By applying both traditional source analysis and archeological research this paper examines two questions related to the Gothic War in Picenum and Ager Gallicus: First, it deals with the credibility of Procopius’ reporting; second, it looks at the scope of the destructions caused by the 20-year-long conflict in the region and, hence, sheds light on the problem of whether the changes this war brought about – especially in contrast with the following invasion of the Lombards – justify the claim that (...) its end clearly marked the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. (shrink)

In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (2017), we outline a systematic pragmatic account of rephrasing. For this purpose, we combine two interrelated methods of inquiry into the variety of uses of rephrase as a persuasive device: (i) the annotation of rephrase types to identify locutionary and illocutionary aspects of rephrase, (ii) the crowd–sourced examination of rephrase types to investigate their perlocutionary effects. As it draws on Waltonian insights and on empirical (...) and experimental research on the (mis)use of rephrase, our approach allows us to ground a novel theoretically–informed and data–driven pragmatic account of rephrase. (shrink)

In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (2017), we outline a systematic pragmatic account of rephrasing. For this purpose, we combine two interrelated methods of inquiry into the variety of uses of rephrase as a persuasive device: (i) the annotation of rephrase types to identify locutionary and illocutionary aspects of rephrase, (ii) the crowd–sourced examination of rephrase types to investigate their perlocutionary effects. As it draws on Waltonian insights and on empirical (...) and experimental research on the (mis)use of rephrase, our approach allows us to ground a novel theoretically–informed and data–driven pragmatic account of rephrase. (shrink)

In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (2017), we outline a systematic pragmatic account of rephrasing. For this purpose, we combine two interrelated methods of inquiry into the variety of uses of rephrase as a persuasive device: (i) the annotation of rephrase types to identify locutionary and illocutionary aspects of rephrase, (ii) the crowd–sourced examination of rephrase types to investigate their perlocutionary effects. As it draws on Waltonian insights and on empirical (...) and experimental research on the (mis)use of rephrase, our approach allows us to ground a novel theoretically–informed and data–driven pragmatic account of rephrase. (shrink)

The Concussion in Sport Group guidelines have successfully brought the attention of brain injuries to the global medical and sport research communities, and has significantly impacted brain injury-related practices and rules of international sport. Despite being the global repository of state-of-the-art science, diagnostic tools and guides to clinical practice, the ensuing consensus statements remain the object of ethical and sociocultural criticism. The purpose of this paper is to bring to bear a broad range of multidisciplinary challenges to the processes and (...) products of sport-related concussion movement. We identify lacunae in scientific research and clinical guidance in relation to age, disability, gender and race. We also identify, through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary analysis, a range of ethical problems resulting from conflicts of interest, processes of attributing expertise in sport-related concussion, unjustifiably narrow methodological control and insufficient athlete engagement in research and policy development. We argue that the sport and exercise medicine community need to augment the existing research and practice foci to understand these problems more holistically and, in turn, provide guidance and recommendations that help sport clinicians better care for brain-injured athletes. (shrink)

First published in 1932, this book, based on an address delivered in 1931, presents a concise and lucid summary of the philosophy of the author of _The Decline of the West_, Oswald Spengler. It was his conviction that the technical age — the culture of the machine age — which man had created in virtue of his unique capacity for individual as well as racial technique, had already reached its peak, and that the future held only catastrophe. He argued (...) it lacked progressive cultural life and instead was dominated by a lust for power and possession. The triumph of the machine led to mass regimentation rather than fewer workers and less work — spelling the doom of Western civilization. (shrink)

The Scottish Common Sense School of philosophy emerged during the Scottish Enlightenment of the second half of the eighteenth century. The School’s principal proponents were Thomas Reid, James Oswald, James Beattie and Dugald Stewart. They believed that we are all naturally implanted with an array of common sense intuitions and these intuitions are in fact the foundation of truth. Their approach dominated philosophical thought in Great Britain and the United States until the mid nineteenth century. In recent years philosophers (...) have renewed their appreciation of the notion of common sense. In particular, discussions of common sense intuitions are integral to contemporary epistemological foundationalism. Scottish Common Sense Philosophy: Sources and Origins is a 5-volume collection of writings by and about philosophers in the eighteenth-century Scottish Common Sense School. The writings by Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart are readily available in recent editions and facsimile reprints so this series focuses on less accessible and less well-known items. Oswald’s Appeal appears here in print for the first time in any form since 1772. Volume 2 is the first reset printing of Beattie’s Essay in over 100 years, and is the only edition to contain annotations that trace the major changes that he made to the text. Almost all of the responses in volumes 3 and 4 appear here in print for the first time since their original publication. These include reviews, pamphlets and excerpts from books. Also included is previously unpublished discussion of Beattie’s Essay by Dugald Stewart. The final volume is a bibliography of around 80 Scottish philosophers from the early eighteenth century to the close of the nineteenth century. Unlike the 1932 bibliography of Scottish philosophers offered by T. E. Jessop, which selectively presents only the philosophical writings by the various Scottish philosophers, this volume attempts to catalogue all of the writings by these philosophers in all of their editions. (shrink)

À partir d’une enquête réalisée dans un grand magasin parisien, cet article s’intéresse aux conflits liés à l’extension des horaires d’ouverture des magasins. Il poursuit deux objectifs. Le premier est d’analyser la manière dont la question du travail sur des horaires atypiques (dimanches, jours fériés, soirées) est posée et imposée dans le commerce de détail. Le second objectif de l’article est d’analyser, d’une part, le rapport que les employés de commerce entretiennent vis-à-vis de cette « nécessité » et, d’autre part, (...) les difficultés rencontrées par l’action syndicale face à ce sujet. (shrink)

Noires ou métisses, Africaines, Antillaises ou Américaines, Suzanne Césaire, Paulette Nardal, Eugénie Éboué-Tell, Jane Vialle, Andrée Blouin, Aoua Kéita et Eslanda Robeson sont les protagonistes de ce livre novateur, riche et stimulant. Leur point commun : s’être engagées, à différents titres, pour contester la domination coloniale dans la seconde moitié du xxe siècle. Le destin de certaines (Suzanne Césaire, Eugénie Eboué-Tell, Eslanda Robeson), souvent associé à celui de leur mari, est plus...

This article concerns the study of the agricultural policy of the Belgian State in the period of 1844-1845. Behind the technical formulations of diverse and even contradictory laws and regulations, the interest is to reveal the political and economical interests and strategies of the main political actors. This period is at the end of the well-known belgian "Unionism" that means the alliance of the dominant farces, catholics and liberals. The study shows that this period is not exempt of conflicts between (...) those farces, with behind them respectively agricultural and industrial interests, with a more predominant wheight of the latters than the usual theory of modernization usually had assessed. (shrink)

The most common approach to understanding the semantics of the concept of pain is third-person thought experiments. By contrast, the most frequent and most relevant uses of the folk concept of pain are from a first-person perspective in conversational settings. In this paper, we use a set of linguistic tools to systematically explore the semantics of what people communicate when reporting pain from a first-person perspective. Our results suggest that only a pluralistic view can do justice to the way we (...) talk about pain from a first-person perspective: The semantic content of the folk concept of pain consists of information about both an unpleasant feeling and a disruptive bodily state. Pain linguistics thus provides new insights into ordinary pain language and poses an interesting challenge to the dominant unitary views of pain. (shrink)

La figure de l'individu, qui a dominé la philosophie et les sciences sociales au cours des trois dernières décennies, semble à bout de souffle. Partout, singuliers et collectifs cherchent à dépasser la simple adaptation au monde fluide imposé par le capitalisme mondialisé et à redevenir les agents de leur propre vie. Au nord comme au sud, un immense désir de subjectivation est en train de gagner nos sociétés. Pourtant, la figure du sujet reste confuse. Longtemps identifiée à une entité naturelle, (...) hors de l'histoire, elle pâtit aujourd'hui également des représentations, tout aussi néfastes, qui concluent de l'historicité radicale du sujet à sa relativité éthique et politique, voire à son inexistence. Ce livre reprend, à la racine, la réflexion sur les relations entre sujet et histoire, en y réintroduisant une tradition oubliée, sinon refoulée par la philosophie : celle qui commence avec Humboldt, se poursuit chez Saussure, Benveniste et Meschonnic. En définissant le langage comme activité et comme mise en circulation de puissances poétiques, cette tradition fournit les bases d'une nouvelle anthropologie historique du sujet. (shrink)

Background Studying the contribution of individual countries to leading journals in a specific discipline can highlight which countries have the most impact on that discipline and whether a geographic bias exists. This article aims to examine the international distribution of publications in the field of bioethics. Methods Retrospective quantitative study of nine peer reviewed journals in the field of bioethics and medical ethics (Bioethics, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Hastings Center Report, Journal of Clinical Ethics, Journal of Medical Ethics, Kennedy (...) Institute of Ethics Journal, Nursing Ethics, Christian Bioethics, and Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics). Results In total, 4,029 articles published between 1990 and 2003 were retrieved from the nine bioethical journals under study. The United States (59.3%, n = 2390), the United Kingdom (13.5%, n = 544), Canada (4%, n = 160) and Australia (3.8%, n = 154) had the highest number of publications in terms of absolute number of publications. When normalized to population size, smaller affluent countries, such as New Zealand, Finland and Sweden were more productive than the United States. The number of studies originating from the USA was decreasing in the period between 1990 and 2003. Conclusion While a lot of peer reviewed journals in the field of bioethics profile themselves as international journals, they certainly do not live up to what one would expect from an "international" journal. The fact that English speaking countries, and to a larger extent American authors, dominate the international journals in the field of bioethics is a clear geographic bias towards the bioethical discussions that are going on in these journals. (shrink)

Previous chapter Janina Wellmann's analyses are extremely valuable because they provide us with new historical evidence that can only improve our understanding of a very obscure past. But the general interpretations she proposes are quite questionable. The idea that after 1800 a “Rhythm Episteme” has dominated the field of knowledge erases the very acute conflict that broke out in the early years of the 19th century between poetic and artistic rhythmologies, inspired by a common - Sur le concept de rythme (...) – Nouvel article. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in farmers’ organizations as an effective approach to farmer participatory research (FPR). Using data from an empirical study of farmers’ research groups (FRGs) in Uganda, this paper examines the patterns of participation in groups and answers questions such as: Who participates? What types of participation? How does participation occur? What are the factors determining participation? Results show that there is no single type of participation, but rather that FPR is a dynamic process with types of participation (...) varying at different stages of the process. Farmers’ participation does not follow the normal adoption curve. Rather, it is characterized by high participation at the initial stages, followed by dramatic decrease and dropping-out, and slow increases toward the end. There is usually significantly higher participation among male farmers at the beginning of the process. However, as FRGs evolve, the proportion of men decreases sharply while the relative proportion of women continues to increase until it dominates the group. The findings do not support the common assumption that groups usually exclude women and the poor. On the contrary, we argue that FRGs are an effective mechanism to provide women and the poor with opportunities to participate in research. However, to be effective, this requires moving beyond head counting to promote more proactive gender and equity perspectives for amplifying the benefits of agricultural research to those who tend to be marginalized or excluded by mainstream development initiatives. This will be critical for making agricultural research more client-oriented and demand-driven. (shrink)

Previous chapter Between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, rhythm begun to be understood exclusively under its Platonic-Aristotelian guise. Rhythm defined as order of movement or succession of time-lengths set up the general theoretical framework within which reflection was to remain in the West until the 18th century. The Platonic metric paradigm became dominant, at the expense of the Democritean physical paradigm but also of the Aristotelian poetic paradigm. The former - Sur le concept de rythme – (...) Nouvel article. (shrink)

Previous chapter The very same year, 1977, Edgar Morin published La Méthode. La nature de la nature – Method: Towards a Study of Humankind: The Nature of Nature. This essay was the first installment of a long series designed to establish a new scientific paradigm: “the paradigm of complexity.” The latter stood as a challenge to the fragmentary and reductionist spirit dominating the scientific enterprise and advocated a dynamic and productive - Physique – Nouvel article.

It is often said that the term rhythm has as many meanings as the number of people who use it. This essay tries to argue to the contrary. Nowadays, the most common definition relies on a metric basis that spread and became dominant in our culture during the 19th century. A previous essay has dealt with the history of rhythm in Antiquity. It has uncovered the intricate and conflictive development of three theoretical prototypes: the Democritean physical, the Platonic metric, and (...) the - Sur le concept de rythme – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Previous chapter The Bypass of Ideas and its Cost We now realize how elaborate the ethics outlined by Deleuze and Guattari was. It was a remarkable piece of philosophical ingineering which provided a number of valuable insights into the good life from a fundamentally rhuthmic perspective. It is therefore precious to us who are now facing a completely fluid world dominated by modern technologies of communication and transport, and neoliberal capitalism. This does not mean however that it - Philosophie – (...) Nouvel article. (shrink)

Ce texte est une nouvelle version d'un texte déjà mis en ligne le 14 octobre 2013. Après une très longue période dominée par des conceptions du rythme plus ou moins inspirées par le modèle platonicien, la question ancienne du rhuthmos a réémergé au XVIIe siècle dans les œuvres de deux penseurs hétérodoxes : Spinoza et Leibniz. S'opposant aussi bien aux conceptions philosophiques traditionnelles qu'à celles dominant leur époque, l'un et l'autre ont posé un certain nombre de jalons ontologiques et (...) (...) - Philosophie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Previous chapter In the aftermath of the Third Century Crisis, the Principate, which had proven inadequate to rule over an empire stretching between the Atlantic ocean and the Middle East, Northern Africa and Rhine and Danube rivers, was substituted by a new political system: the Dominate. In this system, the power was originally divided among four Emperors and four capitals under Diocletian, then reunited under Constantine, then divided again - Sur le concept de rythme – Nouvel article.

Résumé Les interstices représentent ce qui résiste encore dans les métropoles, ce qui résiste aux emprises réglementaires et à l’homogénéisation. Ils constituent en quelque sorte la réserve de « disponibilité » de la ville. Du fait de leur statut provisoire et incertain, les interstices laissent deviner ou entrevoir un autre processus de fabrication de la ville, ouvert et collaboratif, réactif et transversal. Ils nous rappellent que la société ne coïncide jamais parfaitement avec elle-même et que son développement laisse en arrière (...) plan nombre d’hypothèses non encore investies. L’interstice constitue certainement un des espaces privilégiés où des questions refoulées continuent à se faire entendre, où certaines hypothèses récusées par le modèle dominant affirment leur actualité, où nombre de devenirs minoritaires entravés, bloqués, prouvent leur vitalité. À ce titre, l’expérience interstitielle représente la parfaite métaphore de ce que peut être le mouvement de l’antagonisme et de la contradiction dans la ville postfordiste : un mouvement qui s’affirme au fur et à mesure de ce qu’il expérimente, qui monte en intensité grâce aux modalités de vie et de désir qu’il libère, qui s’oppose à la hauteur de ce qu’il est susceptible d’inventer et de créer. (shrink)

Résumé Les interstices représentent ce qui résiste encore dans les métropoles, ce qui résiste aux emprises réglementaires et à l’homogénéisation. Ils constituent en quelque sorte la réserve de « disponibilité » de la ville. Du fait de leur statut provisoire et incertain, les interstices laissent deviner ou entrevoir un autre processus de fabrication de la ville, ouvert et collaboratif, réactif et transversal. Ils nous rappellent que la société ne coïncide jamais parfaitement avec elle-même et que son développement laisse en arrière (...) plan nombre d’hypothèses non encore investies. L’interstice constitue certainement un des espaces privilégiés où des questions refoulées continuent à se faire entendre, où certaines hypothèses récusées par le modèle dominant affirment leur actualité, où nombre de devenirs minoritaires entravés, bloqués, prouvent leur vitalité. À ce titre, l’expérience interstitielle représente la parfaite métaphore de ce que peut être le mouvement de l’antagonisme et de la contradiction dans la ville postfordiste : un mouvement qui s’affirme au fur et à mesure de ce qu’il expérimente, qui monte en intensité grâce aux modalités de vie et de désir qu’il libère, qui s’oppose à la hauteur de ce qu’il est susceptible d’inventer et de créer. (shrink)

This paper provides a summary of the symposium on the institutional and social construction of Responsible Investment (RI), held at the 22nd IABS conference. In the context of the symposium, we propose to move beyond the dominant focus on the financial impact of RI to consider the potential of emergent institutional and sociological perspectives to explain the practices and concepts related to RI. In doing so, our aim is to explore in greater detail the current changes in the RI infrastructure (...) and the impact of these changes on wider issues of corporate sustainability and social responsibility. (shrink)

This paper looks at the issues and controversies that led to creation of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) and that dominated its agenda in the early years. The successes and failures of ORI are described and new problems identified. This paper then looks ahead to the future, considering what issues will dominate ORI’s agenda and affect the research institutions, individual scientists, and the scientific community in the next several years.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Notre seuil de tolérance à la violence imposée par la domination sociale contribue à définir l’univers de contraintes dans lequel sont immergés les « SDF ». Il leur offre aussi des issues à la domination. Encore faut-il quelques dispositions sociales pour pouvoir les emprunter, pour saisir les maigres chances représentées par ce qui peut alors devenir un atout : la définition sociale d’eux-mêmes dont les plus dominés font l’objet.We apprehend homelessness according to our own tolerance level toward physical violence imposed (...) by deprived situations. A given data contributing to define homelessness, it may represent, too, means for short time survival tactics. Harsh personal and social conditions are necessary however to adapt oneself to such a definition of themselves imposed to the most dominated citizens. (shrink)

In a recent contribution to this journal, Arjaliès (J Bus Ethics 92:57—78, 2010) suggests that the emergence of socially responsible investment (SRI) in France can be best described as a social movement with a collective identity that aimed to challenge the dominant logic of the financial market. Such an account is at odds with a body of empirical studies that approaches SRI in the French context as a process of market creation led by loosely coordinated actors with contradictory and conflicting (...) interests and values, who have mainly complied with—rather than opposed—the existing dominant financial logic of the asset-management field. In this comment, we build on this prior research to contest Arjaliès' perspective on both theoretical and empirical grounds, with the aim of highlighting the shortcomings of conflating social movements and other forms of collective actions in understanding the building of new markets in organization theory and SRI studies. We contend that in mistaking for social movement forms of collective actions that underpin the emergence of markets, scholars of organization theory may confuse distinct mechanisms in their explanation of SRI emergence across countries, overlook the complex dynamics and interactions of markets and social movements, and, most importantly, fail to evaluate the real political significance of SRI as an empirical phenomenon. We propose that future research on SRI distinguishes carefully "social-movement research as a theoretical framework" from "social movement as an empirical phenomenon" in order to avoid such drawbacks while benefiting from recent advances in social-movement research. (shrink)

Pascal est sûrement l’une des sources majeures des pages de Malebranche sur l’imagination. En prenant comme point de départ la doctrine cartésienne, Pascal et Malebranche élaborent une réflexion sur l’imagination en tant que force paradoxale qui domine l’existence humaine. Les analyses de la Recherche de la vérité sont toutefois incompréhensibles sans les prémisses des Pensées où l’imagination est reconnue comme irréductible à l’opposition entre « grandeur » et « misère » de l’homme. Ce sera donc en rejetant cette (...) opposition que Malebranche pourra s’approprier l’héritage pascalien et penser ainsi l’imagination comme « reine du monde ».Pascal is one of the main sources of the pages by Malebranche on imagination. Starting from the Cartesian characterisation, both propose a reflection on imagination as an ambiguous strength that dominates human existence. The analysis of the Recherche de la vérité result incomprehensible without the precedent of the Pensées. There imagination is recognized as an element that cannot be reduced to the opposition between the human « grandeur » and « misère ». By refusing this opposition Malebranche is fully entitled to Pascal’s legacy and he will so underline the role of imagination as « reine du monde ». (shrink)

The doctrine of the three orders which distinguishes and hierarchizes flesh, spirit and charity is obviously one of the major themes of Pascal’s thought. But it appears that Pascal meditates as much on the disorder – and dis-order – induced by sin and the corruption of our nature as on the hierarchy and the heterogeneity of these three kinds of reality. In the world he describes, in fact, not only is everything overturned – the lowest order, that of (...) the flesh, now dominating the other two – but also everything is confused – pleasure, for example, obtaining the credence that normally belongs to science, and the flesh invading the order of the spirit through custom and imagination. To maintain then, as several commentators do, that no interference between the orders is possible, so that tyranny can only exist in the state of desire, is in our view to adopt a more Stoic than Pascalian point of view. For to deny disorder is also, according to Pascal, to deny sin by projecting into the second nature the memory of the first. (shrink)

This paper advances the idea that Oswald de Andrade's Anthropophagy, formulated for the first time in 1928, can be read as a decolonial project avant la lettre. In order to establish this thesis, we will reconstruct the project of the Brazilian thinker through a detailed analysis of the first aphorism of his Manifesto Antropófago (Anthropophagist Manifesto). We will argue that, similarly to what will be later articulated by the decolonial approach, Andrade indicates: (i) that the cultural and economic dimensions (...) of colonialism are entangled ramifications of a larger structure of domination; (ii) that capitalism is an aspect of this larger structure; and (iii) that it is necessary to articulate a third political path irreducible to both capitalism and communism. Anthropophagy would thus function not only as the evident metaphor of cultural appropriation, but also as a diagnosis of the colonial domination and as a therapeutic to face it within a decolonial project. (shrink)

The principle that rational agents should maximize expected utility or choiceworthiness is intuitively plausible in many ordinary cases of decision-making under uncertainty. But it is less plausible in cases of extreme, low-probability risk (like Pascal's Mugging), and intolerably paradoxical in cases like the St. Petersburg and Pasadena games. In this paper I show that, under certain conditions, stochastic dominance reasoning can capture most of the plausible implications of expectational reasoning while avoiding most of its pitfalls. Specifically, given sufficient background (...) uncertainty about the choiceworthiness of one's options, many expectation-maximizing gambles that do not stochastically dominate their alternatives "in a vacuum" become stochastically dominant in virtue of that background uncertainty. But, even under these conditions, stochastic dominance will not require agents to accept options whose expectational superiority depends on sufficiently small probabilities of extreme payoffs. The sort of background uncertainty on which these results depend looks unavoidable for any agent who measures the choiceworthiness of her options in part by the total amount of value in the resulting world. At least for such agents, then, stochastic dominance offers a plausible general principle of choice under uncertainty that can explain more of the apparent rational constraints on such choices than has previously been recognized. (shrink)

The Apaṇṇaka Sutta, one of the early recorded teachings of the Buddha, contains an argument for accepting the doctrines of karma and rebirth that Buddhist scholars claim anticipates Pascal’s wager. I call this argument the Buddha’s wager. Does it anticipate Pascal’s wager and is it a good bet? Contemporary scholars identify at least four versions of Pascal’s wager in his Pensées. This article demonstrates that the Buddha’s wager anticipates two versions of Pascal’s wager, but not its (...) canonical form. Like Pascal’s wager, the Buddha’s wager presents a decision problem between two opposing theses in an epistemic context that lacks evidence of their truth or falsity. Like Pascal, the Buddha also tries to solve this problem using dominance, superdominance or ‘superduperdominance’ reasoning. The Apaṇṇaka Sutta likely provides the earliest textual example of such reasoning. While the Buddha’s wager does not exhibit the expected utility reasoning of the best-known form of Pascal’s wager, the article suggests a reformulation that parallels Alan Hájek’s (2018) vector-value reformulation. Is it a good bet? This article argues that it is not if this means we are rationally required to accept its recommendation. This is because, while it avoids two of the major objections levelled against Pascal’s wager, it succumbs to one and has two problems of its own. (shrink)

To explore literary silence is to explore the relationships between literary texts and the silence of the ineffable. It is to enquire what dynamics texts develop as they strive to 'say the unsayable', and it is to think literature as a silence that speaks itself. This study describes these literary and silent dynamics through readings of Pascal's Pensées, Rousseau's Rêveries, and Beckett's trilogy Molloy, Malone meurt, and L'Innommable. It contributes to our understanding of three major writers and challenges our (...) idea of what silence is. The subject of silence and of the ineffable has a long philosophical and critical tradition. A careful study of this tradition reveals the dominance of a limiting dualistic understanding of silence and its relationship to noise or language: silence becomes the negative other, the beyond, about which there remains nothing to say. The study of literary silence seeks rather to trace a language that becomes its own silence. It compromises the attempt to think a silence that moves within and through texts, that is inherent to the literary expression. Central to this theoretical endeavour are thinkers like Derrida, Deleuze, Gadamer, and Vattimo. The theoretical understanding of silence permits an effective methodology for reading literary silence. Notions of repetition, the aporia and the implosion, which are developed in reference to Kierkegaard and Bataille, describe textual strategies of literary silence and structure the readings. Finally, the reading of literary silence has its point of reference in writers like Mallarmé, Blanchot, and Beckett. It is their texts that have taught us to become topological readers, to move in and out of texts' movements; they have shown us how the literary expression is irreducible to linear, meaning oriented language. As readers of such texts we have been prepared to read the dynamics of the unsayable, and finally to start discerning the silences of the literary. (shrink)

To explore literary silence is to explore the relationships between literary texts and the silence of the ineffable. It is to enquire what dynamics texts develop as they strive to 'say the unsayable', and it is to think literature as a silence that speaks itself. This study describes these literary and silent dynamics through readings of Pascal's Pensées, Rousseau's Rêveries, and Beckett's trilogy Molloy, Malone meurt, and L'Innommable. It contributes to our understanding of three major writers and challenges our (...) idea of what silence is. The subject of silence and of the ineffable has a long philosophical and critical tradition. A careful study of this tradition reveals the dominance of a limiting dualistic understanding of silence and its relationship to noise or language: silence becomes the negative other, the beyond, about which there remains nothing to say. The study of literary silence seeks rather to trace a language that becomes its own silence. It compromises the attempt to think a silence that moves within and through texts, that is inherent to the literary expression. Central to this theoretical endeavour are thinkers like Derrida, Deleuze, Gadamer, and Vattimo. The theoretical understanding of silence permits an effective methodology for reading literary silence. Notions of repetition, the aporia and the implosion, which are developed in reference to Kierkegaard and Bataille, describe textual strategies of literary silence and structure the readings. Finally, the reading of literary silence has its point of reference in writers like Mallarmé, Blanchot, and Beckett. It is their texts that have taught us to become topological readers, to move in and out of texts' movements; they have shown us how the literary expression is irreducible to linear, meaning oriented language. As readers of such texts we have been prepared to read the dynamics of the unsayable, and finally to start discerning the silences of the literary. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz geht der Autor der Frage nach, ob und in wiefern die theologische Annahme, daß das Christusgeschehen paradigmatisch für den Begriff des Handeln Gottes ist, verständlich ist. Der Verfasser analysiert dafür die Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung und versucht die christologischen Konsequenzen der verschiedene Interpretationen für die Konstruktion eines Modells des Handeln Gottes herauszufinden. Er benützt Gedanken geschichtsphilosophischer Art um eine solche Ausdehnung der Vorstellung des Christusgeschehens zu verteidigen, daß auch andere Zeiten als das erste Jahrhundert einzuschließen sind. Damit zeigt (...) der Verfasser, daß Lessings Problem des garstigen Grabens und viele Formen der Leben-Jesu-Forschung theologisch von falschen Fragestellungen ausgehen. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 57 Heft: 1 Seiten: 138-154.

Purpose. The paper aims at substantiating the meaningful relationship between Descartes’ and Pascal’s positions as two variants in responding to the demand of the era in the development of anthropology. The realization of this purpose involves defining the spiritual climate of the era and addressing to the texts of two great French thinkers of the 17th century to demonstrate common moments in interpreting the phenomenon of a man. Theoretical basis. The methodological basis in the research is the conceptual propositions (...) of the representatives of phenomenology and hermeneutics. Originality. The existence of the doctrine of human nature by Descartes is argued and the manifestations of common moments with Pascal’s doctrine are outlined. The latter include the context of the Copernican unfinished Revolution, the emphasis on restrictions in the methodology of the natural sciences, the intense search for description language beyond the rational components of human nature, the high opinion in the Christian understanding of man, critique of atheism. Conclusions. The paper substantiates the meaningful relationship in the doctrine of man from both French thinkers, which manifests itself in the vision of the initial situation as a person’s choice of their own foundations in the course of conceptualization the scientific revolution, understanding of Christianity as a basic paradigm of thinking, priority of the anthropological interest over natural-science one, the dominant role of the ethical philosophizing motive. (shrink)

Le génie de Blaise Pascal séduit toujours de nombreux chercheurs. Des âmes avides d'absolu font de ses écrits leur livre de chevet. Sans doute cette notoriété a-t-elle estompé les autres membres de cette famille somme toute remarquable. Etienne, le père, est un esprit universel. Juriste, délégué de la cité, il est aussi grand mathématicien, compositeur et organiste, religieux et père admirable. Gilberte, la sœur aînée, a un talent littéraire qui s'exprimera dans La vie de M. Pascal. Les dons (...) poétiques de Jacqueline, la cadette, étonnent dès l'enfance. Etienne, le neveu, écrira un précieux témoignage sur la méthode de son oncle. Marguerite, la nièce miraculée, vivra jusqu'à quatre-vingt-sept ans et rapportera ses souvenirs dans un livre sur Blaise. Leurs lettres, peu nombreuses et trop souvent ignorées, méritent une attention d'autant plus minutieuse qu'elles nous introduisent dans l'intimité de cette famille. Ce qui domine, c'est une union exceptionnelle qui survit au-delà de la mort après avoir traversé les heurts inévitables entre ces fortes personnalités. On s'émerveille de la diversité des vocations : chaste veuvage pour Etienne, maternité et vie de famille pour Gilberte, vie religieuse pour Jacqueline, consécration à Dieu dans le monde pour Blaise, ministère presbytéral pour Louis. André Bord nous raconte cette vie de famille étonnante en nous faisant découvrir plusieurs faits inédits. (shrink)

This volume represents a translation of the majority of the essays in one of those collections.

Das Wort »Metakritik«, heute eine gängige philosophische Vokabel, (er-)findet der Königsberger Publizist und Schriftsteller Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) im Zuge seiner intensiven Auseinandersetzung mit Kants ›Kritik der reinen Vernunft‹. – Das vorliegende Buch bietet erstmals eine durchgängige, eingehende und umfassende Kommentierung der ›Metakritik über den Purismum der Vernunft‹ (1784) und ihrer Begleittexte. In seinem Sprachdenken ist Hamann ein entscheidender Vermittler zwischen dem angelsächsischen Empirismus und dem Frühidealismus in Deutschland. Über ihre spezifische Kantkritik hinaus ist Hamanns ›Metakritik‹ philosophiegeschichtlich und systematisch von (...) Interesse vor allem für die Sprach- und Religionsphilosophie. (shrink)

This paper reevaluates Adorno’s theory of non-identity following from a critical examination of his reading of Hegel. The main discussion revolves around two theses central to both philosophers: 1. Conceptual thinking forms the centre of philosophical thought (identification). 2. Philosophical thought aspires to become everything (totality). The analysis of two distinct interpretations, one stricter and one more moderate, demonstrates that Adorno takes the hardline view. With the moderate view, however, not only do the limits of Hegelian philosophy become more pronounced, (...) they also reveal novel systematic connections with pivotal concepts inherent to Critical Theory – connections that have notably lacked substantial consideration within relevant research. (shrink)