The paper presents a program to construct a non-relativistic relational Bohmian theory, that is, a theory of N moving point-like particles that dispenses with space and time as fundamental background structures. The relational program proposed is based on the best-matching framework originally developed by Julian Barbour. In particular, the paper focuses on the conceptual problems that arise when trying to implement such a program. It is argued that pursuing a relational strategy in the Bohmian context leads to a more parsimonious (...) ontology than that of standard Bohmian mechanics without betraying the original motivations for adopting a primitive ontology approach to quantum physics. It is also shown how a relational Bohmian approach might clarify the issue of the timelessness of the dynamics resulting from the quantization of a classical relational system of particles. (shrink)

Howard Adelmann’s majestic five volume Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology was published nearly 50 years ago. A mix of paraphrase and translation, as well as extended commentary, Adelmann described Malpighi as “one of the cardinal figures in the history of biology. As we look back over the three centuries that separate him from us, he may, for all his towering stature, at first glance seem a distant figure. And yet he and his work are not so remote after (...) all” . Much has changed in the history of biology since Adelmann’s groundbreaking work, and among the many lessons to be taken from Domenico Bertoloni-Meli’s carefully researched, persuasive and, at times, beautifully rendered book is that the life sciences in the early modern period must be studied with an eye to the history of science, medicine and philosophy—i.e., calling Malpighi simply a “biologist” is very liable to mislead. This point, though only implicit in Meli’s choice to study Malpighi “in relati .. (shrink)

Marcel Duchamp describes the infrathin as “the most minute of intervals, or the slightest of differences.” Working through Duchamp’s proposition, and taking him at his work that the infrathin cannot be defined as such—“One can only give examples of it”—this article explores how the infrathin comes to expression and asks what a politics of the infrathin might look like. Key to the exploration is the question of how else value can be defined and how this rethinking of the concept of (...) value might compose with the concept of a pragmatics of the useless. (shrink)

Rosso: Can you say something more about the differences between your work and Derrida’s?De Man: I’m not really the right person to ask where the difference is, because, as I feel in many respects close to Derrida, I don’t determine whether my work resembles or is different from of Derrida. My initial engagement with Derrida—which I think is typical and important for all that relationship which followed closely upon my first encounter with him in Baltimore at the colloquium on “The (...) Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man”—had not to do with Derrida nor with me, but with Rousseau. It happened that we were both working on Rousseau and basically on the same text, by sheer coincidence. It was in relation to Rousseau that I was anxious to define, to try to work out some … not discrepancies … but some change of emphasis between what Derrida does and what I’m doing. And there may be something in that difference between us that remained there, to the extent that in a very genuine sense—not as denegation or as false modesty —my starting point, as I think I already told you, is not philosophical but basically philological and for that reason didactical, text-oriented. Therefore I have a tendency to put upon texts an inherent authority, which is stronger, I think, than Derrida is willing to put on them. I assume, as a working hypothesis , that the text knows in an absolute way what it’s doing. I know this is not the case, but it is a necessary working hypothesis that Rousseau knows at any time what he is doing and as such there is no need to deconstruct Rousseau. In a complicated way, I would hold to that statement that “the text deconstructs itself, is self-deconstructive” rather than being deconstructed by a philosophical intervention from the outside of the text. The difference is that Derrida’s text is so brilliant, so incisive, so strong that whatever happens in Derrida, it happens between him and his own text. He doesn’t need Rousseau, he doesn’t need anybody else; I do need them very badly because I never had an idea of my own, it was always through a text, through the critical examination of a text … I am a philologist and not a philosopher: I guess there is a difference there … I think that, on the other hand, it is of some interest to see how the two different approaches can occasionally coincide, at the point that Gasché in the two articles he as written on this topic says that Derrida and myself are the closest when I do not use his terminology, and the most remote when I use terms such as deconstruction: I agree with that entirely. But, again, I am not the one to decide on this particular matter and I don’t claim to be on that level … Stephano Rosso teaches English literature at the University of Verona and is writing a dissertation in comparative literature at SUNY—Binghamton. Among other works, he has coedited, with Naurizio Ferraris, Decostruzione tra filosofia e letteratura and Estetica e decostruzione. He is presently translating Paul de Man’s Resistance to Theory into Italian. (shrink)

This paper aims to show how recent cinematic representations reveal a far more pessimistic and essentialised vision of Human/Cyborg hybridity in comparison with the more enunciative and optimistic ones seen at the end of the twentieth century. Donna Haraway’s still influential 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” saw the combination of the organic and the technological as offering new and exciting ways beyond the normalised culturally constructed categories of gender and identity formation. However, more recently critics see her later writings as (...) embodying a Faustian deal between the individual and hegemony, where technology does not enhance but merely returns the subject to a level of normalisation. As such cybernetics is only configured as a form of prosthetic rehabilitation, to ‘re’-able the ‘dis’-abled, that ultimately re-establishes earlier essentialised subject positions through that same evolutionary process. The Six Million Dollar Man, which ran from 1974 to 1978, exampled a symbiosis between the organic and the technological where the broken human body is not just re-made via mechanical prosthesis but through a process of Cyborg hybridity which actually makes it better, faster, stronger than before. In contrast, contemporary films such as Avatar (Cameron 2009), Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen (Bay 2009) and Iron Man II (Faveraeu 2010) portray an inherent anxiety toward the cyborg body disavowing of any human/cyborg interaction beyond re-establishing their own discrete and separate subject positions. Although human/cyborg symbiosis constructs the possibility for potentialised bodies beyond those previously imagined, contemporary, popular, film represents them as separated and essentialised. This article looks at what cultural anxieties might produce such an about turn in such representations how this positions human identity in a time of increasing technology and, as a result, asks “whatever happened to The Six Million Dollar Man?”. (shrink)

“Because those who come after us may not be like us, or because those like us may not come after us, or because after a time there may be none to come after us, mankind must now set to work to insure that those who come after us will be more unlike us. In this there is at work the modern intellect’s penchant for species suicide.” With these words Paul Ramsey brings to a conclusion his provocative and surprising study of (...) the problems we are encountering – and will encounter – as scientific advances make the genetic control of man a real possibility. Now, increased knowledge of chromosome structure has taken the alteration of the human race out of the realm of science fiction and placed it in the hands of laboratory scientists. Ramsey sees this advance in science and technology as a mixed blessing. He examines the ramifications of genetic control, not only the now common measures of birth control and artificial insemination, but also the effect on the genetic pool of the increasing numbers of genetically poor individuals. His concern for humanistic values informs each argument as he tackles such issues as asexual reproduction of men, frozen semen banks, and the breeding of human beings for special purposes. No less than the future of man as we know him hangs on these issues. One must pay particular attention to this book. (shrink)

The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe (1946) by Glenn Clark is a work of biography and philosophy, exploring the life and ideas of the versatile artist, writer, and philosopher Walter Russell. New Thought writer and professor Glenn Clark (b. 1882, d. 1956) was a fervent believer in the power of prayer and the Light of God to reveal the secrets of the universe. As he explains in Chapter One: We Go Seeking, he had been searching "...for a (...) man who has discovered the universal law which lies back of the Sermon on the Mount, and who consciously uses that law with full awareness of its meaning, and full obedience to its principles." He believed that he had found that man in Walter Russell. Walter Russell (b. 1871, d. 1963) was a man who seemed preternaturally adept at everything he wished to try. After being removed from school at the age of nine and sent to work at a dry goods store, he worked a number of low-paying jobs. But he had "absolute faith...that anything can come to one who trusts to the unlimited help of the Universal Intelligence that is within so long as one works within the law and always gives more to others than they expect, and does it cheerfully and courteously." Throughout his life, he found success as a musician, painter, sculptor, writer, ice skater, philosopher, and lecturer. He was commissioned to sculpt a 28-figure Mark Twain Memorial just a few years after he began sculpting. And in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked him to sculpt the Four Freedoms Monument. He designed several buildings in New York City and invented the cooperative ownership model (aka the co-op). And most of these pursuits were undertaken with no formal education. By the time Clark met with Russell, he had achieved success in his artistic, literary, architectural, physical, and even scientific pursuits. So when Clark was searching for a man who knew the secrets of the universe and was referred to Russell on more than one occasion, he knew that he had to meet him. Large portions of the book, particularly in the chapters We Meet the Man, We Meet the Man of Action, and The Five Laws of Success, are presented as an interview with Russell, giving us insight into his beliefs straight from the source. "Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common," he says. "The most conspicuous of these is that they all produce a prodigious amount of work. The second is that they never know fatigue. And the third is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men's lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man's life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws." At the heart of Russell's philosophy is a belief that every man "has consummate genius within him. Some appear to have it more than others only because they are aware of it more than others are, and the awareness or unawareness of it is what makes each one of them into masters or holds them down to mediocrity..." To know that we have genius inside of us, and to have absolute faith in our inner voice and in the Universe, is to unlock that genius. Through the story of Russell's brilliant life and his Five Personal Laws of Success (humility, reverence, inspiration, deep purpose, and joy), the reader gets a plain-language example of genius-in-action. He demonstrated his great energy, lack of fatigue, and "ever-flowing fountain" of genius throughout his long life, maintaining his creativity until his death in 1963 at the age of 92. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE MAN BLIND FROM BIRTH AND THE SUBVERSION OF SIN: SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT FUNDAMENTAL MORALS1 James Alison I would like to undertake with you a reading of a passage from the Bible, John Chapter 9. I hope that we will see this chapter yield some interesting insights in the light of my attempt to apply to it the mimetic theory ofRené Girard. I'm not going to expound mimetic theory (...) for you: there is no shortage of books in which such expositions are to be found.2 I'mjust going to put the theory to work, with minimal recourse to technical jargon, in a reading from Scripture, hoping that it will be something like an exercise in publicity for the fecund use to which any of you might put mimetic theory. The reading will not be a simple commentary, but an attempt to experiment with the perspective of the reading. That is to say, we're asking "Who is reading this passage?," "With whom do we identify?" And the reason for this approach is to nudge us into beginning to raise certain questions of fundamental morals, how 'This paper was first published in Theology andSexuality 6, March 1997, and appears here by kind permission ofthe editor. With minor alterations this is the author's translation and adaptation ofa talk given at the Instituto Teológico de America Central (ITAC) in San Pedro Montes de Oca, San José, Costa Rica in May 1995. For instance: R. Schwager, Must there be Scapegoats? Violence andRedemption in the Bible (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987); R. Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence: Paul's Hermeneutic ofthe Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992); J. Williams, The Bible, Violence and the Sacred: Liberationfrom the Myth ofSanctioned Violence (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991); Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (New York: Crossroad, 1995)—this is the most accessible ofthe accounts. James Alison27 we talk about them, or live them in a more or less coherent and convincing way. I can't promise you any great conclusions, because I'm only just beginning to get into this subject. For that reason, I'll begin by saying that what follows is somewhat experimental, and will end with a few hints as to possible future paths to follow. I should also begin by saying that my intention is not to cause scandal, but to provoke a discussion which allows a fuller way ofliving a Christian life. In this sense what I'm trying out is an attempt at a search for a theological method which I have not yet mastered and which, if developed, will, I hope, prove somewhat emancipatory for all ofus. Miracle or theological debate? Let us begin our reading of John 9. At first sight we have an account of a miraculous healing. It is the story of a man blind from birth who receives his sight from Jesus one Sabbath, and then of the consequences of this healing among the people who witness, or hear about, the matter. Ifthe account were to be found in one of the synoptic Gospels, perhaps it might remain at that—there is no shortage of such stories. I have no doubt that in the background to the story we're dealing with an historical incident of a healing carried out by Jesus on a Sabbath. However, here the "miraculous healing" element doesn't receive much emphasis, nor does the Sabbath or rather, the matter ofthe Sabbath does receive a certain weight, as we will see later on, but with some very idiosyncratically Johannine touches. In any case, the purpose of this Chapter is determined by the debate about sin, sight, blindness and judgement within which it is set: these are the jeweller's artwork which show forth, and make sense of, the gem ofthe healing. Let us look at the beginning of the story. Jesus sees a man born blind, and his disciples ask him: "Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answers them: "Neither this man nor his parents. He is blind so that the works of God may be made manifest in him." That is to say, the whole story which follows comes as an illustration... (shrink)

by Alonzo L Hamby Noam Chomsky The Guardian, March 8, 1996 Harry Truman is a marvellous subject for a serious biography and after decades of 'scholarly engagement' with the subject, Alonzo Hamby is well qualified to write one. As he says, Truman was a 'man of the people,' whose life 'exemplifies' many aspects of 'the American experience'. In April 1945, 'knowing little more about diplomatic arrangements and military progress than what one would read in a good newspaper, he suddenly found (...) himself responsible for overseeing the end of the war and the establishment of a new global order'. 'You, more than any other man, have saved western civilisation,' Churchill informed him. It was a 'nearvisionary achievement,' in Hamby's judgment. (shrink)

Purpose. The author believes that the main topic of philosophical studies of Heraclitus was not nature, not dialectics, and not political philosophy; he was engaged in the development of philosophical anthropology, and all other questions raised by him were subordinated to it to one degree or another. It is anthropology that is the most "dark" part of the teachings of this philosopher, therefore the purpose of this article is to identify the hidden anthropological message of Heraclitus. In case of success, (...) it will become clear what made him "darken". Theoretical basis. The methodological basis of the article is the anthropological understanding of fragments of Heraclitus’ texts presented in a historical and philosophical context. Originality. The philosophical concept of Heraclitus is still a mystery for researchers of his work. The author of the article proposed such a variant of interpretation, within the framework of which different elements of this concept fit into a consistent model. Conclusions. The article proves that although the anthropological turn in philosophy is traditionally associated with the activities of the sophists and Socrates, the previous philosophical thought was also not devoid of anthropological ideas. Moreover, pre-Socratic philosophers posed problems, the interpretation of which brought the doctrine of man to the level of high-order abstractions, while surprisingly preserving the concreteness of the life-meaning questions that confront him. And one of the brightest representatives of pre-Socratic anthropology was Heraclitus of Ephesus. Religion was the motivator that made him study the world, man, and society. The doctrine of the Logos developed by Heraclitus had a tremendous impact on Plato and Philo of Alexandria, and through them on the author of the Fourth Gospel, who begins his story with a "Greek" rethinking of the mystery of the Incarnation. If Heraclitus claimed that a person carries a particle of the Logos, then John proclaimed that the Logos itself incorporated a particle of man. Despite all the differences between these approaches, each of them postulated the cosmic significance of human existence, which means that it brought anthropology to the ontological level. (shrink)

Principal editor of the great Encyclopedia, novelist and prose writer of genius, contributor to the development of scientific thought and method, to the theory of the bourgeois drama and to the practice of art criticism, Diderot perhaps embodies the rich variety of the Enlightenment spirit more than any other man. His only real rival is surely Voltaire. Rousseau, whose influence was greater than Diderot's, would not thank us for classing him among the philosophes. The more profound philosophers - a Hume (...) or a Kant - not only lack his range, but are less unquestionably ‘Enlightenment men’. (shrink)

Principal editor of the great Encyclopedia, novelist and prose writer of genius, contributor to the development of scientific thought and method, to the theory of the bourgeois drama and to the practice of art criticism, Diderot perhaps embodies the rich variety of the Enlightenment spirit more than any other man. His only real rival is surely Voltaire. Rousseau, whose influence was greater than Diderot's, would not thank us for classing him among the philosophes. The more profound philosophers - a Hume (...) or a Kant - not only lack his range, but are less unquestionably ‘Enlightenment men’. (shrink)

Abstract Is `History Man', Fred Inglis' biography on R.G. Collingwood a successful biography? Inglis' explicit ambition is to portray the concrete figure Collingwood by abducting him from what he calls the vacuum-packed academic world of scholars. But the best biographers look for a balanced equilibrium between rendering philosophical ideas and dramatizing a philosopher's life. Put another way, they evoke the interweaving of a philosopher's thought with the vicissitudes of his life. Despite the unmistakable qualities of this biography, Fred Inglis did (...) not fully succeed in finding that very balance, mainly due to a lack of philosophical background. While Oxford University Press with the new edition of his works and manuscripts is thoroughly reorienting the traditional view of Collingwood, Inglis' fluently written but rather biased portrayal does no full justice to the heart of his fascinating philosophy and personality. (shrink)

The case of St. Joseph, the Flying Friar, is one of the most fascinating in the entire history of parapsychology. But until now, there was very little written in English about Joseph. Grosso’s new book fills that void handily, and goes well beyond that by speculating in detail and great subtlety on a variety of surrounding issues, including the efficacy of prayer, the history of religion and religious miracles in general, and the psychology of the period in relation to the (...) development of religious thought. Grosso’s broad range of scholarly competence allows him to weave together these various threads into something much more than a mere recounting of astounding anecdotes about Joseph’s phenomena. Indeed, there’s more in this book than can be covered adequately in a review. So I’ll focus primarily on what I imagine will be news anyway to most JSE readers—namely, the astounding phenomena and the reasons for taking this case seriously. The case of St. Joseph provides the earliest outstanding evidence for human levitation and quite possibly the best from any era. But from a certain conventional viewpoint, the case has several strikes against it from the start. In many people it triggers deep-seated prejudices, about either historical evidence generally or the evidence for alleged religious miracles in particular. Even those willing to be open-minded about nineteenth-century evidence for paranormality may balk at taking seventeenth-century evidence equally seriously. And even those willing to be open-minded about seventeenth-century evidence may draw the line at evidence for religious miracles. Here, they would urge, the problem of biased observation and reporting are especially acute. (shrink)

Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much m advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his act DEGREES from an impersonal point of view.... It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of the time. He must remember that while he (...) is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the future; and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. Herbert S. (shrink)

In the treatise on the construction of man De opificio hominis, Gregory of Nyssa argues that man is qualitatively superior to other natural creations of God. Man is created in the image of God, a condition not found, at least explicitly, for other creatures. It is up to him whether he will digest this image in question or not. Despite the superiority attributed to man, it is not claimed in any way that he shall behave towards the rest of nature (...) by a way of domination. (shrink)

Throughout his work Hegel distinguishes between the notion of an act from the standpoint of the agent and that of all other standpoints. He terms the formerHandlung and the latterTat. This distinction should not be confused with the contemporary one between action andmerebodily movement. For one, bothHandlungandTatare aspects of conduct that results from the will,viz. Tun. Moreover, Hegel's taxonomy is motivated purely by concerns relating to modes of perception. So whereas theorists such as Donald Davidson assert thatallactions are events that (...) are intentional under some description, Hegel reserves the term ‘action’ for those aspects of behaviour that are highlighted by a specific set of agent-related descriptions. This is not an ontological category, since there are no such objects as actions-under-specific-descriptions.Sophocles'sTheban Trilogyreveals the central role that these notions must play in any Hegelian understanding of tragic drama. Indeed the contrasts that matter most to Hegel's general take on both epic and tragic poetry are more closely related to the study of action than the standard theory attributed to Hegel would seem to allow. It is more fruitful, then, to incorporate Hegel's insights into such tragedies to the model of action employed by him than it is to try to make them fit whatever ‘theory’ of tragedy might appear to be hinted at in hisAesthetics. (shrink)

In the period after the First World War when the various national-ideological “truths” that led to it were not well resolved which resulted in the Second World War, one of the greatest world crises occurs. In those turbulent times, one philosopher renounces his national identity (changes his religion and name), wanting not to save himself from an evil world that is emerging but to join the creation of a completely new world – the world of modern logic. This man is (...) Alfred Tarski, whom many recognize as “the man who defined truth”, linking him to the formulation of the distinction between object and metalanguage. In the paper, I argue with historians of philosophy who claim that this distinction was first set by the logician and philosopher of the Lvov-Warsaw school Stanislaw Leśniewski (whose Tarski was the only doctoral student) accusing Tarski of violating professional laws without attributing the authorship of this distinction to Leśniewski. I show that this is not true and I cite the places where Tarski clearly emphasizes Leśniewski ‘s contribution. (shrink)

OSHO continues to inspire millions of people worldwide in their search to define a new approach to individual spirituality that is self-directed and responds to the everyday challenges of contemporary life. His unique perspective encompasses both the timeless wisdom of the East and the highest potential of Western science and technology, and he was named by The Sunday Times of London as one of the “1000 Makers of the 20th Century.” The American novelist Tom Robbins has called him “the most (...) dangerous man since Jesus Christ.”. (shrink)

The article is a continuation of a series of works devoted to the methodological substantiation of the subject of philosophical anthropology. Using the example of specific searches for building the proper anthropological discourse, an attempt is made to analyze how different authors tried to build anthropology as a rigorous science. This makes it possible to analyze the problems associated with the methodology of science in its classical and non-classical versions. In this article, this work is done on the material of (...) E. Cassirer's searches, on building a connection between his classic work "Philosophy of Symbolic Forms" and his later work "Experience about Man", devoted to the anthropology as such. It is shown that Cassirer tried to overcome the substratum, naturalistic approach that dominated the essential paradigm in defining a person, by searching and describing the basic functional principle that singles out a person as a being. This is what Cassirer considers the principle of generating symbolic forms from which the entire space of culture is built. It is this that acts as the basic activity of a person, making him who he is and building his connection with culture. The symbolic form and the actual practice of form generation act as an intermediary between man and culture. This gives E. Cassirer the right to define man as a symbolic animal. The article also shows the difference between the classical discourse, which E. Cassirer continued to adhere to, and the non-classical one, which was proposed by M. Heidegger. This was shown in the famous discussion at Davos between two philosophers. (shrink)

Man's Approach to God was the 5th lecture in the Wimmer Memorial Lecture Series (1947-1970) at Saint Vincent and was given in 1951 by Jacques Maritain. Maritain was one of the most influential figures in the Thomistic revival of the 20th century. Both in his personal life and in his prolific academic corpus, Maritain modeled the Church's commitment to the interrelationship between faith and reason. So seriously did he take his intellectual commitments in his student years that, along with soon-to-be (...) wife, Ra•ssa Oumansoff, he made a suicide pact that he would only break if he could find some meaning to life. This search ultimately led him to Catholicism. Maritain's works reveal an active mind capable of applying his speculative thought to virtually any subject. Every one of his works was an exploration of reason and its limits, and of how faith completes the natural desire to know. His Wimmer lecture is a model specimen of this approach. Maritain's Man's Approach to God is a three-part lecture. In it, he seeks to explain how man comes to know God existentially, as well as how faith responds to and completes this search for meaning. This lecture grew out of his desire to show that every human being, and not just philosophers, can penetrate into the depths of reality, for all bear within themselves the indelible image of God and are equally called to the communion of love for God and love for our brothers [as] a single love of charity. (shrink)

Interest in philosophy of management continues to grow. Growth of the philosophy of management might result from the consideration of man's potential as viewed by two different men, an industrialist and a philosopher. James Finney Lincoln was president and board chairman of The Lincoln Electric Company for 37 years. During that time, and for 14 previous years when he was the firm's general manager, he developed a philosophy basic to a practice of business management that gained national and international attention. (...) Wilhelm von Humboldt was a very gifted person with many accomplishments including those as a Prussian statesman, a humanist, and a linguistics scholar. A comparison of both men's philosophies reveals the following: In each view man's potentiality was approached by the dynamic, on-going process of developing his latent abilities or powers. Both views stressed freedom as being critical to the development of man's latent abilities or powers. For Lincoln the individual must gain satisfaction from the recognition of developing his latent abilities. For Humboldt the individual must enjoy the 'freedom of developing himself.' Lincoln warned against custom as being a barrier to development since it places man in situations which are without variation, forcing him merely to follow precedent. Humboldt, in addition to freedom, stated that "a variety of situations" is essential for development. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Interest in philosophy of management continues to grow. Growth of the philosophy of management might result from the consideration of man's potential as viewed by two different men, an industrialist and a philosopher. James Finney Lincoln was president and board chairman of The Lincoln Electric Company for 37 years. During that time, and for 14 previous years when he was the firm's general manager, he developed a philosophy basic to a practice of business management that gained national and international attention. (...) Wilhelm von Humboldt was a very gifted person with many accomplishments including those as a Prussian statesman, a humanist, and a linguistics scholar. A comparison of both men's philosophies reveals the following: In each view man's potentiality was approached by the dynamic, on-going process of developing his latent abilities or powers. Both views stressed freedom as being critical to the development of man's latent abilities or powers. For Lincoln the individual must gain satisfaction from the recognition of developing his latent abilities. For Humboldt the individual must enjoy the 'freedom of developing himself.' Lincoln warned against custom as being a barrier to development since it places man in situations which are without variation, forcing him merely to follow precedent. Humboldt, in addition to freedom, stated that "a variety of situations" is essential for development. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Part intellectual history, part critical theory, The Last Man Takes LSD challenges the way we think about both Michel Foucault and modern progressive politics. One fateful day in May 1975, Foucault dropped acid in the southern California desert. In letters reproduced here, he described it as among the most important events of his life, one which would lead him to completely rework his History of Sexuality. That trip helped redirect Foucault's thought and contributed to a tectonic shift in the intellectual (...) life of the era. He came to reinterpret the social movements of May '68 and reposition himself politically in France, embracing anti-totalitarian currents and becoming a critic of the welfare state. Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora examine the full historical context of the turn in Foucault's thought, which included studies of the Iranian revolution and French socialist politics, through which he would come to appreciate the possibilities of autonomy offered by a new force on the French political scene that was neither of the left nor the right: neoliberalism. (shrink)

"Seymon Lyudvigovich Frank, the author of the volume here made available for the first time in English translation, was one of the leading Russian philosophers of this century; some authorities consider him the most outstanding Russian philosopher of any age...._ " _Man's Soul__ is a book which perfectly exemplifies the generous conception of the mission and competence of philosophy characteristic of Frank and the other members of the Russian metaphysical movement. Frank's stated aim in the treatise is to reclaim for (...) philosophy a field of investigation which, from the time of Plato and Aristotle to that of the Russian Idealists, philosophers had viewed as properly theirs, but which, since the mid-nineteenth century, they had allowed to fall into almost complete neglect: the study of the nature of the human soul...._ "The moral message of _Man's Soul__ is well summed up by its epigraph, quoted from St. Augustine: 'Let man first of all return to his own self, so that once he has, as it were, stepped therein, he may rise from thence and be elevated to God.'" -- from the foreword by Philip J. Swoboda. (shrink)

The French studies scholar Patrick Coleman made the important observation that over the course of the eighteenth century, the social meanings of anger became increasingly democratized. The work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is an outstanding example of this change. In Man or Citizen, Karen Pagani expands, in original and fascinating ways, the study of anger in Rousseau’s autobiographical, literary, and philosophical works. Pagani is especially interested in how and to what degree anger—and various reconciliatory responses to anger, such as forgiveness—functions as (...) a defining aspect of one’s identity, both as a private individual and as a public citizen. Rousseau himself was, as Pagani puts it, “unabashed” in his own anger and indignation—toward society on one hand (corrupter of our naturally good and authentic selves) and, on the other, toward certain individuals who had somehow wronged him (his famous philosophical disputes with Voltaire and Diderot, for example). In Rousseau’s work, Pagani finds that the extent to which an individual processes, expresses, and eventually resolves or satisfies anger is very much of moral and political concern. She argues that for Rousseau, anger is not only inevitable but also indispensable, and that the incapacity to experience it renders one amoral, while the ability to experience it is a key element of good citizenship. (shrink)

This article reappraises the political ideas of William Manning, and through him the trajectory of early modern republicanism. Manning, an early American farmer writing in the 1780s and 1790s, developed the republican distinction between and into a novel On this theory, it is the dependent, laboring classes who share an interest in social equality. Because of this interest, they are the only ones who can achieve and maintain republican liberty. With this identification of the interests of the dependent classes with (...) the common good, Manning inverted inherited republican ideas, and transformed the language of liberty and virtue into one of the first potent, republican critiques of exploitation. As such, he stands as a key figure for understanding the shift in early modern republicanism from a concern with constitutionalism and the rule of law to the social question. (shrink)

George Seddon takes a cheeky pride in his native wit, in his ability to improvise, invent, and to trip lightly over difficult terrain. These are the bush virtues of the Man from Snowy River. In this essay I reflect upon the interdisciplinary (and undisciplined) nature of Seddon's vision and practice, and place him in a tradition of nature and landscape writing in Australia that goes back to the 19th century. But I also suggest that he has been ahead of his (...) time in many ways, particularly in his anticipation of the field of environmental history. He has been one of the people who has generated new environmental narratives that indigenize Australia, and which undermine the dominant imperialist, diffusionist, one-way accounts of origins. In this sense, Seddon has creatively embraced - and sometimes overturned - the predicament of the antipodean. Seddon happily combines poetry and practice. He became known as the `powerline man' in landscape planning, and enjoyed quoting William Blake to the State Electricity Commission of Victoria in his report on the Loy Yang coal field development. By analysing his 1998 submission to the Snowy Water Inquiry, the essay shows how Seddon unites `good science, good planning, good design, and good communication', and offers environmental wisdom that is both highly intellectual and extremely practical. (shrink)

Our insight into the paradoxical nature of the human situation and the awareness of the polarity of man's being has not been transmitted through rigorous philosophical reflection but has been nurtured by the mystic, religious and poetic traditions of all times. It is therefore all the more necessary to detect and recognize the religious and mystic accents of recent philosophic thought in their philosophical camouflage, and try to see how philosophic reflections on man's pre-philosophic awareness of himself in his archaic (...) experience can significantly contribute to build an authentic image of him. An alleged incident in the life of the great Persian poet and mystic, Shaikh Faridubbin Attar, will illustrate better what we mean than any philosophical sophistication. Once taken captive by a soldier of the Tartar hordes which sacked Nishapur, he refused to let his life be redeemed by the offer of a substantial sum as he considered himself worth much more. However he later urged on his captor to accept as lowly a price as a bundle of grass since he deemed himself not worth even that much. The consequence can easily be imagined. The authenticity of this story, like that of all beautiful stories which make history meaningful, is now disputed. Its meta-historical relevance remains unchallenged nevertheless. What is really intended to be conveyed by weaving an imaginary anecdote round the life of a great Sufi is probably the paradoxicality of man's existence alluded to in the Quran: “Verily we created man in the most excellent stature and then reduced him to the lowest of the low” (Quran XCV). Consequently man moves between two infinites, the infinite which makes him swing to dizzy heights and the infinite which allows him to sink to frightening depths. In other words he can rise so high as to assimilate the attributes of the divine and fall so low as to forfeit his human identity. (shrink)

This volume signals reinvigoration of Russell the public campaigner. The title of the volume is taken from one of his most famous and eloquent short essays and probably the best known of his many broadcasts for the BBC. Man's Peril 1954-55 not only captures the essence of Russell's thinking about nuclear weapons and the Cold War in the mid 1950s, but its extraordinary impact which served to jolt him into political protest once again. The activism of which we glimpse the (...) initial stirrings in this volume continued in various guises more or less without interruption until his death. Russell later became involved with pressure group politics of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the civil disobedience tactics of the Committee of 00. In the writings assembled in this volume, however, he is looking towards the non-aligned states and world scientific opinion as possible brokers of de;tente . Although Russell was becoming increasingly immersed in work for peace, this was not to find him reminiscing about his peace about peace campaigning during the First World War, defending "History As an Art", and attacking the obscurantism of obscenity legislation and the opponents of birth control. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:.. MERELY A MAN OF LETTERS" an interview with Jorge Luis Borges* Philosophy and Literature: Why don't you tell us about some of the philosophers who have influenced your work and in whom you have been the most interested? Jorge Luis Borges: Well, I think that's an easy one. You might talk in terms of two: Berkeley and Schopenhauer. But I suppose Hume might be worked in also, because, (...) after all, Hume refutes Berkeley. Really, he comes from Berkeley—even if Berkeley comes from Locke. You might think of Locke, of Berkeley, and of Hume as being three links in an argument..... But I suppose that when someone refutes someone else in philosophy, he is carrying on the argument. P&L: And Schopenhauer? Borges: Schopenhauer is very different from Hume. Of course, Schopenhauer had his idea of the Will. That is not to be found in Hume.... The case of Berkeley was different. I suppose he thought of God as being aware of all things all the time, if I don't get him wrong. If we go away, does this room disappear? No, because God is thinking about it. Now, in the case of Schopenhauer, I was rereading Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Idea, and I was rather taken aback, or baffled I should say, puzzled by something that keeps on recurring in Schopenhauer. Of course it may have been a slip of the pen, but as he goes back to it, and as he was a very careful writer, I wonder if it is a slip of the pen. For example, Schopenhauer begins by saying that the universe, the stars, the spaces in between, the planets, *On April 14, 1976, two editors of Philosophy and Literature, along with an interested colleague, interviewed Jorge Luis Borges at Michigan State University, where he held a position as visiting professor for the winter term. These remarks are edited from the transcript of that conversation. 337 338Philosophy and Literature this planet, those things, have no existence—except in the mind which perceives them. But then, to my surprise—and I suppose you can explain this to me, since you are philosophers and I am not—what Schopenhauer says is that all those things have no existence except in the brain. And that the universe—I remember these words, I don't think I'm inventing them now—"ist ein Gehirnphänomen," that the world is a cerebral phenomenon. Now, I was baffled. Because, of course, if you think of the universe, I suppose the brain is as much a part of the external world as the stars or the moon. The brain after all is a system of visual, of tactile, perceptions. He keeps on insisting on the brain. I don't think, for example, that Bishop Berkeley insists on the brain, or Hume, who would have insisted on the mind, consciousness. P&L: People sometimes say that they see Berkeley in stories like "Orbis Tertius." Borges: Yes, I suppose they do. Well, of course. But in that story I was led by literary means also. P&L: How do you distinguish the literary from the philosophical means in that story? Could you explain that? Borges: Very easily.... Encyclopedias have been my chief reading. I have always been interested in encyclopedias. I used to go to the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires—and since I was so shy, I felt I could not cope with asking for a book, so I looked on the shelves for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I would pick up any chance volume and I would read it. One night I was richly rewarded, because I read all about the Druses, Dryden and the Druids—a treasure trove, no?—all in the same volume, "Dr-." Then I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia... a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked. For example, you would have a language and then a literature, and then a history and so on. Then I thought I would write a story of a fancy encyclopedia. Of course that would require many different people to write it... (shrink)

Man will never be virtuous, until his interests instruct him to be so. So long as these shall even so much as seem opposed to his virtue, he will inevitably pursue the former and renounce the latter. That which must be done, is to clear from his mind the horrible mists and fogs of prejudice--bid him no longer worship the cold prescriptions of policy, for the warm principles of justice--to free his soul from the fetters of authority--to remit and exalt (...) him to himself--to let him seek, by the light of his conscience alone, in the joyous, genial climate of his own free spirit, for all the rules of his conduct. Then, and not till then, will he be virtuous and happy.--(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Seeking to rediscover the connection between philosophy as studied in universities and those general views of man and reality which are 'philosophy' to the educated layman, Edward Craig here offers a view of philosophy and its history since the early seventeenth century. He presents this period as concerned primarily with just two visions of the essential nature of man. One portrays human beings as made in the image of God, required to resemble him as far as lies in our power; (...) the other sees us as autonomous creators of our own environment and values. The author writes with a broad sweep not encouraged by recent fashion, yet shows how textual detail which previous commentators have found opaque becomes transparent when viewed against such a background. In the final chapter he treats passages from recent work in the same way. The general conceptions which philosophical thought embodies can equally well be embodied in other media, especially literary. The author illustrates this point with German and English examples and thereby draws together disciplines often felt to be far apart. He also reveals striking similarities between Anglo-American and certain twentieth-century continental European lines of thought. (shrink)

The Collected Papers 28 signals reinvigoration of Russell the public campaigner. The title of the volume is taken from one of his most famous and eloquent short essays and probably the best known of his many broadcasts for the BBC. Man's Peril, 1954-55 not only captures the essence of Russell's thinking about nuclear weapons and the Cold War in the mid-1950s, its extraordinary impact served to jolt him into political protest once again. The activism of which we glimpse the initial (...) stirrings in this volume continued in various guises more or less without interruption until his death. In the writings assembled in this volume, however, he is looking towards the non-aligned states and world scientific opinion as possible brokers of détente . (The volume includes Russell's famous public statement, the declaration of scientists known as 'The Russell Einstein Manifesto'.) Although Russell was becoming increasingly immersed in work for peace, this was not to the exclusion of all other interests. For example, here we find also him reminiscing about his peace campaigning during the First World War, defending 'History as an Art', and attacking the obscurantism of obscenity legislation and the opponents of birth control. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jesus, Man of Sin: Toward a New Christology in the Global EraSoho MachidaSin as the Common GroundThe blasphemous title of this article is likely to outrage more than a few devout Christians. I am aware that most Christians view Jesus as the most immaculate and beautiful person who ever lived. As a Buddhist scholar and practitioner, however, I cannot extinguish a long-held question from my mind. Was Jesus really (...) free from sin? I do not object to the view of those Christians who see him as the greatest living expression of compassion and courage. But the Christian construction of an untainted, perfect image of Jesus, the Son of God, raises certain problems that I would like to address. Although Jesus, the Anointed, could have had a special mission in the human world, the Son of Man did not appear as the Holy Ghost. He was incarnated in human form: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only son from the Father” (John 1:14).It is important to carefully consider the meaning of the Incarnation. The fact that Jesus came to be born with flesh in this world means that he chose to stand on the common ground of sin with us. The sin that I refer to here is the most ontologically fundamental sin that is at the core of human experience. What links us with Jesus is none other than so-called Original Sin.To be sure, as a man who comes from a different religious tradition, I do not make this outrageous claim because I want to dispute the value of the divine personhood of Jesus, or because I am cynical about the most sacred object of Christian faith. I have a deep respect for the greatness of the Christian tradition that has developed around this very unusual person, Jesus Christ.On a personal level too, I do not think of Jesus as a distant figure, as merely the god of another religion. During my boyhood in Japan, I often attended an Episcopal church; and the first academic degree I earned in the United States was in theological studies. In light of all that I have learned from my own personal involvement with Christianity, I still believe that Jesus was a person who suffered like us as a sinful human being.If I were to choose the most important of Jesus’ words from the Bible, I would not hesitate to point to the following passage: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? (My God, my God, why have you deserted me?)” (Mark 15:34). It is surprising how few Christian scholars have offered persuasive interpretations of these words, which Jesus is said to have uttered in the final moments of his life. Many Christians would rather not hear such contradictory, despairing words come from the mouth of Jesus. Yet [End Page 81] these words of extreme suffering contain the key message at the core of Christian faith.Though I am also interested in Jesus’ historical background and the political role he played in a tiny corner of the Roman Empire, it is not the purpose of this article to investigate the historicity of Jesus’ life, as many theologians and historians have attempted to do in recent years. I will focus instead on the philosophical implications of Jesus’ life and his physical body, and why I believe it is important to develop a new Christology for the coming global era.The Karmic Body of JesusFirst, why did Jesus have to experience the suffering of crucifixion? The evident answer might be explained this way: because he sacrificed himself to redeem the human race, which has been sinning since the time of Adam and Eve. I would like, however, to suggest a totally different answer: Jesus was crucified to atone for his own sin. He courageously showed the way each of us must take responsibility for our own lives. He deserves our high admiration, but not excessive mystification.I do not mean that Jesus committed any specific sin in his lifetime, but rather that as the Son of Man he too was... (shrink)

The article reveals the approaches to the essence of man by one of the founders of Russian cosmism K.E. Tsiolkovsky and V.I. Vernadsky. the teaching of which is attributed to the natural-scientific direction of Russian cosmism, during the emergence of the vector of technical and technological development of mankind. The idea of a holistic, harmonious approach to the material and spiritual world of man united the philosophical worldview of K.E. Tsiolkovsky and V.I. Vernadsky, who viewed man and the surrounding world (...) in unity from an objective standpoint, and the mind was the source of man's conquest of the Universe. The approaches of K.E. Tsiolkovsky and V.I. Vernadsky have much in common and are characterized by the scale of views on man as a global and cosmic being. At the same time, two great cosmologists approached their conclusions from different research positions. Each of them has his own way of philosophical view of a person and the world around him. The article provides a comparative analysis of the teachings of K.E. Tsiolkovsky and V.I. Vernadsky, analyzes the general and different. The relevance of the topic is determined by the modern problems of the biosphere, which as a global system has already lost its stability under human influence. A more in-depth study of the philosophy of K.E. Tsiolkovsky and V.I. Vernadsky allows us to trace the relationship of their peculiar ideas with global approaches to the microcosm of man, understanding the transcendental and spiritual foundations of the philosophy of cosmism. (shrink)

In Foucault’s writing throughout the 1960s, in which he foregrounds the critical function of language and signification, works of art and literature – and works of avant-garde art and literature in particular – appear prominently and are the objects of sustained theoretical investment. In the 1970s, however, as Foucault moves away from his earlier concern with language’s capacity to dissolve “man” and begins to concentrate instead on the ways in which man is governed, works of art and literature no longer (...) possess the same political promise for him and drop out almost completely from his writing. Yet the question of aesthetics does not disappear for him entirely, and, in his final years, he returns to it, though with his analysis now directed at what he calls an “art” or “aesthetics of life.” In this paper, I examine these developments with the aim of drawing out the connections between Foucault’s changing view of aesthetics and the larger transformations that take shape within his overall project. Against this background, I argue that Foucault’s call for an art of life, in which the individual develops techniques for continually reinventing his or her existence, does not necessitate abandoning the avant-garde aesthetic practices that he had previously advocated. Rather, I assert, his conception of an art of life – when read in conjunction with his theorization of critique as a “permanent” questioning of the limits imposed on us – offers a new framework for reimagining both the function of those practices and their legacies in culture today. (shrink)

In a series of poignant vignettes, a preeminent historian makes a compelling case for Machiavelli as an unjustly maligned figure with valuable political insights that resonate as strongly today as they did in his time. Whenever a tempestuous period in history begins, Machiavelli is summoned, because he is known as one for philosophizing in dark times. In fact, since his death in 1527, we have never ceased to read him to pull ourselves out of torpors. But what do we really (...) know about this man apart from the term invented by his detractors to refer to that political evil, Machiavellianism? It was Machiavelli's luck to be disappointed by every statesman he encountered throughout his life--that was why he had to write The Prince. If the book endeavors to dissociate political action from common morality, the question still remains today, not why, but for whom Machiavelli wrote. For princes, or for those who want to resist them? Is the art of governing to take power or to keep it? And what is "the people?" Can they govern themselves? Beyond cynical advice for the powerful, Machiavelli meditates profoundly on the idea of popular sovereignty, because the people know best who oppresses them. With verve and a delightful erudition, Patrick Boucheron sheds light on the life and works of this unclassifiable visionary, illustrating how we can continue to use him as a guide in times of crisis. (shrink)