphysical-flux (...) doctrine so much as a natal form of his physiognomic theory ofperspectivism, a naturalistic and anti-teleological conception of flux, and a theory of justice as cosmodicy. (shrink)

I argue that, despite similarities between them, Hayden White has fundamentally misunderstood Nietzsche’s philosophy of history. White, like many postmodern historical theorists, attributes to Nietzsche a truth-relativism with respect to historical facts and a value-relativism with respect to the worth of competing interpretations. I show that both of these attributions take insufficient account of Nietzsche’s perspectivism. Nietzsche rejects relativism and endorses interpretations that further the interests of particular types of life. When Nietzsche’s position is properly distinguished from the kind of (...) relativism ascribed by White, it will appear a coherent middle-ground between the positivist construal of historical truth and post-modern truth relativism. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s relationship with Burckhardt’s image of the Renaissance was a way of practicing history. Nietzsche shared with Burckhardt the preference for typology, the belief that truth is reached intuitively and concerns the inner identity of all things, and for great cultural historical objects and individuals. And he shared it with him in some part precisely because two of their most significant common influences were Goethe and Schopenhauer. Beyond this, I argue that there are a few minor and a few more (...) significant disjunctions in their approach to the historiography of the Renaissance. I address what we might call the question of motive: that Burckhardt’s purpose in construing the Renaissance was in fact quite opposed to Nietzsche’s more radical gaze upon history. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s break from Schopenhauer is usually regarded as coextensive with his movement toward ontological naturalism, the view that all there is is limited by the scope of what is naturally observable. Moral norms like good and evil are accordingly ruled out as “things,” but naturalized as human, all-too-human constructions, just as much as are God and the soul, just as much as would Schopenhauer’s non–naturally observable one world Will. While I think that basic picture is correct, I also think that (...) scholars have regarded the problem with insufficient attention to the historical context of that transition, especially when it comes to naturalistic explanations of choice and agency. The move away from a.. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche: Philosophy of History Nietzsche was well-steeped in his contemporary methods and debates in the philosophy of history, which carried over into his philosophy in essential ways. Once a prodigy in classical philology, Nietzsche’s philosophy is everywhere concerned with traditions, historical shifts in custom and meaning, and, to adapt his key expression, “how things […].

History and memory rank as central themes in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. As one of the last philosophers of the 19th century, Nietzsche naturally belongs to the so-called ‘historical century’. The contentious exchange with the past and with antiquity – as much as the mechanisms, the dangers, and the lessons of memory and tradition – are continually examined and stand in close relationship with Nietzsche’s vision of life and his project of human development. As Jacob Burckhardt once wrote of (...) the cultural critique to his Basel colleague: "Fundamentally, you are always teaching history". Following Burckhardt’s judgment, the contributors focus on the analysis of core questions in the philosophies of history and memory, and their respective convergence in the thought of Nietzsche. The epistemological relevance of these central concepts will be thematized alongside those concerning tradition, and education. The discussion of these rich themes unifies a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from cultural memory to contemporary philosophy of mind. The contributions are revised versions of selected papers presented at the 2018 conference of the annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society in Naumburg. (shrink)

Today there are multiple implantable medical devices on the market. The type of implants that interface the body’s tissues has been considered to have particular strong ethical implications. This article describes a development of a novel practice for ethical assessment and reflection within medical device research and development of non-CE marked medical devices, taking the perspective of both the ethicist and the researcher. The research case was an EU funded project where the aim was to develop and compare the efficiency (...) of invasive and non-invasive technological medical devices to create meaningful sensations as a novel therapy for phantom limb pain. An Independent Ethical Advisor with a regulatory and advisory role was assigned to the project, allowing us to investigate the projects deliberate incorporation of ethics. In the article we suggest and applied a novel framework based on action research for combining ethical assessment with building ethical reflection. The case analyse five different activities / elements: 1) the use of informed consent; 2) a survey amongst the research partners; 3) a workshop session; 4) observation of consortium meetings; and 5) an interview with a participating patient. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal RecurrenceAnthony K. JensenLawrence J. Hatab. Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence. New York-London: Routledge, 2005. Pp. xix + 191. Paper, $24.95.In his latest book, Lawrence Hatab brings together several threads from his previous writing into an elegant expression that examines a wide range of Nietzsche's thought through the single prism of his notoriously obscure conception of "Eternal (...) Recurrence." The opening chapters establish the affirmation of becoming and the "tragic" view of the world (which Nietzsche had already articulated in his earliest book) as central to the entire spectrum of his writing. Chronological shifts in Nietzsche's expression away from this tragic outlook are not suggestive of stringently exclusive temporal periods in his thought but, in themselves, illustrate an "agonistic perspectivism" wherein certain thought postures perform a corrective or delimiting role meant to expand the dialectical character of Nietzsche's thought. Hatab believes that the cosmological presentation of the Eternal Recurrence found in Nietzsche's later notebooks should thus be received as one "perspectival participant" in the more encompassing question of the value-of-life affirmation within the ceaseless repetition of our tragic existence.Hatab's detail of the Eternal Recurrence in chapters 4 and 5 is his richest philosophical presentation and his most original contribution to Nietzschean scholarship. Although rather conventional in his emphasis on the existential-force of the Eternal Recurrence (i.e., its meaning for the way we live our existence), Hatab is more creative in attempting to overcome the problem raised for such existentialist projects of self-instantiation. Even if a "factually true" cosmological conception of Eternal Recurrence is impossible, as has often been demonstrated, we readers of Nietzsche must listen seriously to his "call to affirm Eternal Recurrence." Hatab's move is to uphold Recurrence as not "factually" valid but as "literally" true. Readers should approach Eternal Recurrence with about the same degree of conceptual criticism as the Greeks would have done in listening to their dramatic performances: we ought to "suspend our disbelief" in a moment of "mimetic identification" with the "literal," if not "factual," truth of the drama. We readers should believe Eternal Recurrence as a "quasi-religious revelation," in the same manner Nietzsche himself claims to have been convinced.The call to affirm the literal truth of Recurrence is not a mandate to "approve" the eternal repetition of every event, irrespective of how morally repugnant that event may be. Contrary to some interpreters, affirming the perpetual re-occurrence of the holocaust does not imply the desire for the holocaust to recur, for in affirming the recurrence of that event, we also affirm our attitude of moral repugnance to it. To affirm the tragic world of becoming, we must affirm agonistic (or competitive) tensionalities between opposing values without reducing those tensions to any one-sided resolution. So construed, Nietzsche's Will to Power appears not as a drive to destroy or invalidate alterity, but as a call to embrace otherness as the condition of this competitively-structured life itself. Hatab's Nietzsche does not oppose otherness, but only the effort to place it in a binary scheme of opposition with the intention of nullifying the value of alterity as a part—even if a terrible part—of life.In chapter 6, there is a useful, if oversimplified, classification of the various articulations of Eternal Recurrence, ranging from the historical positions of Löwith and Heidegger to the contemporary presentations of Magnus and Soll. Hatab's assessment of the "Existentialist" reading here would have been helpful earlier in the book, as it only now demarcates the line between those readings and Hatab's own emphasis on the "existentialist call and test" of Eternal Recurrence. That line is drawn when conventional "existentialist" interpretations abandon the "literal" truth of Eternal Recurrence, which, in doing so, deflate the efficacy of Eternal Recurrence as a life-altering doctrine. Chapter 7 analyzes certain philosophical issues regarding the compatibility of Recurrence with Nietzsche's conceptions of creativity and the nature of truth. Particularly important, though, again—and this should at least have been mentioned earlier—is Hatab's illumination of Nietzsche... (shrink)

Luigi Caranti presents his readers three carefully articulated arguments in this estimable book. The first is that Kant's career-long engagement with Cartesian skepticism culminates in the first Critique's A-edition version of the Fourth Paralogism, rather than in the later Refutation of Idealism, as is more traditionally thought. The second argues that scholars must take Kant seriously when he asserts that transcendental idealism is the only possible refutation of skepticism, since it denies the possibility of the skeptical doubt arising in the (...) first place. Third, on the merit of its solution to this skeptical "scandal of philosophy," transcendental idealism remains today a first-rate epistemological viewpoint.What Caranti means by skepticism is restricted to Descartes's infamous "Evil Genius" hypothesis, the doubt whether any logical inference can establish a causal connection between external objects and the immediately-known affects of the mind . Caranti shows that Kant failed to adequately answer this charge throughout the pre-critical period since he then identified phenomena with mind-dependent representations and noumena with the cause of those representations. That causal argument would never satisfy since it presumed the very inference denied by the skeptic in the first. (shrink)

Twenty years after the appearance of the first of his three-volume One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics, Edward Halper has produced his much anticipated prequel commentary on the opening books of the Metaphysics. Readers of the chronologically prior Central Books will not be disappointed here. The analytic detail, the remarkably comprehensive yet deftly critical attention to the vast history of Aristotle scholarship, the clarity and precision of compositional style—all hallmarks of Halper's earlier work—are here in abundance as he works through (...) his singularly sweeping vision of the unity of Aristotle's book.Halper's central argument is that the problem of the One and the Many is Aristotle's most crucial and pervasive concern in the Metaphysics. While Aristotle himself never declares this—not even in those passages on the Presocratic philosophers where this problem features most prominently—Halper argues convincingly that Aristotle's conviction about the possibility of a science as determined by a necessary degree of unity among the objects it studies must itself assume the solvability of the One and Many problem. As explicated in the. (shrink)

The Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought aim to make available to students the most important works in the field in affordable, readable, and unabridged editions, a goal eminently achieved in these two volumes, which have been edited and translated by a noted Rousseau scholar and teacher. Whether used alone or assigned together, these volumes are especially well designed for classroom use; scholars will also find them convenient and reliable, though the multivolume Collected Writings, vols. 1–6, edited by (...) Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly will remain the standard scholarly edition of Rousseau’s writings in English. (shrink)

Huggins, AK When the debate about gay marriage really started to gain some momentum in Australia, probably a year or two before the last Labor Party Conference, I predicted amongst some of my gay friends that, as we got closer to a vote or other defining moments in this process, people and organisations would start 'crawling out of the woodwork' with distasteful, even despicable ways to demonise same-sex partnership and indeed gay people generally. I was right. I also mentioned to (...) my friends that in Sydney, Cardinal Pell and Archbishop Jensen would wait just before any parliament vote to politicise their pulpits by locking in the federal Liberal vote using their lap boy Tony Abbott to deny a conscience vote amongst his party colleagues. I was right again. I also said that any attempt by a State or Territory to pass their own gay marriage legislation would be countered by a Liberal Government in the High Court of Australia. I was right again. It is so difficult and regrettable to be right all the time!! (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this survey we have investigated the experiences and attitudes of Danish physicians regarding end‐of life decisions. Most respondents have made decisions that involve hastening the death of a patient, and almost all find it acceptable to do so. Such decisions are made more often, and considered ethically more acceptable, with the informed consent of the patient than without. But both non‐resuscitation decisions, and decisions to provide pain relief in doses that will shorten the patient's life, have been made (...) and found acceptable by at least 50% of the respondents, even when there is no informed consent. Furthermore, 12% have doubled morphine dosages with fixed intervals, thus providing doses substantially higher than that necessary to control pain, without the informed consent of the patient. Two per cent have helped in assisted suicide, and 5% have administered a lethal injection at the patient's request. Respectively 37% and 34% find these last two practices ethically acceptable. Amongst those that do not find them acceptable, the most important reasons to be opposed are, the doctrine of double effect, the doctrine of doing and allowing, and the view that human life is sacred. Amongst supporters, the most important reasons mentioned are, that the patient's right to self‐determination should be respected, the view that a patient should not be forced to suffer, and the view that the patient has a right to be helped to a dignified death. (shrink)

We show in ZFC that if there is no proper class inner model with a Woodin cardinal, then there is an absolutely definablecore modelthat is close toVin various ways.

ABSTRACT Nietzsche's texts invite perplexing questions about the justification and objectivity of his ethical views. According to the interpretation suggested here, Nietzsche does not advance a substantive normative ethics, but proposes, based on his ontological idea of will to power, an instrumentalist theory of value. He is not a realist about value—according to him, nothing is intrinsically valuable. However, things, actions, beliefs, and values can be evaluated with reference to their capacities in serving our fundamental quest for power. The central (...) advantage of this interpretation against competing readings is that it attempts to make sense of how an “objective” evaluation fits together with antirealism or nihilism about value, including how the “ethics” of will to power is to be understood alongside the metaphysical and ethical doctrine of eternal recurrence. (shrink)

In this survey we have investigated the experiences and attitudes of Danish physicians regarding end-of-life decisions. Most respondents have made decisions that involve hastening the death of a patient, and almost all find it acceptable to do so. Such decisions are made more often, and considered ethically more acceptable, with the informed consent of the patient than without. But both non-resuscitation decisions, and decisions to provide pain relief in doses that will shorten the patient's life, have been made and found (...) acceptable by at least 50% of the respondents, even when there is no informed consent. Furthermore, 12% have doubled morphine dosages with fixed intervals, thus providing doses substantially higher than that necessary to control pain, without the informed consent of the patient. Two per cent have helped in assisted suicide, and 5% have administered a lethal injection at the patient's request. Respectively 37% and 34% find these last two practices ethically acceptable. Amongst those that do not find them acceptable, the most important reasons to be opposed are, the doctrine of double effect, the doctrine of doing and allowing, and the view that human life is sacred. Amongst supporters, the most important reasons mentioned are, that the patient's right to self-determination should be respected, the view that a patient should not be forced to suffer, and the view that the patient has a right to be helped to a dignified death. (shrink)

We show that either of the following hypotheses imply that there is an inner model with a proper class of strong cardinals and a proper class of Woodin cardinals. 1) There is a countably closed cardinal k ≥ N₃ such that □k and □(k) fail. 2) There is a cardinal k such that k is weakly compact in the generic extension by Col(k, k⁺). Of special interest is 1) with k = N₃ since it follows from PFA by theorems of (...) Todorcevic and Velickovic. Our main new technical result, which is due to the first author, is a weak covering theorem for the model obtained by stacking mice over $K^c ||k.$. (shrink)

We shall construct a smooth category of mice and embeddings in the core model for measures of order 0. The existence of such a category implies that the global principle □ holds in K. We then prove a much stronger, the so-called condensation-coherent version of global □. The key tool of the whole construction is a new criterion on preserving soundness under condensation.

The philosophical situation at Copenhagen University in the 1960’s was dominated by two positivists. Th elogical positivist Jørgen Jørgensen – who had written the history of the “movement” – and the legal positivistAlf Ross. There were also two “outsiders”: Peter Zinkernagel, who did more analytical philosophy of language in the British style, and K. Grue Sørensen who was working in the traditions of neo-Kantianism. In 1955 Grue-Sørensen was hired as the first professor in education – after a long controversy about (...) the scientific status ofeducation as a discipline – but with a focus on the history of education. He had received a doctoral degree in philosophy in 1950 with a dissertation on refl exivity as a philosophical concept and a thesis about the reflexivity of consciousness. He was also an objectivist in ethics, and had been critical of the prevalent moral relativism and subjectivism found in recent philosophy. Jørgensen and Ross had done important work on moral argumentation with more technical work on the logic of imperatives and norms. Moral objectivism was not only wrong but in a way also “immoral” because it undermined their belief in democracy. Especially Jørgensen also thought that the idea of reflexivity was wrong when applied to consciousness. Neither statements nor consciousness could be reflexive – that is refer to themselves/itself. The reflexivity of consciousness is – according to Jørgensen – simply not an empirical psychological fact. Grue-Sørensen tried to establish the foundation of a theory of education based both on conceptions of consciousness and of the relation between scientific knowledge – facts – and moral values – in a neo-Kantian fashion. For him the interplay between ethics and knowledge was a central part of a theory of education – a belief due to which he never became a professor of philosophy – having tried many times. These debates in philosophy and in education were superseded in the 1970’s by the rise in influence of the German inspiration from Critical Theory and the demise of logical positivism. (shrink)

The double issue of Synthese devoted to essays on the work of W. V. Quine has been re-issued under hard cover with an additional paper by Grice on "Vacuous Names" and a 13-page bibliography of Quine's writings. With the exception of Berry's "Logic with Platonism" and Jensen's "On The Consistency of a Slight. Modification of Quine's New Foundation," the papers are concerned with the key issues of Word and Object. Quine's responses to each of the contributors are not as (...) helpful as they might be, but are at times quite illuminating. He dispels Stenius's view in "Beginning with Ordinary Things" that Quine holds a Russellian epistemology, for example, and clarifies somewhat his account of ontic commitment in replying to Hintikka's "Behavioral Criteria of Radical Translation." Hintikka argues that "to be is to be a value of a bound variable" presupposes the principle, "to be is to be an object of search." Quine rejects this view, identifying his ontology with the range of the variables as opposed to the class of all things to which a theory is ontically committed. The introduction to chapter two of Word and Object by Harman is quite helpful, suggesting among other things that Quine's use of 'propositional attitude' is a misnomer to be better replaced by 'sentential attitude'. An interesting and provocative paper by Kaplan offers a Fregean alternative to Quine's general mode of handling referentially opaque contexts, allowing "Quantifying In" with the variable ranging over expressions. Interestingly enough, Quine's remarks are rather laudatory and sympathetic. Davidson's "On Saying That" suggests a roughly similar account of oratio obliqua discourse. Føllesdal and Sellars discuss "Quine on Modality" and "Some Problems about Belief." There is a discussion of "Quine's Philosophy of Science" by Smart, tracing a shift from instrumentalism to realism on the part of Quine. Also included are papers by Chomsky, Stroud, and Geach, as well as Strawson's familiar "Singular Terms and Predication." In spite of the imposing price and the uneven quality of the essays, the book is a desirable piece of Quineana.--K. T. (shrink)