Science and Faith explores the phenomenon of religious revelation in the light of the originary hypothesis, which postulates the origin of human language and culture in a unique event. It is the third in a series of works by the author, including The Origin of Language (1981) and The End of Culture (1985), that develop a generative anthropology founded on this hypothesis. After an introductory presentation of the hypothesis and its cultural consequences, the book discusses the two most significant instances (...) of revelation in the Judeo-Christian tradition: Moses' discovery of God's name on Mount Sinai, the inauguration of Hebrew monotheism, and Paul's vision on the road to Damascus, the founding event of Pauline Christianity. Moses' experience marks the inception, and Paul's the end, of revelation as the central Judeo-Christian discovery-procedure. The analysis of Christianity concludes with a discussion of the anthropological content of the doctrine of the Trinity. (shrink)

By examining selected works by Stephen Gaukroger, Alfred North Whitehead, Lynn White, Jr., Benjamin Farrington, and Paul Gans, the author discusses the formation of Western culture and the intellectual tools and the social conditions that contributed (and still contribute) to its being. He concludes that a metaphysics and a realistic epistemology—based on an ancient Greek confidence in the human intellect, in its ability to reason to truths that acknowledge the immaterial character of human intellection—is required for the West (...) to retain its identity and develop its own culture. (shrink)

This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur's own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the text (...) is formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor's introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur's thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur's contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines. (shrink)

Emergence develops a novel account of diachronic ontological emergence called transformational emergence and locates it in an established historical framework. The author shows how many problems affecting ontological emergence result from a dominant but inappropriate metaphysical tradition and provides a comprehensive assessment of current theories of emergence.

Paul Elbourne defends the Fregean view that definite descriptions ('the table', 'the King of France') refer to individuals, and offers a new and radical account of the semantics of pronouns. He draws on a wide range of work, from Frege, Peano, and Russell to the latest findings in linguistics, philosophy of language, and psycholinguistics.

Studi e relazioni: Una "sorta di amaro de fortuna" : la vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca (1520) -- L'uomo "è pienamente uomo unicamente quando gioca" : istinto del gioco ed eeducazione estetica in Friedrich Schiller -- Iatròs philósophos isótheos : Karl Jaspers e la relazione medico-paziente nell'età della tecnica -- L'incidenza delle TIC sulla didattica della storia della filosofia -- Prefazioni e presentazioni: Il Campanella di Paul Lafargue -- Marcuse e Fromm lettori e interpreti dei Manoscritti del 1844 (...) di Karl Marx -- "Democrito che 'l mondo a caso pone"? : Enriques interprete di Democrito e dell'atomismo antico -- Alle origini della "Nuova lettura di Marx" : Backhaus su Adorno e Marx -- L'angoscia e le metamorfosi dell soggetto nella crisi del moderno : per un'etica del desiderio -- Note e recensioni: La differenza nomologica e il bisogno di giustizia delle masse -- Eduard Gans : un professore politico tra Restaurazione e Vormärz -- Ludwig Feuerbach : antropologia ed etica -- America Latina e Occidente : tra filosofia e letteratura. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss three different kinds of disagreement that have been, or could reasonably be, characterized as deep disagreements. Principle level disagreements are disagreements over the truth of epistemic principles. Sub-principle level deep disagreements are disagreements over how to assign content to schematic norms. Finally, framework-level disagreements are holistic disagreements over meaning not truth, that is over how to understand networks of epistemic concepts and the beliefs those concepts compose. Within the context of each of these kinds of (...) disagreement it is not possible for the parties to the dispute to rationally persuade one another through only offering epistemic reasons for their conflicting points of view. However, in spite of the inability to rationally persuade, we explore how it may nevertheless be possible to rationally navigate each of these varieties of deep disagreement. (shrink)

From flea bites to galaxies, from love affairs to shadows, Paul Feyerabend reveled in the sensory and intellectual abundance that surrounds us. He found it equally striking that human senses and human intelligence are able to take in only a fraction of these riches. "This a blessing, not a drawback," he writes. "A superconscious organism would not be superwise, it would be paralyzed." This human reduction of experience to a manageable level is the heart of Conquest of Abundance, the (...) book on which Feyerabend was at work when he died in 1994. Prepared from drafts of the manuscript left at his death, working notes, and lectures and articles Feyerabend wrote while the larger work was in progress, Conquest of Abundance offers up rich exploration and startling insights with the charm, lucidity, and sense of mischief that are his hallmarks. Feyerabend is fascinated by how we attempt to explain and predict the mysteries of the natural world, and he looks at the ways in which we abstract experience, explain anomalies, and reduce wonder to formulas and equations. Through his exploration of the positive and negative consequences of these efforts, Feyerabend reveals the "conquest of abundance" as an integral part of the history and character of Western civilization. "Paul Feyerabend . . . was the Norman Mailer of philosophy. . . . brilliant, brave, adventurous, original and quirky."—Richard Rorty, New Republic "As much a smudged icon as a philosophical position holder, [Feyerabend] was alluring and erotic, a torch singer for philosophical anarchy."—Nancy Maull, New York Times Book Review "[A] kind of final testament of Feyerabend's thought . . . Conquest of Abundance is as much the product of a brilliant, scintillating style as of an immense erudition and culture. . . . This book is as abundant and rich as the world it envisions."—Arkady Plotnitsky, Chicago Tribune. (shrink)

Introduction -- Media and representation. On the one medium / Eric Gans -- The scapegoat mechanism and the media: beyond the folk devil paradigm / John O'Carroll -- The apocalypse will not be televised / Chris Fleming -- Film. Mirrors of nature: artificial agents in real life and virtual worlds / Paul Dumouchel -- Superheroes, scapegoats, and saviors: the problem of evil and the need for redemption / Joel Hodge -- Sanctified victimage on page and screen: The hunger (...) games as prophetic media / Debra E. Macdonald -- The mimetic e-motion: from The matrix to Avatar / Nidesh Lawtoo -- Apocalypse of the therapeutic: The cabin in the woods and the death of mimetic desire / Peter Y. Paik -- Eyes wide shut: mimesis and historical memory in Stanley Kubrick's The shining / David Humbert -- Against romantic love: mimeticism and satire in Woody Allen's Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona; you will meet a tall dark stranger; and To Rome with love / Scott Cowdell -- A beautiful crisis: Ang Lee's film adaptation of The ice storm / Carly Osborn -- Cowboy metaphysics, the virtuous-enough cowboy, and mimetic desire in Stephen Fears' The hi-lo country / Thomas Ryba -- Television. The self in crisis: watching Mad men and Homeland with Girard and Hegel / Paolo Diego Bubbio -- Media, murder, and memoir: Girardian baroque in Robert Drewe's The shark net / Rosamund Dalziell -- Conversion in Dexter / Matthew John Paul Tan and Joel Hodge. (shrink)

This paper argues that, given a certain apparently inevitable thesis about content, we could not know our own minds. The thesis is that the content of a thought is determined by its relational properties.

Paul Guyer presents the first in-depth examination of the lifelong intellectual relationship between two of the greatest figures of the European Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant and Moses Mendelssohn. He explores their influence on each other and their disagreements, with particular focus on metaphysics, religion, and aesthetics.

If God exists, where can we find adequate evidence for God's existence? In this book, Paul Moser offers a new perspective on the evidence for God that centers on a morally robust version of theism that is cognitively resilient. The resulting evidence for God is not speculative, abstract, or casual. Rather, it is morally and existentially challenging to humans, as they themselves responsively and willingly become evidence of God's reality in receiving and reflecting God's moral character for others. Moser (...) calls this 'personifying evidence of God,' because it requires the evidence to be personified in an intentional agent - such as a human - and thereby to be inherent evidence of an intentional agent. Contrasting this approach with skepticism, scientific naturalism, fideism, and natural theology, Moser also grapples with the potential problems of divine hiddenness, religious diversity, and vast evil. (shrink)

Paul C. H. Lim offers an insightful examination of the polemical debates about the doctrine of the Trinity in seventeenth-century England, showing that this philosophical and theological re-configuration significantly impacted the politics of religion in the early modern period.

Wittgenstein’s philosophical achievement lies in the development of a new philosophical method rather than in the elaboration of a particular philosophical system. Dr Paul Johnston applies this innovative method to the central problems of moral philosophy: whether there can be ‘truth’ in ethics, or what the meaning of objectivity might mean in the context of moral deliberation. Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, first published in 1989, represents the first serious and rigorous attempt to apply Wittgenstein’s method to ethics. The conclusions (...) arrived at differ radically from those dominating contemporary ethical discussion, revealing an immense discrepancy between the ethical concepts employed in everyday moral decision-making and the way in which these are discussed by philosophers. Dr Johnston examines ways of eliminating this discrepancy in order to gain a clearer picture of the proper nature of moral claims, and at the same time provides new insights into Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s philosophical achievement lies in the development of a new philosophical method rather than in the elaboration of a particular philosophical system. Dr Paul Johnston applies this innovative method to the central problems of moral philosophy: whether there can be ‘truth’ in ethics, or what the meaning of objectivity might mean in the context of moral deliberation. Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, first published in 1989, represents the first serious and rigorous attempt to apply Wittgenstein’s method to ethics. The conclusions (...) arrived at differ radically from those dominating contemporary ethical discussion, revealing an immense discrepancy between the ethical concepts employed in everyday moral decision-making and the way in which these are discussed by philosophers. Dr Johnston examines ways of eliminating this discrepancy in order to gain a clearer picture of the proper nature of moral claims, and at the same time provides new insights into Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy. (shrink)

That we owe duties to others is a commonplace, the subject of countless philosophical treatises and monographs. Morality is interpersonal and other-directed, many claim. But what of what we owe ourselves? In Duty to Self, Paul Schofield flips the paradigm of interpersonal morality by arguing that there are moral duties we owe ourselves, and that in light of this, philosophers need to significantly rethink many of their views about practical reason, moral psychology, politics, and moral emotions. -/- Among these (...) views is the idea that divisions within a person's life enable her to relate to herself second-personally--that is, as though she were relating to a distinct other person--in the way required by morality. Further, there exist political duties owed to the self, which the state may coerce persons to perform. This amounts to a novel argument for paternalistic law, which appeals to considerations of right, justice, and freedom in order to justify coercing a person for their own sake--a liberal justification for an idea typically thought to be deeply at odds with liberalism. -/- Schofield untangles how this view would impact various issues in applied ethics and political philosophy, for example, financial prudence and risk, the pursuit of the good life, and medical ethics. Duty to Self is essential for anyone working in moral and political philosophy or political theory. (shrink)

From flea bites to galaxies, from love affairs to shadows, Paul Feyerabend reveled in the sensory and intellectual abundance that surrounds us. He found it equally striking that human senses and human intelligence are able to take in only a fraction of these riches. "This a blessing, not a drawback," he writes. "A superconscious organism would not be superwise, it would be paralyzed." This human reduction of experience to a manageable level is the heart of _Conquest of Abundance_, the (...) book on which Feyerabend was at work when he died in 1994. Prepared from drafts of the manuscript left at his death, working notes, and lectures and articles Feyerabend wrote while the larger work was in progress, _Conquest of Abundance_ offers up rich exploration and startling insights with the charm, lucidity, and sense of mischief that are his hallmarks. Feyerabend is fascinated by how we attempt to explain and predict the mysteries of the natural world, and he looks at the ways in which we abstract experience, explain anomalies, and reduce wonder to formulas and equations. Through his exploration of the positive and negative consequences of these efforts, Feyerabend reveals the "conquest of abundance" as an integral part of the history and character of Western civilization. "Paul Feyerabend... was the Norman Mailer of philosophy.... brilliant, brave, adventurous, original and quirky."—Richard Rorty, _New Republic_ "As much a smudged icon as a philosophical position holder, [Feyerabend] was alluring and erotic, a torch singer for philosophical anarchy."—Nancy Maull, _New York Times Book Review_ "[A] kind of final testament of Feyerabend's thought... Conquest of Abundance is as much the product of a brilliant, scintillating style as of an immense erudition and culture.... This book is as abundant and rich as the world it envisions."—Arkady Plotnitsky, _Chicago Tribune_. (shrink)

_Criticism and Conviction_ offers a rare opportunity to share personally in the intellectual life and journey of the eminent philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Internationally known for his influential works in hermeneutics, theology, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics, until now, Ricoeur has been conspicuously silent on the subject of himself. In this book--a conversation about his life and work with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay--Ricoeur reflects on a variety of philosophical, social, religious, and cultural topics, from the paradoxes of political power to (...) the relationship between life and art, and life and death. In the first of eight conversations, Ricoeur traces the trajectory of his life, recounting the origins of his convictions and the development of his intellect against the tragic events of the twentieth century. Declaring himself the "son of a victim of the First World War," Ricoeur, an orphan, sketches his early years in the house of stern but loving grandparents, and the molding of his intellect under the tutelage of Roland Dalbiez, Gabriel Marcel, and André Philip. Ricoeur tells the intriguing story of his capture and five-year imprisonment by the Germans during World War II, where he and his compatriots fashioned an intellectual life complete with a library and lectures, and where he, amazingly, was able to continue his dissertation research. Elegantly interweaving anecdotal with philosophical meditations, Ricoeur recounts his relationships with some of the twentieth century's greatest figures, such as Heidegger, Jaspers, and Eliade. He also shares his views on French philosophers and explains his tumultuous relationship with Jacques Lacan. And while expressing his deepest respect for the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Michel Foucault, Ricoeur reserves his greatest admiration for the narratologist Algirdas Julien Greimas. Ricoeur also explores the relationship between the philosophical and religious domains, attempting to reconcile the two poles in his thought. And readers who have struggled with Ricoeur's work will be grateful for these illuminating discussions that provide an invaluable key to his writings on language and narrative, especially those on metaphor and time. Spontaneous and lively, _Criticism and Conviction_ is a passionate confirmation of Ricoeur's eloquence, lucidity, and intellectual rigor, and affirms his position as one of this century's greatest thinkers. It is an essential book for anyone interested in philosophy and literary criticism. (shrink)

Aristotle's modal syllogistic has been an object of study ever since the time of Theophrastus; but these studies have been somewhat desultory. Remarkably, in the 1990s several new lines of research have appeared, with series of original publications by Fred Johnson, Richard Patterson and Ulrich Nortmann. Johnson presented for the first time a formal semantics adequate to a de re reading of the apodeictic syllogistic; this was based on a simple intuition linking the modal syllogistic to Aristotelian metaphysics. Nortmann developed (...) an ingenious de dicto analysis. Patterson articulated the links between the modal syllogistic and the metaphysics, using an analysis which strictly speaking is neither de re nor de dicto. My own studies in this field date from 1976, when my colleague Peter Roeper and I jointly wrote a paper "Aristotle's apodeictic syllogisms" for the XXIInd History of Logic Conference in Krakow. This paper contained the disjunctive reading of particular affirmative apodeictic propositions, which I still favour. Nonetheless, I did not consider that paper's results decisive or comprehensive enough to publish, and my 1981 book The Syllogism contained no treatment of the modal syllogism. The paper's ideas lay dormant till 1989, when I read Johnson's and Patterson's initial articles. I began publishing on the topic in 1991. Gradually my thoughts acquired a certain comprehensiveness and systematicity, till in 1993 I was able to take a semester's sabbatical to write up a draft of this book. (shrink)

"The 'Geschichte des Aristotelismus' (3 Bände, 1971-2001), which is the product of Paul Moraux's many decades of research on Aristotle and the Aristotle archive he founded, is a masterpiece of the history of philosophy that serves to set standards." Prof. Dr. Bernd Seidensticker.

This essay uses the concept of reconstruction to make an argument and an intervention in relation to the practice and study of black aesthetics. The argument will have to do with the parochialism of John Dewey, the institutional inertia of professional philosophy, the aesthetic dimensions of the US politics of reconstruction, the centrality of reconstructionist politics to the black aesthetic tradition, and the staging of a reconstructionist argument in the film, Black Panther (Coogler 2018). The intervention aims to address the (...) fact that arguments like these tend not to register properly because of certain reflexive and customary limits on some common forms of philosophical inquiry. The sort of professional philosophy I was raised to practise and value tends not to be particularly inclusive and open-minded, especially when it comes to subjects that bear directly on the thoughts, lives, and practices of people racialized as black. black aesthetics, by contrast, is an inherently ecumenical enterprise, reaching across disciplinary and demographic boundaries to build communities of practice and exchange. Hence the need for an intervention: to create the space for arguments and the people who work with them to function across disciplinary and demographic contexts. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher of the later Renaissance whose writings encompassed the ongoing traditions, intentions, and achievements of his times and transmitted them into early modernity. Taking up the medieval practice of the art of memory and of formal logic, he focused on the creativity of the human mind. Bruno … Continue reading Giordano Bruno →.

This study investigated faculty attitudes towards student violations of academic integrity in Canada using a qualitative review of 17 universities’ academic integrity/dishonesty policies combined with a quantitative survey of faculty members’ (N = 412) attitudes and behaviours around academic integrity and dishonesty. Results showed that 53.1% of survey respondents see academic dishonesty as a worsening problem at their institutions. Generally, they believe their respective institutional policies are sound in principle but fail in application. Two of the major factors identified by (...) faculty as contributing to academic dishonesty are administrative. Many faculty members feel unsupported by their administration and are reluctant to formally report academic dishonesty due to the excessive burdens of dealing with paperwork and providing proof. Faculty members also cite unprepared students and international students who struggle with language issues and the Canadian academic context as major contributors to academic dishonesty. This study concludes with recommendations for educators and recommendations for future research. (shrink)

In this study of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Paul S. Loeb proposes a fresh account of the relation between the book's literary and philosophical aspects and argues that the book's narrative is designed to embody and exhibit the truth of eternal recurrence. Loeb shows how Nietzsche constructed a unified and complete plot in which the protagonist dies, experiences a deathbed revelation of his endlessly repeating life, and then returns to his identical life so as to recollect this revelation and (...) gain a power over time that advances him beyond the human. Through close textual analysis and careful attention to Nietzsche's use of Platonic, biblical, and Wagnerian themes, Loeb explains how this novel design is the key to solving the many riddles of Thus Spoke Zarathustra - including its controversial fourth part, its obscure concept of the Übermensch, and its relation to Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. (shrink)

This book presents the essential background for understanding semantic theories of both verbal mood and sentence mood. Paul Portner evaluates and compares the theories, draws connections between seemingly disparate approaches, and highlights the most significant insights in the literature to provide a clearer understanding of how mood works.

“One day the day will come when the day will not come.” Bleak, but passionately political in its analysis of the social destruction wrought by modern technologies of communication and surveillance, Open Sky is Paul Virilio's most far-reaching and radical book. Deepening and extending his earlier work, he explores the growing danger of what he calls a “generalized accident,” provoked by the breakdown of our collective and individual relation to time, space and movement in the context of global electronic (...) media. But this is not merely a lucid and disturbing lament for the loss of real geographical spaces, distance, intimacy or democracy. Open Sky is also a call for revolt—against the insidious and accelerating manipulation of perception by the electronic media and repressive political power, against the tyranny of “real time,” and against the infantilism of cyberhype. Virilio makes a powerful case for a new ethics of perception, and a new ecology, one which will not only strive to protect the natural world from pollution and destruction, but will also combat the devastation of urban communities by proliferating technologies of control and virtuality. (shrink)

Long before skeptical theism was called “skeptical theism,” Stephen Wykstra (1984) defended a version of it based on an epistemological principle he called CORNEA. In this paper, I use elementary confirmation theory to analyze CORNEA’s core. This enables me to show precisely what is right about Wykstra’s very influential defense of skeptical theism and, perhaps more importantly, precisely what is wrong with it. A key premise of that defense is that, on the assumption that God exists, we wouldn’t expect to (...) know what God’s reasons for allowing certain evils are. I show that, while that premise together with CORNEA’s core shows that our inability to adequately explain the existence of those evils in terms of theism is not strong evidence against theism, it fails to show that the evils themselves are not strong evidence against theism. (shrink)

It Is My Pleasure To Introduce this discussion of Naoko Saito's American Philosophy in Translation. We have contributions from three experts in American philosophy, all of whom have been in conversation with the author for many years: Jim Garrison, Vincent Colapietro, and Steven Fesmire. Prior to their contributions, I would like to set the scene with some brief remarks to introduce the book and to explain something of its background.Over the past two decades, I have worked closely with Saito on (...) a number of projects, and I have been familiar with her ideas for this book since its inception. In some respects, the book is the product of studies in American philosophy that go back to her time as an undergraduate in Tokyo in the 1980s, ideas that were advanced considerably when she did an MA at Harvard, taking classes with Stanley Cavell and Hilary Putnam, and subsequently when she completed her PhD at Teachers College, with René Arcilla as her advisor and Cavell as a member of her committee. It was against this background that, in 2006, Saito published her first singly authored book, The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson. As that title indicates, she was already exploring the relation between Dewey and pragmatism, on the one hand, and American transcendentalism, on the other. Her sense back then of some separation between these traditions of thought, and of the nature of the tensions between them, has been refined and, for the most part, strengthened in the years since that earlier publication. No doubt she has been influenced in this by Cavell, who, in one essay, for example, asks: “What's the use of calling Emerson a pragmatist?” In any case, her account of this relationship is extended and altered significantly in American Philosophy in Translation.Through the course of her research, Saito has been conscious of the fact that she is studying American philosophy from a distance—a distance that is geographical, cultural, and linguistic—and she retains a thoughtful humility in relation to this. But she also sees here a possible opening to the perception and release of untapped aspects of these traditions of thought, in ways that might fertilize and extend the ground in which the inheritance of American philosophy has flourished. This is very much the line that she pursues in this book. In the light of this, and as the book's title indicates, there is a particular focus on language and translation. It is important that the latter term is understood not merely as an attractive metaphor for change and transformation: crucial to her developing argument is the experience of translating between languages and the reality of the experience in the lives of so many today, within the academy and without. In the course of this experience, one is sometimes confronted, quite self-consciously, with a word or phrase that resists translation. But sometimes—more often in the life of the accomplished or habituated speaker of the foreign language in question—the experience persists as an undercurrent, subtly opening a world that is other in some respects from the one that comes to light in the mother tongue.By contrast, to the many (especially Anglophone) monolingually minded, the need for translation can appear as an unwanted barrier, something of a nuisance, a problem to be solved. This is by no means a response confined, however, to the uneducated (or the Anglophone or the monolingual). There is also a sophisticated variant of this narrowness of outlook where faith is placed in an artificial or technical language with the power, the fantasy runs, to overcome the vagaries of natural language. Hilary Putnam recalls how Rudolf Carnap, whose stature as a thinker and as a human being he does not doubt, felt strongly that “for all x, planned x is better than unplanned x” and was drawn to the idea of a common world language: Thus the idea of a socialist world in which everyone spoke Esperanto (except scientists, who, for their technical work, would employ notations from symbolic logic) was one which would have delighted him. And I recently had a conversation with a student who remarked quite casually that it would not be a bad idea if there were only one language and one literature: “We would get used to it, and it might help to prevent war.” (Putnam 185)Putnam does not deign to respond to the latter assertion. What is foregrounded in his discussion is that monolingualism is likely to hide the plurality of goods that is realized in different cultures. The importance of that plurality is surely something that the luminaries of American philosophy bring to light. Indeed, Putnam's key point of reference in making these remarks is William James.The undercurrent of translation in the experience of the more accomplished speaker of a foreign language can act then as a sensitization to cultural difference, to different possibilities of thought and being. But in fact, this shifting of thought can apply within any language itself, not just inter- but intra-lingually, opening an insight that is close to the heart of American philosophy. If one can hear the cry of the rooster, then one may be wakened also by Thoreau's turn of expression in the idea of the “father tongue”: through a maturing experience of the language we are brought up with, we come to “a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak” (Thoreau 69). This renewed investment in language, this continual return to our words, is what opens them to new thought and gives them interest. It is first an inheritance from the culture we are brought up in, but it dies in our speech and thinking if we do not turn it to something new. To build, we must begin by borrowing an axe, but we can return it sharper than when we borrowed it.If translation is operative in our language as a whole, as Saito's argument shows, this points to the many little rebirths within ourselves and in our interactions with one another. In fact, the point becomes political in that democracy depends upon this renewal of our words. This renewal resists not only the allure of ideology but also the now familiar etiolated rhetoric of “political realism.” Moreover, it points beyond the reliance, within the politics of recognition, on the defining of groups and categories toward a politics of acknowledgment.In this vein, Saito's outsider perspective is in tune with what Richard Bernstein has called the “global resurgence of American pragmatism.” The borderline or outsider perspective can have a powerful effect on thought, in relation to which Saito invites the reader to recall that America's past was itself an outsider-past: it was outside Europe, a relation with which it was bound to struggle, but it was also ready, as Emerson and Thoreau demonstrate, to draw from greater cultural distances, where it found congenial aspects in East Asian thought.Saito stresses the anti-foundationalist character of American philosophy as of critical importance for both philosophy and politics, and again her discussion of language is crucial to this. Dewey's emphasis on communication, with his relatively flat style of prose, is contrasted with the stylistic experiment and invention that she finds in Emerson, Thoreau, and Cavell. She sees the style of these writers, in some contrast to that of Dewey, as having a salutary, destabilizing effect. She wants to destabilize Dewey. It is entirely consonant with her position, furthermore, that she raises doubts about the bland acceptance of a politics of inclusion. Not only can this become a surreptitious form of discipline and control: it can engender the conformism that Emerson worked so hard to prevent.The book finishes on a more aesthetic note, taking up lines of thought in Dewey's aesthetics but turning this toward the more extravagant elision, in Thoreau, of the functional and the beautiful. The thematization of the aesthetic in this way is, she tries to show, crucial to our (political) world. (shrink)

Substantially revised to include a wealth of new material, the second edition of this highly acclaimed work provides a concise, coherent introduction that brings structure to an increasingly fragmented and amorphous discipline. Paul R. McHugh and Phillip R. Slavney offer an approach that emphasizes psychiatry's unifying concepts while accommodating its diversity. Recognizing that there may never be a single, all-encompassing theory, the book distills psychiatric practice into four explanatory methods: diseases, dimensions of personality, goal-directed behaviors, and life stories. These (...) perspectives, argue the authors, underlie the principles and practice of all psychiatry. With an understanding of these fundamental methods, readers will be equipped to organize and evaluate psychiatric information and to develop a confident approach to practice and research. Praise for the original edition: "This brilliant book illuminates psychiatry more clearly than any other work I know.... This is the best (and the shortest) single volume on psychiatry that anyone could read."-- New England Journal of Medicine "Every psychiatry department, regardless of ideology, should build a course around this... work. Open-mindedness might become fashionable."-- Journal of Clinical Psychiatry "An elegantly reasoned and eloquently written book that enriches our understanding of clinical events.... [It provides] an opportunity to open our eyes to new possibilities."-- Hospital and Community Psychiatry. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is often argued that, because she would always be in the position to waive it, a person cannot owe a duty to herself. In a recent AJP article, Janis David Schaab argues that a person can owe a duty to herself even if it can be waived, thus rendering unwarranted a scepticism about such duties, as well as efforts to show that they are unwaivable. Here I argue that, for all that Schaab says, waivability continues to threaten the (...) very possibility of duties to self. As such, scepticism about their existence remains justified, as do attempts to vindicate them by demonstrating that they cannot be waived. (shrink)

The Philadelphia Association is always linked with the name of R. D. Laing, one of its founders, but very little is known about its unorthodox contribution to the development of psychoanalysis. Founded in 1965, it took as its aim the relief of mental illnesss of all desciptions, in particular schizophrenia. At its inception it was a focus for people, with a diversity of backgrounds and interests, concerned with 'mental illness' and how society defines it. Its members - who included psychoanalysis, (...) psychiatrists and artists - developed a philosophical critique of psychoanalysis grounded in phenomenology, and an 'anti-psychiatry' critique of the institutional treatment of the mentally ill. They favoured the setting up of therapeutic community households of which the best known was Kingsley Hall. The PA was then very much part of the counter culture - it staged, for example, the famous Dialectics of Liberation Congress at London's Roundhouse in 1967. The psychotherapists who currently belong to the Philadelphia Association continue to work with community households and to offer a psychotherapy training. Here the authors share their innovative and distinctive approach on a number of interrelated themes: the herapeutic community and differend ways it can be understood; work with deeply regresed patients; the concept of identity in a social context; the debate between Lacan and Derrida on Poe's 'The Purloined Letter'; the phenomenology of knowledge and transference and authority. Together, they offer a cogent critique of many psychiatric and psychonalaytic assumptions. The contributors are Robin Cooper, Joseph friedman, Steven Gans, John Heaton, Chris Oakley, Haya Oakley and Paul Zeal. They are all psychotherapists and members of the Philadelphia Association. (shrink)

The eternal recurrence of the same. Simmel's critique ; Awareness ; Evidence ; Significance ; Coherence -- Demon or god? Deathbed revelation ; Daimonic prophecy ; Dionysian doctrine ; Diagnostic test -- The dwarf and the gateway. The gateway to Hades ; The dwarf's interpretation ; Zarathustra's cross-examination ; The inescapable cycle ; Crossing the gateway ; No time until rebirth ; The ancient memory ; Midnight swan song -- The great noon. Two conclusions ; Tragic end and analeptic satyr (...) play ; Zarathustra's hour ; Noon crucifixion ; Seventh-day convalescence ; Last temptation ; Third-day resurrection -- The laughing lions. Revaluation of values ; Dawn reunion ; Morning consecration ; Call to arms ; Final farewell and last will ; Zarathustra's great destiny -- The shepherd and the serpent. The eternally recurring human ; The future human ; Zarathustra the dragon-slayer ; The decapitation ; The heavy hammer ; No longer shepherd -- Circulus vitiosus deus. Impotence and revenge ; Backward-willing ; Self-redemption ; The third transformation ; The child spirit ; No longer human ; Zarathustra's dying gift -- Post-Zarathustra. Nietzsche and Zarathustra ; Reversing the bad conscience ; Atheism and the death of God ; Countering the ascetic ideal. (shrink)

I define an ‘evidential argument from evil’ as an attempt to show that something we know about evil, while not provably incompatible with theism, is evidence against theism in the precise sense that it lowers the epistemic probability of theism being true. Such arguments must show that, for some statement e about evil that we know to be true, the antecedent probability of e given the denial theism – Pr(e/~G) – is greater than the antecedent probability of e given theism (...) – Pr(e/G). To show that e is strong evidence against theism, such arguments must show that Pr(e/~G) is many times greater than Pr(e/G). Skeptical theists seek to refute such arguments by denying that Pr(e/G) can be assessed with sufficient specificity to draw any interesting conclusions about how it compares to Pr(e/~G). Skeptical atheists seek refute such arguments by denying that Pr(e/~G) can be assessed with sufficient specificity to draw any interesting conclusions about how it compares to Pr(e/G). I argue that skeptical atheism is the more serious challenge of the two. I close by briefly discussing the implications of these results for the project of constructing a successful argument from evil against theism. (shrink)

My project is to examine and critically discuss the role of simplicity in Swinburne’s probabilistic natural theology. After describing that role and the details of his theory of simplicity, I challenge Swinburne’s view that the criterion of simplicity is a fundamental criterion for evaluating causal explanations, proposing instead that what is right about that criterion can be derived from a more fundamental criterion of “coherence.” I close by exploring the implications of my proposal for Swinburne’s natural theology.

This book casts new light on the work of the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770 - 1843), and his translations of Greek tragedy. It shows Hölderlin's poetry is unique within Western literature (and art) as it retrieves the socio-politics of a Dionysiac space-time and language to challenge the estrangement of humans from nature and one other. In this book, author Lucas Murrey presents a new picture of ancient Greece, noting that money emerged and rapidly developed there in the sixth century (...) B.C. This act of monetization brought with it a concept of tragedy: money-tyrants struggling against the forces of earth and community who succumb to individual isolation, blindness and death. As Murrey points out, Hölderlin (unconsciously) retrieves the battle between money, nature and community and creatively applies its lessons to our time. But Hölderlin's poetry not only adapts tragedy to question the unlimited "machine process" of "a clever race" of money-tyrants. It also draws attention to Greece's warnings about the mortal danger of the eyes in myth, cult and theatre. This monograph thus introduces an urgently needed vision not only of Hölderlin hymns, but also the relevance of disciplines as diverse as Literary Studies, Philosophy, Psychology (Psychoanalysis) as well as Religious and Visual (Media) Studies to our present predicament, where a dangerous visual culture, through its support of the unlimitedness of money, is harming our relation to nature and one another. "Here triumphs a temperament guided by ancient religion and that excavates, in Hölderlin's translations, the central god Dionysus of Greek tragedy." -Bernhard Böschenstein, author of "Frucht des Gewitters". Zu Hölderlins Dionysos als Gott der Revolution and Paul Celan: Der Meridian. Endfassung-Entwürfe-Materialien. "Lucas Murrey shares with his subject, Hölderlin, a vision of the Greeks as bringing something vitally important into our poor world, a vision of which few classical scholars are now capable." -Richard Seaford, author of Money and the Early Greek Mind. Homer, Tragedy, Philosophy and Dionysus. "Hölderlin deserved such a book." -Jean-François Kervégan, author of Que faire de Carl Schmitt? "...fascinating material..." -Noam Chomsky, author of Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda and Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe. (shrink)

Marshall McLuhan died on the last day of 1980, on the doorstep of the personal computer revolution. Yet McLuhan's ideas anticipated a world of media in motion, and its impact on our lives on the dawn of the new millennium. Paul Levinson examines why McLuhan's theories about media are more important to us today than when they were first written, and why the _Wired_ generation is now turning to McLuhan's work to understand the global village in the digital age.

In this book, Paul K. Moser proposes a new approach to inquiry about God, including a new discipline of the ethics for inquiry about God. It is an ethics for human attitudes and relationships as well as actions in inquiry, and it includes human responsibility for seeking evidence that involves a moral priority for humans. Such ethics includes an ongoing test, a trial, for human receptivity to goodness, including morally good relationships, as a priority in human inquiry and life. (...) Moser also defends an approach to the evidence for God that makes sense of the elusiveness and occasional absence of God in human experience. His book will be of interest to those interested in inquiry about God, with special relevance to scholars and advanced students in religious studies, philosophy, theology, and biblical studies. (shrink)

Although scientific models and simulations differ in numerous ways, they are similar in so far as they are posing essentially philosophical problems about the nature of representation. This collection is designed to bring together some of the best work on the nature of representation being done by both established senior philosophers of science and younger researchers. Most of the pieces, while appealing to existing traditions of scientific representation, explore new types of questions, such as: how understanding can be developed within (...) computational science; how the format of representations matters for their use, be it for the purpose of research or education; how the concepts of emergence and supervenience can be further analyzed by taking into account computational science; or how the emphasis upon tractability--a particularly important issue in computational science--sheds new light on the philosophical analysis of scientific reasoning. (shrink)