Von Wright argued that moral goodness is a derivative form of goodness. He proceeded to give an account of the moral goodness of an act, in terms of the good of man. Philosophical anthropology must render the phenomenon of morality intelligible. This chapter suggests that the roots of moral value lie in human sympathy, in maternal love, in intuitive recognition of the humanity of others, and in the nature of loving friendship. The sentiment of sympathy is virtually ubiquitous, but sympathetic (...) propensities vary from person to person, being partly a function of their imagination. Sympathy is an emotional tap‐root of moral reasons and a presupposition of moral reasoning. Kant's argument in support of a requirement of equal formal respect for human beings as moral agents is problematic. The explicit emergence of the idea of formal respect is one of the great advances in our evolving understanding of human nature and our conception of ourselves. (shrink)

Some of human evil is a function of the historical stage of society. The evils and wickednesses of bureaucracy are as old as well‐developed bureaucratic hierarchies. Evil‐doers have character traits that may form recognizable patterns with explanatory weight. Evil‐doers produce reasons for their evil‐doing and offer justifications for their evil deeds. Psychological experiments may indeed establish important correlations and statistical probabilities that may be crucial for the formation of intelligent social policy. The greatest students of the place of evil in (...) human life and of the subjective psychology of evil in a complex social setting are great novelists, dramatists, and poets. From the late eighteenth century onwards ideological beliefs played a major role in stimulating evil, not for the greater glory of God but for the future glory of man. The first major social movement that bent an ideology to wholly evil policies were the Jacobins during the French Revolution. (shrink)

At the beginning of spiritual ascent, there are three main ways for a modern man: the direct path of lessons, the way to help someone, the information path. Now people should learn not to walk through troubles, direct lessons, when a person changes only directly by contacting the sources of suffering. Here he learns through the extreme options of lessons, the most difficult. On the first path, something becomes an event, and people must learn to celebrate events. This is the (...) way of rules, going from sign to sign. Everything along the way is work. One must learn to accept this. The gift itself is to learn how to work to make it easier to work. You can not count on other rewards. The rule here should be: "Thank you, that's over, but it can happen again.". (shrink)

By using a tomographic approach to quantum states, we rise the problem of nonlocality within a single particle (single degree of freedom). We propose a possible way to look for such e®ects on a qubit. Although a conclusive answer is far from being reached, we provide some re°ections on the foundational ground.

It is sometimes argued that Wittgenstein's conception of grammar and the role he allocated to grammar (in his sense of the term) in philosophy changed between the Big Typescript and the Philosophical Investigations. It is also held that some of the grammatical propositions Wittgenstein asserted prior to his writing of the Philosophical Investigations are theses, doctrines, opinions or dogmatism, which he abandoned by 1936/37. The purpose of this paper is to show these claims to be misunderstandings and misinterpretations. On all (...) important matters, his conception of grammar and of grammatical investigations, of grammatical statements or propositions and of grammatical clarification did not change between the Big Typescript and the Investigations. Grammatical propositions (e.g. the meaning of a word is its use; a sample in an ostensive definition belongs to the means of representation; belief is not a mental state) are no more theses, doctrines or opinions than is “a bachelor is an unmarried man.” Nor are they in any way dogmatic. (shrink)

A nicely documented and interesting, though loosely argued and dogmatic, study, from a neo-Calvinist perspective, of the Christian doctrine of man and its relation to doctrines of man implicit in politics, literature and philosophy.--F. M. S.

A comprehensive study in the field of comparative religion with excellent historical analysis. The concluding sections of this volume contain interesting discussions of such topics as communism as a religion, Gandhi's religious philosophy and the relation of religion and psychotherapy. The sections dealing with Old Testament religion and Christianity are substantially the same as were found in Burtt's Types of Religious Philosophy. A fine bibliography is included.--M. S. S.

A competent and philosophically subtle study of S. K.'s notion of the relation of Christianity and history. The relation of time and eternity, of "sacred history" and ordinary history and the problem of contemporaneity in the Fragments, the Postscript and Training in Christianity are brought into focus through S. K.'s doctrine of the incarnation. This Holm interprets as "fictionalist"; "it is valid to believe that this man is God... as if it were so, although his empirical appearance can never reveal (...) it." --F. M. S. (shrink)

A comprehensive study in the field of comparative religion with excellent historical analysis. The concluding sections of this volume contain interesting discussions of such topics as communism as a religion, Gandhi's religious philosophy and the relation of religion and psychotherapy. The sections dealing with Old Testament religion and Christianity are substantially the same as were found in Burtt's Types of Religious Philosophy. A fine bibliography is included.--M. S. S.

An "essay on life" giving us in 60 pages a doctrine of man and the universe based on broadly Christian principles plus, for good measure, a commentary on every book of the Old Testament.--F. M. S.

Drawing upon recent contributions to an already developed literature of diverse speculation on Bayle and his milieu, the author attempts to assess the historical significance of Bayle's writings by means of a chronological treatment of the French Calvinist's changing understanding of the relation of faith and reason. One may find here the main lines of Bayle criticism judiciously set forth, together with a careful investigation of some biographical material and the exposition of Bayle's principal ideas on the role and limits (...) of reason as a speculative and moral guide, the function of grace, the grounds of faith and morality, the problem of error, and, the centrality of Providence. The author argues convincingly for the thesis that Bayle remained consistently loyal to the traditions of the Reform. On the other hand, the closely related attempt to illuminate the logic of Bayle's ambiguous statements of the dualism of reason, as an instrument for yielding clarity and evidence, and as the agent of man's struggle with the unknowable, lacks critical vigor. Nonetheless, this work is a very readable summary of the intellectual contribution of a crucial figure in the evolution of French philosophical and religious thought. A valuable bibliography is included.--J. M. S. (shrink)

A forceful study of Sophocles' great drama. With ingenious argument and scholarly documentation Mr. Knox argues that the tragedy of Œdipus is not a tragedy of fate, nor a tragedy of an Aristotelian hero with a "moral flaw," but rather the tragedy of a great man who tries to escape and deny the fact of divine omniscience. The author considers Œdipus as an individual hero, as a political animal who is a symbolic representation of Periclean Athens and as a paradigm (...) of all mankind. The book is written with great vitality and is worth while for "Greekless reader" and classical scholar alike.--M.S.S. (shrink)

"Loss of Innocence explores the sunny, innocent mood of post-War America and the budding skepticism that began to creep into the minds of an overly-credulous public in the 1950s. Taking the quiz show scandals of the 1950s and the U-2 spy incident of 1960 as examples, the book argues that these two events shook the public and began to erode their blind faith in government and institutions, creating a credibility gap that haunts us to this day"--.

Schleiermacher's Copernican revolution in theology is effected through his presentation of the Christian mythos in terms of a phenomenological anthropology of self-consciousness. Moreover, as Niebuhr shows in this apt study of some features of Schleiermacher's theological thinking, the principles which determine the shape of that revolution can be deduced neither from a biblical dogmatics allegedly purified of philosophical presuppositions nor from a philosophy uninformed by theological experience. In the first part of the book, Niebuhr discusses Schleiermacher's little-known work The Christmas (...) Eve: A Dialogue, affording us a picture of the author's starting-point in the experience of a salvation or potentiated self-consciousness which is historically and socially mediated. The subsequent analysis of the lectures on hermeneutics and ethics discloses the object of Schleiermacher's inquiry to be not the supernatural being that posits the cosmos, but the creative Logos indwelling the individual and all men by means of the common, organic media of human existence in which the self both comes to be and comes to create history and culture. Finally, The Christian Faith is reviewed by Niebuhr in terms of the expression it gives to the mature Schleiermacher's theology and christology. The primordial consciousness of being-in-relation reveals the historical, societal, worldly context of the self and the various polarities of the self's existence such that religion emerges as a phenomenon coterminous with man's affective response to the relationships in which the whole of human nature is bound, and theology, the "daughter of religion," becomes the methodology by which the articulation of an affective determination of self-consciousness is achieved. The rigorously pursued explicitation [[sic]] of the forms and determinations of self-consciousness is interpreted by Niebuhr with a penetration and a sympathy at once acute and comprehensive. By giving us a series of insights into Schleiermacher's "thinking in motion," Niebuhr has contributed a cogent testimony to the nineteenth-century theologian's central importance in the fields of hermeneutical theory, philosophical ethics, philosophy of religion and culture, and theology. One would have welcomed a more critical appraisal of Schleiermacher's view of the formal and material compatibility of philosophy and theology, understanding and feeling, inasmuch as the scope of theological inquiry appears to be limited by the boundaries of reason set forth in the ethics, and philosophical anthropology is apparently reduced to a rather sophisticated phenomenology of religious experience. In any case, Niebuhr's scholarly treatment of the material should lead the reader to an informed examination of Schleiermacher's text.--J. M. S. (shrink)

This admittedly sympathetic exposition of Maine de Biran's psychology represents a competent and comprehensive introduction into the main philosophical thought of the French thinker and into the conditions and value of his published and unpublished writings as well as of the literature dealing with his life and work. It is inspired by the conviction that there is a need for this new addition to the vast bibliography of the philosopher, not only because Biran is almost without readers in the English (...) philosophical tradition, but especially because his philosophizing centers around matters of current concern in English philosophy. The philosophical psychology which Biran considered, and hoped to develop, as the foundation not only of moral and religious philosophy, but also of empirical psychology, was above all a philosophical analysis of psychological concepts, as the author shows in his discussion of Biran's ideas about the method and the original concept of psychology in the two main parts of his text. In a critical account of Biran's argumentation, seen against the background of the philosophical problematics of today, his refutation of the mathematical analysis of traditional philosophy, of the inductive reasoning of the natural sciences, and of metaphysical or abstractive reasoning together with his defense of reflective consciousness as the appropriate method of psychological studies, are explained. The unique object of psychology, the private inner life, demands reflection as its corresponding method. An analysis of the data of consciousness is, then, to lead to the recognition of the true primitive fact of all inner experience which is to serve as the foundation of psychology. Biran finds it in the will, the awareness of our effort or willed action. The nature of this foundation of psychology and of the "twofold humanity" in man's being, i.e., of affective, passive life and of active, conscious life, indicates that Biran's philosophical psychology truly is a philosophy of mind, not a philosophy of man. The book ends with a classified select bibliography of 44 pages, various Appendixes and Indexes. It should be required reading for any student interested in Maine de Biran's philosophy.--M. S. (shrink)

At issue in this study is a question as old as it is presently pertinent: Do individuals form the social or does the social form individuals? Like Socrates, Lévi-Strauss gives ontological priority to society. And his reasons, like those of Socrates, are weighted with ethical concern. But the concern of Levi-Strauss is not "Know thyself." For, by dissolving subjectivity into structures of the collective unconscious, he eliminates the self. Indeed, toward the end of this work, Shalvey likens the entire enterprise (...) of Levi-Strauss to that of Nietzsche. Not content, however, to announce the death of God, he proclaims the death of Man. (shrink)

The prisoner presented as the object of the meditation of this book is Socrates. His behavior and its explanation on his last day in prison, as portrayed in Plato’s Phaedo, serve as the basis for the development of a modernized view of Socrates’ understanding of action and mind, that is to withstand attacks from present day versions of the rejected materialistic philosophy of man. The category of causality understood both as the "real cause" of human activity, which Socrates identifies with (...) his morally responsible intention and decision, and as the physical conditions of our behavior is to be replaced by, and interpreted in terms of, the more fundamental concept of originative action. (shrink)

As indicated by its subtitle, this examination of the existentialist critique of psychoanalysis is not only understood as a study in philosophical psychology; it is primarily intended to be a report about a phase of the recent history of European thought. Both Freud’s metapsychology and the existentialist philosophical and psychiatric opposition to the psychoanalytic philosophy of man are to be presented as expressions of the crisis of Continental rationalism.

This work is understood as an up-to-date philosophical and neurobiological answer to materialist positions concerning the nature of the human mind maintained in the English-speaking philosophy of today. Against physicalist and parallelist views of the body-mind relationship a "strong dualist-interactionist" theory of this relation is defended, in which the primacy is ascribed to the self using, modifying, and shaping its brain in deliberate autonomy. This theory is proposed and clarified in 3 sections. In the first part of the book, Popper (...) mainly examines materialist philosophies of the mind and gives "a history of the body-mind problem since Descartes and especially of the steps which led to parallelism". Physicalist theories of the self, like radical materialism and behaviorism, psycho-physical parallelism, epiphenomenalism, or identity theories are found to be incompatible with the irreducible reality and activity of 3 worlds : the universe of physical entities, the world of mental states, including states of consciousness, psychological dispositions, and unconscious states, and the world of the products of the human mind. Phenomena of consciousness seem "radically different" from what is found in the physical world; due to conscious and purposeful action dramatic changes have taken place in the physical environment of man. The idea of the closedness of W1 is "clearly refuted" by the existence of W3. Plato's and Descartes' conceptions of the body-mind relationship are basically correct--in spite of the fact that the Cartesian model of physical causation has broken down. The "brain is owned by the self, rather than the other way around". This philosophical view of the ultimate superiority of the self over the brain finds its scientific confirmation in Eccles's review of physiological findings concerning structure, function, and development of the nervous system offered in part II of the book. As especially Sperry's studies of brain-split patients have shown, the self stands in direct liaison with the body "only in relationship to activities in the dominant hemisphere" ; only specific neuronal structures, "the modules in the cerebral cortex," and these only in special conditions, are open to an interaction with the self. The evidence for the dependence of the mind upon determined brain centres in sensory, emotional and motoric behavior, in the acquisition and use of language and memory is presented. This dependence is found never to be automatic, instantaneous, or merely passive; nor does it offer an explanation of the experienced unity of the self or even of an image of perception. As a result of his survey of contemporary physiological knowledge, the author proposes "a radical new hypothesis" concerning the self-brain relations. The self-conscious mind "is an independent entity" actively engaged in reading out from the multitude of active centres in the modules of the brain's liaison areas, deliberately selecting from these centres in accord with its interests, integrating its selections into the unity of conscious experience, and acting back on the neuronal centres. The self-conscious mind developed in relationship to W3 influence on the self "exercises a superior interpretative and controlling role upon the neuronal events by way of a two-way interaction" between W1 and W2. (shrink)

In this "contribution to philosophical anthropology" the author offers a competent examination of the body-soul relationship which represents primarily a phenomenological characterization of various psycho-somatic relations. The essential difference of the two substances of body and "personal spiritual soul" is to be established as "the indispensable presupposition" of "the wonderful and intimate unity" of man,, and this unique unity is systematically to be defended against all forms of exaggerated dualism and monism. In order to secure this fundamental philosophical truth about (...) the constitution of man against any sceptical questioning, the nature of philosophical knowledge is determined in a long introduction which summarizes an earlier epistemological publication of the author and utilizes its recognitions to manifest possibility and need of an independent philosophical discussion of psycho-somatic relations. Philosophical knowledge is described as a kind of cognition of its own, differing in method and contents from scientific efforts. While science studies contingent facts and conditions in empirical observation and by way of inductive reasoning, essential structures, necessary relations, and strictly deduced states of affairs constitute the object of philosophical knowledge. The latter uses the intuition of essences discovered in the Phenomenological School of Munich as the main method of its endeavors and as the foundation of demonstrative procedures. (shrink)

Two works: the first is a commentary on Book Lambda of Aristotle's Metaphysics; the second is a section of Avicenna's commentary on the so-called "Theology of Aristotle.

The debate over financial incentives and market models for organ procurement represents a key trend in recent bioethics. In this paper, we wish to reassess one of its central premises—the idea of organ shortage. While the problem is often presented as an objective statistical fact that can be taken for granted, we will take a closer look at the underlying framework expressed in the common rhetoric of “scarcity”, “shortage” or “unfulfilled demand”. On the basis of theoretical considerations as well as (...) a socioempirical examination of public attitudes, we will argue that this rhetoric has an economic subtext that imbues the debate with normative premises that have far-reaching social and ethical consequences and need to be made explicit and discussed. (shrink)

From the Editors:Such was the topic considered by members of a new discussion club, "The Free Word" [Svobodnoe slovo] , along with specialists from the Institute of Philosophy, USSR Academy of Sciences.

From the Editors:Such was the topic considered by members of a new discussion club, "The Free Word" [Svobodnoe slovo], along with specialists from the Institute of Philosophy, USSR Academy of Sciences.

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

Sustained attention, a key cognitive skill that improves during childhood and adolescence, tends to be worse in some emotional and behavioural disorders. Sustained attention is typically studied in non-affective task contexts; here, we used a novel task to index performance in affective versus neutral contexts across adolescence (N = 465; ages 11–18). We asked whether: (i) performance would be worse in negative versus neutral task contexts; (ii) performance would improve with age; (iii) affective interference would be greater in younger adolescents; (...) (iv) adolescents at risk for depression and higher in anxiety would show overall worse performance; and (v) would show differential performance in negative contexts. Results indicated that participants performed more poorly in negative contexts and showed age-related performance improvements. Those at risk of depression performed more poorly than those at lower risk. However, there was no difference between groups as a result of affective context. For anxiety there was no difference in performance as a function of severity. However, those with higher anxiety showed less variance in their reaction times to negative stimuli than those with lower anxiety. One interpretation is that moderate levels of emotional arousal associated with anxiety make individuals less susceptible to the distracting effects of negative stimuli. (shrink)

al-Ḥifnī's Muqaddimah fī al-ādāb followed by al-Bishrī's commentary.

Jones and Coleman are among a handful of otherwise normal as a child and the number 5 was red and 6 was green. This the- people who have synesthesia. They experience the ordinary ory does not answer why only some people retain such vivid world in extraordinary ways and seem to inhabit a mysterious sensory memories, however. You might _think _of cold when you no-man’s-land between fantasy and reality. For them the sens- look at a picture of an ice cube, (...) but you probably do not feel es—touch, taste, hearing, vision and smell—get mixed up in- cold, no matter how many encounters you may have had with stead of remaining separate. ice and snow during your youth. Modern scientists have known about synesthesia since Another prevalent idea is that synesthetes are merely being 1880, when Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, pub- metaphorical when they describe the note C flat as “red” or say lished a paper in _Nature _on the phenomenon. But most have that chicken tastes “pointy”—just as you and I might speak of brushed it aside as fakery, an artifact of drug use (LSD and a “loud” shirt or “sharp” cheddar cheese. Our ordinary lan- mescaline can produce similar effects) or a mere curiosity. guage is replete with such sense-related metaphors, and perhaps About four years ago, however, we and others began to un- synesthetes are just especially gifted in this regard. cover brain processes that could account for synesthesia. Along We began trying to find out whether synesthesia is a gen- the way, we also found new clues to some of the most mysteri- uine sensory experience in 1999. This deceptively simple ques- ous aspects of the human mind, such as the emergence of ab- tion had plagued researchers in this field for decades. One nat- stract thought, metaphor and perhaps even language. ural approach is to start by asking the subjects outright: “Is this A common explanation of synesthesia is that the affected just a memory, or do you actually see the color as if it were right people are simply experiencing childhood memories and asso- in front of you?” When we tried asking this question, we did ciations.. (shrink)