This paper examines Nietzsche’s conflicted relation to Epicurus, an important naturalistic predecessor in the ‘art of living’ tradition. I focus in particular on the Epicurean credo “live unnoticed” (lathe biōsas), which advocated an inconspicuous life of quiet philosophical reflection, self-cultivation and friendship, avoiding the public radar and eschewing the larger ambitions and perturbations of political life. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the idea looms largest and is most warmly received in Nietzsche’s middle period writings, where one finds a repeated concern with prudence, withdrawal (...) and concealment, and where the primary emphasis is on private pluralistic experiments in therapeutic self-cultivation among small groups of free spirits. The idea of the Epicurean Garden appeals greatly to Nietzsche at this time as well, and I suggest that Zarathustra’s Blessed Isles are best understood as a friendship community along these lines. However, Nietzsche’s growing impatience with human imperfections and the siren song of great politics eventually lead him away from Epicurus and back to Plato. Beginning with Zarathustra, the paradigm of the modest, hidden helpful philosopher-therapist is replaced by the more ambitious philosopher-legislator who takes upon himself the task of determining the future of humanity. Nonetheless, I argue that we can profit more from the modest, practical insights of Nietzsche’s Epicurean art of living. (full version). (shrink)

A unique introductory guide to the rich, complex and diverse tradition of Islamic philosophy, this book comprises over a hundred concise entries, alphabetically ordered and cross-referenced for easy access. All the essential aspects of the Islamic philosophical tradition are covered here: key figures, schools, concepts, topics and issues. Articles on the Peripatetics, Isma'ilis, Illuminationists, Sufis, kalam theologians and later modern thinkers are supplemented by entries on classical Greek influences as well as Jewish philosophers who lived and worked in the Islamic (...) world. Topical entries cover various issues and key positions in all the major areas of philosophy, making clear why the central problems of Islamic philosophy have been, and remain, matters of rational disputation. (shrink)

This comparative examination of Nietzsche and the Islamic philosopher al-Kindi emphasizes their mutual commitment to the recovery of classical Greek and Hellenistic thought and the idea of philosophy as a way of life. Affiliating both thinkers with the Stoic lineage in particular, I examine the ways in which they appropriate common themes such as fatalism, self-cultivation via spiritual exercises, and the banishing of sorrow. Focusing primarily on their respective conceptions of self and nature, I argue that the antipodal worldviews of (...) al-Kindi and Nietzsche can be understood as a bifurcation of Stoic philosophy. (shrink)

This paper initiates a dialogue between classical Islamic philosophy and late modern European thought, by focusing on two peripheral, ‘heretical’ figures within these traditions: Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyāʾ al-Rāzī and Friedrich Nietzsche. What affiliates these thinkers across the cultural and historical chasm that separates them is their mutual fascination with, and profound indebtedness to, ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophy. Given the specific themes, concerns and doctrines that they appropriate from this common source, I argue that al-Rāzī and Nietzsche should (...) be read as Epicureans and seen in relation to their predecessor as part of the subterranean tradition of philosophical naturalism. However, while each figure appropriates the philosophy of Epicurus, they ultimately transform it in important ways: al-Rāzī offers us a qualified “Platonic” Epicureanism, while Nietzsche forges a radicalized “Dionysian” Epicureanism. The point of such a comparative examination is twofold. First, analyzing the divergent paths of these “wayward” Epicureans sheds new light on the historical trajectory of naturalism as a philosophical stance (as well as its current prospects and limitations). Second, by initiating a dialogue between the classical Islamic and modern European philosophical traditions, we can better understand the antagonisms and shared concerns between these two horizons, as well as the ambiguities and self-questioning that occur within them. (shrink)

The last twenty-five years or so have seen the emergence of exciting comparative work on Nietzsche and various philosophical traditions beyond the bounds of Europe. So far, however, the emphasis has been primarily on the cultures of India, China and Japan, with an almost exclusive focus on Buddhist, Hindu, Daoist, and Confucian traditions. Surprisingly, little work has been done on Nietzsche and the Islamic tradition. In this paper, I sketch out Nietzsche’s understanding of Islam, the ways in which he uses (...) it as a resource for his critique of Christianity and European modernity and the criticisms he has to make of it as one of the great monotheistic world religions. I then argue for the need to engage Nietzsche with specific Islamic falāsifa of the classical period (9-12th c.) rather than Islam itself, as some recent scholars have attempted to do. Although Nietzsche himself seems to have had no direct familiarity with any of the falāsifa, there are, I argue, many entry points for productive comparison and dialogue. This is at least in part because they share a significant common heritage: both were careful students of classical Greek and Hellenistic thought, and both put the insights they encountered there to work in bold new ways. Indeed, they appropriated, transformed and reanimated Greek ideas in new contexts and towards new ends that their progenitors would scarcely have recognized, and that were often radically challenging to their contemporaries. I focus here on a few select themes—the idea of philosophy as a “way of life,” the ideal of “becoming like God so far as it is possible” and the Platonic figure of the philosopher-ruler, all of which get taken up and re-imagined in radically novel and sometimes antipodal ways. (shrink)

While in the beginning of the environmental debate, conflicts over environmental and technological issues had primarily been understood in terms of ‘‘risk’’, over the past two decades the relevance of ignorance, or nonknowledge, was emphasized. Referring to this shift of attention to nonknowledge the article presents two main findings: first, that in debates on what is not known and how to appraise it different and partly conflicting epistemic cultures of nonknowledge can be discerned and, second, that drawing attention to nonknowledge (...) in technology conflicts results in significant institutional effects and new constellations of actors in public debates. To illustrate and substantiate this political dynamics of nonknowledge we draw upon examples from the areas of agri-biotechnology and mobile phoning. In a first step, we develop in greater detail the concept of scientific cultures of nonknowledge and identify three such cultures involved in the social conflicts within the two areas. Subsequently, we analyze the specific dynamics of the politicisation of nonknowledge looking at the variety of actors involved and the pluralisation of perceptions and evaluations of what is not known. Then, we point out some of the institutional reactions to the political and cultural dynamics of scientific nonknowledge. We argue that the equal recognition of the diverse cultures of nonknowledge is a key prerequisite for socially legitimate and ‘‘robust’’ decision-making under conditions of politicised scientific nonknowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the figure of the ape in Nietzsche's texts, and how it fits into his putative naturalism. I examine the lowly status and ignoble qualities that he associates with this animal and argue that they betray a residual anthropocentricism profoundly at odds with Nietzsche's dehumanized conception of nature. Accordingly, I suggest a reading of Nietzsche's ape remarks that brings them more into accord with his non-teleological and non-hierarchical conception of species. Ultimately, I argue that a (...) robust, thorough going Nietzschean naturalism would require the affirmation of the ape, including everything it comes to represent for Nietzsche. (shrink)

This article re-exams the old tension between the philosopher and the city. Reading Ibn Bājja’s Governance of the Solitary and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra against the background of Plato’s Republic, I argue that they both embrace several key aspects of Platonic political philosophy: the assumption that philosophical natures can grow spontaneously in sick cities, the ideal of the philosopher legislator and the correlative project of founding a virtuous new regime. Yet in preparation for this final task, each prescribes a regimen (...) of solitude for philosophers, so that they might preserve their own health and autonomy. While this spiritual exercise at first appears merely temporary and provisional—aimed at the cultivation of a philosopher ruler and the eventual establishment of a healthy political regime —I argue that both Ibn Bājja and Zarathustra ultimately abandon their Platonic ambitions and opt instead for the apolitical contemplative life. (shrink)

A vast historical, cultural and philosophical chasm separates the thought of the 10th century Islamic philosopher al-Farabi and Friedrich Nietzsche, the progenitor of postmodernity. However, despite their significant differences, they share one important commitment: an attempt to resuscitate and reappropriate the project of Platonic political philosophy, particularly through their conceptions of the “true philosopher” as prophet, leader, and lawgiver. This paper examines al-Farabi and Nietzsche’s respective conceptions of the philosopher as commander and legislator against the background of their Platonic source, (...) and reflects upon the human cost each thinker is willing to abide in order to establish a regime that would be conducive to the perfectibility and flourishing of the human being. (shrink)

This article considers the significance of the Blessed Isles in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. They are the isolated locale to which Zarathustra and his fellow creators retreat in the Second Part of the book. I trace Zarathustra’s Blessed Isles back to the ancient Greek paradisiacal afterlife of the makarōn nēsoi and frame them against Nietzsche’s Platonic conception of philosophers as “commanders and legislators,” but I argue that they represent something more like a modern Epicurean Garden. Ultimately, I suggest that Zarathustra’s (...) Epicurean impulse toward withdrawal (whether into a sequestered friendship community or mountain solitude) undermines his Platonic attempts at great politics. (shrink)

A discussion of the different ways in which the Islamicate philosophical tradition has been characterized and categorized in Anglo-European scholarship.

This paper examines the significance of Epicureanism for Nietzsche’s critique of Christian monotheism and his subsequent attempt to reanimate a kind of this-worldly, affirmative religiosity of immanence. After a brief overview of the pivotal role that Epicurus’ thought plays in the death of God, I focus on Epicurus’ own residual conception of the gods and the ways in which Nietzsche strategically retrieves it and puts it use in his writing. Nietzsche juxtaposes the distant, serene, indifferent Epicurean gods with the omniscient, (...) intrusive, jealous and needy God of middle-Eastern monotheisms. One might say that they constitute a ‘halfway house’ of sorts between Christianity and Nietzsche’s new Dionysian religion of the earth. But they also figure prominently in his own conflicted desire to intervene in the aleatory course of natural history and legislate the the future of humanity: Nietzsche finds he cannot simply look down with “the mocking and aloof eyes” of an Epicurean god upon the degeneration and diminution of the human being under Christian ascetic regimes of cultivation. Ultimately, Nietzsche fails to achieve the divine temperament of the Epicurean gods (looking down from afar on human ignorance, desire and suffering with a noble pathos of distance). Forthcoming 2022. (shrink)

I examine Zarathustra's increasing ambivalence about his role as philosopher-prophet-legislator, connecting the speech "On Passing By" (Z III.7) with his doctrine of amor fati (GS 276) as a pivotal moment in his gradual ascent up the ladder of love/affirmation and consequent overcoming of great politics. Forthcoming 2022.

This paper examines Nietzsche’s conflicted relation to Epicurus, an important naturalistic predecessor in the ‘art of living’ tradition. I focus in particular on the Epicurean credo “live unnoticed” (lathe biōsas), which advocated an inconspicuous life of quiet philosophical reflection, self-cultivation and friendship, avoiding the public radar and eschewing the larger ambitions and perturbations of political life. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the idea looms largest and is most warmly received in Nietzsche’s middle period writings, where one finds a repeated concern with prudence, withdrawal (...) and concealment, and where the primary emphasis is on private pluralistic experiments in therapeutic self-cultivation among small groups of free spirits. The idea of the Epicurean Garden appeals greatly to Nietzsche at this time as well, and I suggest that Zarathustra’s Blessed Isles are best understood as a friendship community along these lines. However, Nietzsche’s growing impatience with human imperfections and the siren song of great politics eventually lead him away from Epicurus and back to Plato. Beginning with Zarathustra, the paradigm of the modest, hidden helpful philosopher-therapist is replaced by the more ambitious philosopher-legislator who takes upon himself the task of determining the future of humanity. Nonetheless, I argue that we can profit more from the modest, practical insights of Nietzsche’s Epicurean art of living. (short version). (shrink)

A philosophical examination of 'new wave' as a musical genre, focusing on its developmental history and relation to punk as well as its unique ethos and aesthetic. Forthcoming 2021.

In this essay I examine the tension between Nietzsche's doctrine of amor fati and his political project of Zuchtung. As philosophical naturalist, Nietzsche espouses a love of fate and a respect for necessity and reality. However, as philosophical legislator, he apparently denies the fatality of the human being in his attempts to cultivate or perfect it. I argue that Nietzsche's Zuchtung differs importantly from "idealistic" varieties of legislation in that it both requires and aims at the affirmation of fate. On (...) my reading, Nietzsche's nomothetic project neither contradicts nor undermines his naturalistic project: rather it represents its apotheosis and culmination. (shrink)

The present stage in the development of our society is marked by serious changes in social morality. The building of communism is entering a new stage. The man of the communist future is taking shape and being perfected before our eyes. Under these conditions, the Party - and this was emphasized at its Twenty-Fourth Congress - requires of a worker in the arts a thorough examination of contemporary life and of its hero to the full extent of his talent, and (...) demands that his ethical convictions and awareness of spirit be developed. Since this is the case, it is natural that literary criticism faces new, lofty tasks: tasks of analyzing literature in connection with those economic, societal, and moral processes which characterize social existence today. This was stated clearly both at the Party Congress and in the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On Criticism in Literature and the Arts" [O literaturno-khudozhestvennoi kritiki]. (shrink)

A reconstruction of the anagenetic transformations from fins to tetrapod limbs is represented considering the self-evident mechanical constraints which must have limited the construction and thus the function and the transformation.

Head stabilization is fundamental for balance during locomotion but can be impaired in elderly or diseased populations. Previous studies have identified several parameters of head stability with possible diagnostic value in a laboratory setting. Recently, the ecological validity of measures obtained in such controlled contexts has been called into question. The aim of this study was to investigate the ecological validity of previously described parameters of head stabilization in a real-world setting. Ten healthy subjects participated in the study. Head and (...) trunk movements of each subject were recorded with inertial measurement units (IMUs) for a period of at least ten hours. Periods of locomotion were extracted from the measurements and predominant frequencies, root mean squares (RMSs) and bout lengths were estimated. As parameters of head stabilization, attenuation coefficients (ACs), harmonic ratios (HRs), coherences and phase differences were computed. Predominant frequencies were distributed tightly around 2 Hz and ACs, HRs and coherences exhibited the highest values in this frequency range. All head stability parameters exhibited characteristics consistent with previous reports, although higher variances were observed. These results suggest that head stabilization is tuned to the 2 Hz fundamental frequency of locomotion and that previously described measures of head stability could generalize to a real-world setting. This is the first study to address the ecological validity of these measures, highlighting the potential use of head stability parameters as diagnostic tools or outcome measures for clinical trials. The low cost and ease of use of the IMU technology used in this study could additionally be of benefit for a clinical application. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Die Einführung von Impfprogrammen bei einer immun-naiven Bevölkerung in Europa spielte eine wesentliche Rolle für den Verlauf der COVID-19 Pandemie. Vor allem zu Beginn waren Impfprogramme jedoch durch einen Mangel an Impfdosen gekennzeichnet. Bei einer Zuteilung geringer Dosen an Krankenhäuser in der Initialphase, waren Krankenhausleitungen durch eine möglichst faire Verteilung dieser Impfdosen unter dem Krankenhauspersonal gefordert. Der Beitrag dokumentiert das Vorgehen im ersten Quartal 2021 an fünf deutschen Krankenhäusern in einem Klinikverbund. Wir berichten über einen regel-konsequentialistischen Ansatz auf der (...) strategischen Ebene, der durch einen egalitären Ansatz auf der taktischen Ebene ergänzt wurde. Es erfolgte die ethisch begleitete Entwicklung eines hybriden Schemas unter Verzicht auf klassische Verteilungsmuster, wie dem First-Come-First-Served Schema. Die Kombination des strategischen regel-konsequentialistischen Schemas mit egalitärer Verteilung auf der taktischen Ebene war vollständig funktional und unter den Mitarbeitenden des Klinikverbundes gut akzeptiert. In Zeiten von Pandemien und knappen Ressourcen spielt die Verteilung von medizinischen Gütern für die Funktionalität medizinischer Einrichtungen eine wichtige Rolle. Die Verteilung von Gütern, die durch den Staat bereitgestellt werden, bedarf jedoch einer Anpassung an die jeweiligen Gegebenheiten der Institutionen. Dieser Bericht zeigt eine mögliche Option für die Verteilung knapper Impfdosen auf, die nicht nur unter Personen der Zielgruppe verteilt wurden, sondern die auch die Funktionalität der medizinischen Versorgung in einer Region sicherte. (shrink)

Reality has become an increasingly prominent topic in contemporary philosophy. The book’s contributors are responding to the challenge to use the philosophically underexplored potential of film to disclose what the editors propose to call “the real of reality.”.

Background: SNOMED CT is a large terminology system designed to represent all aspects of healthcare. Its current form and content result from decades of bottom-up evolution. Due to SNOMED CT’s formal descriptions, it can be considered an ontology. The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a foundational ontology that proposes a small set of disjoint, hierarchically ordered classes, supported by relations and axioms. In contrast, as a typical top-down endeavor, BFO was designed as a foundational framework for domain ontologies in the (...) natural sciences and related disciplines. Whereas it is mostly assumed that domain ontologies should be created as extensions of foundational ontologies, a post-hoc harmonization of consolidated domain ontologies in use, such as SNOMED CT, is known to be challenging. Methods: We explored the feasibility of harmonizing SNOMED CT with BFO, with a focus on the SNOMED CT Clinical Finding hierarchy. With more than 100,000 classes, it accounts for about one third of SNOMED CT’s content. In particular, we represented typical SNOMED CT finding/disorder concepts using description logics under BFO. Three representational patterns were created and the logical entailments analyzed. Results: Under a first scrutiny, the clinical intuition that diseases, disorders, signs and symptoms form a homogeneous ontological upper-level class appeared incompatible with BFO’s upper-level distinction into continuants and occurrents. The Clinical finding class seemed to be an umbrella for all kinds of entities of clinical interest, such as material entities, processes, states, dispositions, and qualities. This suggests the conclusion that Clinical finding would not be a suitable upper-level class from an BFO perspective. On closer inspection of the taxonomic links within this hierarchy and the implicit meaning derived thereof, it became clear that Clinical finding classes do not characterize the entity (e.g. a fracture, allergy, tumor, pain, hemorrhage, seizure, fever) in a literal sense but rather the condition of a patient having that fracture, allergy, pain etc. This gives sense to the current characteristic of the Clinical Finding hierarchy, in which complex classes are modeled as subclasses of their constituents. Most of these taxonomic links are inferred, as the consequence of the ‘role group’ design pattern, which is ubiquitous in SNOMED CT and has often been subject of controversy regarding its semantics. Conclusion: Our analyses resulted in the proposal of (i) equating SNOMED CT’s ‘role group’ property with the reflexive and transitive BFO relation ‘has occurrent part’; and (ii) reinterpreting Clinical Findings as Clinical Occurrents, i.e. temporally extended entities in an organism, having one or more occurrents as temporal parts that occur in continuants. This re-interpretation was corroborated by a manual analysis of classes under Clinical Finding, as well as the identification of similar modeling patterns in other ontologies. As a result, SNOMED CT does not require any content redesign to establish compatibility with BFO, apart from this re-interpretation, and a suggested re-labeling. Regarding the feasibility of harmonizing terminologies with principled foundational ontologies post-hoc, our results provide support to the assumption that this does not necessarily require major redesign efforts, but rather a careful analysis of the implicit assumptions of terminology curators and users. (shrink)

The author of this unusual and fascinating monograph is an intellectual historian whose interests extend well beyond Nietzsche to encompass Weimar classicism, 20th century analytical psychology and classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy. Although this may at first sound like a strange juxtaposition, Bishop’s previous studies have made a compelling case that vital aspects of Nietzsche’s thought come sharply into focus when he is read in relation to figures such as Goethe and Schiller on the one hand and Jung on the (...) other, with an eye to certain formative themes and metaphors in the Platonic tradition. What we find when we set these thinkers in dialogue with one another is a distinct intellectual-spiritual lineage predominantly concerned with the possibilities of self-transformation. Bishop’s interpretative approach is perhaps closest to Pierre Hadot in this respect, albeit more oriented towards modern German thought and uniquely informed by Jungian depth psychology. (shrink)

Given its title, one might expect Roy Jackson's Nietzsche and Islam to offer an examination of Nietzsche's views on Islam. Such a volume would be welcome indeed, since with the exception of a short but excellent article by Ian Almond there is a striking lacuna in Nietzsche studies on this particular topic.1 However, while Jackson frequently notes Nietzsche's surprisingly positive assessment of Islam, his concerns here are not so much historical and philological as contemporary and political. The stated aim of (...) the book is twofold: first, to demonstrate (contrary to popular belief) that "Nietzsche is not the standard bearer for atheism" and second, to make the case that his philosophy "has particular relevance for .. (shrink)

In this book, Parkes presents the first full-length study of Nietzsche's psychology. He argues that Nietzsche does not entirely reject that "most ancient and venerable" of hypotheses--the soul--but rather retains a considerably less metaphysical version of it. The book comprises a rigorous philological investigation of Nietzsche's psychological images and discourses, ultimately culminating in an examination of his most revolutionary psychological idea: his hypothesis regarding the irreducible multiplicity of the soul.

dialectical frameworks constitute a recent and powerful generalisation of Dung's argumentation frameworks, where the relationship between the arguments can be specified via Boolean formulas. Recent results have shown that this enhancement comes with the price of higher complexity compared to AFs. In fact, acceptance problems in the world of ADFs can be hard even for the third level of the polynomial hierarchy. In order to implement reasoning problems on ADFs, systems for quantified Boolean formulas thus are suitable engines to be (...) employed. In this paper we give complexity sensitive QBF encodings of ADF problems generalising recent work on QBFs for AF labellings. Our encodings provide a uniform and modular way of translating reasoning in ADFs to QBFs, that can be used as the basis for novel systems for ADF reasoning. (shrink)

Otto Neurath (1882-1945) was a highly unorthodox thinker both in philosophy and economics. The contributions to this sparkling new book conclude that Neurath touched on many of the most critical problems of economic theory during its formative years as a modern discipline. His economics provide insights into the foundational problems of modern economics and should encourage contemporary economic theorists to critically reflect their own hidden presumptions.

Nietzsche's use of metaphor has been widely noted but rarely focused to explore specific images in great detail. A Nietzschean Bestiary gathers essays devoted to the most notorious and celebrated beasts in Nietzsche's work. The essays illustrate Nietzsche's ample use of animal imagery, and link it to the dual philosophical purposes of recovering and revivifying human animality, which plays a significant role in his call for de-deifying nature.

It is argued that the narrow concept of selection used since the time ofDarwin is only concerned with the relation between organism and its environment . It did not include the organism itself, which was the object of the pre-phylogenetic idealistic morphology. An adequate understanding of the mechanism of evolution dispenses with the concept of morphology as the basis of phylogeny.Es wird aufgezeigt, da\ der aufDarwin selbst zurückgehende eingeengte Gebrauch des Selektionskonzeptes auf die Beziehung zwischen Organismus und Umwelt die biologische (...) Konstruktion der vorphylogenetischen idealistischen Morphologie überlassen hat. Ein zutreffendes VerstÄndnis des Evolutionsmechanismus begreift aber die biologische Apparatur ein, entzieht der Morphologie, soweit sie sich als Vorbedingung phylogenetischen Arbeitens versteht, den Boden. (shrink)

We investigate risk and ambiguity attitudes among Ethiopian farmers in one of the poorest regions of the world. Strong risk aversion and ambiguity aversion were found with the Ethiopian farmers. We compared their attitudes to those of a Western university student sample elicited by the same decision task. Ambiguity aversion was similar for farmers and students, but farmers were more risk averse. Our results show that ambiguity aversion is not restricted to Western student populations, and that studies of agricultural decisions (...) may benefit from explicitly considering ambiguity attitudes. (shrink)