Originally published in 1967, this Companion is designed to help readers of the Qur’an by giving them necessary background information. An account is given of ideas peculiar to the Qur’an, and the main variant interpretations are noted. A full index of Qur’anic proper names and an index of words commented on has been provided. Based on A J Arberry’s translation, this Companion can be used with other translations, or indeed with the original text, since the verses are numbered.

How does literature illuminate the way we live? Maurice Natanson, a prominent champion of phenomenology, draws upon this method's unique power to show how fiction can highlight aspects of experience that are normally left unexamined. By exploring the structure of the everyday world, Natanson reveals the "uncanny" that lies at the core of the ordinary. Phenomenology--which involves the questioning of that which we usually take for granted--is for Natanson the essence of philosophy. Drawing upon his philosophical predecessors Edmund Husserl, (...) Alfred Schutz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Natanson paves his own way with stories and examples that themselves bear witness to how phenomenology occurs in literature. In considering such works as Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Natanson shows how literature opens us to the domain of possibility and how metaphor offers philosophical power when we think about freedom and change. This book, written by one of the twentieth century's leading phenomenologists, will interest students in philosophy and in literature. They will value the work particularly for its clarification of concepts and terms that frequently emerge in the contemporary intellectual climate. (shrink)

"This book tries to assess Galileo's work in its historical singularity. It is constructed around a precise question: How did Galileo create the modern science of motion? Starting from this question, I shall go on to determine as accurately as I can what concepts and methods helped classical mechanics to take shape." [Preface].

No one who has read the classics with any attention can fail to have been struck by certain oddities in both the Greek and Latin usage of epithets denoting colour. How really strange their application often is may have escaped general notice for three reasons: partly, it may be, because custom has staled their surprising character—phrases such as ‘the wine-dark sea’ having become, so to say, ‘household words’; partly because a natural and on the whole commendable diffidence prevents our attributing, (...) at least to the Greeks, anything that seems in the least derogatory from an artistic point of view; and partly because these instances of curious usage are scattered and so have no cumulative effect on our judgement. (shrink)

Since William Jones announced the kinship of Sanskrit and the European languages, a massive body of scholarship has illuminated the development of the so-called "Indo-European" language group. This new historical philology has enormous technical achievements to its credit. But almost from the start, it became entangled with prejudices and myths--with efforts to recreate not only the lost language, but also the lost--and superior--civilization of the Indo-European ancestors. This drive to determine the identity and nature of the first language of humanity (...) was deeply rooted in both near eastern and western traditions. The Bible described the perfect, transparent language of Adam and followed its degeneration, caused by human sin, into the multiple, opaque languages of later nations. The three sons of Noah became, for Jewish and early Christian writers, the founders of three distinct human groups. By the sixth and seventh centuries, historians began to magnify the deeds of certain later peoples, such as the Scythians and Goths, and to connect them with the biblical genealogy of languages and races. And in the Renaissance, speculative historical etymology took root and flourished, as national pride led European intellectuals to assert that their own modern languages--for example, Flemish--either could be identified with the original one or offered the closest surviving approximation to it. Japheth, Noah's favorite son and the forefather of the Europeans, emerged as the hero who had preserved the original language in its purity. A new history of the European languages developed, one which traced them back to the language of the barbarian Scythians and emphasized the connections between Persian and European languages. It came to seem implausible that the European languages derived from Hebrew. By the eighteenth century, in short, all the preconditions were present for a discovery that the ancestors of the Europeans, like the common ancestor of their languages, had been independent of Semitic influence. A modern scholarly thesis whose political and intellectual consequences are still working themselves out reveals the continuing impact of a millennial tradition of speculation about language and history. (shrink)

A sustained analysis of how Addams gave American pragmatism a radical, revolutionary edge.

This dissertation integrates the work of feminist care theorists such as Carol Gilligan with the phenomenological work on embodiment of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as well as the social philosophy of Jane Addams to create an approach to morality that I call, "Embodied Care." I define embodied care as an approach to morality that shifts ethical considerations to context, relationships, and affective knowledge in a manner that can only be fully understood if its embodied dimension is recognized. Care is exhibited through (...) habits that are an expression of embodied knowledge and contribute to a caring imagination. Care is committed to the flourishing and growth of individuals yet acknowledges our interconnectedness and interdependence. This dissertation aims to contribute two ideas to existing care discourse: Care cannot be fully understood without attending to its embodied dimension and that care can be a viable component of a social ethic but only if its corporeal aspect is addressed. ;The introduction contains my definition of care that will be explicated throughout the dissertation. The opening chapter reviews the current literature on care ethics and organizes various positions held to help clarify the assertion I will make throughout the dissertation: care is more foundational than an ethical theory because it is rooted in the body. Largely drawing upon the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, chapter two establishes how the body is "built for caring" by exploring caring knowledge and caring habits. Chapter three bridges individual and social considerations through the notion of a caring imagination which employs corporeal resources to transcend distance and time to understand and empathize with others. In chapter four the work of Jane Addams is used to understand how attending to embodiment can contribute to social habits of care that build a caring society. The final chapter explores how embodied care transforms the moral landscape on a personal and a social level. ;Rather than providing the definitive answers desired by traditional ethical systems, embodied care points to the kinds of questions and issues that should be attended to. Embodied care is not about "getting it right," but about "making it better" for those involved. (shrink)

He focuses on Hegel and Nietzche, perhaps to give Mallarme and Kafka a breathing spell. Paper edition (unseen), $10.95. No index or bibliography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The original extended mind theory propagated by Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58:7–19, 1998) refers to the idea that our minds do not simply live within our brains or bodies but extend into the material world. In other words, the extended mind refers to the externalization of cognitive processes into technology. Through the case study of the artistic performance of the android Alter inspired by the Japanese Shintoist ritual of Kagura this paper reconceptualizes the extended mind from a technological act of (...) transfer towards the relational, spatial, and performative ontologies of the intersubjective encounters between humans and non-humans. In an effort to decolonize performance and curatorial practice the paper draws upon indigenous scholarship, feminist STS, and performance studies to overcome preconceived conceptualizations of affect, perception, and relationality. The fundamental question the paper explores is how does intersubjective relationality unfold through performance in space? Based upon a critique of the android Alter’s past performance the paper concludes with a re-envisioned event score that employs a reconceptualized theory of the extended mind and aimed at a different kind of intersubjective relationality to emerge. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a new approach to address the ramification problem in common-sense reasoning about action and change. We contrast the methods of McCain and Turner, Thielscher and Sandewall and, based on some of the limitations they encounter, we introduce a trajectory-based approach which keeps a history of the states through which a system evolves to characterise its dynamical state. We furnish an underlying state-transition semantics and a logic that admits an expressive, dynamical account of some typical scenarios (...) which encounter modelling difficulties in the other approaches mentioned. (shrink)

Contributors to this volume demonstrate how the ethics of care factors into a variety of social policies and institutions, and can indeed be useful in thinking about a number of different social problems. Divided into two sections, the first looks at care as a model for an evaluative framework that rethinks social institutions, liberal society, and citizenship at a basic conceptual level. The second explores care values in the context of specific social practices or settings, as a framework that should (...) guide thinking. (shrink)

This book looks at two ‘revolutions’ in philosophy – phenomenology and conceptual analysis which have been influential in sociology and psychology. It discusses humanistic psychiatry and sociological approaches to the specific area of mental illness, which counter the ultimately reductionist implications of Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The book, originally published in 1973, concludes by stating the broad underlying themes of the two forms of humanistic philosophy and indicating how they relate to the problems of theory and method in sociology.

Prodelision or Inverse Elision takes place when a word ending in a long vowel or diphthong is immediately followed by another word beginning with a short vowel. Though it is very occasionally found in inscriptions and in the manuscripts of certain prose authors, particularly those of Plato—almost uniquely and its cases—it is to be considered as essentially a verse phenomenon, affecting as it does the metre of the line in which it occurs. Prodelision was unknown to Homer and Hesiod, is (...) rare in lyric, and seems only to come into real use with the dramatists of the fifth century. An examination of the practice of the three tragedians and of Aristophanes is not without interest in itself and may occasionally throw some light on points of textual criticism. (shrink)

The notion of "feminist pragmatism" or "pragmatist feminism" has been around since Charlene Haddock Seigfried introduced it two decades ago. However, the bulk of the work in this field has been directed toward recovering the feminist strain of classical American philosophy, largely through renewed interest in the work of Jane Addams. This exploration of the origins of feminism and pragmatism has been fruitful in building a foundation for theoretical considerations. The editors of this volume believe the next logical step is (...) the contemporary application to both theory and experience. Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism is the first book to address the modern significance of the nexus of feminism and pragmatism. The issues explored here include the relationship between community and identity, particularly around the impact of gender and race; reframing political practice regarding feminist pragmatist commitments including education, sustainability movements, and local efforts like community gardens; and the association between ethics and inquiry including explorations of Buddhism, hospitality, and animal-human relationships. (shrink)

For example, from the point of view of pure conceptual analysis, since the reduction of what is not understood to what is understood is new understanding, explanation seems to involve growth of understanding. But is it the only kind of growth of understanding? It seems that explanation is quantitative growth of understanding. Could there be a qualitative growth of understanding and if so what would it be? And how would qualitative growth of understanding relate to explanation?