Hildegard of Bingen was one of the most remarkable women of her day. From early childhood she experienced religious visions, and at the age of eight she entered a cloistered religious life in the Benedictine monastery of Disibondenberg. Eventually she not only became abbess of the community, but presided over the establishment of an important new convent near Bingen. All but forgotten for hundreds of years, Hildegard was rediscovered in the 1980s and since then her visionary writings have been widely (...) read and studied. Even more surprisingly, music that she composed has been performed and recorded to great acclaim. She has come to be seen by some as a proto-feminist icon -- a woman of great accomplishments who made her own way in a man's world and exerted extraordinary influence over some of the most powerful figures of her time. Much of Hildegard's correspondence has been preserved. It reveals that for more than 30 years this cloistered nun was an unflinching adviser and correspondent to all levels of church and society, from popes and kings to ordinary lay persons, from Jerusalem to England. With the 2004 OUP publication of Volume III of Joseph Baird and Radd Ehrman's translation, the complete correspondence became available for the first time in English. For this new abridgement, Baird has selected 75 of the most interesting and revealing of the letters from Volumes I, II, and III. Freed from the organizational restraints of the Latin edition of the letters, he has arranged them in roughly chronological order and provided greatly expanded, accessibly written introductory notes that contextualize the letters and explain their significance. As a result, this fascinating collection serves as a kind of life in letters that makes an ideal introduction ot this exceptional woman, her world, and her work. This book is the first to give a thorough and definitive illlumination of the personal life of Hildegard of Bingen as viewed through the defining lens of her personal correspondence: her early, hesitant bid for recognition of her spiritual gifts; her courageous, and ultimately futile, fight to retain the companionship of her close personal friend and the poignant outcome of that struggle; her vehement defiance of the male hierarchy in her bid to establish her own communities under her personal governance; her impudent challenge to contemporary conservatives views by the dress and customs she established in her community; her paean of praise for the power of music; and her adamant refusal, even at the advanced age of eighty, to give in to the demands of the male authorities even in the face of excommunication. (shrink)

A renowned anthropologist's profound and personal correspondences with the world we live in.

Contributing to a greater understanding of German intellectual and cultural history, this essential volume presents for the first time a definitive collection of the extended academic and personal correspondence between Martin Heidegger and his student Karl Löwith.

An important work in the debate between materialists and dualists, the public correspondence between Anthony Collins and Samuel Clarke provided the framework for arguments over consciousness and personal identity in eighteenth-century Britain. In Clarke's view, mind and consciousness are so unified that they cannot be compounded into wholes or divided into parts, so mind and consciousness must be distinct from matter. Collins, by contrast, was a perceptive advocate of a materialist account of mind, who defended the possibility that (...) thinking and consciousness are emergent properties of the brain. Appendices include philosophical writings that influenced, and responded to, the correspondence. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a version of panpsychist idealism on first-person experiential grounds. As things always appear in my field of consciousness, there is prima facie empirical support for idealism. Furthermore, by assuming that all things correspond to a conscious perspective or perspectives (i.e., panpsychism), realism about the world is arguably safeguarded without the need to appeal to God (as per Berkeley’s idealism). Panpsychist idealism also has a phenomenological advantage over traditional panpsychist views as it does not commit (...) perceptual experience to massive error by denying that perceived colours are properties of things. Finally, I argue that the subject combination problem for panpsychism has been motivated by the problematic assumption that consciousness is in things. Thinking about subject combination from the first-person perspective is fruitful for reframing the subject combination problem and for seeing how subjects could potentially combine for the idealist. (shrink)

Correspondence with a disciple revealing an altogether unknown facet of Sri Aurobindo's personality: his great sense of humour.

Called “the most important critic of his time” by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has only become more influential over the years, as his work has assumed a crucial place in current debates over the interactions of art, culture, and meaning. A “natural and extraordinary talent for letter writing was one of the most captivating facets of his nature,” writes Gershom Scholem in his Foreword to this volume; and Benjamin's correspondence reveals the evolution of some of his most powerful ideas, (...) while also offering an intimate picture of Benjamin himself and the times in which he lived. Writing at length to Scholem and Theodor Adorno, and exchanging letters with Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt, Max Brod, and Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin elaborates on his ideas about metaphor and language. He reflects on literary figures from Kafka to Karl Kraus, and expounds his personal attitudes toward such subjects as Marxism and French national character. Providing an indispensable tool for any scholar wrestling with Benjamin’s work, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940 is a revelatory look at the man behind much of the twentieth century’s most significant criticism. (shrink)

George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, was an Irish philosopher and divine who pursued a number of grand causes, contributing to the fields of economics, mathematics, political theory and theology. He pioneered the theory of 'immaterialism', and his work ranges over many philosophical issues that remain of interest today. This volume offers a complete and accurate edition of Berkeley's extant correspondence, including letters written both by him and to him, supplemented by extensive explanatory and critical notes. Alexander Pope famously said (...) 'To Berkeley every virtue under heaven', and a careful reading of the letters reveals a figure worthy of admiration, sheds new light on his personal and intellectual life, and provides insight into the broad historical and philosophical currents of his time. The volume will be an invaluable resource for philosophers, modern historians and those interested in Anglo-Irish culture. (shrink)

What’s the difference between those psychological posits that are ‘me” and those that are not? Distinguishing between these psychological kinds is important in many domains, but an account of what the distinction consists in is challenging. I argue for Psychological Constructionism: those psychological posits that correspond to the kinds within folk psychology are personal, and those that don’t, aren’t. I suggest that only constructionism can answer a fundamental challenge in characterizing the personal level – the plurality problem. The (...) things that plausibly qualify as personal are motley. Other attempts at accounting for the personal level either cannot accommodate this plurality, or cannot explain what unifies the personal. Given arguments others have given for a pluralistic conception of folk psychology, constructionism explains and predicts this plurality in a systematic and unified way, thereby solving the plurality problem. (shrink)

As is well known, Heinrich Scholz and his academic society maintained good scientific contacts with Polish logicians before, during, and after the Second World War. My interest here is to examine the details of their collaboration by presenting Scholz’s unpublished correspondence with Fr. Józef M. Bocheński. The following topics are discussed here: Polish logicians who survived the war and their current place of work; reorganization of the scholarly environment, didactic activities, duties, scholarly trips; current research topics, prospects for post-war (...) publications, and future publishing plans; information about Jan Łukasiewicz, Bolesław Sobociński, and Joachim Metallmann; personal matters. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction What Is the Problem? Why Try to Change the Profession? The Challenges Epistemic Responsibility and Credibility Why the Personal Is Philosophical Is Political References.

The concept of respect for persons is often rejected as a basis for understanding forgiveness. As many have argued, to hold your offender responsible for her actions is to respect her as a person; but this kind of respect is more likely to sustain, rather than dissolve, your resentment toward her (Garrard & McNaughton 2003; 2011; Allais 2008). I seek to defend an alternative view in this paper. To forgive, on my account, involves ceasing to identify your offender with her (...) wrongdoing, and this requires a corresponding affective change on your behalf. While there are different ways this may happen, I argue that respect for your offender as a person can play a significant role in the process. (shrink)

An exchange of correspondence with Charles Fried. Parfit's section begins: "I am puzzled. Consider Case One: I could save either one stranger or five others. Both acts would involve a heroic personal sacrifice. I choose, for no reason, to save the one rather than the five. Fried argues: (i ) Since both acts would involve a heroic sacrifice, I could not be criticized if I chose to do neither. (2) If I could not be criticized for choosing to (...) do neither, I cannot be criticized for choosing to do one rather than the other. Therefore (3) When I choose to save the one rather than the five, my choice cannot be criticized. Fried rejects (3). Though my act is heroic, he concedes that my choice is 'perverse' and 'morally deficient.'". (shrink)

An important work in the debate between materialists and dualists, the public correspondence between Anthony Collins and Samuel Clarke provided the framework for arguments over consciousness and personal identity in eighteenth-century Britain. In Clarke’s view, mind and consciousness are so unified that they cannot be compounded into wholes or divided into parts, so mind and consciousness must be distinct from matter. Collins, by contrast, was a perceptive advocate of a materialist account of mind, who defended the possibility that (...) thinking and consciousness are emergent properties of the brain. Appendices include philosophical writings that influenced, and responded to, the correspondence. (shrink)

For several centuries prior to the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875, individual 'theosophers' in Britain and Europe were quietly in touch with one another all seekers of the inward way. Theosophic Correspondence (1792 1797) is a series of inspiring letters, personal and philosophic, exchanged during the climactic days of the French Revolution between Kirchberger, member of the Sovereign Council at Berne, Switzerland, and Saint-Martin, whom Kirchberger regarded as 'the most eminent writer . . . and most (...) profound of his age'. (shrink)

The informal letters of great philosophers often provide valuable clues not only to the development of their thought processes but also to their inner personalities. The austere and distant Hegel comes alive as a man in his correspondence, and the rigorous Spinoza takes on the blood and flesh of a gracious friend in his letters. In Kant’s correspondence, we occasionally find helpful interpretations of his thought as he answers questions put to him by friends and inquirers. And the (...) letters of William James to his wide circle of friends are uniformly charming. We do not usually find a great deal of profound significance in the extant personal correspondence of philosophers but there is an occasional insight, often a clue to the unfolding of a personality, or an unguarded comment here or there which suggests a tendency or trait. (shrink)

This is the most complete English edition of Kant's correspondence that has ever been compiled. The letters are concerned with philosophical and scientific topics but many also treat personal, historical, and cultural matters. On one level the letters chart Kant's philosophical development. On another level they expose quirks and foibles, and reveal a good deal about Kant's friendships and philosophical battles with some of the prominent thinkers of the time: Herder, Hamann, Mendelssohn, and Fichte.

George Berkeley (1685-1753), Bishop of Cloyne, was an Irish philosopher and divine who pursued a number of grand causes, contributing to the fields of economics, mathematics, political theory and theology. He pioneered the theory of 'immaterialism', and his work ranges over many philosophical issues that remain of interest today. This volume offers a complete and accurate edition of Berkeley's extant correspondence, including letters both written by him and to him, supplemented by extensive explanatory and critical notes. Alexander Pope famously (...) said 'To Berkeley every virtue under heaven', and a careful reading of the letters reveals a figure worthy of admiration, sheds new light on his personal and intellectual life and provides insight into the broad historical and philosophical currents of his time. The volume will be an invaluable resource for philosophers, modern historians and those interested in Anglo-Irish culture. (shrink)

This book presents the first full translation of the correspondence of Leo Strauss and Gerhard Krüger, showing for each the development of key and influential ideas, along with seven interpretative essays by leading Strauss scholars. During the early to mid-1930’s, Leo Strauss carried on an intense, and sometimes deeply personal, correspondence with one of the leading intellectual lights among Heidegger’s circle of recent students and younger associates. A fellow traveler in the effort to “return to Plato” and (...) reject neo-Kantian conventions of the day, Krüger was also a serious student of Rudolf Bultmann and the neo-orthodox movement in which Strauss also took an early interest. During the most intense years of their correspondence, each underwent significant intellectual development: in Krüger’s case, through a penetrating series of studies of Kant and Descartes, respectively, ultimately leading to Krüger’s conversion to Catholicism; and, in Strauss’s case, through the complex stages of what he subsequently called his “reorientation,” involving what he for the first time calls “political philosophy.” Readers interested in tracing the development of Strauss’s thoughts regarding a theological alternative that he found helpfully challenging—if not ultimately compelling—will find this correspondence to be an accessible point of entry. (shrink)

In 1922 Charles Hartshorne, then an aspiring young philosopher, wrote to Edgar Sheffield Brightman, a preeminent philosopher of religion for twenty-three subsequent years and, remarkably, almost every letter was preserved. In their introductory essays, editors Randall Auxier and Mark Davies place the unusually rich and intensive correspondence in its intellectual context and address the relationship between personalism and process philosophy/theology in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy.

This is a most complete English edition of Kant's correspondence. The letters are concerned with philosophical and scientific topics but many also treat personal, historical and cultural matters. On one level the letters chart Kant's philosophical development. On another level they expose quirks and foibles, and reveal a good deal about Kant's friendships and philosophical battles with some of the prominent thinkers of the time: Herder, Hamann, Mendelssohn and Fichte. What emerges from these pages is a vivid picture (...) of the intellectual, religious and political currents of the late eighteenth-century Prussia, in which there is much to be learnt about topics such as censorship, and the changing status of Jews and women in Europe. Amongst the special features of this volume are: a substantial introduction, detailed explanatory notes, a glossary, and biographical sketches of correspondents and people referred to in the letters. (shrink)

For several centuries prior to the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875, individual 'theosophers' in Britain and Europe were quietly in touch with one another all seekers of the inward way. Theosophic Correspondence (1792 1797) is a series of inspiring letters, personal and philosophic, exchanged during the climactic days of the French Revolution between Kirchberger, member of the Sovereign Council at Berne, Switzerland, and Saint-Martin, whom Kirchberger regarded as 'the most eminent writer . . . and most (...) profound of his age'. (shrink)

Called “the most important critic of his time” by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has only become more influential over the years, as his work has assumed a crucial place in current debates over the interactions of art, culture, and meaning. A “natural and extraordinary talent for letter writing was one of the most captivating facets of his nature,” writes Gershom Scholem in his Foreword to this volume; and Benjamin's correspondence reveals the evolution of some of his most powerful ideas, (...) while also offering an intimate picture of Benjamin himself and the times in which he lived. Writing at length to Scholem and Theodor Adorno, and exchanging letters with Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt, Max Brod, and Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin elaborates on his ideas about metaphor and language. He reflects on literary figures from Kafka to Karl Kraus, and expounds his personal attitudes toward such subjects as Marxism and French national character. Providing an indispensable tool for any scholar wrestling with Benjamin’s work, _The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940_ is a revelatory look at the man behind much of the twentieth century’s most significant criticism. (shrink)

This paper replies to the first 36 commentaries on my target article on “Is human information processing conscious?” (Behavioral and Brain Sciences,1991, pp.651-669). The target article focused largely on experimental studies of how consciousness relates to human information processing, tracing their relation from input through to output, while discussion of the implications of the findings both for cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind was relatively brief. The commentaries reversed this emphasis, and so, correspondingly, did the reply. The sequence of topics (...) in the reply roughly follows that of the target article. The discussion begins with a reconsideration of the details of the empirical findings, whether they can be extrapolated to non-laboratory settings, and the extent to which one can rely on their use of subjective reports. This is followed by an in-depth discussion of what is meant by “conscious processing” and of how phenomenal consciousness relates to attentional processing. We then turn to broader philosophical and theoretical issues. I point out some of the reasons why I do not support epiphenomenalism, dualist-interactionism, or reductionism, and elaborate on how first- and third-person views of the mind can be regarded as complementary and mutually irreducible. I suggest how the relation of conscious experiences to their neural correlates can be understood in terms of a dual-aspect theory of information,and how this might be used to resolve some of the paradoxes surrounding the causal interactions of consciousness and brain. I also suggest that, viewed from a first-person perspective, consciousness gives purpose to existence, which allows a different way of viewing its role in evolution. (shrink)

In December 1945 Thomas Mann wrote a famous letter to Adorno in which he formulated the principle of montage adopted in his novel Doctor Faustus. The writer expressly invited the philosopher to 'consider, with me, how such a work - and I mean Leverkuhn's work - could more or less be practically realized'. Their close collaboration on questions concerning the character of the fictional composer's putatively late works effectively laid the basis for a further exchange of letters. The ensuing (...) class='Hi'>correspondence between the two men documents a rare encounter of creative tension between literary tradition and aesthetic modernism which would be sustained right up until the novelist's death in 1955. In the letters, Thomas Mann openly acknowledged his 'fascinated reading' of Adorno's Minima Moralia and commented in detail on the 'Essay on Wagner', which he was as eager to read as 'the one in the Book of Revelation consumes a book which tastes "as sweet as honey"'. Adorno in turn offered detailed observations upon and frequently enthusiastic commendations of Mann's later writings, such as The Holy Sinner, The Betrayed One and The Confessions of Felix Krull. Their correspondence also touches upon issues of great personal significance, notably the sensitive discussion of the problems of returning from exile to postwar Germany. The letters are extensively annotated and offer the reader detailed notes concerning the writings, events and personalities referred or alluded to in the correspondence. (shrink)

In December 1945 Thomas Mann wrote a famous letter to Adorno in which he formulated the principle of montage adopted in his novel Doctor Faustus. The writer expressly invited the philosopher to 'consider, with me, how such a work - and I mean Leverkuhn's work - could more or less be practically realized'. Their close collaboration on questions concerning the character of the fictional composer's putatively late works effectively laid the basis for a further exchange of letters. The ensuing (...) class='Hi'>correspondence between the two men documents a rare encounter of creative tension between literary tradition and aesthetic modernism which would be sustained right up until the novelist's death in 1955. In the letters, Thomas Mann openly acknowledged his 'fascinated reading' of Adorno's Minima Moralia and commented in detail on the 'Essay on Wagner', which he was as eager to read as 'the one in the Book of Revelation consumes a book which tastes "as sweet as honey"'. Adorno in turn offered detailed observations upon and frequently enthusiastic commendations of Mann's later writings, such as The Holy Sinner, The Betrayed One and The Confessions of Felix Krull. Their correspondence also touches upon issues of great personal significance, notably the sensitive discussion of the problems of returning from exile to postwar Germany. The letters are extensively annotated and offer the reader detailed notes concerning the writings, events and personalities referred or alluded to in the correspondence. (shrink)

The private letter, one of the most representative expressions of mass literacy, was the product of improved postal services and epistolary manuals. In the nineteenth century, which also witnessed the new phenomenon of mass emigration, letter writing became one of the most common practices. This article discusses the correspondence of José Moldes, an Asturian who left Spain for Puerto Rico at the age of fourteen and settled shortly afterwards in Chile. He died in his native Asturias at the age (...) of sixty-one. Throughout these fifty or so years, José wrote letters to keep in contact with members of his family, to control them when he became head of the household or to manage his businesses and investments. About 120 of his letters survived in the Moldes-Barreras family archive, through which we can reconstruct his experiences. The essential characteristics of this epistolary corpus emerge from an analysis of its material and graphic aspects, suggesting the profound influence of immigration on personal writing. (shrink)

James and Stumpf first met in Prague in 1882. James soon started corresponding with a "colleague with whose persons and whose ideas alike I feel so warm a sympathy." With this, a lifelong epistolary friendship began. For 28 years until James's death in 1910, Stumpf became James's most important European correspondent. Besides psychological themes of great importance, such as the perception of space and of sound, the letters include commentary upon Stumpf's (Tonpsychologie) and James's main books (The Principles of Psychology, (...) The Varieties of Religious Experience), and many other works. The two friends also exchange views concerning other scholars, religious faith and metaphysical topics. The different perspectives of the American and the German (European) way of living, philosophizing and doing science are frequently under discussion. The letters also touch upon personal questions of historical interest. The book offers a critical edition and the English translation of hitherto unpublished primary sources. Historians of psychology and historians of philosophy will welcome the volume as a useful tool for their understanding of some crucial developments of the time. Scholars in the history of pragmatism and of phenomenology will also be interested in the volume. (shrink)

In the Spring 1997 issue of the journal, Ronald M. Green's affiliation was inaccurately listed. Although he did serve at the Office of Genome Ethics at the National Institutes of Health, in correspondence prior to pub lication of his paper “Parental Autonomy and the Obligation Not to Harm One's Child Genetically,” he requested that his affiliation only be listed at the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth College. He wanted to avoid any appearance of speaking on behalf of NIH. The editors (...) regret the confusion this oversight caused Professor Green personally and journal readers. (shrink)

In the Spring 1997 issue of the journal, Ronald M. Green's affiliation was inaccurately listed. Although he did serve at the Office of Genome Ethics at the National Institutes of Health, in correspondence prior to pub lication of his paper “Parental Autonomy and the Obligation Not to Harm One's Child Genetically,” he requested that his affiliation only be listed at the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth College. He wanted to avoid any appearance of speaking on behalf of NIH. The editors (...) regret the confusion this oversight caused Professor Green personally and journal readers. (shrink)

The project takes as its starting point our conflicting intuitions about personal identity exposed by Bernard Williams' thought experiment involving the switching of bodies in "The Self and the Future." The conflicted intuitions are identified as animalist and psychologist and correspond roughly with the two major approaches to personal identity. The traditional strategy to resolve the conflict---thought experiments---is critically examined and the project concludes that proper thought experiments will reveal the conflict but are unlikely to resolve it. A (...) new reading of the conflict is proposed. The concept of the person is a cluster concept with distinct components: biological human beings, rational agency and psychological continuity, where the latter is construed as the temporal analog of phenomenological unity at a time. The project then suggests that moral theory is best pursued not by a naturalist conception of persons that unites the components of the cluster, but by a novel conception that separates them. This can be accomplished best by eliminating the concept of the person altogether. Objections that the concept of the person is ineliminable are considered and rejected, as are objections that the nature of conflict is not reason enough to abandon the concept. Personhood's centrality for value theory is questioned and the eliminativist strategy is defended on the grounds that responsibility, self-concern and moral rights are best analyzed with the component concepts instead of the cluster concept. Eliminativism is therefore preferable to competing accounts of personal identity because the former is better suited for moral theory. Among the advantages are the ability to: attribute responsibility to group agents without calling them persons, make sense of our conflicting demonstrations of self-concern without taking them as evidence for conflicting theories of personal identity, and attribute moral rights to entities who fail to meet traditional criteria for personhood but who are nonetheless entitled to moral respect. (shrink)

The informal letters of great philosophers often provide valuable clues not only to the development of their thought processes but also to their inner personalities. The austere and distant Hegel comes alive as a man in his correspondence, and the rigorous Spinoza takes on the blood and flesh of a gracious friend in his letters. In Kant’s correspondence, we occasionally find helpful interpretations of his thought as he answers questions put to him by friends and inquirers. And the (...) letters of William James to his wide circle of friends are uniformly charming. We do not usually find a great deal of profound significance in the extant personal correspondence of philosophers but there is an occasional insight, often a clue to the unfolding of a personality, or an unguarded comment here or there which suggests a tendency or trait. (shrink)

Person-centred care is a cornerstone of contemporary health policy, research and practice. However, many researchers and practitioners worry that it lacks a 'clear definition and method of measurement,' and that this creates problems for the implementation of person-centred care and limits understanding of its benefits. In this paper we urge caution about this concern and resist calls for a clear, settled definition and measurement approach. We develop a philosophical and conceptual analysis which is grounded in the body of literature concerning (...) the theory and practice of person-centred care. We consider a range of influential definitional frameworks of person-centred care, highlighting their differences and showing that they do not correspond to a clearly circumscribed and consistent underlying concept. We argue that a degree of indeterminacy and vagueness should not be seen as a problem with the concept of person-centred care; these are features of a rich and contested concept which exists prior to and outside of practical and technical operational definitions and applications. We defend the value of operating with multiple accounts of person-centred care, arguing that what counts as being person-centred can vary across different care contexts, in relation to different patient groups, and as a reflection of different, defensible ethical perspectives. Although the idea of a single, agreed definition is attractive and may seem to be a practical or even necessary step towards meaningful and coordinated action, we argue that this is only the case in a qualified sense. Comprehensive attempts to narrow down the concept in this way should be resisted, as they risk undermining what it is that makes person-centredness a valuable concept in healthcare. (shrink)

There are modes of presentation of a person in thought corresponding to the first and third person pronouns. This paper proposes that there is also thought involving a second person mode of presentation of another, which might be expressed by an utterance involving ‘you’, but need not be expressed linguistically. It suggests that co-operative activity is the locus for such thought. First person thought is distinctive in how it supplies reasons for the subject to act. In co-operative action there is (...) first person plural intending and judging. So there is a way of thinking of another, when openly co-operating with him or her, which plays the distinctive role of giving reason for contribution to the co-operative activity. In slogan form, ‘you’ is ‘we minus I’. The way children learn to use second and third person pronouns is naturally explained on this view. Contrasting less sophisticated kinds of co-operative activity with more sophisticated forms, and considering some issues about common knowledge and commo.. (shrink)

In this article, we present ethnographic material collected among the Telengits, mainly in the Kosh-Agach district of the Republic of Altai (Russian Federation). Analysis of Telengit concepts and practices shows a person as a complex network of relations and therefore a composite entity. Each of the terms that the Telengits use and which could be translated as 'soul' corresponds to various aspects, potentialities, and powers of a person; at the same time, a person is also a part of a larger (...) composite entity — Altai. It is easier to grasp the Telengit way of acting and conceptualizing the world if we see those notions as tools that help people to come to terms with particular situations and tasks and not as a structured set of mental representations. (shrink)

In this article a wide range of candidates for features that are defining of personhood are conceived of as interrelated, yet irreducible, layers and dimensions of what it is to be a person in the full-fledged sense of the word. Three layers of personhood -- consisting of person-making psychological capacities, person-making interpersonal significances, and person-making institutional or deontic powers -- are distinguished. Running through the layers there are then two dimensions -- the deontic and the axiological -- corresponding to the (...) recognitive attitudes of respect and love. These recognitive attitudes of 'taking something/-one as a person' are responses to the psychological layer and directly constitutive of the interpersonal layer of the respective dimensions of personhood. The multiplicity of ways to understand what 'personhood' means is only apparently chaotic and reveals, on a closer look, a well-ordered and dynamic internal structure. (shrink)

Existence of state-supported academies of science is a distinctive feature of the fundamental-science organization in Ukraine. Their research staff is divided into two groups: (i) personal members (academicians and corresponding members) and the rest of the researchers. First-group members have numerous economic and status privileges. It is officially purported that personal members are scientifically qualified than their colleagues. We analyzed this hypothesis on the basis of international indicators of the scientifi c activity (numbers of publications in the international (...) peer-reviewed journals and citations in them). The indicators testify that there are no distinctions between representatives of both groups being of the same age and qualifi cation. A conclusion is made that the lifelong privileges of the first group are ill-founded. (shrink)

Francis Hutcheson is often described as the father of the Scottish Enlightenment, and in this modern edition, never-before-published personal letters reveal the loyalty and lasting affection Hutcheson had for his friends, and his published correspondence and speeches bring to light his polemical skills in controversy and his preoccupation with religious and intellectual liberty.

James and Stumpf first met in Prague in 1882. James soon started corresponding with a “colleague with whose persons and whose ideas alike I feel so warm a sympathy.” With this, a lifelong epistolary friendship began. For 28 years until James’s death in 1910, Stumpf became James’s most important European correspondent. Besides psychological themes of great importance, such as the perception of space and of sound, the letters include commentary upon Stumpf’s and James’s main books, and many other works. The (...) two friends also exchange views concerning other scholars, religious faith and metaphysical topics. The different perspectives of the American and the German way of living, philosophizing and doing science are frequently under discussion. The letters also touch upon personal questions of historical interest. The book offers a critical edition and the English translation of hitherto unpublished primary sources. Historians of psychology and historians of philosophy will welcome the volume as a useful tool for their understanding of some crucial developments of the time. Scholars in the history of pragmatism and of phenomenology will also be interested in the volume. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 103-104 [Access article in PDF] Robert Boyle. Correspondence of Robert Boyle. 6 vols. Edited by Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio, and Lawrence M. Principe. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001. Cloth, $795.00. A complete edition of Boyle's correspondence has long been needed. Up until now, scholars who have attempted to incorporate Boyle's correspondence into their work have been thwarted by (...) (inter alia) illegible handwriting, foreign languages in the seventeenth-century versions, and scattered correspondence across a number of different countries on at least two continents. Michael Hunter and his co-editors, Antonio Clericuzio and Lawrence Principe, along with help from a staff of translators and editorial assistants, have succeeded brilliantly in creating order out of chaos.Given the length of time that Hunter et al. have been working on this edition and the extent to which cooperation has been sought and given by Boyle scholars worldwide, this Correspondence is as complete as is humanly possible. It is likely that in coming years stray letters will be found (most likely in private collections), but such finds will not be due to these editors' having failed to search assiduously for all extant correspondence. Next to completeness, the editorial methods and scholarly apparatus determine the usefulness of such an edition, and here again, Hunter and his co-editors have performed faultlessly. Hunter's introduction explains fully the decisions that were made concerning editorial choices (such as the choice of copy texts, etc.). In the letters themselves, the editorial annotations are easy to follow and arranged in such a way as to present a relatively uncluttered text (with textual variants being consigned to a section at the end of each volume). Editorial footnotes have been clearly distinguished from authorial footnotes. The editors have been quite successful in identifying correspondents and have provided useful cross-references in the footnotes to other relevant materials. In addition, each volume contains a section of brief biographical entries for those correspondents whose letters occur frequently in that volume.The editors' annotations are detailed and helpful and reflect years of dedication to the search for relevant information concerning Boyle's interests and his contemporaries. Throughout the entire Boyle Project, Hunter has elicited input from Boyle scholars on various people, topics, and references, and (as is the case with Boyle's Works) the result is an amazing amount of complementary information.Correspondence in a foreign language appears in both the original and in translation. This makes it possible for a scholar without competence in, for example, early modern Latin to have access to the content of the correspondence while allowing other scholars to check the accuracy of translations for themselves.Perhaps most useful of all the scholarly apparati is the glossary that appears at the end of each volume. Here one may find the meanings of the many seventeenth-century terms that are opaque to the typical twenty-first-century reader. Given the extent of Boyle's involvement in alchemy, without this glossary and its identification of the many alchemical terms it would be virtually impossible for a modern reader (even one who has studied chemistry) to make sense of many of the letters. Credit in this case goes to Lawrence Principe, who has contributed the fruit of his years devoted to the study of medieval and early modern alchemy. [End Page 103]A personal note from the reviewer may help to emphasize the significance of the contribution that Michael Hunter and his associates have made to Boyle studies. When I first began dealing with the (at that time) unpublished sources available to Boyle scholars, the situation was one of almost complete chaos. I was fortunate enough to have access at that time (1990-91) to Hunter's "Finding List" to the sources available at the Royal Society of London. This was surely an advantage over previous scholars, who could only pick their way through the many volumes looking for information that might be relevant to their studies; even so, progress in pursuing a particular aspect of Boyle scholarship was tedious. Cross-references to related... (shrink)

Personality is a relatively regular habit of a person. It exerts a specific influence on personal behavior and the corresponding results. At the same time, personality can provide a certain degree of explanation for the differences among individuals in behavior and the related consequences. Economic differences are one of the discrepancies that exist among individuals. In order to explore the quantitative relationship between personality and individual income, this study takes 376 active employees of Chinese startups as the primary research (...) objects. Additionally, considering the simplification and convenience of the survey, the annual salary investigated by this study is the pre-tax income of active startup employees. It uses quantitative methods to analyze the relationship between their personality traits and annual salary. Unlike the measures used in previous studies, this study employed the HEXACO-60 Inventory created by Ashton and Lee to investigate employees’ personality traits. Compared to the Big Five model, HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Consciousness, Open to Experience, and Agreeableness) adds a new dimension to evaluate personality traits, called Honesty-Humility (H-H). H-H did not appear in previous studies related to personality and individual income. Therefore, there is no reference to the relationship between H-H and personal earnings. Considering that the content of H-H is highly consistent with the components of inter locus of control and the core spirit advocated by the Confucian culture, which influences Chinese people profoundly, this paper proposes a bold hypothesis, that is, H-H has a positive correlation with employees’ annual salaries. Meanwhile, other corresponding hypotheses for the correlation between the other personality traits in HEXACO and employees’ annual salaries are proposed. After that, the above hypotheses are tested with the help of correlation analysis. Then, the following conclusions can be quickly drawn. Consciousness, eXtraversion, Open to Experience, and Honesty-Humility positively correlate with employees’ annual salaries. In comparison, Emotionality and Agreeableness negatively correlate with employees’ annual salaries. (shrink)

Hegel’s Philosophy of Law deals in theLaw section of the categories: person, property and contract. Research critically reconstructs this theory from a Marxist perspective. In the concept of person, first of all, the singular will is reduced to a solipsist will unrelated to intersubjectivity. Then, the concept of Hegelian property bases the private appropriation of property as the externalization of the singular will. This legal property guarantees the maintenance and reproduction of private property, that is, it will guarantee the private (...) accumulation of capital, Marx will say. Anyway, the theory of the contract would link the autonomy of the contracting wills, however, it is a mere appearance, because, in fact, the owners’ wills are under the domination of the capitalist market, as it is explained in Marx’s Capital. The theoretical deficit of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law in general is that the legal concepts of person and property correspond to the abstract will. Hegel describes the juridical description of the legal system of the modern state as the development of free will that legitimizes the asymmetry of civil society in its socioeconomic inequalities. (shrink)

According to the orthodox Christian belief expressed most famously at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Jesus Christ is one person who is both divine and human. Not surprisingly, many have wondered at this, for it seems impossible for one person to have both divine and human characteristics. There are different versions of this difficulty, which correspond to different human and divine characteristics. In this article, I will defend traditional Christology against an argument that bases itself on one particular difficulty. (...) The argument contends that Christ's omniscience and non-omniscience mean that he cannot be one person; it contends, in short, that Chalcedon is self-undermining. I will begin by making some preliminary remarks. In the second section of the paper, I will show that the anti-Chalcedonian argument cannot simply be avoided or ignored. In the third section, I will examine the argument itself. (shrink)