In this article I try to investigate the possible insights one may reach by considering the development on the level of socio-philosophical theories as a symptom of the development taking place on the level of social practice.

Le jeune philosophe viennois Otto Weininger se suicide en octobre 1903, âgé de 23 ans. Il vient de faire paraître un brûlot, Sexe et Caractère, qui restera un succès de librairie pendant deux décennies, avec 36 rééditions jusqu'en 1925. Sigmund Freud le considérera comme un génie. Ludwig Wittgenstein le tiendra en grande estime, tout comme Karl Kraus, Stephan Zweig, Robert Musil, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Georges Bataille ou encore Emil Cioran. Malgré tous les hommages qu'il a reçus, Weininger (...) est quasiment inconnu en France. Est-il si difficile d'aborder et de comprendre le foisonnement intellectuel et artistique qu'a connu Vienne avant l'effondrement de l'empire austro-hongrois?? Le caractère antisémite et antiféministe de son œuvre le rend-il toujours aussi infréquentable?? Certes, la brièveté de son existence et la radicalité de ses positions ne plaident pas pour une approche nuancée du personnage. En fait, la renommée d'Otto Weininger, ici resituée dans son contexte, a été occultée par l'aura internationale que Freud a eu le temps de construire jusqu'en 1939. Pourtant, à son grand étonnement, jusqu'au seuil de la mort, certains de ses visiteurs lui poseront des questions sur les relations directes ou indirectes qu'il a eues avec cette étoile filante de la nuit viennoise. Tous deux se sont attaqués aux mêmes questions dans une période marquée par de profonds bouleversements. C'est ce qui explique que la bisexualité, la femme et l'homme face à leurs rôles respectifs et, plus généralement encore, les multiples éléments qui constituent l'identité de chacun sont des sujets qui résonnent toujours dans notre actualité. (shrink)

This paper examines the contents and institutional context of August Weismann's long essay on Amphimixis (1891). Therein he presented detailed discussions of his on-going studies of reduction division and parthenogenesis, but more to the point, he included an elaborate examination of Émile Maupas's two major publications in protozoology. To understand the relevance of this part to the other two, the author briefly reviews highpoints in earlier nineteenth century protozoology and concludes that only in the mid-1870s and 1880s did protozoa add (...) an important dimension to heredity theory. Otto Bütschli and then Maupas provided Weismann with a deeper understanding of how conjugation and fertilization were related but not identical processes. This allowed him to integrate the two into a fuller understanding of evolution by natural selection. (shrink)

O processo de desenvolvimento da história (e demais ciências) das religiões, com objeto e metodologia próprios, pode ser analisado por meio das discussões que aprofundaram as relações entre a defesa do caráter racionalista do homem ocidental e a persistência de formas religiosas de expressão no transcorrer dos séculos XIX e XX (bem como neste início de século XXI). Por meio do estudo da história da teologia e das religiões, são estabelecidos critérios para o julgamento das convergências entre movimentos religiosos, também (...) de suas especificidades, aqui discutidos à luz de pressupostos subjacentes em obras de Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) e Mircea Eliade (1907-1986). A escolha dos autores se justifica pelo fato de representarem, cada qual a seu modo, estágios teórico-analíticos no desenvolvimento das ciências das religiões que abarcam o conflito entre racionalismo ocidental e formas religiosas. Pelo que guardam de semelhança ou contradição, especialmente pela presença do sagrado em sua argumentação, os três autores vêm a confirmar uma suspeita (do religioso) ou hipótese (do cientista): a religião persiste. Palavras-chave: Ciências da Religião. Teologia. Émile Durkheim. Rudolf Otto. Mircea Eliade.The process of the development of History (and other sciences) of Religions, with its object and methodology, can be analyzed by the discussions that deepened the relations between the defense of the rationalist character of the western man and the persistence of religious forms of expression in the 19th and 20th centuries (as well as in the beginning of the 21th century). Studying the History of Theology and of Religions, the criteria for the judgment of the convergences within religious movements can be established, as well their specificities, discussed here under the subjacent ideas found in Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) and Mircea Eliade (1907-1986). The selection of these authors can be justified by the fact that they represent each one on his own way, the theoretical analytical stages in the development of the Sciences of Religions that enclose the conflict between western rationalism and religious forms. Considering what they have in common and in contradiction, especially for the presence of the holy in their argumentation, the three authors confirm a suspicion (of the religious man) or a hypothesis (of the scientist): the religion persists. Keywords: Sciences of Religion. Theology. Émile Durkheim. Rudolf Otto. Mircea Eliade. (shrink)

Dvorec Jelšingrad (Erlachstein), ki se nahaja na severozahodnem obrobju Šmarja pri Jelšah, je bil v sredini 19. stoletja deležen prenove vzhodnega dela stavbe, interierjev in parka po vzorih mavrske in orientalske arhitekture. Za novo eksotično podobo je bil zaslužen tedanji lastnik Rudolf Oskar Gödel-Lannoy (1814–1883), ki je med svojo dolgoletno diplomatsko kariero v Egiptu, na Bližnjem vzhodu in Balkanu načrtno zbiral antikvitete. Ob vrnitvi v domovino jih je v svojem dvorcu razstavil v treh novo nastalih orientalskih dvoranah, kar se (...) v sočasnih virih omenja kot “orientalni muzej”. Iz popisa predmetov, ki so jih leta 1943 v dvorcu zasegli Nemci in prenesli v Pokrajinski muzej Maribor, je razvidno, da je Lannoyjeva zbirka starin vključevala številne predmete iz starega Egipta, Mezopotamije, Grčije in Rima. Z izjemo staroegipčanskega fragmenta Merimosejevega sarkofaga iz 18. dinastije, ki ga danes hranijo v Narodnem muzeju v Pragi, v dosedanjih raziskavah vsebina Lannoyjevih starinoslovnih zbirk še ni bila deležna strokovne pozornosti. Pričujoči prispevek se osredotoča na jelšingrajsko zbirko mezopotamskih predmetov, tj. cilindričnih pečatov, pečatnih kamnov, živalskih amuletov in glinenega stožca kralja Gudea iz Lagaša, ki jih danes hranijo v depoju arheološke zbirke Univerzalnega muzeja Joanneum v Gradcu. (shrink)

Short description: One of the major works of the great German theologian Emil Brunner, The Divine Imperative deals with one the many uncertainties in which we ...

The introduction of normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) in controlled donation after circulatory determination of death (cDCDD) protocols is by some regarded as controversial and ethically troublesome. One of the main concerns that opponents have about introducing NRP in cDCDD protocols is that reestablishing circulation will negate the determination of death by circulatory criteria, potentially resuscitating the donor. In this article, I argue that this is not the case. If we take a closer look at the concept of death underlying the (...) circulatory criterion for determination of death, we find that the purpose of the criterion is to show whether the organism as a whole has died. I argue that this purpose is fulfilled by the circulatory criterion in cDCDD protocols, and that applying NRP does not negate the determination of death or resuscitate the donor. (shrink)

In the period 1875-1920, a debate about the generality and applicability of evolutionary theory to all organisms was motivated by work on unicellular ciliates like Paramecium because of their peculiar nuclear dualism and life cycles. The French cytologist Emile Maupas and the German zoologist August Weismann argued in the 1880s about the evolutionary origins and functions of sex (which in the ciliates is not linked to reproduction), and death (which appeared to be the inevitable fate of lineages denied sexual conjugation), (...) an argument rooted in the question of whether the ciliates and their processes where homologous to other cellular organisms. In the beginning of the twentieth century, this question of homology came to be less important as the ciliates were used by the British protozoologist Clifford Dobell and the American zoologist Herbert Spencer Jennings to study evolutionary processes in general rather than problems of development and cytology. For them, homology mattered less than analogy. This story illustrates two partially distinct problems in evolutionary biology: first, the question of whether all living things have common features and origins; and second, whether their history and current nature can be described by identical mechanisms. Where Maupas (contra Weismann) made the ciliates qualitatively the same as all other organisms in order to create a cohesive evolutionary theory for biology, Jennings and Dobell made them qualitatively different in order to achieve the same end. (shrink)

The vital status of patients who are a part of controlled donation after circulatory death (cDCD) is widely debated in bioethical literature. Opponents to currently applied cDCD protocols argue that they violate the dead donor rule, while proponents of the protocols advocate compatibility. In this article, we argue that both parties often misinterpret the moral implications of the dead donor rule. The rule as such does not require an assessment of a donor’s vital status, we contend, but rather an assessment (...) of whether procurement of organs in cDCD cause the death of the donor or not. We then argue that commonly practiced cDCD protocols do not violate the dead donor rule, since the donation does not trigger or cause the death of the donors. (shrink)

We show that \, the basic theory of bounded arithmetic corresponding to the complexity class \, proves the \ axiom expressing the totality of iterated multiplication satisfying its recursive definition, by formalizing a suitable version of the \ iterated multiplication algorithm by Hesse, Allender, and Barrington. As a consequence, \ can also prove the integer division axiom, and the \-translation of induction and minimization for sharply bounded formulas. Similar consequences hold for the related theories \ and \. As a side (...) result, we also prove that there is a well-behaved \ definition of modular powering in \\). (shrink)

Recently, there have been attempts at offering new justifications of the Rawlsian idea of public reason. Blain Neufeld has suggested that the ideal of political autonomy justifies public reason, while R.J. Leland and Han van Wietmarschen have sought to justify the idea by appealing to the value of political community. In this paper, I show that both proposals are vulnerable to a common problem. In realistic circumstances, they will often turn into reasons to oppose, rather than support, public reason. However, (...) this counterintuitive result can be avoided if we conceive of autonomy and community differently. (shrink)

Excerpt from Die Lehre vom Urteil Windelband hat in seinen "präludien und in dem Aufsatz der Festschrift für Zeller "beiträge zur Lehre vom nega tiven Urteil gerade vermittelst der Urteilslehre den ent scheidenden Schritt zu tun vermocht, der Logik wieder ihre sachliche Heimat im Ganzen der Philos0phie zu bestimmen. Rickerts "gegenstand der Erkenntnis ist sodann das Grund buch für alle logischen Untersuchungen der Werttheorie geworden und geblieben. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. (...) Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

There have been few attempts thus far to read Rorty through a humanistic lens. This paper is an attempt at making explicit some of the key features of his conception. My main objective is to show that humanism is integral to his philosophy and to explain what it consists in. I focus on Rorty’s secular humanism, which I believe lies at the center of his thought. In sections 2 and 3, I provide an account of key humanist sources, both pragmatist (...) and non-pragmatist. Section 4 examines recent interpretations of Rorty as a humanist. In section 5, I focus on the distinction between the human and nonhuman as the central feature of his humanism. Section 6 outlines Rorty’s project to humanize humanity. In the concluding section, I summarize the key features of his humanism. (shrink)

In his book The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind: On the Place of the Virtues in Contemporary Epistemology, Jonathan Kvanvig argues that there is an interchangeability of personal and doxastic justification, which ‘blocks the quick route to virtue epistemology’. To prove that personal justification is reducible to doxastic justification, he utilizes λ-calculus expressions that aim to show the logical equivalence of the two notions of justification. In this paper, I argue that he has made an illegitimate move (...) in his translation of the ordinary talk of personal justification into λ-expressions because his translation involves both an elimination from and an addition to the ordinary language. Pace Kvanvig, there is no logical equivalence of personal to doxastic justification. So, his argument for the reducibility of personal to doxastic justification founders. More importantly, since he has failed to disprove that personal justification is irreducibly primitive, he hasn’t shown that the prospects for virtue epistemology are ‘hopeless’. (shrink)

We develop approximate counting of sets definable by Boolean circuits in bounded arithmetic using the dual weak pigeonhole principle (dWPHP(PV)), as a generalization of results from [15]. We discuss applications to formalization of randomized complexity classes (such as BPP, APP, MA, AM) in PV₁ + dWPHP(PV).

The latter half of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable resurgence of interest in Kant’s philosophy in Continental Europe, the effects of which are still being felt today. _The Neo-Kantian Reader_ is the first anthology to collect the most important primary sources in Neo-Kantian philosophy, with many being published here in English for the first time. It includes extracts on a rich and diverse number of subjects, including logic, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, (...) and transcendental idealism. Sebastian Luft, together with other scholars, provides clear introductions to each of the following sections, placing them in historical and philosophical context: the beginnings of Neo-Kantianism: including the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, Otto Liebman, Friedrich Lange, and Hermann Lotze the Marburg School: including Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and Ernst Cassirer the Southwest School: including Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, Emil Lask, and Hans Vaihinger responses and critiques: including Moritz Schlick, Edmund Husserl; Rudolf Carnap, and the 'Davos dispute' between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer. The Neo-Kantian Reader is essential reading for all students of Kant, nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and phenomenology, as well as to those studying important philosophical movements such as logical positivism and analytic philosophy and its history. (shrink)

We prove that all axiomatic extensions of the full Lambek calculus with exchange can be axiomatized by formulas on the level of the substructural hierarchy.